Ziff

Terminal Velocity mainly depends on gravity, the mass of the object, the shape of the object, and the drag coefficient. Let's go back to Max Q, which is what the OP wants to know. v=craft velocity p=atmospheric density So the formula is, Max Q = ½pv² If you were to track the aerodynamic pressure from launch pad to orbit you would see (on planets with an atmosphere that is) a chart that looks like a bell curve. I might be able to come up with something if I had any idea how to make a plugin for KSP.

What you are referring to is Max Q, or Maximum Dynamic Pressure, not Terminal Velocity. Terminal Velocity is when freefall acceleration reaches zero when the downward force of gravity equals the upward pull of drag. I know of no such mod, but MechJeb definitely accounts for it because you can watch MechJeb throttle down at the appropriate time during launch.

You are making a direct comparison between engines, which is useless because the engines are used to move mass. Let's compare it using ship weights. Let's say we are landing on the Mun in a small (15tn) craft (loaded with fuel/pod/single engine only). T30 T:W: 9.27 Delta-V: 2992 T45 T:W: 8.47 Delta-V: 2912 Poodle T:W: 8.72 Delta-V: 2777 The T30 has the advantage in both categories. And the T45 over the Poodle, because it has a higher delta-v (and we certainly have plenty of T:W already) In an 85tn craft (remember, just fuel/pod/single engine only) landing on the Mun. T30 T:W: 1.53 Delta-V: 6553 T45 T:W: 1.42 Delta-V: 6483 Poodle T:W: 1.54 Delta-V: 6622 In this case it's clear that the Poodle has the advantage in both categories. The lower engine weight of the LV-T Series of engines doesn't make up for their lower ISP once you reach a certain weight. Every engine has an advantage in a specific situation. The advantage of the Mainsail is the gimbal and thrust. The 7 LV-T30's it would take to almost equal the thrust would have 4 more mass, there is a balance you have to find. I typically only use 1 of these engines on my heavy lifting craft where the large gimbal engine is needed for control, but I supplement that with higher ISP non gimbaling engines in the asparagus stages, and I jettison it before reaching orbit. And here's 2 things to consider. 1. # of parts. Clusters of engines mean a lot more parts. And when your ship weighs 500tns+, those additional clusters of parts can slow down an older computer. 2. Price. Yeah, that's right. One of these updates will bring a campaign mode (the option is already on the menu) and you will have to actually spend kerbalbucks on these things. Currently 1 Mainsail costs the same as 1 Aerospike. This is something we are going to have to take into account when campaign mode comes along, and when it does, if the prices are what they are now, there is no way you will slap 6 Aerospikes on instead of a mainsail.

I would recommend only setting it to between 3-4, at 5 orbits and higher the predictions are usually off.

That's not docking. There is no current implementation of docking, unless you are using the mods. What he did was just rendezvous in orbit and then he EVA'd the crew between ships. It's fairly common, I myself have done it several times in munar orbit pre .17 to practice for interplanetary missions. He had to fly both ships all the way there, as opposed to docking together and flying 1 ship there. Edit: You linked to the thread, where I read the first post and dismissed the whole thing. I read further and I saw your mission, and yes, that's pretty cool. I have yet to play with the docking mods, mostly because everyone says they cause issues with timewarping. For future reference, each post has a number in the top right corner. You can right-click and copy the link, or left click and open the post directly and cut and paste the link. That way when you post the link to the thread it will take you directly to the post you are referring to.

I refer to it as a 'loss' compared to a vertical escape where you are not circularizing your orbit. I agree that it should be that way, mathematically speaking, but from the tests I ran it doesn't really appear to be. Try the same experiment that I did and let me know how it turns out.

Actually, I never considered this until now, but with the advent of IVA's that adds a whole new layer to docking. Imagine actually having to look at a CCTV cam or out a docking window or something. I am totally imaging it just like this video, watch the view in the top left hand corner.

Which one, The Walking Dead I assume? What is Outcasts like? I haven't heard of that one. Actually, I will probably end up youtubing it to see. The weird thing about what you're saying is that's the same thing that happened to Firefly. It got dropped just as it was gaining momentum and starting to get somewhere. It sounds like they both easily could have had a ramped up second season.

