Markus Reese

Gilly for the silly Great guide, though only challenge I have is the need to send multiple ships to try and capture. While if you are going for maximum efficency, it is a way to do it. However, I use a different way that has a very high success rate, though can result in long mission times. I never try to capture on a direct single transfer. Too much frustration of save and reload or messing around with the multi rockets etc. When I launch, I plan to arrive early for outer orbit transfers. Arrive a little late for the inner planets. Main point of the strategy is to let the planet intercept you. when you escape kerbin SOI, align your orbit plane to target, and do your burn. Make sure you do your transfer burn to arrive at orbit a bit ahead. Keep a slow burn to have your orbit pass past the target orbit. What will happen is the planet will catch up to you or for inner planets, you catch up to it. By continuing your slow burn, you just need to watch the map for your orbit capture on trajectory. If you are well off the mark, at apo or per can decel/accel if you have the fuel to elongate your time at the different speed. It works every time as long as you have your planes aligned, which is needed anyways for any capture.

I find the best configuration for the nuclear engines is to use the support structure little wingly bit to connect them away from the hull a bit. I will have on this strut one 400 tank then the nuc. down the center I have been mounting a jettisonable fuel tank and use the separator engines to clear it away.

Wow, that is pretty intense. I have been planning a joolian mission, but maybe I have underestimated the velocity needed to escape jool. More fuel possibly needed in my return phase. Jeb. Get out there with moar boosters and find out what is needed.

Woo hoo! Designs work. Behold my actual completed and new submissions I present Vindicator This is a high altitude heavy bomb payload rocket capable of a configurable deployment system as seen here with the largest Omega bomb. The omega bomb is an 18t "guided" air/fuel bomb. (mechjeb guidance system not included) Many different bomb configurations are available according to customer demands. 9bomb-2.25t ea. Multi deployment bombs and clusterbomb packs are also available. All three options are available for your testing. Clusterbomb is currently set for single fire deployment, but is easy to change bomb configuration to your own triggering setup. (Note... Due to time, I couldn't do any extensive testing of the planes, so I am looking forward to seeing what you guys can do with it)

Cool to know. I am going to have to try and attach some sort of ordinance to my planes and make them more compatible. Have some ideas and hopefully they work.

Second edit: I should learn to read more closely. The focus is on bombers and I haven't attached any bombs to mine.... sorry about that, but still are some cool planes.... Maybe if you have a favorite bomb design can have fun mounting or something XD. Well, am back home, so first two vintage spaceplane recordings. I will need to hunt for the archived fitting so guess they are not submissions, but still cool for stock parts. Here is the story of my most epic one first off. The link to the Bioman campaign challenge. I have sort of retired from the extreme stuff and now focus on cool designs, but is by far my most epic story. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/13638-Bio-Campaign-Missions?p=202962&viewfull=1#post202962 and the bombing run The .craft files are in the thread, but would need retrofit to modern technology. Not submitted since I have other ksp projects on the go, but still was an awesome mission. It was version 0.15 so fuel efficiencies and tank quantities have changed, plus the 2m tanks. Second historical one was made for a historical re-creation. I need to find the .craft, but the plane should work better with the new patches plus myself now having a flight stick. Fun to watch vid though. Here is a submission. Originally made for 0.16, but the ship still works fine. Some fuel management to maintain centre of gravity is needed, but outside of that, is a single stage plane that can reach the poles using only airbreathers. Plus has a cool and unique style. I present Polar Express Edit. Might not actually reach poles now. I havent tried. I built this and flew it before fuel bug was discovered. I might have made it to poles on partial throttles. If tested now, probably wouldn't reach poles, but still is a neat plane.

vegi, put up a pic of your rocket. I know I had issues because I overthought the setup. Once you get orbit, it is the hardest part. you said you had the fuel and ship to reach so not sure what could be causing it if you get that alignment.

