Ziff

Cowzgomooz, there is already a thread with almost this same exact title right here -> http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/17968-which-planet-are-you-most-excited-for Is there really a need for a second thread?

Minmus is only 6 degrees off from Kerbin's plane. This means that there are 2 possible launch windows where we could end up on the same plane as Minmus. One would launch at 84 degrees, the other at 96 degrees, depending on Kerbin's rotation. It is relatively easy to time your launch so you end up in orbit on the same plane and then only have to do a single injection burn using the same method as you would to go to the Mun. I did a write up on how to time the launch with some photo's in this thread here -> Minmus Direct Transfer

Not exactly. Minmus orbits on a plane inclination difference of 6 degrees from Kerbin. So you either add or subtract the 6 degrees to the heading depending on when you launch. I did a write up explanation on this for someone in another thread. Here it is with some photo's as well. Minmus Inclination

It's only been a bug in .16, not for any version before that. Before .16 engines used a fuel burn rate. For .16 they switched to Specific Impulse. The problem is that a line of code was left in that lets the fuel usage be modified the square of the throttle or something, I don't remember exactly. But basically at 100% thrust it works correctly. However, at 50% thrust it should use 50% of the fuel usage but instead it's using like 25%, and at 10% thrust it's using even less, it's only using 1% fuel. It's not hard to build rockets that get to orbit with plenty of fuel left over , it just takes some practice in design.

One of my favorites (because it's clearly not true) has to be "These blast points  too accurate for sandpeople. Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise." Imperial stormtroopers, who then proceed to miss every shot they fire in all 3 movies, except for the one guy that shot Leia. He got lucky. My favorite comedy line is by Leia when she says, "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."

Ok, I laughed, but where is the rest of it? I was hoping to see rockets number 2, 3, and however many more it took to get a design that worked.

Please use the search feature. This has already been posted repeatedly and discussed to death.

I've posted several different designs with their associated .craft files if you would like to take a look. They're on this thread here -> http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/16822-Rocketry-by-Ziff?p=234564#post234564 Yeah, I know, shameless plug but whatever. Oh, best advice, go edit the part.cfg file for the large decoupler and change its strength to 176 so that it doesn't fall apart anymore. Its a bug that will be fixed in .17 anyway.

It was directed at the image Vostok posted. So I've been wondering about Nova's photo and I can't figure out what is under the crew tank(what I assume is a crew tank, anyway). Is it just a 2m to 1m adapter from one of the other mods or might it be something else, which I think it is.. Also, it is super nice to see shadows working correctly again.

I only tried to fly with the joystick once and it didn't end well. It never occurred to me to try it during landing. Vanamonde, if you go into the settings menu at the KSP Splash screen, there are quick buttons that you can click to invert the controls for the joystick for each separate axis.

It's pretty standard that any new version will break the .craft and persistence files, it is Alpha after all, the Dev's shouldn't have to waste time trying to make everything backwards compatible.

My personal favorite right there. You know that poor Kerbal is thinking 'Maybe if I turn my light off, it won't really have happened.' While not amazing visuals, I found this accidental orbit to be rather amazing. A Minmus gravitational slingshot that threw me into a Mun slingshot that threw me into an escape velocity. This also was an accidental occurrence. While testing a research vessel I discovered that it had enough fuel to still land on the Mun, so I headed down into a random landing site, completely in the dark. Afterwards I decided to take a photo of it for my Rocketry thread and advanced the time warp and this is what I caught. Kerbin too?!

Haha! That was one massive explosion! Poor little kerbals and bits everywhere, I would imagine. This just happened recently to me during the 'Quickest time to Minmus' challenge. I had to leave for awhile in the middle of my transfer orbit, so I just saved the game and shut it off. When I came home and reloaded the quicksave, I failed to notice some erroneous bug that caused my .craft file to change a bit. If you look closely, the legs are position much higher than they were originally placed (at the bottom of the tank) and are somehow actually crossing each other. I would like to mention that Jeb did manage to salvage the mission by landing spectacularly on the engine with one leg preventing it from rolling downhill.

