RoboRay

A pulse-fission Orion drive is suited for take-offs from a planet... if you aren't overly worried about what happens to the launch facility. See: Footfall, by Larry Niven. I believe the biggest concern is the feed mechanism. If it fails to load the second bomb, it's too late to do anything about it... you're already a mile off the ground. The pusher plate should be large, though... I think the 10m size is fine but, if you want to go smaller, there are already mods with 3m (3.75m in-game) and 4m (5m in-game) parts.

The Discovery had a large flywheel just behind the centrifuge, rotating in the opposite direction, so only one actual centrifuge was required. I had blueprints of the ship when I was a kid, but have no idea where they came from or what became of them.

Hint: TWR increases during engine burns as fuel is consumed. A stage with 2:1 TWR when ignited may reach dangerous gee loads just before burn-out. This setting mitigates that problem.

And now, for something completely different... A rover. Wait? A rover? Why is there a rover in the airship mod thread? Well... there's part of an airship. It seems to be missing some stuff, though. Let's just back this rover on in there... Now we're talking! The air-transport module also serves as living quarters and a base of operations for the rover exploration crew.

The air-transport module also serves as living quarters and a base of operations for the rover exploration crew.

Why would there be separate chemical and nuclear propellants? Hydrogen offers the best performance in both cases. And if methane or another fluid is chosen instead, due to the difficulties in storing hydrogen, it still makes more sense to use the same propellant for both. Originally, there was no oxidizer, just fuel. Oxidizer was added as a rocket requirement when working intakes were added for jet engines.

Holy misleading thread title, Batman!

Keeping it symmetrical is a huge challenge, even if you use an "H" booster configuration instead of a spiral one. Attitude changes and steering of the craft will contribute to momentary changes in fuel distribution, which could result in a feedback loop that increases the deviation. Even more of a problem is that any variation in fuel consumption by different engines would result in different fuel flow quantities in different directions, allowing conservation of angular momentum to do it's thing anyway. I assure you that even the fuel-flow considerations of asparagus-stalk boosters are not "really easy to fix" in real-life with simple ideas. I really wish the forum-monster hadn't ate the last big thread on this, because it addressed all these issues and with the math to back it up. As to me, I'm about to get off work so I'm done with forums for the day.

There are other momentum effects that impact it. And the other factors I mentioned. If it was "really easy to fix" I'm pretty sure NASA would be doing it.

I bet you're trying out all those new and bigger parts, and lots of them. "Build smaller" is the #1 key to success in rocketry. Diminishing returns on added mass is a huge factor in rocketry, with every increase (even if you're just adding fuel and engines) making your craft less and less efficient. Doubling your mass makes the craft about four times harder to get into orbit, while every decrease in mass pays off big in making the design process easier. "Moaaar boosters!" is a joke. The first thing to do when improving a design's performance is to start stripping away every part you don't actually need. Only when there's nothing else you can remove do you start adding parts. And start removing parts from the top down. If you remove a ton from your payload, you can probably save a few tons on your upper stage, and many tons on your lower stages. The most efficient and usually the most capable spacecraft design for a mission is the absolute smallest craft that can do the mission.

Yes, those are backwards. You want the side with the little hatch and viewing window in the middle showing:

It's not used in real-life because conservation of angular momentum would result in an ever-increasing, unstoppable roll of the craft as the fuel spiraled inward to feed the core stage. And moving that much fuel from tank to tank to tank while feeding engines consuming vast quantities of it is pretty much an impossible engineering challenge. Not to mention that disconnecting fuel lines while engines are burning is a rather dangerous activity. The drag induced by an asparagus setup isn't any greater in real-life than any other lateral booster arrangement, and those are used extensively.

I'd rather have the RHC and THC and wire them up to a USB controller for KSP.

Note there's a Quantum Parts Kit or something mod that gives the Quantum parts new models and textures, so they don't look identical to other stock parts. It makes them easier to spot, for sure.

The key measure of a spacecraft's capabilities is how much it can change it's velocity. Every maneuver you make is altering your orbit by a specific velocity. If you're in low orbit around Kerbin and want to flyby the Mun, you need to change your velocity by about 860m/sec. To turn your flyby into an orbit around the Mun, you have to spend another 210m/sec. To land from orbit, it's 640m/sec. Delta-v is literally "change in velocity" expressed mathematically, and is used to determine, more or less, just where you craft can go and where it can't. Using the example above, if your ship has only a total capability of 1200m/sec remaining when in Kerbin orbit, it can orbit the Mun but it can't land on it.

My first interplanetary mission was a nuclear-powered mapping probe for Duna: My first manned interplanetary ship, the Minerva II: Well, technically, it's the second. The identical Minerva I had it's starboard fuel lines bitten off by the Kraken on it's way to Duna. Here, Bill goes aft on a inspection of the fuel lines and engine nacelles after receiving a warning of the incident.

Mine is rocket-only, which makes it somewhat larger for the increased fuel requirements, using the NovaPunch conical tanks and Little Mother engine array: Crew capacity is seven, but this flight only carried three. I was going for DC-X Delta Clipper-style operations, so no parachutes are installed.

You were politely corrected. Bitching at the people who are helping you only hurts you in the long-run. Good luck, from now on.

Well, no, that's not exactly what they did. They brought their Pe down to 10 miles (if I remember correctly), then retro-burned from there to cancel out their horizontal velocity and descend simultaneously. That's far more efficient than simply killing your horizontal orbital velocity and dropping straight down, but still gives up some efficiency for safety.

If you copy that design, I suggest moving the landing legs up much higher. The craft will be more stable and much less likely to tip over with the center of mass closer to the ground. I'd leave the engine nozzles and base of the lower compartment just a bit above the deployed footpads, so you can just grab onto the built-in ladder and climb up to the hatches.

It's Hohmann, by the way. Somebody did the math a couple of months ago, and there's no destination from Kerbin that is more efficient to use a bi-elliptic transfer to reach. The forum-monster ate that thread, unfortunately, and I don't remember the specifics of the work.

Hah, well, you are far from the first. "Just keep exploding until you get it right" is really standard learning procedures in KSP. My first couple of Mun landings, I came down way too fast. After that, I came down too slow and wasted a lot of fuel. Eventually, I figured out a manageable descent rate. Here's a suggestion: Try going to Minmus first. The lower gravity makes landings much easier.

Land more gently?

None of the current mods or calculators for KSP transfer injections account for orbital eccentricity or inclination, AFAIK. What I usually do is use Protractor to identify roughly where my maneuver node should be (I start with it right on the ejection angle), and adjust the maneuver to get the encounter.

Some things are just easier to do yourself than to hand off the MJ. If you have wings, it's not like you need precise targeting... you should be able to glide some distance if you don't have an perfectly on-target reentry. And if you've got a jet engine and some fuel, you can reenter pretty much anywhere on or near the landmass KSC occupies and just fly to the runway.