Eric S

Probably a minimalist but not kludgey combined Mun/Minmus mission. I'll want to plant flags, but I've done individual missions to each of them enough that just planting a flag isn't enough to make me want to go back. On the other hand, the only times I've hit both on the same mission was with overkill motherships that were on shakedown cruises to find problems before they took off for other planets. As for all the rover-seat-on-an-SRB comments, that would probably be the first thing I did, except that I already did it with the seat from the DEMV mk 3 rover.

You'll be glad to know, then, that that's one of the changes coming in 0.20, barring last minute snags.

If you've recently installed FAR for more realistic aerodynamics, it can cause this kind of problem, especially if you've got an awkward payload that isn't in a fairing. If you did install FAR, it's important not to be more than about five degrees off of prograde at any time you're in a significant atmosphere.

I thought so too until I looked in the config file. In fact, every time I state that, I check the config file to make sure that 1) I read the config file correctly to begin with, and 2) that it hasn't changed in any updates. It doesn't make much sense, but I'm OK with that until they get closer to a released version and write it off to the fact that while they've done gross balancing, there's still some fine tuning in balancing that hasn't been done. On the other hand, the linear RCS thruster does have a higher crash tolerance (50 vs 15 for the quads). x8 symmetry for RCS (quads or linear) is bad for efficiency for translation in the normal/antinormal/radial/antiradial directions, as well as yaw/pitch, as half the blocks are positioned 45 degrees off of the direction you want to thrust in. Since for translation in the prograde/retrograde directions and roll, all the RCS quads can fire, I don't find the extra quads to be that helpful. I have been known to double up RCS quads on my more massive craft, as well as use more powerful RCS quads from a mod pack that I can't remember.

Rotation on all three axis is possible without RCS, but translation is only possible in the direction you have engines pointed. Without RCS, that's usually just one direction out of 6.

I usually start very low, 1k or 2k, but don't tip more than a few degrees until I get over 10K, but that's so that I don't drop things on the launch pad rather than efficiency. Yes, it's going to depend on the craft, though if you're not doing anything too unusual and have a "normal" TWR, 10K is the normal place to start it. If you install FAR, this changes, but mostly in that you start your turn a bit sooner because you can't turn very far away from the prograde without causing instability in the rocket.

Correct. The only thing that ship has to keep it from spinning is the rotPower of the probe pod, and the stayputnik has the lowest rotPower of all command pods. Yes, even the other probe pods have much more rotPower than the stayputnik. I recommend avoiding that pod for exactly that reason unless you are willing to put up with the lack of rotPower for aesthetic reasons. EDIT: Missed the SAS. That helps kill spin/rotation, with or without an ASAS, but won't help create spin/rotation.

Only true if you're using the linear thruster in a more efficient manner than an RCS quad, and if the RCS quads are properly placed, there won't be much room for improvement, so certainly not way too much fuel. The quads have the same mass, same thrust, same ISP. The only difference is that the quads can thrust on any of four vectors, the linear thruster can only thrust in one vector. Colonel_Panic has a better point. The quads that are not at the ends of the craft (I'm assuming that this craft is actually two docked craft which is why that there are even quads located there) should but shut down while the two craft are joined, as they're too close to the center of mass to provide much leverage and they wind up thrusting at an odd angle because they're about 45 degrees off from the center of mass. Linear thrusters in the same position would be no more efficient.

RCS works for both translation and rotation when it's on.

Also true, I used them extensively that way while I was learning to land, though I never landed anything manned that way.

Exactly. The honor system works for this. Getting other people involved in deciding that Mod X is too beneficial but Mod Y is acceptable isn't necessary and would be a lot of hassle.

Some of us have already had the story changed on us. I originally read "Ender's Game" when it was a short story and didn't have the greater plot arc.

