lazarus2405

Yes, that's correct. The fraction of your spacecraft's mass that's made up of intakes will determine how high you can fly before you flame out.

I'm glad to see this plugin back out there. In the old thread, there was talk of spawning the new spacebuilt ship already docked to the spacedock. That way, large space station structures could be assembled on orbit from parts sent up. Have you considered whether that's feasible? Perhaps the spacebuilt identifier and the spacedock identifier could be reworked into special docking ports.

I'm really pleased with the work you've done. I really appreciate the best-of-both-worlds approach to docking you're using. My only complaint is that the part count is enormous. All the ladders and mobility enhancers really do add up. My computer's not new, but it's no slouch (C2Quad 9400 OC'd to 3.6ghz, 8gb ram, Radeon 4850). Rendezvous was a slideshow for me. I'm willing to use the jetpack if it means I can drop that part count, so I stripped the depot of its mobility enhancers. So I'm starting to dock engines, tanks, and landers to it for use as the core node of an interplanetary mission.

I'm in agreement that a jet ascent stage is going to be your best bet on Eve. I've got a stock 3-kerbal lander prototype (because multi-year voyages get lonely) that climbs on basic jet engines and then lights the aerospikes. My reasoning is that the weight tradeoff of hauling the jet engines to Eve as opposed more rocket fuel should be much more favorable in the thick atmosphere. It's far more than enough to get off of Kerbin, and it just might do the trick on Eve if my thrust to weight is high enough for Eve's gravity. I'm still fine-tuning it (and its massive launcher) and haven't been able to test it on Eve yet. The real problem is that I can't keep the part count low enough. I'm using sixteen basic jets, each with its own nacelle, radial decoupler, and struts to keep it all stable. Simulating the lander's many parts on top of an enormous booster during launch is almost too much for my computer to handle, when the same computer manages to launch larger rockets with much less complex payloads. I might just post the craft file and see if anyone has suggestions to keep the part count down.

Here's one that's been bugging me. You have to burn at some point to put your orbit on the same inclination as your target. I had been doing this by burning normal at what appeared to be a node midway through my cruise, trying to eyeball it edge-on in map view. In my Jool attempts I more or less missed and ended up in extremely elliptical polar orbits after using a whole lot of delta-v to get captured. Thinking about it now, it seems like bad aiming leading to a silly waste of delta-V. So, when is the least expensive place to burn? How do I line it up to make it accurate? Are there any navigational tricks I can use get in a low-inclination trajectory to allow aerobraking and capture?

Minimize the mass you have to deliver to Mün. The heavier your lander (and return stage) is, your launcher has to be exponentially bigger. Remember, to lift a larger payload you need more fuel, but then you have to lift that extra fuel, which itself requires more fuel... Fun facts: In the real Apollo program, Grumman engineers went all-out to save weight on the lunar module. There were only two tiny windows because glass is heavy. Many non-structural areas were only a couple layers of mylar thick, which they then acid-cleaned to shave off grams of microscopic dirt. Some technicians signed and attached a paper note of good luck to Neil and Buzz to the arm of the external video camera on the Apollo 11 LM - and they even weighed the tape and paper!

I'm not familiar with Bace, and a forum search didn't dig up the right thread. Was it subsumed into another addon pack? Would you be so kind with a link? Thanks.

Sir, that would depend on how big your rocket is. With stock 2m parts, large boosters and multiple stages, you certainly need struts. 300t on the pad without struts is not a fun time. Anyway, thanks for the rundown. In your screenshots, your struts are all so very straight. How do you keep everything so nice and perpendicular?

Both! I think both mods are too young and in flux to have a strong preference. Depending on how each perform through save states, I might use both on the same station, ORDA for station construction and Erkle's for short-term docking like crew transfers. For small things, I like how Erkle's is more tolerant of orientation.