Duna the easy way without any math or hassle. 1. Get kerbol orbit 2. Adjust orbital plane to parallel if needed. 3. Burn so your orbital path will arrive a bit before duna gets to that position. 4. Keep a slow burn to elongate your orbit past duna. 5. If you are going to arrive very early, burn at apo to increase your duration you are traveling slower than duna. 6. Interception. This works for me every time provided I don't arrive late or get there horrendously early. Never ever have had to use a protractor/calculator/etc. So I spend a bit more on fuel. Slow burn and efficent engines make it fun.

What about historical crafts? A while back in 1.5 did a ship that was able to land on both muns, then spaceplaned in and bombed the ksc 2. I have it on video if you want. At current my source isn't flash enabled so I cannot get at the link. But if you google ksp2 bombing run, it will come up. Also, I have been working on a very special space plane for planetary travel. I think you would approve as a badass looking plane. Even the stage separations are designed to be stylish. I have some final test runs before I unveil it.

More often the high altitude flipping is caused by asymetry. If you have fins or other aero control surface, they become ineffective at higher altitudes. You want to make sure your fuel burn doesn't offset your center of gravity, also make sure your center of thrust is inline with your center of gravity. Even one engine being slightly off angle will cause a spin out of control. I had this happen on a space plane where I had one engine above and one below mounted to radial decouplers. The below one was only slightly off center on the decoupler and I spun out of control once I lost the airflow control.

One thing I like to use is srbs on my initial launch off planets. A pair of the 400s aren't too bad to land and lift off a lander and interplanetary stage.

0.0 why didnt I think of just doing that. I always do the pain in the arse map referencing to get my ejection burn timed. Just looking at sun is much easier... Wouldn't be that easy. Those nervas are heavy and to have to land and launch them from each planet would be a bit of a challenge. Of course, if you mean just orbit, that isn't too bad. I already got a rocket that could transfer around the planets provided I don't want to land. Now to land on all bodies in one trip... definitely would be doing eve last.

A good criteria is a ship that can return from eve, or reach jool and has temp capabilities to land on Moho. Those are the three extremes.

Do what I do and fly by the seat of my pants. Flying to anything and don't know the timing for orbit transfer? Do your transfer late so you cross orbit ahead of your target. While you are passed it's orbit, it will catch up and you capture planet or whatever on the return. Just make sure you get your orbit plane aligned right and it works every time. Heading to the inner planets, do the inverse arrive a bit late and pass it on the inside. I have never even added 2+2 ever in my life of playing ksp and can get most anywhere if I have the desire to make it. Before planets came out, all my landers were VTOL space planes made entirely by trial and error. First get orbit. Then correct orbit, then just adjust orbit length until capture. That is why arriving early (outer) or late (inner) is beneficial. The map does all the work. When you do this, you can keep burning to increase catchup time until you capture on the return trajectory. Works every time if done right. Give a quicksave before your burn in case you were wrong. Also avoid burning too fast or you might miss a very tiny capture window. Sometimes it only blinks for a second on the map. Again, I do it all by visual. Pass and return capture for any orbital body (or if possible such as minmus or other long range objects, fly counter orbit) Need to change your angle, all you have to do is wait until your orbit plane crosses the target orbit plane. Once that happens, burn perpendicular to your direction of travel while aligned to your orbit body horizon. The orbit will pivot on this axis until they align. Works every time if you have the fuel. No fancy calculators needed. Those are only needed if you want to maximize your efficency. I just make overkill rockets. I always arrive with fuel to spare.

Umm... wow... I won't even go into the details of my mission. The air resistance and gravity on my exploration craft, I would never get my plane back off again. Off to try something new I thinks! Space plane on dune...

I think it is the increased air resistance, and is the gravity different? Less gravity will mean the better pack effectiveness.

Personally, I want docking and some optimization. What might be needed is a tank welding feature. Make stacked tanks "welded" into one object to reduce the required object count. They would still wobble due to leverage and thrust plus still have the normal weight issue. But if we had 6 stacked fuel tank sets instead of 30 in a stage, it would be nice plus less need for struts. Now I am all for very kerbin rockets, but big rockets are even more kerbal and right now is something to avoid.

\o/ Been working on one, just some final tweaks left to try out. Bill is gonna have a good or bad day. Jeb is in orbit of gilly right now waiting. Took him half a year to get there, but oh well. IIRC, eve has less gravity, or so it seemed since I had trouble keeping from leaving orbit when trying to catch gilly. Or was that just an illusion caused by long range orbits, but don't think so....

