UmbralRaptor

I'd lean towards (in order of decreasing potential ÃŽâ€V savings): An Eve sling, a Jool Sling, or an old-school bielliptic sundive (arbitrarily high apastron, followed by burning to lower you periastron). Circularization ÃŽâ€V (at 500 km altitude) would be somewhat under 27.7 km/s, depending on your apastron. Transfer ÃŽâ€V would be ~1 - 5 km/s from LKO, depending on method and efficiency.

None of the above -- typically failures resulted in 0 survivors, and there was no persistence at the time.

In general, there's no such thing as a perfect rocket. For a sufficiently well defined mission, constraints, and limited parts set, there may be.

Already deleted several nosecones to improve loading times.

Ln()I've seen log() used for both base 10 and base e logs, but it seemed like it was more commonly used for base 10... The pressure at datum (that is, 0) altitude. On planets/moons with water, this is sealevel. The values are on the KSP wiki.

You can take the pressure equation and solve for altitude. On Kerbin: -ln(pressure)*scale_height On other bodies: -ln(pressue/datum_pressure)*scale_height

In the past Squad (I think Harv specifically) have mentioned that the ingame temperature units are arbitrary.

The Skipper is useful in that it fills in a thrust gap between the the LV-T30 (or *shudder* Poodle) and the Mainsail, as well as providing niceties like electricity and TVC. That said, its actual performance is utterly meh. 3x LV-T30s get you essentially the same thrust and better Isp for less mass.

So many newbies... (I started with 0.8.4)

Again with the increased-drag canard. Asparagus staging works so well in KSP and is essentially unused in real life because of the differences in our rockets. In KSP, plumbing is easy while TWR and low mass fraction tanks are hard. In real life, it's the opposite.

There is still such a thing as ASAS, even if no stock parts exploit it. It's fairly straightforward to reimpliment, but I'm unsure of how well it plays with the new SAS.

I've been having various issues with the new SAS. However, I've found that the old ASAS still exists. As such, I've thrown together a part that brings it back. This version is tuned differently from 0.20.2's to reduce overshoot and jitter, but I've included instructions if you dislike it.

I would be surprised if that craft worked in 0.20.2 -- it's quite unstable aerodynamically (high drag parts near the front, low drag parts near the back).

Look for the MODIFIER_KEY entry in settings.cfg

Downloaded 0.8.4, bought around 0.13 or 0.14. There have been quite a lot of change since then.

That's the version for 0.20.2 since it's been released. (I'm running the store version with updates turned off)

Ignoring that all planets and moons in KSP are on rails... It really doesn't take much ÃŽâ€V to alter Gilly's orbit significantly. The problem is that a ship capable of supplying that ÃŽâ€V would have to be ~0.1 - 10% the mass of Gilly, depending on propulsion details.

(Unlike real engines) KSP engines are 100% efficient at all throttle levels. If you're not in atmosphere, a short burn tends to be more efficient (if harder to control) than a longer one, but that's orbital mechanics rather than engine performance. In some cases, a cluster of smaller engines offers greater ÃŽâ€V. A notable example is 3 LV-T30s (or 2 LV-T30s and an LV-T45) vs a Skipper. I lean towards ASAS.SAS has a built in torque system (...and a PID controller) to stop your rocket from turning. ASAS also tries to keep you from turning with a PID controller, but uses it to generate control inputs instead. The major problem with the stock ASAS is that it's poorly tuned for most and tends to overcorrect. Reducing control authority by turning off thrust vectoring for most engines, struts, and retuning the ASAS (currently only possibly by editing the part.cfg) help.

alt+F12 (Or whatever your modifier key is + F12 if on Mac or Linux)

1. The LV-T30 is good for most-anything, the LV-T45 can be added to LV-T30 groups to provide control, the Mainsail is good for lifting large payloads into orbit, and the LV-N and LV-909 are good for interplanetary maneuvers and landing on airless worlds. (I'd be tempted to ignore other engines for now.) The only difference between the non-probe fuel tanks is size -- a stack of 32 FL-T200s will behave much like a rockomaxx jumbo 64. 2. Keep an eye on the navball. D will always move the ship right on it. 3. Could be a Minmus trip, could be building a spacestation, could be bringing a rover to the Mün, or something else entirely.

Semi-related: you may want to raise CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT to 5 or so to get a better idea of where your orbit goes if you're passing through lots of SOIs.

Maybe: Note that you have to be careful to optimize the pulse units for Isp.

It does. The account is transferred.

3000 km/s? That'll make gravity assists (aside maybe from a sundive) of negligible value. No currently available technology (read: <10,000 s ion engines) will get you those kinds of speeds. I'm not sure how much development would be necessary for a system that can (eg: fission fragment rocket, ultra high Isp Orion, starwisp or other beamed propulsion. I'm unsure if solar sails would cut it) Bussard, and mind the drag. edit: After running some numbers for a 0.1 AU sundive, I'm only seeing at extra ~100 km/s. That's... less useful than I was expecting.

Pure rockets? The simplest approach would be a Mainsail and 12,800 L of propellant. Maximum payload to a 75 km orbit is ~7 tonnes, so with the smaller payload a 150 km would be doable. Making it recoverable could be a hassle, though. Several LV-T30s clustered around an LV-T45 would probably be the highest payload fraction, assuming you can solve the recovery issues.