UmbralRaptor

Ah, yes. Palm trees and 1 m high grass on some parts of the launch terrain. They took long enough to adapt to the loss of the brickosphere.

A marginal decent improvement: 117 105 boosters, 6 stages, 1 ASAS, 12 winglets, and a pile of struts. I suspect that gravity drag is a bigger enemy than aerodynamic drag with this design. Maybe if I included a pitchover...? I\'m going to say that a mechjeb or the like is okay. Also, I\'m unsure if the numbers I\'m getting out of my spreadsheets are reasonable. Is it normal for ?V for lower stages to be lower than for upper stages for a minimum mass design? Edit: I did better than I thought. <100 boosters should be possible... Edit 2: Okay, that\'s hilarious. My paper ?V for this is *lower* than for my stock single stage to Kerbol escape.

Mission submitted. Feh.

What\'s your Planet Detail Factor set to? If it\'s low (especially 0), try increasing it to 70-100%. Performance should still be acceptable, even on a Pentium 4 and Radeon 9xxx equivalent video card.

My very back of the envelope guess is at least 50 large ZO2 tanks (75 tonnes) for a Hohmann ellipse. Something like that 42 minute münshot in the spacecraft exchange would probably be in order. >_> Possibly the best approach for capping off this iteration of the game. Are the reporters at the Kerbal Times counting any orbit, or do they distinguish between ones at different inclinations?

Careful, we\'re in an iterated situation and we can communicate. The standard prisoner\'s dilemma rules may not apply. --- It looks like doing 1 or more orbits without any deaths requires TL3 or a lot of luck. The 'main' (400 unit) tank seems to last for ~800 seconds, while a 69,078 x 69,078 m orbit takes ~1830 seconds. How many orbits does it take to count as a success, and what happens if 1 or 2 crew members don\'t make it back? If these numbers are correct, then a crew of 3 needs more than one large ZO2 tank per orbit(!) I expect that, payload requirements before the TL5 solar panels are going to get... interesting.

I think you mean throttling? Thrust vectoring just means that the direction that the thrust is going can be moved. For ingame purposes, it means a non-zero gimbal rating.

SAS uses built in reaction control wheels (sort of). ASAS uses whatever it can grab (command pod reaction control wheels, RCS, winglets, thrust vectoring engines...)

Er, that was actually a math error on my part. The 35 km ship should have been ¤4872 by itself, and ¤7872 including research. That said, the 70 km rocket is only 9% more (6% more counting research) than the 35 km one. You\'ll see a similarly tiny cost difference (if any) for 0° (east) vs 90/270° (polar) vs 180° (west) orbits). Expect costs to jump once we\'re doing higher payload and ?V missions, though.

My argument was much smaller in scale and apparently too subtle? This is *not* about the rewards side of things. Paying, say, ¤8000, ¤8000, ¤5000, ¤5000 for a series of missions will benefit you more than paying ¤6000, ¤8000, ¤12000, ¤13000. (all other things being equal) That rewards in a given turn appear to be based on average amount spent on that mission plus some percent is a different problem. There are real risks of something like Progress Quest, rubber banding, perverse incentives (like you said, and depressingly realistic), etc. I\'d prefer more than 2 turns to see how this plays out, though. For a lack of anything else WRT payments and appropriate designs: some of the designs I went through for these past 2 turns: [table] [tr] [td]Propulsion[/td] [td]Rocket Cost[/td] [td]TL[/td] [td]Cost w/ R&D[/td] [td]Mission[/td] [td]Notes[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]3 SRB[/td] [td]¤4272[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤4272[/td] [td]10,000 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 2, 1[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]4 SRB[/td] [td]¤4722[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤4722[/td] [td]16,500 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 2, 1, 1 or 2, 2[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]6 SRB[/td] [td]¤5622[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤5622[/td] [td]35,000 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 2, 2[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]8 SRB + 1 TR-18[/td] [td]¤7497[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤7497[/td] [td]35,000 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 3, 2, stage, 2, 1. Fully conventional staging.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]9 SRB[/td] [td]¤6972[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤6972[/td] [td]70,000 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 4, 2, 2, 1[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]10 SRB + 1 TR-18[/td] [td]¤8397[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]¤8397[/td] [td]70,000 m alt[/td] [td]Burn 3, 2, stage, 2, 1. Fully conventional staging.[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]2 FLT-250 + 2 LV-909[/td] [td]¤4872[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]¤7872[/td] [td]35,000 m alt[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2 FLT-500 + 2 LV-909[/td] [td]¤5322[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]¤8322[/td] [td]70,000 m alt[/td] [td]May be capable of 350+ km range.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]3 FLT-500 + 3 LV-909[/td] [td]¤6522[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]¤9522[/td] [td]LKO (briefly)[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤4222[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤11122[/td] [td]16,500 m alt[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤3800[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤10800[/td] [td]16,500 m alt[/td] [td]No parachute. Powered landing required.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 FLT-500 + 1 FLT-250 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤4447[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤11447[/td] [td]70,000 m alt[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤4672[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤11672[/td] [td]70,000 m alt[/td] [td]May be capable of 350+ km range.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]3 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤5122[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤12122[/td] [td]LKO (briefly)[/td][/tr] [tr][td]4 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤5572[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]¤12572[/td] [td]LKO (briefly)[/td] [td]Any inclination possible, can carry some additional payload.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]5 FLT-500 + 1 LV-T30[/td] [td]¤6522[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]¤37522[/td] [td]11,400,000 m alt[/td] [td]Münar flyby possible. Carries 1 ZO2 solar panel.[/td][/tr] [/table] Full sized tank prices use the forum cost (¤450) instead of the ingame (¤550) one. All rockets are assumed to require a Mk 1 Command Pod, Mk 16 parachute, and ZO2 main (¤2922, 2.5 tonnes). Now for fewer questionable rewards? edit: fixed some data. edit 2: additional data point added. edit 3: Higher TL altitude runs added. edit 4: minimal TL3 altitude design added.