True. I've put rovers on the nose of landers, landed, inflated the airbags, decoupled the rover and had the airbags push the rover off the top of the rocket. Then I just had to figure out how to upright the rover by inflating/deflating the airbags. This obviously works better with smaller rovers, though. Interesting bit of trivia, the airbag landing system was originally developed as a rover uprighting mechanism :-)

Very much so. my last Duna mission, I managed to tweak my transfer well enough with two sub-15 m/s correction burns that when I entered Duna's SoI, I had to raise my periapsis to aerobrake, otherwise I'd be lithobraking before the aerobraking had much time to slow me down :-) I set a 9Km periapsis if I remember right, which was enough to go from transfer velocity to a parachute landing in a single maneuver, and that was with Deadly Reentry. Not quite. Since the ISP is dependent on the atmospheric pressure, and Duna barely has any atmosphere even at "sea level," the atomic engines will still be more efficient. Even at Duna's sea level, I think their ISP is still 680 or so. That said, most landers I've made with atomic engines that were landing on anything that had close to Duna's gravity wound up getting chemical engines to help out because the low thrust of the atomic engines. Landing on Duna with a local TWR of about 2 is possible, but... unnerving. I think I was at full throttle for the last 8km on my last Duna landing with a TWR that low, and I killed my vertical velocity about 30m above the ground.

It's been suggested and shot down before, and I can see why. When you do that, you're basically splitting everyone into two groups based on what mods they use. While automation may seem to be a clear cut line, others will disagree on that being where the line should be drawn. OP engines that make everything easy? hyperedit? part clipping? Basically, the guy that does the ribbons doesn't want to get drawn into that debate.

Oggula is either overlooking something or not understanding what you want to do. Done properly, refueling in minmus orbit, dropping your kerbin periapsis to 80-100km, then burning at periapsis gets you into a planetary transfer orbit with the least amount of delta-V expended after the point of refueling than most other methods. There are a few disadvantages to this method, and in general, I don't think it's worth it, but it can be done. The first disadvantage is obvious enough, it takes a lot more setup to do this unless you've already got a fuel base at Minmus, and the only time that makes sense is if you're doing a lot of operations around Minmus or if you're using the Kethane mod to create fuel on Minmus. The second isn't as obvious. It takes meticulous timing to get this right, and if you get it wrong, your correction burn could easily use up all the fuel that you saved, if not more. Basically, you need to time your ejection from Minmus so that it puts you into a Kerbin transfer orbit that will hit Kerbin periapsis right as you're hitting your ejection angle. The third disadvantage is that this isn't actually efficient because of the delta-V to get everything into Minmus orbit (unless you're mining kethane on Minmus), it's just getting you out of the system with almost full fuel tanks. Drop tanks of some sort would probably be much easier to do and achieve the same effect. That said, here's how it works, and how it gets you into a transfer orbit with so little delta-V expended from the point of refueling. A burn to a Duna transfer from LKO takes 1000-1060 m/s delta-V depending on your parking orbit, so that's our benchmark. So, starting at the point where you've refueled, You'll burn 100-250 delta-V to go from Minmus orbit to a Kerbin transfer orbit, again depending on parking orbits, target periapsis, etc. A higher Minmus orbit is more efficient here, but it also means your Minmus orbit has a longer period, making it harder to perfectly time your transfer burn. Assuming you got the transfer right, you'll be hitting the periapsis of your Kerbin orbit with enough velocity to take you back out to Minmus, but at just the right time for your transfer to Duna. Since you've already got about 900 m/s velocity over what a normal LKO would have, you only need to provide the missing 150 m/s delta V, for a total expenditure of about 400 m/s since refueling. Why is that not efficient overall? Because you spent over 900 m/s to reach the refueling point, and that isn't even counting the delta-V required to get the fuel there. However, if getting a transfer orbit with as close to a full fuel tank is the only measuring stick, it does quite well.

It really depends on the mission and the craft. I did a mothership to jool mission where I quicksaved before every maneuver because I didn't have enough confidence in my redesign (during testing the mothership managed to shake parts off). At the other extreme, I've done moon landing and returns without ever quicksaving. My normal level is to quicksave after an SoI change.

