UmbralRaptor

Chemical engines and tankage are not. Quite the opposite, really.

100% until I push up against terminal velocity, then down as needed to avoid going to fast. Post-staging and high altitude (>25 km) throttleups may be necessary.

Not realistic at all. In particular, KSP solar panels don't follow the inverse square law. The answers already are. Try an estimate based on how how much the stock ion engine uses. (14.5 units would have to be >20.6 MW) This would imply that the stock lights are pulling at least 28-57 kW o_O

I assume optimal in that for much of an SSTO's ascent you have more engine than you need, and are throttling down. 2STO designs are much weirder -- you throttle down in the latter part of the first stage, then go to (and stay at) max after staging.

Replace the centerline jet engine tank with an FL-T400, and add a few 24-77 radial engines?

::raises a talon:: The recommended specs are more of a rough guideline. Actual minimums are subject to change during development.

If I'm going to be biased against "new" people, it'll involve those who joined the forums in 2012 calling themselves vets.

On a strict delta-v basis, Duna is clearly a priority over Eve. And the Mun and Minmus take precedence over Duna. This obviously changes if you're fine with not much leaving the gravity wells... I'm curious about what things will be like from a resource perspective, especially what Gilly and Ike will contribute to the planets. Sufficiently useful/valuable materials may drive us to interesting places, or make some areas much easier/harder. Kerbol is not Sol, Eve is not Venus, Duna is not Mars, and Laythe is neither Io nor Titan. Laythe is likely the 'easiest' choice for a colony, since it's probably a shirtsleeves environment. That said, Eve and Duna are far more habitable than their real world counterparts. If they're in a safe temperature range, appropriate clothing and an oxygen mask may be all that's required.

I ran out of fuel on descent, and wrecked the craft. Everyone survived, though. 10+10+20+30-5 == 65 points

0.05 G is 0.495 m/s², not 0.05 m/s². Perhaps varying composition affects each world's ability to pull itself into a sphere? In real life, Vesta is more massive than Mimas, but significantly more elliptical.

Well, that clears that up. Also, unless I calculated something wrong, a synchronous orbit is interestingly low (~358 km altitude) edit: Kosmo-not: I'd argue yes. Though slightly harder to get to, for the same reason. OTOH, the rather higher surface speed (9.33 m/s at the equator) may throw less skilled players off?

Back when 0.15.2 was new, and autom8 didn't exist, I flew a rocket to Minmus and gave what are apparently considered the definitive mass figures. As of 0.17, those are wrong, and Minmus is approximately 40% lighter. This doesn't affect the SOI as badly as one might think, but it's no longer bigger than the Mün's. Values pulled from autom8 via Nadrek's scripting: Mass 2.64578967083079E+19 [kg] Gravitational Parameter 1765800026.31247 [m²/s²] SOI 2247428.3879023 [m] Surface gravity 0.05 [G] I'm guessing that these changes are in addition to undoing the tidal locking, or did they sneak in with 0.16? On an unrelated note, g == 9.81 m/s², and G == 6.674e-11 N*m²/kg² in the Kerbalverse.

It can't land, but the inner 7 tanks can reach LKO. Just in case you needed 19-21 km/s of ÃŽâ€V for some reason.

The highest that I'm aware of is ~3400 m high. You might be able to get away with a lower orbit (2-3 km) if the sat is at a sufficiently low inclination.

I'm starting to think that the main advantage of the Poodle is over the LV-T45 (weight/space permitting). It's large enough. The main problem with tall stacks of fuel tanks on a mainsail is wobble, so you end up strutting things together anyway. I suspect that tall rockets tend towards higher moments of inertia than wide ones, which makes maneuvering them harder. Clusters tend to be able to soak up one engine having lousy TWR, as long as the rest are good. (Which lets you pull of shenanigans like a centerline LV-N surrounded by Aerospikes) Clusters also make it really easy to use asparagus staging...Recently I was helping a friend with building/testing some small munlanders. My designs: The latter has 3 big tanks instead of 4, is *much* easier to control, and got to the munar surface without using anything in the landing stage's tank. edit: I guess my opinion is that the Mainsail isn't *enough* bigger compared with other engines to justify the poor Isp. The wobble that tall stacks have doesn't help, and I'm rather less skilled at dealing with it than the problems of flying spiderwebs wide rockets.

nhnifong would need to get a permit from the FAA because of airspace issues. I suspect that "hitch-hiking" on a normal rocket with a cube sat would be the easiest path?

You could get nice pics from "edge of space" (25+ km) with an appropriate balloon. Anything resembling a conventional model rocket motor is far too short on Isp to usefully get into orbit. In there near term, trying to get costs below $1000/kg is optimistic. (And in fact, $/kg are often higher for smaller rockets.)

Drag in KSP is related to the drag and mass* values of an object, rather than its size. The mass bit is unrelated to real life.

In the long term (>100 years), I wouldn't be surprised if there are permanent outposts on other planets/moons/asteroids (compare with oil rigs and antarctica, though). Ditto unmanned missions to the nearest stars. I'm also leaning towards transhumanism as being the big thing that *might* make interstellar travel happen.

The Kerbol systems shows substantial signs of artificial modification/non-Kerbal intelligent life, making determining any natural geologic history difficult. That said, I'd still like to know why the Mün has what looks like water erosion in some craters.

From another flight.

FL-T200: 200 L/tonne Mk 1 fuselage: 167 L/tonne And there were more differences in 0.14 and 0.15...

It's sort of a cross between Io and Titan. Sort of.

Given that the RT-10 got nerfed down to worse than it was in 0.7.3-0.15.2, the RT-B20's thoroughly unspectacular Isp even post-buff, and the Sepratron not being useful for actual propulsion, SRBs just aren't as fun any more. Burn the lower "stages" straight up, then the upper booster horizontally at apoapsis. This one needs to fly with a pseudo-conventional pitchover. I wouldn't be surprised if one can make an SSTO that safely lands on Kerbin, like r4m0n did in 0.16. And if someone puts some effort into launch times and maneuvers, one could likely recreate Abyssal Lurker's Kerbin -> Minmus -> Mün -> Kerbin mission from that time.

Exactly that. Just keep in mind that stages above the current one are extra mass that needs to be accounted for.