Ziff

That is some serious overkill. It only takes about 1000 delta-v to get from the Mun back to Kerbin. Adding the poodle engine actually adds too much weight, as does the larger fuel tank. For a craft of that size, the only thing you need to get back from the Mun is a single LV-909 engine. That would give the pictured craft a delta-v of around 2300-2700 , depending on how much monopropellant it is carrying. More than enough to land, and get back to orbit where it can dock with the returning craft. Just swap out that heavy big engine for the smaller more efficient one.

Von Braun switched from EOR to LOR for a number of official reasons, but he still seriously supported EOR. In fact one of the main reasons he supported LOR was because it would eventually lead to a more efficient EOR method, one based on a lighter and more efficient command module. At that time, with the current command module design and materials, LOR was preferable. He said, "We believe the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mode using a single C-5 offers a very good chance of ultimately frowing into a C-5 direct capability." You can read about those reasons, and other comments, in this actual NASA document from 1962. http://history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/apollo6.pdf One of the more interesting thoughts that are rarely mentioned: "We agree with the Manned Spacecraft Center that the designs of a maneuverable hyperbolic re-entry vehicle of a lunar landing vehicle constitute the two most critical tasks in producing a successful lunar spacecraft. A drastic separation of these two functions into two separate elements is bound to greatly simplify the development of the spacecraft system." In other words, the two craft could be designed separately at the same time with only very little consideration for each other. This allowed for a very simplified lander design that only had to consider landing and supporting 2 men on the moon and being able to dock back with the mothership. Anyway, to the OP: There really aren't any official designs that are specific for the other methods, because they were knocked down before they went beyond concept stages. For example, you can see a diagram of a reduced size Apollo module for a direct-ascent 2 man mission craft with some explanations on this page here-> http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apot2man.htm. This document here-> http://smartech.gatech.edu/jspui/bitstream/1853/8042/3/SSEC_SE2_doc.pdf will explain the differences, with some old diagrams, of concepts of operations. It compares the operational steps of a LOR vs EOR vs Direct Ascent.

They only considered 3 methods. Direct-ascent, which was pretty much your standard 'giant rocket all the way to the moon and back again.' They also considered Earth Orbit Rendezvous , where 2 smaller rockets would launch, 2 pieces would assemble in Earth orbit, and then that craft would go all the way to the moon and back. The 3rd method, Lunar Orbit Rendezvous wasn't seen as very favorable at first. Here's a NASA website that talks about it. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezvous.html

Sure, it's totally possible. I managed to get 154tns to Minmus in .16 (with a fixed fuel bug patch.) Can you upload the .craft file for your lander and I will see if I can dig-up and retrofit my lifting stage to it? I'll go dig it up now and check it.

It has been said by the Dev's that docking will not be in .18, but I can't find the related post.

Being that the game is in Alpha, and only version .17, many of these things are sure to change. In fact a couple of the engines changed in each of the last 3 versions.

The hard part is building a launch vessel capable of getting your Eve return vehicle to the planet. Not actually getting there. Also , you must be rather precise with your landing as well because you will want to land on the tallest mountain you can in order to shave as much delta-v as possible off the return trip. I can get my lander into orbit and back to Kerbin from a tall mountain, but not from the average surface height. You pretty much have to use asparagus staging and aerospikes, there really is no other efficient way to do it.

This is how science has always worked. From Kepler dreaming about walking on the moon, to Jules Verne writing about an all electric powered submarine decades before it was possible. Steve Jobs didn't invent the idea of the iPad either, that was thought up in the 1930's and you can even see a working concept of a flat digital interface device in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Karel Capek, in the 1920's, wrote about sentient androids he called Robots. Arthur C. Clarke also predicted that we would have geosynchronous satellites back in the 1950's. Ever read 'A Brave New World'? Aldous Huxley predicted we would map the human genome and be able to manipulate it and artificially conceive babies. Mark Twain even wrote about something that sounds an awful lot like the internet, way back in 1898. This line is straight from his book 'From the London Times of 1904'. "The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." Crazy, right? Sci-fi has a disturbing tendency to become sci-fact. Edit: Have you ever looked at the number of things Jules Verne got correct when he wrote 'From the Earth to the Moon'? 100 years before Apollo 11 he guessed that 3 men would launch from Florida, yes, he picked Florida (for the same obvious reasons that NASA did), and they would return by parachuting into the sea.

Well, it's easily more than twice the size of a rocket to get into Kerbin orbit. One trick to use that can use to save you about 2-4k delta-v is to land on high ground on eve. The taller mountains are around 9-11km in height.

I think they took a little liberty with the name, considering it's sci-fi significance.