My favorite solution was a powershell script that got lost in the forum rollback. Basically, you put the script in the same directory as your persistence file, run it, and in about a minute, it goes through the persistence file and removes all debris. It's been a while since I used it, but I'll look around to see if I can find a copy.

Not that I've seen.

I have it on every craft that isn't for a challenge that prohibits it. Not so much because I use it for everything but because it's annoying to not have it when I want it. Keeping a symbol on the navball centered during a 45 minute burn just isn't fun enough to keep me interested. On the other hand, about the only thing I use it for that I can't do manually is accurate landings at non-equatorial locations. I'm just not good at that. On the other hand, for most other things, if I really care about it, I'll either do it by hand or check the maneuver node before mechjeb executes it, because I do tend to do better than mechjeb on stuff like that.

kurtjmac and Scott Manley are the ones I used for learning and inspiration. There's a few others I watch for humor when brought to my attention, but I don't actually follow the humor stuff, it's just time filler.

KSP doesn't have a center of drag indicator, and even if it did, it probably wouldn't match the FAR drag model, and the center of drag depends on the angle of attack, so it would move as soon as the craft wasn't aimed directly prograde.

Keep your SRBs low. Yes, that keeps their mass positioned low, but it also keeps their drag positioned low. In addition it gives them a better chance to stage without colliding with your ship.

I once had a physics professor (physics 183 if I remember right, so not a class you'd be required to take unless you were involved in a science curriculum of some sorts). He was a highly regarded in his field, and the physics department considered his presence a boon. However, I had him the first semester he was involved in that university, so there was a bit of a learning experience going on even from the Physics department's point of view. The man was brilliant, and the level of physics he was teaching was basic enough to him that he found it intuitive. And that's where the problem starts. Since he found it intuitive, he had never actually gone through the process of learning it, so he really didn't understand how to impart that knowledge to a room full of students that didn't find it intuitive. And yet, the defect was obviously with us because it was such simple and obvious stuff. And yes, he'd say that during rants. One time he went so far as to call the entire class a bunch of sheep. At the end of the semester, they quietly shuffled the teaching roster so that he never taught that level of physics again. And I get it. I'm the same way with programming. I was taking lvl 300 or 400 classes before any professor taught me anything that I hadn't worked out for myself intuitively before starting college. The only computer science class I ever had any problems with was one taught by the kind of professor who's tests consisted of parroting definitions, and one missing word would drop your score by 25%. I had a harder time in that class than my classmates that had always had to work hard. Despite that, I can't teach programming because for me, it's all so intuitive that I barely have to think about it. Of course you do this then that, that's how it works. I have a very hard time breaking down how I do the basic steps. Long story short, don't assume that because you had to work hard to learn things in this game that that means that you're the wrong person to try to teach it, or to write up a tutorial on it. Knowing how you learned it is as important as what you learned.

maakey's pointing you in the right direction. Basically, if your center of drag is above your center of mass, as is the case with many, if not most asparagus designs, then turning more than a few degrees off of prograde will cause the ship to become uncontrollable because it will be as if you had a parachute attached to the front of the rocket. You can address this two ways, and you should address it both ways. First, you need to make sure your craft doesn't have a huge amount of drag at the top of it. Nose cones on everything, and fairings around anything that isn't aerodynamic. Second, you need to make gradual gravity turns, not the "boost to 10K and then snap turn to 45 degrees" that are so common in stock KSP launches. The farther away from prograde your rocket is pointing, the more torque the offcenter drag will cause. I remember somewhere before the great forum oops that the FAR dev said that you shouldn't be farther than five degrees away from prograde during your launch. With enough control, I could manage 10 degrees, but anything more than that, while it could be done, wasn't practical as the ship started becoming more about controlling the craft than getting anything to orbit. Asparagus staging works fine in FAR, though it's less needed as realistic aerodynamics actually reduces the amount of delta-V you need to get into orbit. If your center stack doesn't have much mass above the height of the radial stacks, you'll need to follow the prograde closely. Done right (and this means tweaking mechjebs ascent profile if you're using mechjeb), you can even get it to launch asparagus staged rockets.