Vanamonde

The LV-N has two half-cylinder cover panels which fly off to the sides when the engine is activated. You need to arrange the engines so that those panels don't hit anything, either by rotating the engines when you place them, or making sure nothing else is at the same level.

I can trump 5thHorseman: Pong on a black & white TV.

Hello positivewun. Asking newbie questions is not a bad thing. Some of us enjoy helping new players.

If they are at the same altitude, they will collide either every time or never. They'll be synchronized, and the closest approach will pass each other, twice per orbit, at the same distance every time. Also, this is a gameplay question, so thread moved.

When we moderators see questions that are specifically about mods, we do move the questions to add-on support. Sometimes the question is borderline (includes a mod but might not be dependent upon it) and we may feel that it's more likely to get help if it stays here. Or there was one thread recently where the question was answered before I found it, so the thread was effectively dead and there seemed to be no reason to move it. Or, we might simply have not run across a thread that needs moving yet, as we are volunteers and monitor the forum on irregular schedules when we have time, and not all of us read every sub-forum. If you see something that you think is in the wrong place, just hit the little triangular report button to call the attention of the mod team to it. That being said, this thread seems to have served its purpose, and is in the wrong sub-section, so let's close it and move on, shall we?

The discussion in this thread has become excessively personal at times. Please confine your remarks to the subject of the thread and avoid experssing opinions about each others' character.

If you are generating/collecting more power than you are using, it automatically accrues in any batteries installed on the ship. Electricity is generated by most engines (not all), and is collected by solar panels, and high in the tech tree, the RTG generator produces a low but constant flow. I haven't worked out a rule of thumb for chutes required, because it depends on the size of the ship, but also how slowly you want to end up going after the chutes open. A large ship, for example, will be more fragile and will need a lower touchdown speed to avoid damage. Nothing should ever hit the ground at more than 10m/s, though. The overlapping of the chutes is merely an aspect of the part animation, and does not affect their performance. The problem you had is probably due to the speed at which the chutes opened. The faster the ship is moving, the harder the shock that's applied when they open, and you were likely going faster on your re-entry flight than you had been in testing, even though the chutes opened at the same altitude in both. Most of us try to avoid unnecessary casualties, but don't feel overly guilty about it, as Jeb frequently reappears after fatal accidents.

Hello Supersonicclank. How does on pilot a Canadian?

You do less aerobraking on the way to the altitude where the chutes trigger, and so it happens at a higher speed and is more violent, despite the thinner air. Generally, free falling on Kerbin gets you down to around 80m/s by the time the chutes open, whereas you're frequently going 300-500m/s when they deploy at Duna. (These are rough numbers based on experience, of course, and will vary by ship size and other factors.)

Woodstar, does your post edit mean that you're no longer having this issue?

Welcome back, Flixxbeatz.

I design the mission payload carefully, but as we all know, KSP's physics is quirky. To paraphrase Clausewitz, "No ship design survives contact with the launchpad." So I'll build a transit stage for that payload, launch/test/revise, then build an upper stage for that, launch/test/revise, then a launch stage, launch/test/revise. I have no idea what the final ship will look like until I see it, as it is whatever was needed to get that payload into space.

The amount of payload an engine can move depends upon a number of things, including where you are in the flight. For example, an ion engine can move a massive space station if it's already in orbit, but you may need a Mainsail to get a much smaller rocket off of the pad. At 20,000m, you need to be able to start building up lateral speed to achieve orbit, so if you're not able to do that, 1) lighten the upper stage, 2) switch to a larger engine, and/or 3) add an additional stage to the original launch vehicle so that you're calling on that engine later in the flight, where it may be sufficient.

Isn't a mobile space station called "a ship"?

Hello Thrfoot.

There is a sub-forum for mission reports, which this thread now occupies. (Moved.)

I've posted this many times, but it's still one of my favorite screenshots. This is a botched aerobrake manuever. Not one thing broke off of that ship until it hit the water (or whatever passes for water on Eve.)

Greetings, NoelElectriqueInc.

