mcirish3

I am having an odd problem with this tool. It will not give back a good pork chop plot or the correct time to leave if I use any dated other than year 1 day 1 00:00.00 as my start time. I want it to calculate a moho to eve transfer but it won't do it, any help possible with this?

What the heck are you saying that your relative velocity to kerbin is around 20,000 m/s,( that is what retrograde to Kerbol would imply) if so you didn't over shoot, you over powered.

In KSP as in real life getting two objects close together is rather a challenge. In essence you need both ships on exactly or nearly exactly the same orbit. But that needs to happen only when the two ships are close together. the greater the radial difference between the two orbis the more quickly and more often they will pass each other in their respective orbits. The inner orbital craft will always be the one doing the passing. Incidentally that is why we see Jupiter so often in the sky. There is a large radial difference between Jupiter and Earth. So the greater you can make the radial difference the less time you will have to wait for a close approach. However there is a trade off with this, as with all physics nothing is for free. It takes more energy( think Fuel) to create this difference and then take it away again for rendezvous if the difference is large. Also as the difference between the two orbits gets larger timing the hohmann transfer gets harder to "eye Ball" in other words the timing needs to be more precises to get a decent transfer. Just so I am not throwing out a word you don't understand a Hohmann transfer is just a short way of saying the least possible energy (think fuel) needed to transfer from one orbit to another. THe basic rule of thumb is if going from a low orbit to a higher one you need be behind the target craft you wish to rendezvous with when you start the burn for the transfer. The greater the orbital difference the farther behind you need to be. The reverse is true when going from a high orbit to a lower one. Hope this helps solves your problem feel free to ask if you have more questions.

Well not entirely true, there is a sophisticated way to do it, via a mapping program and some statistical software but man most of us don't have that kind of time or the PC to do it with. and then there is one anomaly I know if that I don't think even this method would work for (the face on tylo, which was discovered by accident and from a distance looks like part of the terrain) if fact not even sure it is still there after the terrain changes.

Ya, I have been to the south pole monolith before the terrain changes and it was in a very deep hole, but you could actually walk up to it at that time. hopefully they move it back so peeps can find it.

Very true Though actually having the same orbit is.... well..... difficult. In physics the saying is "actually measuring 0 is the most difficult thing we do".

The two answers ahead of mine basically explained how to do this. But perhaps a little further explanation is in order. In KSP as in real life getting two objects close together is rather a challenge. In essence you need both ships on exactly or nearly exactly the same orbit. But that needs to happen only when the two ships are close together. the greater the radial difference between the two orbis the more quickly and more often they will pass each other in their respective orbits. The inner orbital craft will always be the one doing the passing. Incidentally that is why we see Jupiter so often in the sky. There is a large radial difference between Jupiter and Earth. So the greater you can make the radial difference the less time you will have to wait for a close approach. However there is a trade off with this, as with all physics nothing is for free. It takes more energy( think Fuel) to create this difference and then take it away again for rendezvous if the difference is large. Also as the difference between the two orbits gets larger timing the hohmann transfer gets harder to "eye Ball" in other words the timing needs to be more precises to get a decent transfer. Just so I am not throwing out a word you don't understand a Hohmann transfer is just a short way of saying the least possible energy (think fuel) needed to transfer from one orbit to another. THe basic rule of thumb is if going from a low orbit to a higher one you need be behind the target craft you wish to rendezvous with when you start the burn for the transfer. The greater the orbital difference the farther behind you need to be. The reverse is true when going from a high orbit to a lower one. Hope this helps solves your problem feel free to ask if you have more questions.

or you could just use these stock orbital fuel tanks found here they were desinged in .20.2 but work just fine in .21 good luck.

Bug, yes, yep drives me nuts. This is a bug they have yet to fix, not sure why. I found that there are several workarounds including Deejay2000's method. I have discovered with the tank problem if I can get them to attach to any thing at all I can disconnect them and and they will usually bit not always attach correctly after that. I also noticed that the problem gets worse the more parts you have on the ship. To get around this problem is Usually do the tank and engine design work first and then to thrusters and connector parts lights fuel lines and so forth last. since they seem to have less of a problem with the symmetry issue. Also reloading the game seems to help at least for a while. hope this helps.

