zarincos

To address some of the comments regarding my initial testing, my wording is slightly ambiguous, but I simply meant that, because they are able to go 45 degrees very low in the atmosphere, performing a more gradual gravity turn where they end up being at 45 degrees around 10k in the atmosphere (what I've heard been said is now an efficient launch profile, may be wrong) shouldn't be any particular worry. Yes, the rover is a pancake, as stated in the original post, and I understand now that that as much as anything is why the fairing makes me lose dv, but I do feel that it should at least appreciably increase my stability when I use it. And, I apologize if I sound a bit defensive when I say this, there was nothing wrong with my test. I stated in my write up that I was interpreting my results to be fairly consistent with the average fairing use, that is, covering up a wonky payload to reduce overall wonkiness of the rocket, which I see now was not accurate, at least as far as the size and shape of my rover goes. As for the launch profile (straight up), I just did that so my results would be very consistent. As far as them working better when the base shape is simply more aerodynamic goes, it seems kind of strange that it seems you get the most benefit from it when you would seem to need it the least On an aside, I think that the lift change in 1.0.1 is actually what made very un-aerodynamic rockets really bad, since I turned on the aero overlay and when I'm going fast enough high enough in the atmosphere the lift on my rocket is what appears to drag it off course, probably because the structural panels are acting similar to wings. With or without fairings I can't control it and to put it into orbit I have to just go straight up to 75k and burn like a demon east. Just a random statement.

Yeah, I'm noticing a lot of flippage in 1.0.2. I've been trying to put this rover into orbit for nearly an hour, and, with or without fairing, it gets nigh-uncontrollable at 15-25kish. I think that's the area where the drag is enough to play havoc with my heading but the air isn't dense enough for the wings to do their job. Adding the fairing does make it slightly more stable, but not just terribly more so. As far as the fundamental state of fairings go, I'd suspect sal has it right, with them being balanced for massless panels and them weighing something now had a negative effect on drag. In general right now, after a fairly large amount of testing on, admittedly, a fairly specific situation, I'd say they have a use, just a very niche use, plus being nice heatshields.

Here's an imgur album with my basic rover design: http://imgur.com/a/vc9ys. Since the rover itself is baking soda and a pat of butter away from being a pancake, I figured that it would save me some dv and look cool to put a fairing around it for better aerodynamics, and, curious as to how much it was saving me, I immediately started some tests (1.0.2 aero). Abstract/introduction/procedure As you may note, the launcher has a fair number of wings on it, this is because any design I tested had a strong tendency to flip in the atmosphere, including the fairing design. In my initial design, I used just one engine, and that could get my rover to around 8k without incident, but since that resulted in a TWR < 1 for the fairing, I use three engines for all tests to try to ensure that the tests are as fair as possible. I'm primarily testing for whether or not the extra mass of the fairing outweighs any aerodynamic benefit they give, and I submit that this may not be the case for all incidents, as I don't really want to try to design every reasonable rocket and put a fairing around it, I'm open to any screenshots by anyone else. All tests are performed at 100% throttle using SAS to go straight up. All designs were also tested for gravity turns, and, while the fairing run did the turn the smoothest, none of them had serious issues performing up to a 45 degree turn. Obviously that's not efficient for an actual launch, but if they can do it at 3k they should be able to do it at 10+k. Results: As the album shows, the rover on top of a rocket with no special aerodynamic precautions reaches close to 4k maximum height, while the fairing'd rover reaches a mere 2380. I then recognized that maybe it's simply the additional weight of the fairing that causes the TWR to be very non-optimal, and so a smaller fairing would not have these issues. To account for this, I stick an extra ~10.5 tons of mass on my rover in the form of fuel tanks on top of it (that don't feed into the bottom engines) and repeat the test, interestingly getting 2823 for a maximum height, weighing .1t more than the fairing and getting an extra 500 meters in the air. Conclusion: Fairings are literally worse than dead weight. I can appreciate that the additional fuel tanks on top of the rover may have been, in some way, aerodynamic, but they should not provide a better aerodynamic surface than a fairing, and the completely stock weight should be accurate (I have precisely 0 mods installed in this save).

I can't see why this wouldn't work, it sounds like it should get around any major coding difficulties. The one problem this would lead to is that the MB would effectively be an asteroid since, as a vessel, it would likely be affected by physics. I'd still be all for bringing it back, though.

I gave it a try but didn't like it basically instantly, so I turned it off for external views. Still looks cool in IVA, though.

Since 1.0 launched I figured now I would do something I've never done before, do a career playthrough and actually finish out the tech tree and everything. In the process I've strip mined Minmus and want a bit more science before going interplanetary, so I have to do what I only do when I'm forced to: go to the Mun. Sure, it's close, but its extreme gravity compared to Minmus and lower science values make it, for me at least, rather unappealing; where a design I used on Minmus hopped around 4 or 5 times before coming back I'm scared to do any on the Mun (it has a bad TWR). I'm primarily curious if I'm alone in this, so, how often does the average person head to our closest neighbor?

Thanks for the input, everyone. For general information, I got a B-, but I've got a week to revise it on his (and your) comments to improve it, and I think I can pull it a fair bit closer to the A range. His main comment was on the readability of the text, and I agree, but I don't know how to clearly show text flow without either shifting both kerbals off to the side, therefore putting far less emphasis on the pictures, or obscuring at least part of said pictures. I'm also working on getting more than 3 kerbal shots; does anyone know how to make the kerbalizer do emotes, or force the in game kerbonauts to do different emotes? On a different note, I'm sorry you couldn't read it kahlzun, I tried re-uploading and the text was the same quality; can I force imgur to accept a higher resolution?

For an English class assignment, I had to make an instructional comic about anything I chose, and I chose KSP. Here's a basic 8-page comic that talks a bit about a number of semi-basic things, like asparagus staging, gravity turns, and aerobraking. The image quality decreased when I uploaded but I think all the words can be made out, and someone might get a kick out of a couple of the jokes or maybe learn something. Also, if there's anything I put in that was wrong or could be better (including the pictures and design) don't hesitate to say so. Without further ado, here's Bill and Jeb talking about how to reach other planets, using Eve as an example. http://i.imgur.com/APLAHCn.jpg