1. Burning at the closest approach, the periapsis, is most efficient. It doesn't make a big difference if the periapsis is high, but you can lower it by burning 90 degrees from your flight path in the direction of the planet. And yeah, don't warp so fast. 2. Many of the planets have SOIs so large that the planet is just a distant speck. You can find it by rotating the ship until you are pointed straight down (the middle of the brown side of the navball), and then sight along the length of the ship. 3. Nuke engines work fine for just about anything but launch from a large world, though the burn will take longer.

Has it gone anywhere yet? Part count looks crazy.

AwesumnisRawr188, I made made an explanation of asparagus staging. You can find it here.

Say you've built this rocket, but it doesn't go as far as you need it to. So you add some side tanks to give it more fuel and longer range. (Note that this requires running the little yellow fuel lines from the outer tanks to the inner, and yes, the direction is important because fuel runs from the first attachment point to the second. If you ever get confused about which way the fuel lines run, zoom way in and you'll see little gray triangles on the lines, pointing the way the fuel will flow.) But now, the rocket is too heavy for the engine. What to do? Give the side tanks engines to lift their own weight. The side columns will now support their own weight, while still providing additional fuel for the original rocket in the center. True, adding more engines means that they burn some of the fuel, and not all of the fuel in the side tanks is now available for use by the central engine. But this arrangement is still a net gain for the ship as a whole, and the rocket will go farther with these side tanks than without them. This is what is described as asparagus staging, because apparently somebody once thought the cluster of side columns made the rocket look like a clump of asparagus spears. Anyway, when side columns are both burning engines of their own as well as pumping fuel to central stages, that is asparagus staging. Asparagus staging is not used much in the real world for two reasons. Firstly, pumping fuel at the required rate is quite difficult, and creates a number of technical difficulties. And secondly, the side tanks add to air resistence, slowing the rocket and holding it back. But within the game, fuel is pumped as fast as you want it to move, and the additional drag from the side tanks is not a serious problem. Now that we've described asparagus staging, let's demonstrate how it works. For this example, I have added an additional set of asparagus columns, to better demonstrate the idea. The ship takes off and all engines are contributing to lifting the ship's mass. But once the outer set of tanks have used their fuel, they become useless weight which holds the ship back. You want to eject the tanks, but an additional benefit of asparagus staging is that the engines on the outer columns are no longer needed, and can be discarded along with the tanks. Keeping those engines would make the ship go faster, but that isn't always a good thing. Excessive acceleration wastes fuel in atmosphere by trying to push the ship faster than air resistence will allow it to go, and extreme acceleration can even cause parts of the ship to collapse. So off the engines go with the tanks. But keep in mind that the fuel tanks on the remaining portion of the ship are still entirely full, since the fuel they've burned has been replaced by fuel pumped in from the outer tanks. Repeat the process with the second stage and you are back to your original rocket, except that compared to launching it directly from the pad, it is now "launching" with an advantage of many meters of altitude and many meters/second of speed, but still has full fuel tanks. I laid out that example rocket with the columns side-by-side so that it would be easy to see the design, but it actually isn't very strong. That's why players generally wrap the asparagus stages around the central column. (This version has exactly the same parts as the version above.) In this arrangement, all of the side columns cluster around the central core, which makes the ship stronger, and has the advantage of giving you attachment points for reinforcement struts. But this rocket will function just like the flat version pictured above, as long as the fuel lines are arranged properly to feed from outer tanks to inner. Once you have arranged the parts the way you want them in the VAB, though, be careful to go back and re-work the staging order, as the game's construction system does not automatically arrange the parts in the order you need. All the engines should fire at once, then the first set of decouplers should fire, then the second. The staging display should look like this when properly arranged. So that's what asparagus staging is, how it works, and how to build it, so that your rockets fly farther and are stronger. I hope this has been helpful.

Since this is a how-to kind of question, thread moved to gameplay questions. Proceed.

These are the middle days of the alpha.

I haven't tried it because even if it worked, it would accelerate as long as it can, and then tend to fly over a bump and destroy itself.