I am almost willing to bet you can find a .iso file of the windows recovery tool only somewhere on the net that would allow you to make a bootable recovery CD without the full Windows OS CD. The drive won't mount in Ubuntu, but it's still recognized in the bios right?

I'm having a hard time understanding what the real issue is. The old drive was a Windows OS drive, yes? And you want to save the information on the 11 year old drive, or just get it to boot? If all you want is some files off it, install an OS on your spare HD and then mount the old drive as a slave so you can access it and copy what you need. If it fails to read or mount at that point, the drive is likely failing. The last time I had an invalid boot error on a drive that caused it to reset repeatedly after bios, it turned out it was an invalid boot.ini file and running the Recovery option off the Windows OS CD fixed the problem. It's been a long time since I did anything with Ubuntu though, so I dunno why it won't mount the drive.

No, you did not, what you did was just prove that version .16 has a major fuel bug. You should probably now read this thread here-> http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/15196-0-16-MAJOR-Fuel-consumption-is-wrong-at-low-throttle/ You might want to read that first post, and then the third from the last post where HarvesteR confirms it's a bug. If you are a more visual person, you can watch a great explanation of the fuel bug by Scott Manley here-> Just skip to the 3 minute mark where he fully explains what is going on. You can also try downloading the demo, version .13, and try the exact same thing you just did and you will see how it really works. The line above just explains how it doesn't matter how large a vehicle is, or how heavy it is, it still needs to change it's velocity (delta-v) by a certain specific amount in order to perform a specific orbital maneuver. However, you must also understand that the delta-v a ship is capable of achieving (which is the exact wording that I used) is a completely different story my friend. The delta-v a craft can achieve is wholly 100% based on the total mass, fuel amount, and engine Isp. Changing fuel, mass, or engine Isp changes the delta-v it can obtain. This is how NASA creates delta-v budgets to figure out if a spaceship can actually get where it needs to go. They actually use, you know, math, to figure this out. You too can use Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation to figure this out, which you can also read here-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation On Topic After reading another thread about the Apollo computer, I would absolutely love to see an in-game version of this. A very basic computer that can be programmed in a simple manner to perform basic orbital maneuvers would be neat. However, I still love MechJeb for all the information it provides. My skill as a pilot greatly increased when I could focus all my attention at the MechJebs informational windows. Before I used MechJeb I had more than once accident where I crashed into the surface of Minmus because the mountain was over 2km tall! For me, the best part about MechJeb was it allowed me to concentrate on important things, like canceling horizontal velocity during landing, rather than trying to manipulate the camera and see how close the surface was.

If you mouse over both engines, one will say something like Thrust Vectoring: Yes. That one is the gimbaled engine which means the engine nozzle can move somewhat to help steer your craft. Its the liquid fuel engine with less thrust, which it looks like is the one you mounted on your craft. That also happens to be the least Stupid orbiter I have seen from a new player. Getting to the Mun isn't too hard. Get yourself into orbit at a heading of 90 degrees when you launch. Once you're in orbit, wait until you see the Mun rise over the edge of Kerbin, and then align the navigational gimbal so that the V in the center is over the yellow circle(prograde), and fire those badboy engines until the map shows you have an encouter with the Mun. Then advance time until you are in the Mun's sphere of influence (your orbit will change color, showing you will escape the SoI if you don't do anything) , and then do a retroburn until you are in orbit around the Mun.

