DerekL1963

Which can be a problem in-and-of itself, even if the rest of the vehicle is well designed from a stability POV.

Where is your classic hex truss to be found?

I think that without significant moderation the database would quickly be filled with the equivalent of skirt lifter and guardrail micros. (For the non-cachers, these are "junk" caches usually placed on lampposts in parking lots or roadside guardrails. They don't bring you anywhere interesting and are generally extraordinarily easy to find - which lets those who play the "numbers game" rack up a large number of finds with very little effort. They are... very controversial in the caching community.) With care however you could implement any number of interesting challenge series though, such as the equivalent of a DeLorme challenge. (Finding a cache in every biome of a given world as the equivalent of finding a cache on every page of a DeLorme atlas.)

I just let it run in the background while I do other things like browsing the forums.

I use MechJeb too, and generally I jettison any crasher stages (stages used to slow down before landing) above 20km or preferably above 30km.

You're moving the same weight whatever way you do it... And ore, being more compact, makes for a smaller miner and transfer vehicle making it easier to boost from Kerbin.

Minmus is generally a much better mining base...

Ah... with the context of your overall mission architecture that makes sense. Ion is about as light as you can get, minimizing impact on your overall mission. I usually use ScanSat (for the science), so I just attach the resource scanner to my mapping bird since it also wants to be in a polar orbit. (When I'm not using ScanSat's resource scanning mode, but it's wonky.) If I'm not using ScanSat, I just add the resource scanner to my normal science mission (which doesn't care that it's in a polar rather than an equatorial orbit). Plus I usually have a ton of missions running in parallel, so even if I do have to send a dedicated resource scanning bird I usually have plenty going on elsewhere to keep me busy. (Thank heaven for KAC!)

Minmus and Ike are generally the best places to start. Low enough G that it makes designing your landers/lifters easier, high enough G that you're not trying to run a mine in a bouncy house. I generally convert to LF, as by the time mining is attractive I'm tossing big heavy nuclear powered wessels all over the Solar system. I also refine a little mono to refuel my RCS systems. My architecture: A) a mobile miner that can land, refuel itself, and return to orbit stuffed with ore. B) Since the miner is heavy and ungainly, an OTV that picks up the ore and transfers it to an orbital refinery/storage depot. C) The OTV doubles as a tanker by dropping off the ore container and picking up a fuel tank. (Because the OTV+tank generally maneuvers better than the big heavy vehicle it's re-fuelling.) Mobile miner: OTV with ore container. (It's hard to see, but there's RCS on the container to help with handling when it's loaded.) Orbital refinery/storage depot, capable of self-ferrying to Minmus or to Ike if I rejigger the tankage, initial configuration. (I used Modular Fuel Tanks to reduce the oxidiser storage, add monoprop storage, and increase the liquid fuel storage... this cuts down on parts count.) The leftover oxidiser is just margin from transit. The leftover liquid fuel is actually an important part of the system - it lets you refuel the OTV after it's boosted from LKO to Minmus and before it sets off to haul the (very heavy) ore container. Orbital refinery/storage depot, final configuration. Ore storage tank in use, fuel tank (also rejiggered to 100% fuel storage via Modular Fuel Tanks) with the OTV docked ready to fill and head off to service customers. The refinery and power systems are modular, and here they've been moved to a position that's up and out of the way of the main docking hub. (The non stock structural parts pretty much all come from Nertea's Near Future Construction pack.) YMMV, others may have other ideas.

"You have to perform a plane change burn or a capture burn" is a sentence that makes no sense, it's not possible to understand it - hence my repeated attempts to clarify. (That and your insistence on specifying expensive ways to perform plane changes.) You always have to perform a capture/circularization burn whether you perform a plane change or not.

You missed my point foamy - those aren't the only options, only the most expensive ones. The further out you perform your plane change burn, the cheaper it gets - and doing it just inside the SOI is pretty cheap. If you're a better pilot than I am, you can do it even cheaper as part of your mid-course correction burn. The only way to "end up" executing plane changes using the methods you describe it to skip the earlier options.

o.0 You're planning a very complex engine, and you think the electronics (stuff ten year olds are doing) is going to be hard part? No offense, but you're not even ready to crawl yet, you're asking for the stuff you'll need for the third step and you haven't even taken the first step. Education first, then all the math and engineering, then start bending metal. Lather, rinse repeat.

I follow a mailing list for designing and building large(er) rockets and rocket motors, and the general consensus there is that the electronics are the easy part. Designing, building, and debugging the engines is considered far and above the hardest part. And generally, they're building engines much smaller than you're going to need. He made rocket candy, which means you're setting yourself up to fail. There's a very serious group that's been trying to get enough performance out of rocket candy to fly to space on a suborbital trajectory, they've been at it for over a decade now without succeeding. No offence, but you really need to learn to crawl first.

I keep hearing this... and I have to wonder if I'm the only one who carries out the plane change right after entering the target SOI... where they're pretty cheap in terms of d/v.

Yes. I don't know offhand if it stayed in his suit pocket or was transferred to a sample container though.

And if you look there in the lower right... you can see the Shuttle Mate/Demate facility.

Not fancy, but simple and functional... the DCRN-C series of interplanetary communications relays.

Yeah. T'ain't easy or cheap.

Like I said, AFAIK, guidance systems aren't illegal. But I suspect that on an amatuer budget and with off-the-shelf parts you aren't going to get much more than what amounts to a stabilization system.

Not AFAIK. But rockets large enough to make use of a guidance system are likely large enough to be regulated. (Not to mention that an actual guidance system is quite a bit more complicated than a stabilization system.)

Just to be clear here... ITAR only applies if you're sending the information or equipment out of the country I.E exporting or publishing or making it available or acessible by other means to foreign nationals. (Which has an unfortunate chilling effect on the more professional rocketry discussion fora and lists.) ITAR isn't really relevant to this discussion though, there's a different licensing scheme that covers domestic vehicles and launches.

License for such aren't impossible to get - for example SpaceX has (will have) one for Dragon, but they aren't cheap or easy to get... especially on an amauter hour budget.

I've been working on a Dres mission architecture based on re-useable tankers for a couple of weeks now... Today, finally, a breakthrough on tug/tanker design. The numbers, just barely, fall into place - one tug can that haul one tanker that can (just barely) support two additional return flights assuming the flights delivered max payload. (Dres is a stone cold bear to get to and from! The average isn't bad, but the outliers pop up just enough that they have to be accounted for.) Fortunately the tanker for the return flights and for lander support are pretty much the heaviest components, so the balance should in theory (famous last words) fall straight into place. Still, I'm going to have think very carefully about how the rest of the mission components are packaged. Next step, finalize the lander design, then the crew transfer vehicle. (Life support is killing me on the latter, because in addition to a wide range of d/v requirements different windows have wildly different transit times.) Still pondering on the need for an OTV at Dres (if I do need it, I have a self-ferrying design at hand). Also pondering whether to assemble the tankers into a fuel farm or to leave them free flying.

Use the porkchop plot to select different departure times. That's all you need.

Certainly! The list is tailored to my tastes, but it's easily changed. You can delete stuff (from the @PART to the next }), or to add parts cut 'n paste (from the @PART to the next }) and look up the part name by going to the list of parts on the KSP wiki, clicking through the part you want, and then clicking on the Part Configuration in the infobox on the right hand side of the page. (The displayed name in the VAB/SPH is *not* the name the game uses 'under the hood'.) Then put that name in the brackets ( [ ] ) after @PART.