Duxwing

I put plenty of Sepratrons atop the orange tank and then put it directly (no decoupler; you'll see why) atop a core lifter that has a three meter RCS tank, four RCS blocks at its top and bottom, and two fixed solar panels that has six Mainsail motors in asparagus staging around it. Two orange tanks are above every motor, and a strut connects the top of each radial engine to the payload tank; I bind the '1' key to an action group that locks the gimbals of the radial engines and strut them to the core engine so that the lifter stays together, and I keep the whole rocket in place with radial launch clamps attached to the radial engines at the level of the center of mass and engage the action group before launch. The design flies smoothly, has plenty of fuel and maneuverability at high and orbital altitudes, and its Sepratron motors can deorbit the craft after all the tanks (lifter tanks included--use their fuel to refuel craft as well) out of fuel. Be sure to disable fuel flow from the payload tank if you absolutely must have it reach orbit untouched--tapping into it is unlikely, but better to revert to launch lower than higher -Duxwing

I'm glad that you've found additional tracks to use; in the meantime, you could use the fixed, limited nature of your set of tracks to your advantage by forgoing smoothness and communicating through a 'language' of motifs. E.g.: Bicyclist flattened by truck: Bicycle bell rings, and the piano goes da-da-daaaa! Breathing Happy melody Truck engine starts: Da da DUM. Wailing violins Truck engine runs Da da DUM! Da da DUM! Brakes screech, violins wail Cymbals crash! Sad piano melody. -Duxwing

In my experience, holding a course with both the old and new ASAS systems has required patient finesse because the old system was too rigid to accept tiny course corrections, and the new system is too feeble to maintain them. -Duxwing

NOTE: I have only three years of middle school band and a few months of piano lessons to back up my opinions, but I can 'feel' the errors in your music. Dawn of Humanity is calm, cool, and fresh, but fails to fully explore the thematic contents of its title because the vastness of space is not mentioned, and it lacks enough details about early life on earth to make such a flaw acceptable. I see five better alternative approaches to the one that it takes, and what I've seen in your other work makes me think that you're talented enough to take any--or even all of them in order as a narrative concerto: Early Earth: enrich the landscape of chirping birds and bubbling brooks with other details--such as tiger's roars, tribal drums, and mountain winds--to portray the daily struggle for survival that humans faced without mention of the cosmos. Childhood of Humanity: Early Earth through the wondering eyes of a child, enthralled by the sights, sounds, and smells of its surroundings. Ignorant Savages: Interpolate the beauties and wonders of the cosmos into "Early Earth," but don't have the two tracks interact; that way, the humans seem to ignore the heavens and stars. Worshiping Savages: Interpolate the beauties and wonders of the cosmos into "Early Earth," and let the human track react in awe and wonder to the cosmic one, which, in its greatness, does not react; alternatively, they can slowly discover the heavens and then be struck by a climactic epiphany regarding its beauty. Ascent: Tack the sound of plinking hammers, shouting foremen, and good ol' SRBs onto the end of "Wondering Savages" Glorious Beginning: a no-nonsense piece of humanist teleology that starts with flutes, progresses to soaring strings, blaring brass, crashing cymbals, and thundering timpanis, and ends with a hopeful decrescendo of woodwinds to relate the ascent of Man from idiot ape to angel of the stars. Make Wagner eat his heart out and Rousseau turn over in his grave. Orbital starts off with a strong space-military tune, but then simply veers off into a confusing panoply of other noises. Perhaps the soundtrack of could inspire you.Overall, be bolder and more purposeful in your work: use the full range of pitches, rhythms, and volumes available to you; follow musical 'paths' of all sizes directly to their logical conclusions; and focus on maintaining harmony--that critical element of classical music--among and within your instruments. Your openings are strong, even tear-jerking, but they need to be followed through in every step of your music. Let each note lock in with the last in a great architecture of sound. -Duxwing

Texting while flying. Tsk Tsk Tsk. -Duxwing

Ha ha ha :/ -Duxwing

I have thought about this problem to such an extent that I maintain two separate save files, one called "Simulator" and one called "Missions": though deaths are only 'real' on the latter, I'm so attached to my Kerbals (especially the original trio) that I still end flight before the crew dies when playing in the Simulator, and I'd be so sad about losing even one that I haven't yet launched a craft in the Missions save. I also keep my orbital debris set to "Unlimited" so that space junk will be a real concern in the Missions save. But once I develop a rock-solid ship, I will launch it in the Missions save and bask in the glory. -Duxwing

