dashcunning

I\'m up to 6685 m/s. Design is essentially the same as chaz\'s but with 2x3 outer tanks instead of 2x2 and 2x1. I don\'t think the savings you get from dropping 2 tanks earlier makes up for the weight from the 2 extra decouplers and fuel lines. Edit: Actually, after some more testing, there is a small but real improvement by dropping the 2 tanks early on. My higher end speed was achieved by flying closer to the horizon.

I presume it\'s an indicator for when to start the TMI burn. But like you, I can\'t figure out what it\'s referring to. I want to say the angle between line segments Mun-Kerbin and Spacecraft-Kerbin, but that\'s not right. Maybe that would be 111.8° (90+21.8)

The idea behind the 40° thing was to get your trajectory leaving the Mun to be as close to opposite the Mun\'s motion as possible. Which should give you very little velocity relative to Kerbin. Which should result in a highly elliptical orbit that requires very little to get into the atmosphere. And I figured eastwards was better since the Mun is rotating eastwards, giving you some help. But as Hypocee said, it\'s pretty much meaningless. I arrived at 40° below the horizon and 800 m/s @ 5km through trial and error. There\'s no more math or theory behind it than that.

I forgot to respond to this. It\'s hard to say. The one time I landed successfully on the Mun, I returned successfully. But I screwed up leaving the Mun. Don\'t know how much more fuel I would have had if I did it properly. As it was, I had essentially zero left after getting into a 51km aerobraking orbit. I was trying to save that for a landing retro burn, but aerobraking at that altitude takes forever (hence the 39 hour mission time in the final screenshot). I got impatient and said f it and used the last of my fuel next time I was at Ap. Which only lowered Pe from 51km to 28km, so hardly anything. Room for improvement would be: Steps 2 and 4. The current controls and instrumentation lack the precision to make significant gains there though IMO. Step 6. The lower you can get this, the better you are. A better pilot than myself could probably come in at something ridiculous like 500m and follow the retrograde vector all the way down at 100% burn. Step 9. Lower orbit is better. Steps 10 and 11. The ideal burn would put you into an orbit with the Pe just barely in the atmosphere. At which point you run a script that keeps sending the increase time compression key press while you go do something else.

This rocket is too small to zoom into with it\'s default placement in the VAB. Grab it by the command pod and move it left or right a bunch. Rotate your view around 90° and the rocket is now closer to (or further from) the camera. Now when you zoom (hold middle mouse and mouse up or down), you can zoom into the parts allowing you to see what is on the other side. For the fuel line, I zoomed through the ASAS from below so I could see the bottom of the tank and placed one end. I then zoomed out and placed the other end on the engine. Fuel lines connect to whatever they hit, so even though I clicked on the engine, it connected to the ASAS. The engine draws fuel from the ASAS (don\'t ask me why that works), which draws fuel through the line from the tanks. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50454654/Minimal%20Mk11.craft 0) Engage ASAS and throttle up to 100% 1) Stage to launch 2) @15km yaw over to 27° above the horizon on a heading of 90° and re-engage ASAS 3) When the outer tanks/boosters empty, stage to jettison them 4) Cut engine when Ap is 10,800km 5) SoI change occurs shortly after 10,000km. You should be in a hyperbolic (parabolic?) trajectory passing behind the Mun 6) Do a retro burn until Pe is 2-3km 7) At Pe, burn on a heading of 270° to remove horizontal velocity 8) Re-orientate vertically and land. Good Luck 9) Get into a 5km eastwards orbit 9a) Liftoff and head towards the horizon on a heading of 90° and burn until Ap is 5km then cut engine 9b) At Ap, burn again until Pe is 5km 9c) This doesn\'t take much and it\'s easy to overshoot and waste fuel like I did. Be careful 9d) A lower orbit would be more efficient but it\'s more fidgety and doesn\'t allow for 5x time compression. You would also need different values for 10) and 11) 10) When you pass in front of the Mun (the rocket is on the Mun\'s forwards orbital line), aim towards 40° below the horizon on a heading of 90° and engage ASAS 11) When your aim-point becomes the horizon, burn until speed is 800 m/s 12) SoI change occurs shortly after 2,000km. You should be in an elliptical orbit with Pe in or very close to the atmosphere 13) Retro burn so Pe is ~30km 14) Hopefully you are heading for land. Water landings are not survivable w/o a retro burn while land landings destroy the rocket but not the pod 15) Stage to pop chute 16) Immediately before landing, retro burn to slow to a safe landing. If you don\'t have the fuel, cross your fingers! Notes: This probably isn\'t 100% efficient. It\'s close though, easy to replicate, and it worked for me. This was with 13.1. I don\'t see why it wouldn\'t work for 13.2 though.

