UmbralRaptor

The hardest thing is knowing how to acquire science (it's not well documented). The second hardest is how to best traverse the tech tree. Lots of new players get trapped by taking a breadth first approach, or focusing on the upper branches. Meanwhile, a veteran can breeze through the tree in a handful of flights by focusing on the lower branches...

\o/ As best I can tell, g (not g0!) for Kerbin's surface is 9.81 m/s2. The discrepancy showed up several versions ago.

Within KSP (but not in real life), 9.82. This becomes obvious when you test it. eg: g0 == thrust/(Isp * mass_flow) g0 == 1500/(330 * 0.46288) == 9.81994...

The bandwidth numbers are calculated/displayed wrong. Granted, the higher level antenna are still heavier and draw more power, but in-game they should actually transmit faster.

ExpHP: Your calculations are correct. The reason to launch east would (IIRC) be centrifugal force, not coriolis force.

If you don't want to resort to booster-related shenanigans at TL0, you could just build an SSTO. (Yes, it's capable of getting into a 70 km orbit, and landing safely)

I'd argue that the big thing with fuel quantity is throwing enough at the engines to keep your TWR (Thrust to Weight Ratio) from being excessively high. For a single stage, adding more fuel will always improve the mass ratio at the cost of reduced TWR. Even ignoring TWR, each additional tank does less for the craft, with there being an ultimate upper limit on what one stage can do. My propellant rules of thumb: LV-T40/45, Aerospike: 1600 L (a pair of FL-T800s, or a rockomax x16) Skipper: 6,400 L (one orange tank) Mainsail: 12,800 L (two orange tanks)

All docking ports have 0.25 drag (compared with the 0.2 of most stock parts and 0.1 of current nosecones). They actually reduce stability slightly if placed at the front of a craft. In 0.21, I'd generally agree. But they provided an alternative ASAS tuning in older versions, and are useful in campaign mode now...

Too many parts on the command, aerodynamic, and utility tabs are tempting (eg: the Probodyne QBE, OKTO, Engine nacelle, covered solar panels...)

Yes, it's alternate way of measuring. Hence the unit conversion in the rocket equation when you use seconds, but not when you use ft/s or m/s. Note that rocket engines do not know how fast they are traveling, just the relative speed of exhaust leaving the nozzle. Yes, NASA does, but they're clearly using it more like m/s. To provide 1.26e7 N*s, 300 kg would have to be moving at 4.1e4 m/s. That's 4190 s to rounding error. KSP engines historically didn't deal directly with Isp at all, just thrust and fuel consumption. At one point, the Isp system was just a hack to generate fuel consumption, though that's less clear now. C7 has in the past mentioned that the current system (Isp changing fuel consumption, rather than thrust) may be changed, but if/when is unclear. Only for jet engines (where how fast you're moving does directly affect engine performance), and it already partially exists in the part.cfgs.

Yeah, coast phases happen. In real life it's more common with solid fuel stages (eg: Pegasus) or very late in the flight. (eg: the Centaur in an Atlas V or DCSS in a Delta IV will do multiple burns) Or for that matter, the Shuttle would do burns after MECO to reach a stable orbit.

Going by kerbalmaps, 5670 m. That's for a fairly high inclination orbit, though, so you might be able to get away with less near equatorial.

Isp is exhaust velocity. Both -- it would be sort of silly to have all these engines if only 1-3 of them are ever used.

Thereaverofdarkness: I suppose this should be more in depth, but... Cost does not seem like a good metric at this time. If (when?) there is more of an economy, then it will certainly need to be considered as a balance factor, but I'm hesitant to throw it around in the interim. As they currently exist now (especially if unchanged), aerospikes would be better in all phases of flight, especially in space. The modified engines you propose don't allow for the "worse in space" comment to hold at all, given their narrower Isp ranges. For multistage craft, payload fractions seem to be ~1.5-2x the single stage values, but this depends on details, and would require several test flights to verify with the modified engines. (I suppose that the aerospike would be easier to balance if Isp affected thrust rather than fuel consumption...) For augmenting a Skipper while building rockets, I'd suggest attaching LV-T30s via any of several structural/aerodynamic parts. Or even strappping a few boosters on. The current thrust is hilariously convenient (1 orange tank is about the perfect amount of fuel), so I'd rather a TWR tweak, rather than scaling up. I'd much rather see the 48-7S have reduced thrust and perhaps Isp than increased mass. Between the 24-77, LV-909, and LV-N, it's already in a rather crowded thrust range. Meanwhile, there's a rather large gap from the 24-77 (or old 48-7S) and LV-1/1R... The LV-1 is if not fine, near fine. I suspect you are building craft too heavy for it. It has stats that suggest a higher performance (higher thrust and Isp, lower mass) RCS port. If you're building a craft light enough (and admittedly with modest enough ÃŽâ€V requirements) to seriously consider using RCS, then you're in the right area. Upping the Isp by 1.9x to 560 s sounds like something to make it directly take on the LV-N and PB-ION(!), and breaks with your earlier comments about realistic engines. In general, I'd want to see a focus on fixing the balance issues with the Mk 55 and 48-7S (in that order). The issues with the other engines are comparatively small. Your suggestion of upping the Mk 55 thrust by 50% would probably make them useful. Moonfrog: Yes, but no. While there are a lot of ways to make all parts useful ('balanced'), going with "yeah, this looks right" can cause issues, especially with the variety of engines in current versions of KSP. (Consider that most upper stages/landers that use the Poodle would see a TWR and ÃŽâ€V increase from switching to the LV-T30)

tab / shift+tab will cycle through bodies and your maneuver nodes. Backspace to reset. (I've included a link to the keys page on the wiki to preemptively answer additional questions)

In seats, yes (.09375 tonnes as of 0.22). In capsules, no.