So, apparently, some University Engineers working with NASA are investigating how to build fusion impulse rocket engines. It get's better. The fuel they are working on is a combination of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, and a lithium isotope called Li6, in a crystalline structure. Yeah, that's right, Dilithium Crystals. Apparently this engine will halve the time it takes to reach Mars, knocking it down to about 3 months. Links: http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-researchers-to-begin-fusion http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/dilithium-crystals-warp-drive/

What is Endless Space? MWO is a ton of fun when you play with someone else. My buddy and I get on teamspeak and run around in Jenners at 138kph and typically end with 300-700 dmg done and a ton of kills/assists. They need to add more game modes though.

I'm with Vanamonde. The original Alien is amazingly scary. It's not in your face scary, it's this slow buildup that gives your mind time to settle in on the horrible things that are about to happen. The fear the movie creates goes past the current trend of 'make a sudden loud noise, flash the creature on the screen for half a second, and then cut the camera away' trick. Of course, they use that trick in Alien too, but it's not every scene. I'd also go with Event Horizon as a good choice. Great story, great characters and great effects all add to the scary story part. Pandorum, honestly, sucked. It had a great story with a ton of potential and then they just killed it with too much of the 'loud noise, camera shift' crap. It does provide a few memorable moments though. 'Is this guy going to help them, or kill them and eat them.' I would like to add the 1982 version of The Thing. While the original movie was creepy, the remake turned the creature into something that can imitate anyone or anything. Suddenly you don't know who is a good guy, and who is a shape shifting alien that wants to kill everyone. The scene where the one guy's head just grows some spider legs and walks off out of the room creeped me the hell out for a long time. There is also the isolation factor, which is probably why I also think Alien and Event Horizon are good too. I like when the characters are cut off and you know they either have to figure it out or die. Also, Ju-on is pretty good too. The little kids creep me out. I haven't seen Prometheus yet, maybe I will look for that On Demand. Edit: Totally missed that we were talking about space movies, sorry. Yeah, the first two still stand. Does The Thing count? Because the creature was from a spaceship that crashed on earth, so it's somewhat space related.

Just shorten up your lander a little bit. Instead of the X32 fuel tank, make it an X16. Drop the radial mounted engines. The interesting thing is the T:W is high enough to practice taking off and landing on Kerbin. Try it out. Just turn on the ASAS, and liftoff higher than the launch tower, then try to land safely. Turn on the fuel cheat too (since it's just practice) and keep trying it higher and higher. A general rule of thumb is never land faster than 10m/s. You ideally want to get it down to 1m/s just before you land. That lander in the photo has about 3200m/s of delta-v. That is actually enough fuel to do the TMI, land, and return to Kerbin if you practice your landings so you don't waste too much fuel. You can gain another 200m/s of delta-v if you drop the legs down to just 3, which is fine for landing on the Mun. Or, you can change the poodle out for the Lv909 engine. The poodle has a lot of thrust and gives this craft a T:W of like 9 when on the Mun. The Lv909 would give it about a 2.5-2.6 thrust to weight ratio on the Mun but it would up the Delta-V to around 4500. That is a godly amount of fuel for landing on the Mun or Minmus.

Typically when new players see all the added parts they go a little crazy. They start slapping large numbers of fuel tanks and engines onto a ship, not realizing that a heavy rocket goes nowhere fast. Start small, add as few parts in the form of fuel tanks and engines. And see how high you get. Go for sub orbital flights. Then work your way to orbit. Then to the Mun. Trying to design a ship to go straight to the Mun will just frustrate you. Unless you like math. In which case, download the Kerbal Engineer Redux mod here. This will do the math for the Delta-V of your stages as you build them. Read This Wiki to get an idea of how much Delta-V you need for orbit, Mun TMI, Landing, and build a delta-v plan. Then build your ship to fit that plan. Profit.

Someone hire this chick to do a song advertisement for the next game.

This is kind of understandable, minus the super-cooled part. Glass is a special sort of case, because its an amorphous solid. But the whole 'the glass panes are thicker on the bottom glass is a super-cooled liquid' is total BS. The reason the glass panes are thicker on the bottom is because the people who installed them 100+ years ago were smart. They put the heavy thick side on the bottom, because hey, it holds up better that way. Lmao.

The NDA has been lifted. I'm not stupid.

I debated about taking multiple pictures in order to show that, but I thought it might confuse people and steer them away from the general idea of my post.

I'll start where you did. -KSP (pc) -Eve Online (Been playing since beta, still bounce back and forth.) -Battlefield 3 -Guild Wars 2 -Mechwarrior Online (Beta) -World Of Tanks -Civ5 (Multiplayer) Occasionally (xbox) -Skyrim -Fallout Series Coming Soon! (pc) -XCom Enemy Unknown -Ultima Forever A couple of other beta's I can't mention.

It sounds like your rocket maybe top heavy with no ability to counter once it starts to tip over during the gravity turn. If this happens in atmo, try to add just a few winglets or canards towards the top, or more gimbaling engines on the bottom. You can also try to start your gravity turn later (less fuel efficient, but it might solve the problem.) On Topic: I love this update. KSP is becoming more complicated. As new parts and objectives were being added, I was expecting this to happen. I was quite looking forward to it in fact. There is always a bit of a learning curve every time KSP updates but the game is definitely improving all the time. As everyone experiments our knowledge pool of what works and what doesn't will expand and take some of that edge off.

