Eric S

This. I've never done the math on Duna/Ike, but I've made that trip, and done the math for Minmus/Kerbin to Duna (and other) transfers, and boosting out of Minmus orbit into an orbit with a low Kerbin periapsis and high apoapsis and then doing a transfer burn at periapsis was much more efficient than going for an interplanetary transfer directly from Minmus/Ike. The timing can be tricky on those kinds of transfers, but just Duna to Kerbin shouldn't be hard at all.

I prefer doing it gradually. In fact, doing 45 degrees all at once can cause problems if you install FAR. As far as efficiency goes, from my testing, gradual seems slightly better, but by a small enough amount that it gets overshadowed by other factors. if you turn gradually, you need to make sure you don't do it too gradually, otherwise you hit your desired apoapsis before you're close to your desired orbital velocity, and that can cause some major inefficiency.

Sounds good, last time I built a lander that was an all-in-one kethane processing plant, I put Weyland's ED-209 legs on it, and called it Frankenlander.

Radial decouplers aren't easy to reverse, if that's what you're saying. The structural pylon, however, lets go of both objects. Or at least did last time I used one.

The only time I tried to use kethane on Pol, the overlap of places level enough to land on and places with kethane was virtually nonexistent. Then again, if your mining craft is squat enough, that might not be as much of an issue.

I don't consider it nitpicking. Really, I should have used velocity rather than energy, or talked about the conversion between potential and kinetic forms of energy. Not sure why I didn't.

I wouldn't be happy because I want almost all the stuff they've talked about adding, but it's already worth what I paid for it and I'd continue playing it.

Actually, too low of a TWR can reduce your efficiency by reducing the amount of benefit you get from the oberth effect, but it takes an extremely low TWR for this to become a major factor.

delta-v doesn't vary by body, except in how the atmosphere affects the ISP. What KER shows you for each body is your TWR. Very handy to know if your lander stage has enough TWR to lift off of Minmus without being so overpowered that it makes landing there harder.

Loader is the original, Manager is the one that is currently supported and available without jumping through hoops.

I'll agree with all of this, if it's feasible, as long as 1 is selectable rather than fixed. I personally don't like translucent backgrounds, but as long as I can change it I'm fine, and more options is almost always good.

As stupid_chris pointed out, that isn't quite correct. As to why, the oberth effect is not to be underestimated. Rather than get into the math of it, think of it this way. As the craft dives into the gravity well, it will pick up energy from gravity, based on how far into the well it is and how much time it spends there. Then the craft climbs out of the gravity well, and it loses as much energy as it gained. Simple enough, and just what you'd expect if you're thinking in terms of the conservation of energy. Now, instead of passively going in and out, let's burn some delta-v at the periapsis. Now, instead of losing as much energy as it leaves the well as it gained while dropping into the well, it spends more time leaving the well, which means it spends more time affected by that gravity, which means it loses more energy than it gained. EDIT: since we mass less because we burned fuel, replace energy with velocity. We haven't actually violated the conservation of energy, though it's not easy to see where the extra energy went. It went into the rocket's exhaust basically, since it accelerated rather than decelerated at periapsis. Which means that it left the gravity well faster, so it slowed down less, so it will leave the SoI with more energy than it entered it with. Does that make sense? I'm not sure I've made this clear enough. EDIT: Ninja'ed by Mr Shifty, how appropriate *snicker*

Lower orbits have higher velocity, but lower energy since they're farther into the gravity well. When you brake into an orbit, you're shedding velocity/energy. However, even at that, that's not what we're talking about here, since we're not shedding energy to have a low periapsis. The way I have generally found that is the lowest delta-v method to get into any particular orbit: 1) Aim for a very low periapsis while still far away from the planet. I can often manage a sub-surface periapsis with less than 50 m/s delta-v spent fine tuning my transfer, and can always manage a sub-100km periapsis with that budget, once I have an actual intercept. Using conic mode 0 helps with the accuracy during this step, as you can focus on the target planet and see where your periapsis is in regards to the target planet. 2) When you cross over into the SoI of the target planet, use normal/antinormal/radial/antiradial thrust to put your periapsis right where you want it. Do not try to raise or lower your periapsis by burning prograde/retrograde. Normal/antinormal will affect your inclination, radial/antiradial will affect your periapsis. The more accurately you have placed your periapsis in step 1, the less effort it will take in this step. 3) Burn at periapsis to put your apoapsis where you want it. Note that if you have a really low TWR, this could be less than easy. 4) At your apoapsis, raise your periapsis to where you want it. The only time I've found burning directly for your orbit to be more efficient than this is when I seriously messed up step #1 so that my initial periapsis was far away from the planet.

