Horn Brain

Guys, He's just asking about whether G, the gravitational constant, being higher in this universe could explain the same thing you're explaining by saying the planets are more dense. The density thing is another explanation, not the one he's asking about. I think a higher G would make sense, to answer the OP. Certainly more sense than the planets being made of some fundamentally different kind of matter than the kerbals and their ships. If Kerbin has Earth's density, then G is 10.6 times higher (from solving 1g = G * 4/3 * pi * Kerbin Radius) than it is in real life. According to this slideshow: http://www.thphys.may.ie/staff/mshadmehri/AstroNotes/MINIMUM.pdf The minimum mass for a star to ignite fusion should go as G^(-1.5). The real world minimum star mass is about 0.08 solar masses. If we scale with our new G and compare with the mass of Kerbol (for which we must divide the wiki value by 10.6 to account for the different G), then Kerbol has about 3% the minimum solar mass in the kerbal universe. It should therefore be a brown dwarf still, maybe just a plain old gas giant. I think that means that (if we are going to persist in trying to figure out the physics of a game designed by devs that don't care about physical consistency) for Kerbol to be a star, G cannot be the only physical constant that we adjust. We could also adjust the Boltzmann constant, or perhaps the charge of a proton.

There are lots of ways to die that LES can't save the crew from. This is a lunar orbital flight, after all. Something like Apollo 13 is the biggest danger, I would think, since a malfunction in the service module's engine after lunar orbital insertion leaves the crew stranded.

That is the most kerbal solution to the problem of targeted deorbiting that I can imagine.

Manipulable asteroids, like we heard about today with the NASA collaboration. Also, RESOURCES.

This is so freaking cool. Please make manipulable asteroids stock, Squad!

Go for a steep-ish ascent. It's not optimal, but you will probably need the extra time at apoapsis to complete your orbital insertion.

Don't use SRBs. They are very heavy for their provided dV and will make getting the vehicle to Duna much harder. I think Nuke engines can be efficient for Duna ascent. They will always have very high Isp, but they are heavy and have low TWR. If your vehicle is just for going from Duna's surface to orbit, I wouldn't think they'd be necessary. The LV 909 or Aerospike are better options since they have very high efficiency and better TWR. If your vehicle is very small, the 48-7S is a great choice since it weighs almost nothing for the thrust it makes, but it does have worse Isp, so you have to play around in the VAB.

T= 2 * pi * sqrt( a^3 / mu ) T is period, a is semi-major axis, mu is gravitational parameter for the body you are orbiting (which you can get from the KSP wiki). Don't forget to include the radius of the planet (also on KSP wiki) when calculating the semi-major axis: a= h + R R is the radius of the planet and h is altitude above the surface (what the altimeter says at the top of the screen). So if you know the period that you want, solve the first equation for a: a^3 = mu * (T/(2*pi))^2 Now you can calculate a. To get the altitude, subtract the radius of the planet: h= a-R And you're done.

When you set up your encounter, put your periapsis over the north or south pole of the Mun (as close as you can get). Don't worry about lining up with the target orbit yet, just make sure your periapsis is close to the pole. When you do your capture burn, only burn until you're just barely captured; your apoapsis should be at the edge of the Mun's SoI above the other pole, and your AN or DN should be up there too. You will be moving only a few m/s up there, so it will be easy to adjust your inclination to match the target. Then do a maneuver at periapsis to lower your apoapsis and proceed to rendezvous as normal.

There is no way to tell if a kerbal meter is the same as a human meter that I know of. If the units in the game with real names (meters, seconds, tons) are equivalent to their real life counterparts, then the value of G (gravitational constant) is way too high in KSP, or else all the planets are made of ridiculously dense material. It may be possible to work out the true scale if you assume all the constants (G, mostly) are the same, but that would be luck. My guess is there would be too many or too few constraints to figure it out without arbitrarily making up some of the scales or ignoring some information.

Your answer is wrong. It's not a significant effect. Flapping your arms would be about as effective, because technically you could generate a bit of lift and your arms moving down would mean your torso would be moving up at some tiny speed which would (as you pointed out) lessen the impact. You could breath out through your nose really fast and fart to create upward thrust too! The real measure is that it would be a much better use of your time to try and brace yourself in whatever position is most conducive to preserving your brain and internal organs than it would be to jump, flap your arms, rocket sneeze, or fart. I'm sorry I trolled.

For you, buddy.

ZetaX is being a sore loser. Except in the very special circumstance where you're falling just a few percent faster than you could survive, this strategy will be about as effective as prayer. Not to mention it requires a roofless elevator and the ability to jump so fast that you dislocate and shatter all of your joints and bones in your legs, and probably break your back and neck.