Short answer is what you said above and GoDores said below. THe formula is correct but as GoDores pointed out below the added mass of the engines will reduce delta-v. Of course if your design is robust enough you could have it set up to use some onion or better yet asparagus staging (even if the main ship is in orbit, takes some work with manually decoupling or rearranging your staging or a combination of the two and some innovative fuel transfers.) Doing this will get you more delta-V but you will have to shed parts as you go along. Good luck

I use Orange tanks on nearly every rocket I build, Granted I have been building them for a year now so I have some experience behind me. The key with orange tanks is to use the EAS-4 structural connector to reinforce the connection, usually at least 4 of them. I also always put a small 1/4 tank on the bottom and reinforce that connection as well. The reason is it is a workaround to the ROKMAX mainsail over heating. If you don't put 1/4 tank on your engine will overheat and blow up your ship. Oh and like Vanamonde said don't let things run into your ornge tanks they will blow up.

Well in game setting you can always just turn off debris or set it low to like 25 parts if you want to make sure you don't accidentally lose your most recent stuff.

I do not know if it is just the styling or what but I don't like the look. Maybe something a little more respectable, rather than unkempt would look better.

Trolling level :master

Yep guess your right.

Sorry no link for the craft yet but I just had to share a few picks of the finished ship. I will release as a full pack once I have her fully loaded and ready to go along with instructional video I hope. But just pics for now.

This is not an official submission but a work in progress. The picks below are of the Beowulf my new Carrier / Destroyer that just finished its the inaugural launch.

Hello everyone Just a little video I put together.

Hi again everyone here is a rare exception to my typical non modcraft. Introducing the real McCoy Orchid. This is a small probe craft and is relativly simple. But I decided to use it to showcase my first attempt at a KSP video. you can get the craft file here. You will need mechjeb 2.0 found here. and [0.20] Procedural Fairings 1.1 found here. These are two of the best mods for KSP so I chose to use them together.

I thought I would offer an update on my progress since I do not have a video to post as of yet. I realized that I could find mech jeb's optimal trajectory for this particular rocket if I ran a few hundred test flight and recorded the data and plotted using Excel and Maple. That said I also realized that in actuality even with hundreds of test flight I was only going to get close the the Ideal trajectories. since I am still keeping the number of variable to 3, more on those in a bit. In reality there of many variable not the least of which many are derivatives including da/dt and dm/dt respectively. Where a=acceleration, and m=mass thus dT/dt=change in acceleration with respect to time and dm/dt=change in mass with respect to time. There are also many other variable, including d(u)/dh=change in resistive force with respect to height, and once you throw in a more complex rocket with multiple stages,you really start feeling overwhelmed. I am absolutely certain that their is a overarching function that could be made that would calculate the exact ideal path no matter the rocket, I also know for a staged rocket it would have to involve the step function. More on that here. But frankly I am at a loss as to how to proceed further in finding an idea function. (if it could be found mechjeb could be made to launch along a path Ideal for any rocket instead of some meen best path.) All that said, the three variable I am allowing to change are curve % Curve end altitude and curve start altitude.( it should be noted that da/dt and dm/dt also change but at the same rate i.e. max rate this rocket allows) I will hopefully find an optimal curve by the end of the week (no sooner I fear) and it will only be good for this rocket. But since I find this fun I hope I won't tire of it before I am done with my tests.

Check this out it works great and is free. ScreenCapture http://sourceforge.net/projects/screencapturer/files/

Sorry about the bad Video I will submit a much better quality one tomorrow with a much better result. Probably not till tomorrow evening though.

Well here is my entry 5th place I Think.

Happy belated Birthday

I Thought it was silly to have the same images repeated twice in the thread. I placed the pics in the main set of pics at the start of the thread.