Surprisingly, there is almost absolutely no difference between the two methods. I built a 41tn test craft for the purposes of research. I did a total of 4 launches. 2 launches were straight up until I hit escape velocity, 2 were to circular 75km orbits and then boosted to escape velocity. I used MechJeb in both instances to ensure that the vehicle correctly powered down during atmo so as not to waste fuel. Avg fuel remaining after hitting escape trajectory: Vertical Method: 558.8L Orbital Method: 557.2L The conclusion I draw from this is that whatever fuel is saved by performing a gravity turn and using the rotational speed of the planet is lost by circularizing the orbit. Reversely, whatever fuel that is saved by not circularizing an orbit is lost due fighting against gravity in a vertical launch.

You should definitely add the Firefly (T.V. Series) and Serenity (Movie) to that list, they really are epic Sci-Fi. Too bad the T.V. show didn't pick up more interest when it first ran. Battlestar Galatica also deserves a place on that list. Obviously these are older shows that you have to catch on Netflix, reruns, or the net. If you like steampunk sci-fi stuff, Warehouse 13 is pretty awesome. Also, I personally enjoyed the first season of Fallen Skies, not sure how it's been since then, I have limited free time so I can't watch everything. I am so pysched for The Walking Dead. I've been a long time reader of the comic book and I thought I would hate the show but the differences from comic book -> tv show is what keeps it exciting and fresh for me. I mean honestly, I am still not 100% sure who will live and who will die. It's freaking awesome. It's been too long a hiatus though. Also, I seriously hate Lori in the tv show. If I was part of that group, Lori would have had an 'accident' somewhere during season 2.

So then what happens when both players are in the same SOI and one timewarps and the other doesn't? They see the other ship just zip off at light speed? What if I am trying to dock with a station and player xyz comes along with his 2x physical warp and tries to dock there too? Seriously, this is why Squad said they would think about multiplayer later after the game is fully developed and released. Stop trying to bring the dead horse back to life, it's not going to happen until Squad is ready to think about it.

You lost your orbit because you had Anti-Normal on MechJeb selected while your RCS was engaged. So MechJeb kept thrusting your RCS which is probably what pushed you off course. You can actually see the encounter distance shrink a few times while you are moving the camera around right before it disappears.

Just right click on the ladder and click extend.

Maltesh, spoilers don't work when you put an ' anywhere in the spoiler text name.

No, you don't do a plane change when you are halfway through the orbit. You want to do it where the two planes cross. For all of you who don't mind using Mods, this is the best one to use, and the only one you need, for interplanetary travel. The Rendezvous Calculator Shows you exactly when your launch windows are, and exactly when to start your ejection burn based on your current T:W ratio. (Click the little Adjust icon to do this.) Ok, that done, here's how you transfer to Eve. First, use the calculator (or whatever method you use) and get your transfer burn lined up like this. Once you have that lined up, click on the Sun to set it as the viewpoint. Then, and this is the tricky part, you want to flatten out your craft orbit and rotate the camera until the orbit of Eve flattens out as well. I typically zoom the camera in just enough to remove Duna's orbital path from the screen. Eventually I am sure we will have a way to turn on/off other orbital paths, but for now, it just looks messy. Anyway, this is what it will look like. You can see how nice the orbits look flattened out and lined up. Now timewarp until your craft just reaches where those two orbits cross. In this case, it happens to be dead center on the sun as well. This is where your perform your plane change burn. Burn at either at the N location on the gimbal, or 180, or you can use MechJeb's Normal and Anti-Normal buttons. In this case, it's Anti-Normal or 180. Now burn until the planes line up. And bang, we didn't even finish the plane change, instead we had an intercept because of the super awesome job the Planetary Calculator does at timing everything for us. Now check this out, if you look from the top-down view you can see where we are when we performed the plane change. We are well past half-way to the (original) periapsis when we burned.

Aim for the nice flat looking bluish lakes on the map view of Minmus. They are frozen and perfect landing locations.