Your analysis is bad, and you should feel bad. Okay, that's a bit ranty, but the approach chosen is deeply flawed. It does at least fix the poodle, but uses questionable assumptions and ignores how smaller engines interact with larger ones. The net result is making the (currently more or less balanced) Mainsail and (currently marginally underpowered) Skipper all but useless. Unless the smaller engines take similar nerfs, there will be little reason to use the size 2 parts. I suspect that it also makes the lifter parts no better at getting into LKO than the lander ones(!) In general (Or at least when Supernovy and I have been discussing balance), the LV-T30 gets thrown around as the baseline. It's the oldest liquid fuel engine, and the first one on the tech tree. This suggests that it's what the others should be balanced around. Why not go with TMR and to a first approximation ignore gravity? Though for a more in depth analysis, you might want to block out some rocket designs. Careful -- the 24-77 may be worse in both TWR and Isp than the Mainsail, but it remains useful due to the radial mounting and much lower mass. Before the 48-7S was added, the 24-77 was used quite a bit for smaller craft, or augmenting LV-Ns in some SSTO designs. What is the reasoning behind this? It doesn't seem to correspond with the rocket equation. Absolute difficulty is a separate issue from relative engine performance. Whether the default setting for the game should be easier/harder is an interesting question, though. Uh. In 0.17 that would have been the Aerospike. In 0.22 it's the 48-7S. But the Mainsail...? o_OLet's look at the stats of the lifting engines you proposed. [table=width: 600, class: grid] [tr] [td]Name[/td] [td]Thrust[/td] [td]Mass[/td] [td]Isp[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Mainsail 1[/td] [td]1500 kN[/td] [td]6 t[/td] [td]255-295 s[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Skipper 1[/td] [td]650 kN[/td] [td]4 t[/td] [td]285-330 s[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Mainsail 2[/td] [td]1500 kN[/td] [td]7.5 t[/td] [td]270-310 s[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Skipper 2[/td] [td]900 kN[/td] [td]6 t[/td] [td]290-335 s[/td] [/tr] [/table] And using them as SSTOs: (download) I've found that approximating Isp as being at 0.2 atm gives very close to correct numbers. The lower section is for craft that I've actually flown to LKO (aside from the 0.21 48-7S, which I couldn't find a flight record of). If you insist, I suppose generating charts of various 2/3/4 stage designs and landers would be doable... As for balance changes I would actually want to see: * Buff the Poodle. I've toyed with a 260 thrust, 410 s version, but am unsure if that's overdoing it. Something to bring its TWR in line with (if not marginally better than) the LV-909, and do something about the LV-T30 being a better lander engine... * Buff the Skipper. Say, to a 700 kN, 3.5 tonne engine. The current lower Isp and and TWR than an LV-T30 situation is embarrassing. It has TVC, yes, but for craft in the 1-Skipper size it doesn't matter. And larger ones can eat the TWR hit of an LV-T45 and still come out ahead. Especially with the Isp difference... * Nerf the 48-7S. At least back to its 0.21 stats, and maybe even poke away further at the Isp and/or thrust. * Make the Mk 55 useful. eg: bring the TWR up to Mainsail levels, or Isp up to LV-T45. Reducing (or eliminating) TVC on the Skipper or especially Mainsail would help(!)

Well, the macros make it take ages to load, and probably are why it has display/actually doing anything issues in Libre Office 4.1.3. (Why not Excel? Because I'd rather not blow $140 when my normal spreadsheet and wordprocessing requirements are met by $0 software. This includes a fair amount of writing and number crunching, so...)

Technically Isp and thrust give this, though some calculations are required. That said, have you tried right-clicking on an engine while in use, or expanding the resource tab?

Your second line answered it; an object's semi-major axis is directly related to its overall (potential + kinetic) orbital energy. Atmospheric friction* is supposed to reduce your orbital energy (and by extension semi-major axis), but in those pictures isn't. What does your craft look like, anyway? *In the real world drag at this speeds involves almost no friction, but given the limitations of KSP stock aerodynamics...

Violation of conservation of energy for one. Nope.

I'm less concerned by the apoapsis rising (I could write that off as aerodynamics actually working) than by the semi-major axis.

The minimum ÃŽâ€V approach would still be to burn so your orbit exits the Mün's SOI on the trailing side. It may be necessary to wait for up to half of the Mün's orbit to get things to line up properly, though. This is likely to put you on a somewhat inclined Kerbin orbit, so if you care a great deal about where you land, some waiting in LKO (or additional maneuvers) may be necessary.

/KSP/GamedData/Squad/Parts/FuelTank/ Check in each subfolder for a part.cfg file.

If you have enough ÃŽâ€V, you can always get an encounter. The limited windows are about minimizing ÃŽâ€V expenditure.