Oh, well, when you put it that way, ISP makes much more sense. Perhaps you ought to edit the Wikipedia article on it; the dang thing left me baffled. Ah, OK. Thanks. It's OK. One could define a fuel unit to be the minimum necessary amount of fuel and oxidizer necessary to cycle the engine. And ooooooh, liquid oxygen; the fun that can be had with that. The rest of my craft--a Duna lander--will be in two pieces. The first is the support module, which contains RCS, batteries, the engines in question, and a huge load of fuel in detachable tanks. The second is the lander module, which is designed to take two Kerbals down from 50,000m AGL (hereinafter known as Low Dunar Orbit or LDO) to the Dunar surface and back again. Ideally, the lander engines would double as the main engines, but the mass of my original design ran up into the scores of tons, so an extra one or two isn't a huge matter for me. I'm just sick and tired of running out of gas. -Duxwing

Why? Wouldn't the burn with B last only half a second, evening out the difference in efficiencies? Interesting! Why is that? .005 units = 1 ton .005/.005 units = 1/.005 tons 1 unit = 200 tons A Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank carries 800 units of fuel, so it should weigh 800 units * 200 tons / unit or 160,000 tons + Dry Weight, but it doesn't weigh nearly as much. Are you sure that you have the right number of zeros before that five, or the right order of units and tons? So is the flow rate in units the volumetric flow? What is ÃÂ? It isn't p. I wonder, why Squad didn't set them at 50-50? The laws of chemistry are no object in a video game. So using 3 LV-Ns is preferable to using 1 Poodle? -Duxwing

When A has an ISP of 2s, or of 3s? I'm thinking of orbiter applications, not lifter applications--does g0 still matter in that case? Ah, OK. I had a hunch that something like mass-flow would be the answer to my question. So fuel+oxidizer use rate is equal to mass flow rate, then? How do I interpret it? eg: 3x LV-Ns produce 180 thrust at 800 s. Mass flow ~= 0.0229 tn/s (2.062 fuel/s, 2.520 oxidizer/s) 1x Poodle produces 220 thrust at 390 s. Mass flow ~= 0.0574 th/s (5.170 fuel/s, 6.319 oxidizer/s)

Dear Forum, If I have two engines, A and B, and A has a thrust of 1kN and an ISP of 2s, and B has a thrust of 2kN and 1s, then would it logically follow that achieving 2kN of thrust with either A or B would require the same amount of fuel? And is A a 'better' engine if it has an ISP of 3s? Ignore weight, placement, etc. I ask because when I consider the difference between using one engine and two, I consider the two engines as one. To that end, I take the thrust of a single engine and double it while halving its ISP. For example, my model predicts that three LV-N's produce 180kN of thrust at an ISP of ~233. A single Poodle produces 220kN of thrust at an ISP of 390s. Issues of placement aside, should a single Poodle therefore be substituted for tricoupled LV-N's? Its thrust and ISP both exceed that of the group, so doing so seems logical. However, plenty of builders on this forum use not three but dozens of LV-N's on their spacecraft, so I wonder if my logic holds. If my hypothesis is correct, then substituting a Skipper for the Poodle becomes profitable if the necessary thrust is even slightly greater than 220kN, and the same for a Mainsail because their ISP's differ only slightly relative to that of the LV-N. But this idea is counter-intuitive when applied to high-flying orbiters: aren't tiny, extremely efficient engines the order of the day in deep space? One could even argue that a single, short burn from a Mainsail would be preferable to many long burns from an LV-N. But I just don't know, so I'll leave my problem to you, the experts. -Duxwing

Though I don't use MechJeb, I am otherwise the Builder and the Modder. KSP just doesn't have big enough rocket motors and fuel tanks to lift ~70 ton orbiter and hurl them into orbit. To that end, I use the 1,200kN Bearcat Tri-Nozzle, a conventional liquid fuel engine that outclasses all its competitors in the heavy upper stage lifter category. With a vacuum ISP of 350s, it makes the LV-N obsolete, for though the Bearcat is only about half as efficient, it produces 20 times the thrust, thereby slashing burn times, and thereby ultimately fuel consumption. The Bearcat is also the size of the Poodle: an excellent choice for lander engines that double as propulsion for the support module that carries them. Overall, while the Mainsail, LV-N, and Poodle produce more thrust, are more efficient for carrying tiny payloads, and weigh less, respectively, none of them bring roaring thrust, penny-pinching ISP, and light weight together into one package like the Bearcat does as my flagship orbital motor. -Duxwing

