sanity

i dont really design anything as a single ship, i design in modules. and everything rides to orbit on my default lifter, strong, reliable, not prone to spontaneous explosion or performance of interpretive dance Base Plate Module Top Cap Module Fuel Tanks Interplanetary Drive (One Way), they dont have the thrust to return once they stage ---------------------- i stuck this together in duna orbit from 3 interplanetary ships 1 ITP Engine carried the top cap + Fuel Tank 1 carried the base plate + Fuel Tank 1 was just a fuel tank with an interplanetary engine stuck on all three were built from individual modules and assembled in kerbin orbit, then off they go, the ITP engines have enough fuel to deliver a full orange tank to duna (given perfect launch conditions), the ITP engines are 2 stage, 1 stage to break kerbin orbit and 1 nuclear engine for the transfer, downside is they have very long burn times because they are made from only 1 nuclear engine, but they're extremely fuel efficient. when they got there i undocked the fuel tanks and carried parts from the engines, disposed of interplanetary engines (in Duna's Atmo) and rearranged the remaining parts to form the station, 3 full tanks less than 60 parts, docking ports for every possibility, internal power and RCS supplied, sadly the Kerbal will be alone in the capsule till someone comes to relieve him, maybe ill make an unmanned version at some point. i suppose i could assemble the whole thing around kerbin and then push it to other planets, but ive never tried

this is my standard outer planet refuelling station design, very stable because of multiple attachment points for docked parts, and has a low part count multiple attachments are good for stability and the low part count obviously for docking completed ships for refuelling and keeping frame rate high the top cap is docked to both the bottom "base plate" by a central shaft and the three outer fuel tanks which are also docked to the base plate

looks great gonna check it out after exams, question, is there a way to transfer resources to orbit?, ie. can i deploy one in orbit and shuttle resouces metal etc... up from the moon?

might not have enough thrust to break kerbin orbit in 1 pass

big ship maneuvers aren't really that hard, or even any harder than small ship maneuvers, you just have to go slow, remember that your not flying some fast responsive fighter but a large mass tanker, move slowly, take your time, its not really difficult

High Speed, Low Altitude Fly-by of the Mun During an Engine Test under 5k at greater than 4kps horizontal velocity <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/QxrWb/embed"></iframe>

87 rcs props? youtre doing something wrong there, i have some ships in the 100 ton range with only 8 rcs props and they maneuvre fine, granted they're not fighter jets but no ammount of rcs is going to make a 100 ton + vessel respond quickly, its just to much mass moving to fast to slow down in time when turning around, take it slowly on rcs maneuvers. only place rcs along your main axis, (left , right, up down) and always balance it around the centre of mass ships can turn without rcs, or roll rather, not sure about turning really

working on it, i plan on visitning every planet in teh system, meeting up with a refuelling vessel of same type as the forward section, ive previously placed in orbit and docking to refuel, before travelling outward to the next planet.

finally got it all hooked up

Nice, this is my ride

true but an ion engine is not a single impulse burn, its super hard to calculate an intercept with another planet using an ion drive

they may be different vessels but they survive time acceleration, which means it should be possible to use a seperate boost engine to get to other planets by docking it, join 2 boost sections together and you could boost a comlpely fueled boos eengine to anothe planet and have it in a stable orbit, that way when you send a full lander mission it could land and rendezvous in orbit with a completely fueled new boost engine to either return to kerbin or go on to other planets. as far as i know none of the currently used "docking techniques" survive in timewarp, meaning that if you wanted to do something similar to the above, you'd have to do it realtime

excellent cant wait for 0.17 so i can put it to good use!

you asume that there's kethane on the new planet/moons?

definately the way to get to the surface of any high grav world, since you'll need a lot of fuel to get out of the gravity well, you can attach the main transfer engines in space, you could also send an enngine to your destination ahead of you and attack to it to return to kerbin

i look forward to the planned mission control additions, i wanna plan my missions, ie. burn here, gravity slingshot here, aerobrake here, orbit here, return here etc.....

i hope my craft files will still work, i've been developing my interplanetary vehicle

i like to think they're interplanetary pathways

some rockets cant be flown with mech-jeb, they build up too much oscillation and break apart

what information can be determined by usuing the chart? how do you read it?

dam, i overshot

use the rcs and translate laterally until you lift up then burn the main engine on low and land again, simple

alright, lets see her fly

yea i hate that twitch in the hydraulics, it killed my space stations gravity boom and destroyed the rest of the space station when the mass on the end of the boom flicked back into the station proper! hope it gets fixed

launching my largest space station, and staging the launch support frame