djnekkid

Hello everyone Yesterday I managed to finally make a 3man sized craft capable of landing on the Mun, and getting back to Kerbin. It were my 5th attempt at bulding something that did not explode on the pad, break appart during the acent, etc. It consists of mostly stock parts, except for the Lander engines, plus one of the main booster engines, but thoose engines can _probably_ be replaced by stock parts. There is also a MechJab attached. I have not used the automation bits, i use it mostly to get some additional data, such as real height over land, horizontal speed and heading, for easy killing the lateral speed when landing on the Mun, as well as setting heading and pitch to 90/90 during the acent from Kerbin. Consists of: 8 LV-T30 2meter engines1 KW-MLR Hercules X 2 meter engine 28 FL-T32 Fuel Tanks6 LV-T30 1meter engines 1 LV-T45 engine28 FL-T400 Fuel Tanks 6 KW Series Vesta Engines4 Stack Decouplers, 3 small and one big 20 TT-38K Radial Decouplers16 SAS 6 LT-2 Landing Gear3 Small Parachutes Lots of StrutsLots of Fuel lines Anything i might have forgotten Stats: Total Mass: 863kilos Thrust: 11950N Thrust/Weight ratio at ground: 1.63 Total Fuel: 100 800 liters My flightplan: Throttle up and Launch the entire stack At roughly 2500 meters are the first tanks empty At roughly 6000 meters are the next tanks empty At 10km tilt to roughly 80 degrees to the right (90 degree heading) At roughly 15000 meters are the next tanks empty, and here i tilt to roughly 45 degrees When the AP is at 70-75km i tilt down to about 10 degrees and have about 10% throttle, this will flatten my orbit quite alot, as well as raise it abit as well, to 90-100km or so When getting close to the AP, burn the engines to max, but note, when the tanks are almost empty, throttle down when you eject them, or they tend to either damage the craft, or the craft go BOOM because of the g-forces when the engines cut from max throttle to 0 in a blink of an eye Burn thru the rest of the tanks, and when the PE is at roughly 40km, eject the last large stage, so that it will burn up in the atmosphere (or crash land, whatever suits your needs), usually there are abit of fuel left, so if you dont care about spacejunk, you can further extend your orbit with this stage, and perhaps even do some of the "Mun burn". Burn a few seconds on the smaller engines, to circulize your orbit, and wait for a good Munar Injection Timing BURN Timewarp until you hit the PE within the Mun SOI Retroburn, and establish a 80km Munar Orbit Find a proper landingspot, and land there. Congratulations, Lun Lander XL-5 have landed on the Mun, and screenshots can be taken Anyone wants pictures? More will come when in the next post, as there cannot be more then a few pics per post. Finally, the Craft file

So far its been rather boring names, with basic "what does it do" - "mk x" ... With the three noticable ones "Lun Lander mk8", "Lun Lander XL-5" and "NS1". Where the latter one is a sliiiight Star Trek refrence, Near Space 1, its a "Space station" with about 3 or 4 full size 1m tanks in radius, I'll post a screenshot of it. Its at a roughly 150-160km orbit around Kerbin

On a funny sidenote, did -2 to all 3 "drags", and set the mass to 0.1, and i now get to 200km, about a 12% increase

Thank you, and that from what seems to be a dev as well I guess my findings, and this post were explanation enough, but with my probably close to 100 hours played the last week-and-a-half, this is the only "bug" i've encountered that i felt needed some forum postings Anyhow, yesterday i managed to land on the mun, and have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin for the first time. Had some problems getting to land safely, and then i baught a joystick, did cost probably 4x what the game did, but it REALLY helped flying safely

Hello Guys! This is my first post on this forum, and sorry if it have been asked or whatnot before, and i did try a qouple of searches But to the topic, the caps to put on top of rockets, are there any points in them? I did use them alot, but I felt they didn't add any benefits, so i did an almost mythbuster style test: Some initial parameters: * SAS on, no touching on the controlcolumn * Full throttle Small Scale: * (Nose cap on top of the pod) * Command Pod mk1-2 * One stick of dynamite (A small solid booster) With: Came up to 8031m W/O: Came up to 9021m Conclution: they did not help me one bit, rather the contrary. But as always, small scale does not neccesary give you a final conclution Medium Scale: * (Nose Caps on the 3 "stand alone" sticks) * Parachute * Command Pod mk1 * SAS * 3x Radial Decoupler to add some space, so the sticks dont overheat * 4 sticks of dynamite (1 in center, and 3 in a "circle") With: Came up to 31587m W/O: Came up to 58389m Conclution: Still the same one, the added weight of the caps did an even worse job on this test Full Scale: * (Nose Caps on the 4 "stand alone" rockets) * Parachute * Command Pod mk1 * 3x FL-T400 tanks to simulate the weight everything you need on a Mun' Lander, simple orbiting vehi * Decoupler * SAS * 3x FL-T400 with a LV-30 rocket underneeth * 4x3 FL-T400 on radial Decouplers with a LV-30 rocket underneeth * About 8 struts for strucktural support With: Came up to 143,379m W/O: Came up to 176,668m Final Conclution: * The extra weight on the nose caps is NOT worth the possible beneficial drag coeffecient. The wierd thing however, all fuel tanks and solid boosters have a drag coeffecient of 0.3, and the SAME does the nosecap have. The nosecap almost share gfs with the XL parachute, but the parachute almost seem abit less aerodynamic the the nosecaps, but the 'chute have a drag coeffecient of 0.1 * A test done with the last setup, and a "slight" modified "parts.cfg" where i tuned down the drag to 0.05, and i did get abit more height, but still not worth it (roughly 153km) * A second test was done with rather heavy modified "parts.cfg", with drag to 0.001 and weight to 0.1, and i still didnt get the full 176km, but a mere 169k