Except there are two problems. He has 8 NERVA engines on top along with 2 large fuel tanks that do not drain downwards. So fuel isnt actually draining out of the top of that craft, its kind of starting in the middle. Because of these two facts the center of mass doesn't actually move down as it would in a craft with a lighter top. Instead it moves down only very slightly before it starts to move up because the top is so darn ridiculously heavy. This is simply untrue. The farther away the rocket engine is from the center of mass, the harder it is to control. It will actually act like a lever and become uncontrollable. In his case he has a very long, very top heavy rocket. Because it's so top heavy, and because the fuel at the top isn't being burned off (it's starting in the middle) his center of mass moves upwards far sooner than a typical rocket would see. So it very quickly becomes uncontrollable. This is also another reason why rockets stage. Shorter lever, more control. Longer lever, more action (uncontrollable).

You have to calculate the T:W of the craft with the engine, not the engine by itself. The T:W ratio of an engine by itself is meaningless as I have proven to you twice now. Did you read my post, at all? It's clear you didn't. I told you the extra fuel is for the TMI from Kerbin to Mun, and landing, then you assume that is what it's for. I can't have a conversation with you if you totally fail to even read my post. That's twice now you have failed to read what I have written. Sigh. I gave you all the reasons why we can't do what you said, and you ignore all that and ask them anyway. You can make up excuses not to use the Poodle all you want, that doesn't mean it does not have a use. Either way, that's still not my point. My point is you cannot compare engines based on their own T:W ratio. You have to calculate the T:W ratio of the entire craft. You want another reason? 5x NERVA's (Atomic Rocket) cost 8500 vs the 1 Poodle's 600. This doesn't matter right now, but it will matter when Campaign mode arrives. Actually, you can. Put the fuel tanks and engine for each radial/asparagus stage in a separate stage. That's exactly how you would figure it out anyway. Indeed, it's the exact same way you would calculate a vertical stage as well. I used to do that with pencil and paper long before the Kerbal Engineer mod came along.

Allow me to quote myself. So, you are still missing the point. The argument is not 'I am going to burn a huge amount of fuel in orbit.' The argument is you can't compare engines like that, and this is an example of why. Now, let me reiterate, I already told you I only used fuel tanks because they're heavy and easy to add. I simply created a situation, landing a 15tn vs 85tn craft on the Mun with a single engine only. It has nothing to do with how much fuel is currently in the craft. It has to do with the weight of the craft. The argument is actually this: In a 15tn craft the T30/45 are better choices because the added extra weight of the Poodle is worse than the gain from the 20ISP. In an 85tn craft, the weight savings of the T30/45 engines aren't as effective as the gain you get from the 20 ISP on the Poodle. It doesn't matter how much fuel is in the craft, it matters how heavy the craft is vs the weight of the engine and Isp. Get it now? I am trying to show you why you cannot compare engines directly to each other without using actual test craft with specific mass. I hope that you at least see why that is now. The craft doesn't have to be 85tns. Here, I built you a 3man Mun lander. It's pretty typical as far as landers go, RCS and SAS and some legs. The 3 external tanks are so it has enough fuel to go from Kerbin orbit to the Mun, Land, and Return. It's going to drop the external tanks when they're empty too! The first has slightly more Delta-V and Thrust on the Mun. Notice that the second craft even weighs less then the one with the poodle. Which engine would you choose? Now, the NERVA won't work here because it's too tall for the landing legs. The Aerospike and T30 aren't gimbaled and thus, probably wouldn't make a wise choice for a landing engine. Also, the Aerospike wouldn't work anyway because you can't put decouplers on them which would prevent it from having a launch stage below it. I am sure your next argument is going to be 'Well, the differences are negligible.' Sure, maybe it's close enough to not really matter. It just serves to clarify my point that you cannot compare engines the way you were.

It most certainly is not moot, and quite honestly, you totally missed the point of my post. I only used fuel tanks for this purpose because it was easy to build and showed how mass/ISP relate to delta-v, and why you cannot simply compare engines. However, If I happen to have an 85tn research station that I want to land on the Mun, it only takes 1 Poodle to land it there because of the low gravity. No more than that is needed. In that specific case, a Poodle engine beats any LV-T series engine. There is a time and place for every engine. I don't honestly feel like sitting down and doing all the math to prove to you when and why to use a specific engine. I merely posted this to show why you can't compare engines the way you did. My point still stands. Edit: To say 'never' in KSP is ridiculous. Just go look at the things people build. I have seen a 500tn craft designed specifically, and only, to go land on the Mun. It had like 12 Mainsail engines. I would never.. but someone always will, that's the way of KSP.