Seat of the pants, no trig, no protractors, ok, got it. Let's do some eyeballing, guestimating, and saving/reloading. For the purposes of seat of the pants guessing, lets take out the changing ejection angles. Lets make a couple of easy to follow rules. The blue line is actually Kerbin's orbital path. Kerbin's prograde orbit is to the top in this photo. Let's call that North, Kerbin's retrograde orbit would be down, or south. If you wanna go to a higher orbit around the sun, burn when you are to the SE, if you want to go to a lower orbit, burn when you are in the NW where the craft is now. Let's try to go to Duna. Burn when you're in the SE until your orbit matches Duna's. Now all we need to know, is how far does Duna travel in the time it takes us to reach our apoapsis? Notice in the last photo I centered the camera on the sun and positioned Duna so it was to the east. Now we fast forward to apoapsis and see how far Duna went. I have not moved the camera, so we can easily see how far Duna traveled in the 72 days it took to get to apoapsis. Ok, so Duna traveled more than 1/4 of her orbit but not quite half her orbit. She's making it easy for us, let's say she went 1/3 of her orbital distance, since we are guessing, no protractors, remember.. So now all we need to do is reload, time warp until duna is 1/3 of her orbital path behind where our Apoapsis had been. Our Apoapsis had been directly opposite where Kerbin was, so that's easy too. Then we burn at the outward orbital burn location we picked (That Southeast corner, heh, corner. Ziff is so silly.) Ok, so I burned until my apoapsis was at the location it was before and didn't get an intercept. Well, we were only guessing, remember? Let's burn a little more and see what happens. Is it efficient? Hell no. Does it work? Yes, depending on how good you are at guestimating. It probably won't work for Moho, with its really eccentric orbit. But seriously, it took me less time to play around, take the screenshots, and get that intercept (5 minutes) than it did to write this post. Edit: For planets on a different plane, wait until you are at the correct location to do an orbital inclination change. Once that is done you can burn a little bit to see if you get an intercept. I've managed to do this with Eve quite a few times.

Here are some suggestions. If you like Mods, use MechJeb to track things like your current T:W ratio and Delta-V expended during launch. Download the Kerbal Engineer Redux mod. This mod will be able to tell you the current Delta-V of each stage and the T:W ratio. Once you start building bigger rockets it actually takes a bit of math and design to get some really decent rockets. Read this Wiki, even if you don't understand the math, pay attention to the part about delta-v maps. Also, you can use this handy Delta-V Chart to plan your missions. Just add up the delta-v numbers along the path to figure out what is required. The best advice: 1. Have a well defined mission goal so you can calculate what your required Delta-V for that mission is. Going to the Mun/Minmus are nearly identical in Delta-V requirements. However, going to Duna and back is completely different from Eve, or a moon around Jool. 2. Start with the smallest possible lander required to get the mission accomplished. Having final stages that are too large just compound problems for your rocket as each stage gets progressively larger, and in effect, less efficient. 3. Radial stages are by far more efficient than vertical stages. Have fuel lines feed from outer stages to the inner ones. There is a balance between how high you can stack fuel tanks before they get too heavy for lift off vs having not enough fuel to reach orbit. Start with 1 large engine and then try to support it with higher ISP rated engines (in radial stages) even if they have less thrust. This is why the Kerbal Engineer Redux is such a great mod. It figures out the delta-v automatically for each stage. Using this in combination with a delta-v map will allow you to know, without testing, whether you have a shot at pulling off your mission with your current design. If you want to land on the mun and don't have about 700m/s of delta-v in your lander stage, chances are, you ain't making it. If you dont have about 4500-4700m/s of delta-v total between your launch stages, you won't reach orbit. I threw this simple design together as an example of what you might want to start with. Edit: It's important to note that there are 2 sets of radial stages (each with 3 engines) , they have fuel lines that feed inwards and detach separately when each set empties. This is the efficient way to do it. Liftoff! Orbiting the Mun.

Just tell your friend it's ok, he can buy the game at it's full retail value (I dunno, $30-$50 I am guessing?) when it is finished and released. Remind him the game hasn't yet been optimized, because again, it is in Alpha development. This is a chance to contribute to a game as it grows, but there are some sacrifices that are made during development (such as not being optimized, and being full of bugs). It's a trade off, but it's totally worth it.

You can only stay in a geosynchronous orbit (your view of Kerbin won't change) by orbiting in the same direction as Kerbin at a very specific orbit height(that I can't remember off the top of my head). However, you can certainly orbit opposite Kerbin's direction of rotation by launching with a heading of 270° and maintain a specific altitude, but your view will continuously be changing. Edit: Fixed 270°, thanks Vanamonde.

An NDA is a serious legal document. As far as I know the law is the same for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. You must be 18yrs old to sign such a legally binding document. I have signed many of them throughout the years and never once has a digital signature been accepted. I have, however, been allowed to scan a copy of the NDA with my signature and Photo ID and send that to the company because it would take less time, but I still had to mail the original document w/signature.

Plot? What? Am I the only one that watches this show just for Karen Gillan?! I am certainly kind of upset at the implications going on in tonights episode.

You make it sound as if the Oberth effect doesn't work in KSP. You realize it does , right ?

Decode the signal like I did, and you'll know.

I made a short video about this when .16 was released to answer that question for a few people. is a link for it.