I had the same problem for the past couple days as you with getting to planets. If you are like me, you also want to return, so lander is a bit heavier. I found try to avoid complex rockets. You want to brute force out of kerbin as fast as you can get it. I had these big multistaged things, but I accelerated slowly off planet, so most of my fuel was spent in the time offsetting gravity. remember, that holding stable altitude is just accelerating up the same rate gravity is pulling you down. So by burning more fuel, you burn less fuel. Once you get powered out into orbit or escape, you can keep it light, but maintain a patience game with very slow acceleration rates. For example, I had a minimalist lander design. It could just get off kerbin, and get enough to capture another planet's orbit minimized as much as I could. It theoretically works fine, I can return from any place, but couldn't get there to begin with trying to keep smaller stagings with nuc fuel etc. I finally got fed up, stripped everything I added to the lander and just added an equal amount of components (less actually) but had alot firing all at once. The result was the increase in thrust got me to space fast, and still had big engines to get the major acceleration done. Allowing smaller efficent engines for my maneuvering and capture as apposed to the dead weight of a larger fuel supplied efficent transfer stage. Doing that got me to Eve orbit quicker and easier with more fuel left over.

Aww, curse it. Now I will need to plan my landings better. I had planned on nuc jettisons on re-entry. But now I will need to change my designs... hrm....

Usually I don't revive threads, but with new planets, bumping this one back up!

Good choice on not trying to land on jool. Atmospheric surveys show that it is a gas giant and the pressure would crush the vessel before any sort of solid surface (in whatever existence it is) can be achieved! Anyways, watch out for it's atmosphere. With it's gravity well, if you start losing velocity might not be able to get it back. Good job though, you are doing better than I am with the new planetary exploration. I have acheived orbit/"landing" on gilly is about it.

syx. Something I played with was using jet engines for vtol thrust. With their fuel efficiency to thrust output, could it be possible to use them for majority of vertical ascent on eve? Get up high then SRB rest of the way out of the atmo. That is the way I designed my Duna lander in this way but using liquid engines. I use my lander/takeoff to get off surface to get out of gravity well, then fire off the larger SRBs to burst into orbit. Finish off with some nuke engines in a lightweight format, and I can get back easy. Provided I time my transfer correctly. That is the worst part I find . Advice on launching from kerbin or am I on the right track with just go overkill with brute force to get into space?

For the Duna bit. I think the alignment part of the planets isn't the case. I am thinking back to voyager with universal language on the plate for co-ordinates. Now to break down what is being shown here. The three circles and then duna probably just mean duna. What I was looking at myself was the actual symbol. It appears geometric to me. Notice all three lines are tangental. My guess is that the crossing lines represents Duna's moon and duna itself. If the arrow is correct in the assumption that it is the pyramid on the mun. And it clearly shows something above the pyramid pointing down which is probably a reference point to the equilateral vertex. Anyways, I would need to re-draw it, but if the intersecting lines are tangental to Duna, then could be one step closer to locating the source. (also curse i-mapper for my inability to resist browsing threads)

I agree on the two man part as well. Mostly because my system cries a little inside when I try doing it single rocket. The amount of power required to get the return lander even off kerbin is astronomical (no pun intended). For my system it is just murder with that initial launch. I have been working on optimizing it more. But single ship to duna should be possible. When I get home this evening, I am going to rebuild my kerbin launch stage and will try for dune again. Though secretly bop has been my first objective when I saw the naming list. Either way, I am almost there and first step I did was build a minimal lander capable of launching. I did so using fuel tanks with enough nuc burn time to make the interplanetary and acheive a capture. Keeping this light as possible. Launch consists of combines nuc and solid booster. Below this I have my landing engines and orbital capture combined together. This has been fairly reliable and should be good for duna, but the higher atmo and g planets will probably want a space plane booster/lander. To get off has just been as many 2m assemblies I can have going and firing at once. I repeated lots, but am arguing thermodynamics with a friend while typing. how fitting ^.^