You have to perform the velocity change over a maximum of the length of your legs. You don't get to take all day. This would be equivalent to landing on your legs at the speed of your jump, i.e. hitting the ground without the elevator.

All three stages of my fully-reusable Falcon 9 and Dragon Rider replica. I initially tried to land the entire thing and then break each part off and set it down in order, but the thing was too hard to control so I had to fly the first stage by itself, then the second and third stages together. Then I separated the third stage and landed it as well. If anyone's interested, here's a link to the spacecraft exchange which has links to two versions of it.

If the elevator were travelling fast enough to kill you when it hit the ground, then you would probably kill yourself if you jumped fast enough to survive. Think about it. Same velocity change. Also, the roof of the elevator would kill you.

Dragon has a service module with orbital maneuvering capability, but my spacecraft is more like the Dream Chaser spacecraft from Sierra Nevada (but it looks totally different and wouldn't be launched on a Falcon 9 or have a jet engine). It's mostly just designed especially for KSP: lots of fuel for orbital maneuvers, well-balanced, and great range after reentry since targeted reentry is very difficult in this game. Here is a version I did that's more like Dragon Rider. Google Drive Enjoy!

Yes, I tried to land on just the center engine but it has a TWR of about 0.99, so no go. The TWR of a real SpaceX Merlin 1D is like 150, though, so it's not really fair to expect the same from KSP's glorified fire extinguishers.

This is the best thing I've built so far, I think. The main components of every stage fly back to KSC for reuse and it carries 3 kerbals to LKO with no trouble. It even uses the Mk-3 cockpit and a jet fuel adapter without looking completely hideous. Craft file: Google Drive Photo album and flight instruction guide. The hardest part is flying the first stage. Just be careful and start the gravity turn early so that you don't have to steer too far away from the prograde marker. It turns easiest in yaw, so if it gets a bit difficult to control, just roll it a bit. NOTE: Once you reach orbit, enable roll control on either the small control surfaces or the canards. For some reason the game makes them work in reverse during the first stage flight. Unfortunately you can't fly the first stage back AND get the rest to orbit, but it is capable. Maybe you could do this when they add multiplayer. Or you can write a kOS script and change the unload distance. I would love it if someone made a video of that!

Supposedly now you can just use a Kerbal on EVA to collect the data.

Whatever. It follows all the rules laid out except for throttling down to time warp (which if it won't allow us to throttle down to time warp then no one is going to the Mun let alone Duna).

Don't put all your intakes at the front of the vehicle. At high speeds this can move your center of pressure in front of the center of mass and cause you to become unstable. Do landing tests before you do orbital flights. There's nothing more frustrating than getting your SSTO to orbit and then having it flutter to the ground like a lead leaf on reentry. Make sure it can fly nearly empty by tweaking most of the fuel out of the tanks. This will save you much agony. Make sure fuel drains symmetrically so that the CoM stays in the same place. For smaller craft, just use one big tank and make sure the CoM is at the center of it. For larger craft, I have found that it's pretty easy to set up the fuel flow so that the engines on one side drain from the front and the engines from the other side drain from the rear, and then I make sure to use the same tanks on the front and rear. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, but it should be as near as you can tell.

I like to overbuild my launch vehicles so that I can get the bulk of my IP burn done quickly with the Skipper (or sometimes one of the 30 or 45). Other than that, it's always the LV-N for space travel except for small probes, where the low mass of the 48-7S is king.

Not to mention that the second step (colliding hydrogen to make antimatter and annihilating it) is the equivalent of hooking up a pump to a water wheel to pump water from the bottom of the wheel to the top... Just point the high speed hydrogen out the back. Why bother turning something with directional momentum into randomly-sprayed gamma rays that you now have to somehow absorb and convert to thrust again? This is basically a bussard ramjet. Here, go read: Wiki

Ok, what if you build a vehicle with six engines, two pointed in opposite directions along each axis. Put all the fuel in one big tank in the center (so CoM doesn't shift). Set up action groups 1-6 to toggle one engine each. That would give you full directional control without touching the throttle (leave it on full). You could use that to get to Duna pretty easily. If you built a cage of trusses around it to protect it, you could land safely if you added a parachute to make sure it orients flat to the surface. Landing on the Mun might be harder. You might have to choose a landing site that would leave one side of your cubic vehicle oriented normal to the surface. I think one thing that the challenge rules could be changed to allow would be to allow us to throttle down so we can warp. I will not attempt this until I know I can warp all the way to Duna. The rule should be: no active throttle control, but throttling down to warp (and then back up again to the same level afterwards) is allowed.