The fuel line is hidden inside the rocket (you can zoom into parts), going from the bottom of the tank to the top of the ASAS. When possible, I like to hide fuel lines and struts inside for neatness. The only reason I put the ASAS at the bottom like that was to lower the center of gravity. Normally I place it just under the command pod, but I was having horrible luck landing on slopes (the fuel budget is so tight you don\'t have enough to hover around looking for a nice flat spot). The engine kept snapping off and I got fed up and lowered the CoG. Don\'t know if it really helps all that much, but I landed successfully first time after that. You would save 0.05 mass with the ASAS in the normal spot and not needing a fuel line, but whatever. The ASAS is able to use the command pod forces. SAS would work, but I don\'t care for the default tuning on it. It\'s not very good and you get over-correction leading to oscillations. And if anyone would like to try it, I can post an in-depth flight plan.

How do you feel about crumple zones? 3 LFEs, 8 tanks. I screwed up leaving the Mun and used more fuel then necessary. If done properly, I\'m sure you could save some fuel for a short retro burn immediately before landing (the chute gets you to ~25m/s) and have everything survive. Edit: A bare bones 1 LFE, 6 tanks, 2 radial decouplers, 2 fuel lines, 1 chute, command pod may be possible. But hell if I\'m gonna annoy myself trying to fly it without ASAS.

I don\'t know if it\'s the most efficient return possible, but the following method seems to work well and is based a specific, very repeatable timing. Get into a 5-6 km eastwards orbit around the Mun and burn at 40° past the the Mun\'s forward orbital line. An easy way to set this up is to go to the orbital view and when you are crossing that line aim 40° below the horizon on the navball and set ASAS. Wait for that aimpoint to become the horizon and then start your burn. Get up to 830 m/s and then throttle down. Your trajectory will be about as good as you can get and by burning at a low altitude (and higher speed), you get the most out of the oberth effect. I think, I\'m only an amateur rocket scientist Your orbit around Kerbin will have a Pe in the atmosphere (depending on the various specifics during the burn), easy to fine tune for aerobraking. Below ~30,000 for an immediate descent with no further orbiting. Above ~40,000 to remain in an orbit, from which you can make further adjustments. Say for landing back at KSC!

That\'s your speed with a Kerbol assist. Most people are talking about straight up off Kerbin, immediately after engine cut off speeds. I\'ve gotten up to 14893 and that\'s about it for me. The first stage and assembly building are a slide show at this point. Theoretically I could keep going, but it\'s just too painful. What\'s needed is a 6x (or even 3x) length fuel tank to cut down on the number of parts. With the increased game performance, you could add another stage and probably get 17000+.

12254 m/s Another ring of tank boosters would get it 14000+, but it becomes more and more tedious building the thing. 20000+ is probably doable as well, if you are the sort of person to enjoy extremely mind-numbing activities.

On the Mun Back at KSC And the entire rocket on the pad

You can edit ejectionForce in the cfg to give it less rotational oomph. Changing it from 15 to 10 seems good.

Can I make a request for triple and quad length fuel tanks? 3x and 4x the fuel and weight, maybe a nominal dry weight savings. The double is nice for reducing the number of parts, triple and quad would be even better. Can I also suggest renaming of the folders? The game seems to sort the parts alphabetically by folder name. Renaming the folders could have some organizational benefits. Instead of large/medium/small liquid engine, how about liquid engine XXXX. Where XXXX is the thrust of the engine. That way all the liquid engines are together in-game and sorted by increasing thrust. The same could be done for solid booster XXXX. Fuel tank XXXX, XXXX could be capacity or length (1x, 2x, etc.). Leading zeros would probably be a good idea, liquid engine 0065 for example. Apologies if this has already been mentioned, I haven't read all 16 pages. Edit: Perhaps better future proofing would be 'part type(liquid engine) part size(1 meter) part specifics(0065 thrust)'. So your small liquid engine could be 'LE 1m 0065t' or 'LiquidEngine 1m 0065t' to be more legible.