Nobody_1707

Real aerodynamics already gives SRBs a higher effective thrust to weight ratio on payloads where it matters because the drag stops being stupidly high. (Unless your rocket isn't aerodynamic.) Just install FAR and wait for them to implement real aerodynamics in stock KSP.

The reason that I don't jetpack over to the lander is that I need the fuel to EVA to the return vehicle.

Okay, due to circumstances that I was not smart enough to take a lot of screenshots of, I stranded Sidford Kerman on Mün by not killing enough horizontal velocity and destroying the FAR Retrokerbal Lander. So I built a probe piloted rocket to put an escape vehicle into Münar orbit and then drop a FASA Gemini lander down so Sidford could ride it back up, EVA into the escape vehicle, and go home. I successfully placed the Gemini lander on Mün 25 clicks away from Sidford. So now I'm trying to drop a probe piloted rover for Sidford to ride to the Gemini lander because, after an hour of walking, I realized that I wasn't going to get to it on foot. None of my designs have worked, and the best one ran out of fuel and crashed and burned on the surface of Mün. Please help me. I'm using FAR so if the rover can fit in a one to three meter payload fairing, that would be lovely. I can build decent rockets, but landers give me trouble and rovers are killing me.

Install FAR. Enjoy useful SRBs. ??? Profit!

Then I think it's safe to say that your flowchart is sufficiently overcomplicated.

lol Even the old asymmetrical tri-coupler? Cool. Post that thing. I can make a retro 13.3 rocket, for kicks. I wonder if the damn thing could even fly with FAR installed.

Most of my stock spaceplanes did that anyway...

Slight problem with the overcomplicated flow chart, the flow doesn't start anywhere. There doesn't have to be an exit flow, but if there isn't an entrance flow then nothing on the flowchart will ever happen.

Don't plan missions. Set goals then plan operations to achieve that goal. Planning "missions" is how NASA ended up with the Space Shuttle. For example: Goal: Land two Kerbals on the Mün and return safely. Operation 1: Send landing vehicle into KEO. Operation plan: … Operation 2: Send crew into KEO. Operation plan: … Operation 3: Dock Crew Service Module (CSM) with landing vehicle. Operation plan: … Operation 4: Create a Münar encounter. Operation plan: … Operation 5: Move into a Münar parking orbit. Opertation plan: … Operation 6: Transfer crew to landing vehicle and undock. Operation plan: … Operation 7: Land on Mün. Operation plan: … Operation 8: Dick around on Mün. Operation plan: … Operation 9: Launch lander into Münar orbit. Operation plan: … Operation 10: Rendevoux with the CSM Operation plan: … Operation 11: Transfer into the CSM and fly back to Kerbin. Operation plan: … Operation 12: Disconnect the capsule and reenter Kerbin atmosphere. Operation plan: … Operation 13: Land safely. Operation plan: …

Yesterday, my Münar rescue probe ran out electricity during a Münar encounter then slingshotted around into a second Münar encounter where it crashed a good click away from Sidson, whom I was supposed to be rescuing. I didn't realize that you could us a Münar slingshot to create a Münar landing trajectory. It would have been a cool way to land if I had control over the ship.

I loved it. I've never seen Nerd3 before, but I totally subscribed to Dad3. It was almost as fun as listening to Charles and Scott Manley argue over whether their rocket was aerodynamic.

challenge accepted!!! It's pretty fun honestly. Instead of throttling down because the drag is slowing my rocket too much, I have to throttle down because I overbuilt the rocket and it'll overheat and explode from the air compression if I keep it throttled up to max. Clearly an orange tank and a mainsail is too much rocket for a probe guided Münar rescue lander with a Mark-1 capsule. I haven't tried landing yet, because I forgot to power my probe. Like an idiot.

The escape tower already burns up and sideways. Also, as I stack more stuff on top of it the SRB seems to get closer, but never quite reaches, its stock performance so it's not too unbalancing considering that a payload light enough to go very fast on an SRB is basically unflyable when placed on an SRB. I think I've built a light launch vehicle that can get into KEO, but I'm still not used to real gravity turns so I'm not quite sure. The escape tower does work on this rocket since it's heavier. I have noticed that on both this rocket and its immediate predecessor that I unexpectedly generated no reentry effects while hitting heavy atmosphere at ~1600m/s. Is this due to my angle of approach? Light Launch Test Vehicle 2: http://www./?cwp90adw990g3wt The bottom stage is the SRB fin stage from my "Little Joe." If anyone could see if they can get this into orbit with FAR and give me some flight tips then I would greatly appreciate it. I would also be interested to know if the lack of reentry effects is supposed to happen. If it is then I'm going to be reinstalling Deadly Reentry.

Not yet, but I just learned something horrifying. Remember when I said that the launch escape tower worked fine? Well, only if you haven't ignited the SRB yet. If you have then the capsule will be glued to the SRB by the acceleration despite the best efforts of the escape tower.

Kerbal really does need a stock two-seater capsule, and since Nova Punch has already provided a Gemini capsule I guess it should probably be a Soyuz-style capsule for completeness.

Yeah, I did make a Little Joe. Now I have to strap the Mercury parachute and escape tower to it. And I can probably use the escape tower to deorbit too. Slight problem, this rocket moves too quickly to do a gravity turn. The air resistance keeps it pointed relatively straight up until it runs out of fuel. The escape tower system works quite well though.

^ This. Sometimes I use theme names, sometimes I name based on stages and number of engines, and sometimes I just name them based on their operational use and which iteration they are. For example: Kronos, HLV-113, and Lander-1. Kronos is a Titan like rocket*, but with a pair of asparagus staged boosters instead of SRBs, HLV stands for Heavy Lift Vehicle and the numbers mean that it has three stages with one engine on the upper stage, one engine on the second stage, and three engines on the first stage, and Lander-1 is my first iteration lander. *I thought it was appropriate because Kronos was the leader of the Titans.

You can single stage to orbit with a vertical rocket with only a small SRB some fins and a Mk-1 Crew capsule, but you'll explode during ascent if you have Deadly Reentry turned on. Considering that a single SRB would never make it past the thickest part of the atmosphere with that payload before, I'd say that it improves rockets a lot.

Yeah, but then how would I deorbit? Maybe I can slap some sepratrons on it...

Having realistic aerodynamics does this, by definition.

Really? RTGs are much heavier than solar panels and you need a boatload of them to power even a single ion engine. While I like the idea of never running out of power actually using RTGs is always a huge pain in the ass. Especially since they don't have an inline version...

No, he meant x87 which is the floating point co-proccessor for the x86. They implemented more efficient vector math instructions like MMX and SSE, but the x87 instructions and floating point stack are still there for backwards compatibility. While you can't use MMX and SSE for all kinds of calculations they are good at the same kind of things as the GPU, just a bit less efficiently. While restricting the CPU code to x87 would increase the disparity between CPU and GPGPU the GPU is still much faster at easily parallelizable calculations because it can run more of them at the same time. Moving from their custom physics engine to a GPU based engine isn't a simple thing to do though, and if they have to shuffle a lot more data out to the graphics card per frame then they currently do then they might only break even on the switch to the GPU. Memory is slow.

So, essentially, the thing killing the performance of stock SRBs was the ridiculous drag implementation?

Just checked. Yes, it is repeatable. I love aerodynamics so much. And I landed a mere 1111m away from the first capsule.

Not really, Windows always gives more processor time to the Window in focus.