sneakeypete

Wild speculation and theory here, but I imagine that that sort of engine may be handled by the calculations at higher warps, instead of be forces acting on your 3d rocket etc as engines are handled now. Harvester mentioned adding (in the future) code that allowed atmospheric reentry to take place under warp, as he\'d found a mathematical solution for it. In theory, the same sort of thing could be done for engines with a constant imput, and it\'d be quite handy for the reasons given above.

Um... it was only a 2x warp. In that case (and all others) at most it would go from 60 seconds to 2 minutes. ;P

Though its passed up now, you call 75% off CK2 nothing special!!?! edit: personally, i\'ve bought CK2 sword of islam, supreme commander and its expansion, light of altir, and now commander keen complete pack. edit edit: and from dust, and the commando\'s complete pack.

I still barely remember my first time playing, and not being able to figure out digging or downward stairways. Keep at it and you\'ll probably get the hang of it and have fun!

Noone said anything about soft ;P

Wednesday is when i get my thesis marks and the marks for the last subjects i need to complete for my degree. Fingers crossed.

as an engineer i\'m quite a fan of the engineering approach; Close enough within tolerances.

I may do exactly what you\'re doing for my car, in a few months once it has been done and there is some sort of path to follow.

People might find it very handy to change the CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT value in the settings to 5 or 6. That way you can see things like this: click for enlarged image

I was lucky enough to randomly run across an observatory when i was on a day-trip out, so I got to have a look at it and a bit of a chat with the owner.

I don\'t think the extra momentum you could get from planetary flyby\'s would offset the extra food you\'d need to take. Not to mention other non tangible problems with a longer voyage, eg exposure to radiation, higher risk if crew sickness from natural causes etc.

I just completed a high altitude flight in my new design and managed to cover 1600km\'s in an hour. took off just before dawn and landed just before dark. Doing this is going to call for something more ridiculous though

If you ignore the altitude part (hey just get better cameras =P) and allow yourself to fly at around 15000m you can get a much better range, i think. So far my best is 1400km, but i have another promising design that i need to set aside a few hours to fly. And half of those few hours will just be getting it into the air without exploding

Wait, the real mars\' atmosphere is only 0.5% of earths? That\'s a lot less than i thought.

The issue, I think, isn\'t so much the method of getting yourself/fuel to the planet. There\'s that, and numerous other proposals. What i find, however, in all of them, is that they have some magic vehicle which is able to land on mars (with/without refueling on the surface). and then return to orbit. I\'ve not heard any proposals on the feasibility of constructing such a rocket.

I\'m certainly intrigued by the problem from a game play and real life perspective. However, my general mission will probably go something like, fly up to space station which has been built and filled with lots of precious fuel with a few medium lift launches beforehand... then fling entire space station to kerbal mars using a munar slingshot. Once in orbit, the lander would then detach and and land and return, however that may be accomplished, and then the entire space station, complete with empty fuel tanks brought back. Aerobraking may be used to try and save fuel. The main advantage of doing this is that the interplanetary ferry can be used again and again. As for actually landing and returning form a mars like planet, that\'s something i\'m not so sure about. Space-planes are probably out due to atmosphere not being not as thick. Parachuets+rockets to land something with enough fuel mass to reenter orbit will probably be what i\'d try first though.

I\'m also amazed at 0.15, it turned out to be much better than i\'d hoped. space-planes and the improvements to the VAB in general have really been great. The patched conics system is also good. A tip, to everyone, go into the settings text file in your KSP folder, and change the patched conics patch number to 3-4. That way you not only get to see the next path, but the path after that. in other words, you can see in real time how a munar flybly will actually effect your orbit after the fact. Really neat.

Success!

I just found a better way to use this. Instead of Jettisoning the boosters once the ship becomes unstable, bring forward the firing of the last main shuttle engine. This re-balances the forces, although it uses up the strap-on fuel tank before the boosters. adding another fuel tank onto that stack would probably fix that, So maybe i\'ll do a new Mark in the morning. After Further testing i\'ve determined that landing this without exploding is almost impossible, the amount of weight clustered at the rear causes the angle of attack to be so high that the engines hit the ground first, exploding everything.

After leaning that rotated craft in the Space plane Hangar launch rotated, i realized it was that we now have an easier way to build shuttles with the symmetry option in there. After a few hours tinkering around i came up with this basic design, modeled off of the space shuttle. Description and Takeoff The shuttle\'s main body has 3 gimballing engines, fed by a strap-on fuel tank, as well as 2 strap on boosters for takeoff thrust. Obviously, balance is quite an issue. To keep the thrust somewhat inline with the center of mass, the 'top' of the 3 gimballing engines does not fire at the start. SAS should be engaged to fly the craft, and manual input to keep the craft facing vertical during flight may also be required. The craft is stable until approximately halfway through the second tank of the strap on boosters where upon the centre of mass varies to much. Jettisoning the boosters (after killing thrust temporarily) is advised. After this point, the craft should again be stable, and as it is getting to the upper atmosphere, tilt over and start to gain some more horizontal momentum. partway through the last tank of the strap on fuel, the craft should again become unstable, but this can be used to tilt over into an orbital direction if you\'re tricky. Upon jettisoning the strap on tank (again, killing thrust is advised), the final engine on the main craft can then be activated to give uniform thrust on the shuttle body. Simply boost into a ballistic trajectory with an apoapsis of >70km, and circularize when you get there. Currently, there won\'t be much fuel to spare at this point, so trips further afield aren\'t possible, and if the wrong flight path is taken on the way up you might not be able to achieve orbit. Landing The craft can be landed as a glider upon reentry. It is advisable to use SAS to hold the craft pointing towards its direction of travel, as due to its instability if it is pointed more than around 30 degrees from the direction of travel it may back-flip. Its twitchy flight handing characteristics make it difficult to land. I\'ve found holding the nose at an angle of attack of around 20-25 degrees with SAS on the glide in approach is required to have minimal vertical velocity. upon contact with the ground, stage to activate the parachute brakes. With luck you\'ll have the shuttle ready to refuel and reuse. With a little less luck you might have a spectacular explosion but otherwise unharmed Kerbals. Further Improvement By disabling the flow of certain tanks until later in the ascent, the stability of the rocket might be maintained for longer, allowing more fuel to be burnt from the tanks which otherwise need to be jettisoned full right now. Reducing the boosters by a single tank (or perhaps just replacing them with 2 sequential pairs of SRB\'s) and changing the non fuel structure parts in the shuttle to fuel tanks would also probably result in a much better design. I may make a revision of the design in the future. Comments, criticism and questions welcome, enjoy.

I\'m scratching my head about the best way to do this. get up to a really high altitude and use the high altitude engines? just get upto a medium altitude and hold it flat for speed? what is everybody doing?

The rocket is designed (and i believe the Saturn V was the same) to fire its engines for a few seconds before the rocket is released form the pad. In that time sensors can tell the flight computer if everything is working alright with the engines, and if it isn\'t, abort the launch, like what happened here.

Wasn\'t this the name of some isometric RPG a few years back?

Someone who\'s more versed in the operating principals of this engine than me: is this more mass efficient than chemical rockets?