I totally agree with this statement. If you reduce your throttle 50% you cut your acceleration 50% therefore it takes twice as long to get to the same speed. At no point do you somehow magically increase the specific impulse efficiency of an engine allowing you to somehow travel farther on less fuel. Any craft made in version .16, unless you downloaded the hacky fuel consumption fix posted somewhere around here, is experiencing a fuel throttle bug. They all are. Any throttle less than 100% is abusing the bug, and the lower the throttle the more you gain from it, because of the code that was accidentally left in place, as stated by the Devs. You say my premise is silly, but you obviously have a misunderstanding of how specific impulse, thrust, and delta-v all relate to each other. Because thrust has nothing to do with delta-v requirements. At all. Specific impulse is the engines efficiency rating and that is what is used in delta-v calculations.(with fuel amount and total mass) Thrust only tells you if your craft has enough thrust to push the mass it is carrying to escape the affects of atmospheric drag and gravity. That is all. As long as you have a T:W above 1.5, you can then forget about thrust unless you need to know how long to burn your engine for a particular maneuver. You would not be 'saving' fuel, you would be halving the fuel rate. There is a difference. The second craft at 50% throttle would merely be consuming fuel at the same rate as the first craft, yet they would travel the exact same distance on the same amount of fuel (all other things being equal). What you are saying is that somehow throttling down increases your fuel efficiency, and it doesn't. Throttling down would just increase the time it takes to perform the maneuver, yet it would still use the exact same amount of fuel. You keep talking about 'saving' fuel. You aren't saving fuel. You are reducing thrust, which increases the length of your burn time, which is all proportional. It doesn't matter it still takes the same amount of fuel to get a specific mass amount into orbit. You can waste fuel by trying to accelerate too fast against the much thicker atmosphere, but once you pass Max-Q it doesn't matter. You can accelerate fast, or slow, as long as you maintain momentum to reach orbital velocity it will use the same amount of fuel. I don't even know why you are trying to explain this. I completely understand how delta-v, mass, amount of fuel, and specific impulse all relate to each other. They aren't separate, they're all tied to each other. Changing one affects the other. Decreasing mass, Increasing amount of fuel or Isp, increases the delta-v a craft can achieve. Increasing mass, decreasing fuel, decreasing Isp, all decrease the delta-v a craft can achieve. You can muck about with the amount of thrust all you want but it won't ever change the delta-v a craft can achieve, because that is based on total mass, fuel, and Isp.

There is a logical flaw in your argument if this is what you want to use to defend your point. More thrust/fuel is required to transfer heavier objects into orbit because as Mass of your craft increases, your T:W ratio goes down, unless you increase your engine thrust. So you increase engine thrust to get a T:W high enough for liftoff. Now your mass has increased, and as mass goes up, the amount of delta-v produced by same amount of fuel/engine Isp as you had before will decrease. So now you need to add enough fuel to have the correct delta-v required to get into orbit. What you are saying makes no sense. Delta-v is the same, yes, because its a change in velocity required to reach orbit. The amount of Delta-v a craft can achieve is directly related to the total mass of the craft, the amount of fuel on board, and the engine Isp. A heavy object takes more fuel, but still the same delta-v, to get into orbit. If you are, as you claim, throttling down and 'saving' fuel in the upper atmosphere where the is no drag, you are seeing the fuel bug. You cannot save fuel by throttling down in the upper atmosphere. If you are doing that, and saving fuel, you are getting into orbit with more fuel in your tank. Then you have also used less delta-v than required. It doesn't work that way. All things being equal, more fuel = more delta-v. If you are somehow saving fuel, you are using less delta-v. Which as I said before, if I give you a rocket with just less than enough delta-v to reach orbit no amount of throttling down will save you that extra fuel you need and get you into orbit. It is a fuel bug. It was not like this in any previous version. It is a known bug that is already fixed for .17. There is no throttle efficiency once you pass into upper atmosphere. As I explained before, Max-Q is the only time you would have to throttle down. This is usually in the sub 10km range. Once you pass that, the atmosphere thins out tremendously. Once your craft passes the speed that matches the engine exhaust speed, you have reached maximum engine efficiency and throttle will have no effect on increasing the efficiency of the engine.

If you are launching from Kerbin, then it's easy. Just don't turn to a 90 degree heading (east) turn to 0 or 360 for North, or 180 for South. Done, follow same procedures as for a normal launch. It may take a little more fuel though.