It depends on how you want them to look and what you want them to do. Outside of maybe a dozen mods like Kethane, ISA_MAP, Damned/Infernal Robotics, Hooligan Airships, and Kerbal Attachment System, most mods are about improving the interface or providing parts that look different or are differently balanced rather than adding something that just can't be done in a stock game.

No problem, just wanted to figure out what was going on. I don't claim to know everything about the game, so I still pursue what knowledge remains.

The next day, which still worked out to several hours of game play. The decision was made faster than that, I just wasn't sure about the timing.

Nope, not asparagus. Examine the staging. 11) 7 liquid engines and 18 SRBs light up. 10) We drop the 18 SRBs. 9) We drop the bottom six radial fuel tanks engines, AND the bottom stage of the center stack. 8) 7 more liquid engines light up. The 6 radial engines are cross feeding to the center stack, but that isn't enough to count as asparagus. The first step towards asparagus staging, sure, but not asparagus staging. 7) The 6 radial engines and tanks ignited in stage 8 drop here.

Most of the time I see this, it's because you weren't aggressive enough with your gravity turn, or you continued to burn after your apoapsis reached the desired height.

One second. Are you saying that the fuel gauges next to the engines in the staging display are equal? That's not showing how much fuel is in the tank that engine is attached to, that's showing how much fuel is available to that engine, and since all the fuel that is available to any of the engines is available to all the engines, those bars should be equal. However, that bar is of all the available fuel tanks combined, there's no indication of whether the fuel is actually balanced. The testing I did, I was checking the amount of fuel in each tank by right clicking on them.

All the engines run as long as any of the four tanks have fuel, but there was no equalization of fuel levels in the tanks. Each engine drew from a single tank until one of the tanks emptied, so there was equal draw from each tank up to that point. Then, the tank that the empty tank would feed to started emptying faster since two engines were drawing from it. Once that tank emptied, the tank that that tank fed into started emptying faster. Finally, the fourth tank emptied. This doesn't sound like what you're describing. Am I misunderstanding you, or are we still not seeing the same results?

Sadly, this is pretty much true. The solution to making nosecones work involves either redoing the entire aerodynamics portion of the simulation, at which point you've recreated FAR, or you give nosecones negative amounts of drag, opening you up to some insanely oddball behavior.

I've seen this mess up beginners often enough to know better, but I tested it anyway, and as I expected, it drained one tank at a time. It did this with 4 way and 6 way symmetry, with LV-T30 and LV-1 engines, etc. I tried hard, but couldn't duplicate your results. At least one of the following is true. 1) The recipe, and my further testing, missed something important. 2) You've got an addon causing this effect. 3) your testing methodology was off. Could you post a craft file that exhibits the behavior you describe somewhere?

This. The original post doesn't address the problem in a realistic way, and as for the followup suggestion of drag, we have a drag system, just not a good one, and open air intakes are already high enough drag that some people use them as airbrakes. If anything, a more realistic drag system will reduce the drag, not increase it. You don't see spamming air intakes in reality because having an air intake that isn't in the unobstructed airflow is far less effective.

That's the one, thank you :-) I'm going to start practicing that one. It won't help much for suborbital hops and will be more difficult to pull off in hilly areas, but still involves a lot less guesswork than a traditional retrograde burn landing. I wouldn't be surprised if it is at least very close to optimal, as it's basically a reverse of the optimal launch for an airless body, which is to say that you're putting as much delta-v into your orbital velocity as possible without impacting the ground. Optimal would involve touching down while still at full throttle to minimize gravity losses, but I'm pretty sure that timing it out that well is beyond my reflexes.

There's a video floating around here somewhere that shows a highly efficient and mostly safe landing method for celestial bodies that have no atmosphere. It basically involves setting up a periapsis that is barely above the ground and an apoapsis that isn't much higher, then you go full throttle not exactly retrograde. You want to thrust just far enough below the horizon to keep your altitude steady. This means that you'll be gradually transitioning to vertical as you kill your orbital velocity, and at some point, you'll probably need to throttle down. This is a lot easier to do than a traditional suicide burn because if you start burning a little late, you're going sideways instead of down, so you've still got plenty of time to react.