Click on the velocity indicator (on the navball) to toggle it between surface and orbit mode. 2 in 0.13.x, 1½ in 0.14.x. 3 is enough for Kerbin escape. Which reminds me of something...Pay close attention to how the rocket equation works. Specifically, adding niceties like parachutes and ASAS (or, really, anything that can be counted as 'payload.') will exponentially increase how big your rocket is. Small increases in ?V require large increases in stage size, and this gets worse as the stage grows. At some point, you need to stick on a decoupler and add another stage. Excluding parallel staging (typically solid/liquid 'boosters' or drop tanks), lower stages should be substantially larger than upper stages. Otherwise, the additional stages will add little (and may end up reducing available ?V). More thrust (especially in the form of more SRBs) is not always the answer. Sometimes more fuel will be a greater help.

Sort of. I did the 70 km mission with TL0 (9 SRBs, blowing up lower ones for decoupling for $6972). R&D costs are one-time, so we\'ll have to see how many missions at how much lower TL will be required for higher TLs to pay for themselves. It\'s likely that several people will pull ahead of me next turn, as they can do cheap orbital missions with TL3 rockets, while I\'ll have to use a ~$1400 more expensive TL2 rocket, or go for a long distance suborbital mission. I suspect that part of the annoyance is also that we\'re doing 1-dimensional missions. If someone had gone for horizontal distance, a higher payout for a 'lesser' mission would have been more intuitive.

Yep. substantially better Isp, mass ratios, and burn times available in, say, NovaPunch would likely result in *much* smaller rockets.

And apparently the 16,500 m mission did even more. Assuming final income numbers similar to these, I may have shot myself in the foot. Most cash in the bank, but a bunch of my competitors have better tech... *begins project longshot*

I\'m blaming Foamyesque for this one. My rocket has 135 SRBs, 7 stages, and masses 250.56 tonnes (excluding struts). This is in fact smaller than some late model drag racers. I launched at dawn, to get a good lineup. No maneuvers were performed. So, anyone want to work out the smallest SRB-only rocket capable of going into interstellar space? Or if you\'re feeling really insane, sundiving with SRBs?

Eep. I thought I had another day to fix my designs/fly a cheaper mission. ^^;;

You can see how often I use them. >_>

Most of the default controls are here. The main thing it neglects is using the numpad period to toggle the navball\'s visibility. Also, you can change the navball\'s reference frame (surface/orbit) by clicking on the title.

It looks like there are rather cheaper designs than I was initially running. Staging is not my friend, nor is the TWR of 'advanced' propulsion systems. Turn 2 Mission/craft sent. I seem to be a bit lacking in performance for range this turn, so altitude it is! edit: ...and my cost estimates are off. Grr...

Okay, I was also worried about this -- I currently have designs capable of 35 and 70 km, but was worried about going broke, and being unable to do anything even with a successful flight. >_> It\'s doable with 3 boosters, while avoiding the finicky staging shown in that one video. Aerodynamic drag is your primary enemy. Ask here, or PM if you want any suggestions?

Okay, I *think* I got joey73101, semininja, Ydoow, and Witeken added...

Very impressive. Can you explain a bit more about what you did to raise your periapsis at the end there? (What direction you want to burn and why?)

???????! (Yay, astronautics/cosmonautics day) I can\'t think of anything witty, so have a picture of ???:

I\'m on G+. My gmail account is the same as my username here...

*grumble* I\'m fairly sure that that the burn-off old boosters approach is the only way to break 16,500 m with the currently available budget and technology. (If there were just that tiny bit more money for a 5th, though...)