Well, I gave it a fairly decent shot I think. If I timed Minmus's orbit just a tad better I could do a direct injection straight from Kerbin , as I was pretty close to doing that on this mission. Look who showed up, by chance, after the last pilot accidentally exploded against the launch tower? I managed to do a burn from just a few minutes after Kerbin Apoapsis, while still in a decaying orbit. However, there is room for improvement as I hit Minmus on my return leg, I could have shaved a lot of time off had I hit it on the first leg. Touchdown! Er, OMG, JEB, you crazy son of a- What did you do to the landing legs?! Jeb amazingly manage to take off again and get her upright and stopped on a slightly better part of the hill. On a side note, wtf happened to my landing gear? MET: 3:08:17:24

Vanamonde, I remember you posting this .craft file in another thread for some other reason and I remember downloading it, testing it, and commenting on it. I don't know if I mentioned it then, but I had those same 4 engines from your specific .craft file fall off. I remember it clearly, we were talking about design efficiency and I reached orbit with your craft, and then time warped to line up a Mun shot. Coming out of time warp all 4 engines just floated off into space, I think I even took a screenshot. I went back to the VAB, removed the engines, tanks, and associated parts, including the struts, saved it, and then rebuilt it exactly how it was. I launched the craft and the problem was gone. Actually, If there were struts trying to hold the engines on, I removed those. Otherwise everything else was the same. [EDIT]:This confirms what I just read in Zephram's post, as I removed the offending parts and replaced them and the problem went away. So yeah, something definitely quirky there. I wonder where that thread with that specific .craft link went? Maybe I can download and test it again.

I have to agree with this, as they both really fit well into their media format. The book has some great details and character stuff you don't get in the movie. The movie has several amazing epic cinematography shots that you just can't get from the book. However, the movie pace is kind of slow by today's standards and if you watch it expecting an action packed movie you will be disappointed.

Yeah, for reals, even I was looking at the avatar after I read that. Hal's breakdown is in the book because Hal is the antagonist to drive the story, otherwise it would just be a couple of boring sleeping astronauts waiting to get to Jupiter. As for 1) I agree with this, Hal has a conflicting problem. He's supposed to track and relay all information accurately, yet he is also supposed to lie to the astronauts about the real mission. What would a human do in this case? Probably just pick the 1 they prefer. Hal comes up with a solution that fits both, kill the astronauts and there is no need to lie to them anymore and he can go about his programming routine as normal. 2) I always thought the way it read was meant to convey the fact that any normal human would probably go crazy being isolated for that long. The fact that Dave see's this too, yet still manages to come through, points to how strong his character is. Making him a shining example of our species, and thus, deserving of his transformation. But I haven't read it in about 15 years so maybe I should go back and see what I find now.

The only time lower throttle saves fuel is once you hit Max-Q. At that point more thrust produces little speed increase because of atmospheric drag and is otherwise wasted. Rocket engines don't save fuel with lower throttle, once they are traveling faster than the exhaust speed of the engine they are at maximum efficiency and throttle amount has no affect on efficiency. The only thing that increases efficiency would be a higher Isp. Er, what? What do you mean by power? Once you reach orbit, you're uh, in orbit. There is no aligning left to do. This doesn't sound right at all. Rocketry and orbits are all about the speed you need to travel to fall correctly around the orbital body, this is why it's all about delta-v delta-v delta-v. If the orbit height you want to have takes a delta-v of 4500m/s to obtain, and I give you a rocket with an engine with a certain Isp and fuel quantity that gets you 4200m/s of delta-v, you can throttle however you want, you are not getting into orbit. It just doesn't work that way. You can't increase delta-v by lowering your throttle, if you are, what you are seeing is the fuel bug. Back on topic , I love MechJeb. I love all the information it provides, it's just a plethora of wonderous streaming data that I can use in so many ways! I tend to use it a lot on new craft so I can monitor everything, but then I usually get rid of it once I have flown a craft repeatedly. Probably for me the best thing about it is instantly seeing my apoapsis and periapsis without having to check the map. That's what I use the most often. I rarely use the automated features except for simple testing purposes, because it can repeat almost the same maneuvers exactly.