I plan to go: Kerbin's Surface -> Solar Orbit -> Dunar Orbit -> Solar Orbit -> Kerbin SOI -> Kerbin's Surface. Only the injection into Solar Orbit would be accomplished by burning directly upward. The rest of my journey would proceed normally. -Duxwing

But wouldn't simply orienting your launch site,, pointing straight up, and smashing the gas--Mun slingshot notwithstanding--be simplest? -Duxwing

Dear Forum, While planning my mission to Duna, I had a thought: what is the most Delta-V efficient flight path for escaping from Kerbin's sphere of influence to a solar orbit? I usually ascend to a high apoapsis and LKO periapsis and then burn prograde to escape velocity along the tangent of my orbit relative to the sun, but I wonder if simply taking off while facing in the direction of my intended solar orbit and burning straight upward--perhaps slingshotting off Mun in my terminal phase--would be more efficient. My present goal is a manned landing on Duna and return with all crew aboard, so conserving Delta-V is of great concern to me. The ship with which I hope to achieve this mission is as follows: Service Module: 1 Mk1-2 Command Pod (Stock 3 man pod) 1 1600L Main Tank (stacked underneath the Command Pod) 4 1,200L Drop Tanks (mounted radially to the Support Module's Main Tank) 4 400L Drop Tanks (stacked on top of the 4 1,200L Drop Tanks) 1 Rockmax Brand Decoupler Dry Mass (all drop tanks attached): 12 Tons Dry Mass (all drop tanks jetisonned): 7 Tons Fuel Mass: 36 Tons Fuel Volume: 8,000L Lander: 1 Mk2 Lander Can 1 1,600 L Main Tank by Rockomax (fixed to Lander Can) 1 Bearcat Trinozzle Engine with a thrust of 1,200kN and an ISP of 350 by Tyberdine Aerospace (fixed to Lander's Main Tank) Dry Mass (all RCS tanks full): 8 Tons Fuel Mass: 12 Tons Fuel Volume: 1,600L Combined Dry Mass (all drop tanks attached): 20 Tons Combined Dry Mass (all drop tanks jettisonned): 15 Tons Combined Wet Mass: 70 Tons Lifter: 5 KW Rocketry Titan T-1's in asparagus staging 5 12,000L KW Rocketry SC-4 LFT's, each fixed to a Titan T-1 Miscellaneous: ~1 Ton of RCS, Docking Ports, Struts, Legs, Parachutes, ASAS, Maneuvering Thrusters etc. Although, as you may have already divined, the support module of my ship does not have an engine, the powerful Bearcat Trinozzle fits underneath my lander's legs and thereby renders such an engine redundant. My total tonnage may be off by one (I rounded up to account for the miscellania) but the scale of this project makes such an error trivial. As for my navigation: I do not use MechJeb, but I do use ASAS whenever possible and RCS whenever prudent. Any help is appreciated, guys, so pitch in! -Duxwing

Tell the KGSS! They love this stuff! -Duxwing

Hello, World I'm Duxwing, and about a week ago, I joined the KSP. When I saw this forum, I figured, "Hey, might as well!" the decision turned out to be almost as good as getting the game. The sights, the sounds, the smells-- well, only the first one of those-- I love it here. When I saw this forum section, I realized that I ought to say hello to you all before I go posting; good manners and such (thanks, mom). My space program is, like most others, a largely peaceful affair that focuses on getting to the Mun and back. Once I get bored of that, I'll likely buy the full version and try out all the new, neat stuff that I find. If that ever gets tiring, then while I wait for updates I'll (possibly, I'm not sure if I will, but it seems like fun) write more articles for the KGSS, think of faster, cheaper, and more creative rockets, attempt challenges, and give new players help. If that ever gets old, well, there's always Minecraft. During emergency EVA, always remember that the order of events is Squat, Pray, Leap, Adjust, Touchdown, or SPLAT. -Duxwing

Epic! This ought to become part of the game: so many planets to explore, put space stations around, and even colonize! Think of the gravitational interactions, the graceful dance of their orbits on the morning sky! Great work! -Duxwing

Great! Just great! I would go a little lighter on the lacrymose language, though. It's beautiful, but think of it like bold; it emphasizes a certain section by making it of a different style. Imagine if you wrote your entire story in bold: the effect would be at first good, then become annoying, and then finally be ignored entirely. Doing so also alters the rhythm of the story because graceful sentences tend to 'stop' the rhythm for a while (hence the emphasis) and cause the reader to ponder what you just said. However enthralling as that possibility may be, sometimes you just have to say, "See Spot run. Run, Spot!" so that you can continue presenting the story. -Duxwing