shand

dont forget that sizes have been compressed 10(ish) fold. which gets liquid fuel much closer to hydrogen. it seems kerbals are actually using things up to half as dense with that in mind!

my suggestion would be to delete the inner ducts and place them again. sometimes something odd happens. ensure they are going to the tank not the engine.

what motors are you trying to fuel? the stock rover wheels need electrical charge (anywhere on the ship) not liquid fuel.

yup a definate hijack. this will probs get split. You need to place the "cone" top of the fairing first and then build down from that. follow the instructions on the KW page which clearly show this (its a )... or at least it used to before the forum got wiped.

you need to dock, with the ships docked right click on a fuel tank. then press Alt and right click another fuel tank, you should then be able to transfer between them.

1. what version of mechjeb? 2. are you using a probe body with enough batteries? (open the resources panel top right and check electrical charge isnt 0) 3. are you able to manually fire the engine (it may have detached?)

yeah it would be a case of duplicating the part and changing the resource - would be quick and easy way of getting neat storage of small amounts of RCS or kethane. I look forward to this. Personally i think finish off the 2.5 first and then do the 1.25 then the 3. but thats cause i want to play with it very useful, especially if you get to orbit and realise you forgot something "ah just chuck out the auxillary batteries and fit a new RCS tank from the space station" genuis!

this shouldnt be possible anymore. it used to be - due to an error with RCS

Actually the defination of a kg is "the mass of the international standard kg weights" of which there are two, one in the americas, one in europe. incidently these have lost mass over the years due to various processes and are now kept in a vaccum. meter is arbitrary as you state. and time i entirely arbitrary - "x number of decays of y" All others rely on the definitions of the others in some vaguely sensible way (amp - current that causes 1m deflection in 1m long wires, or something, i forget)

i'm noticing a theme. Payload gets easily offended/self-victimised. which is a shame, i tend to agree with them - and now they've clarified i do again! though i would reiterate Francesco's last sentence. Eitherway, launch profile is a side issue here, the main topic is gaining delta v. not what you do with it! OP i suggest downloading kerbal engineer redux (or mechjeb, but KER is better for delta v readings) that way you can fiddle and see. but yes; add fuel sensibly; use high ISP engines appropriate for the mass of your craft; and reduce the mass of your craft. And finally. KISS - the benifits of complex staging are THERE, but if you are struggling i suggest cutting back to basics. payload, upper, lower with SRB on the side. easily get 50tonnes of payload up in that fashion.

I find keeping TWR between 1.4 and 2.2 (stage full to burn out) is perfect. if you overpower your rocket a tiny bit (TWR 2 on the pad) you can throttle back as you go up. as for increasing deltaV generally - nerva, as few as you can while still being able to carry out the acceleration you need. Nerva is only the best if you are using more then 5 tonnes of fuel (or was it 3.5). less then that, use the small rocket or perhaps the aerospike depending.

alternatively mods like haystick can help too.

yeah, this seems to work for me too, very odd!

Yes and harry potter is a fictional novel, that doesnt stop people playing quiditch in the park. (the snitch tends to be a girl wearing yellow) My point is there doesnt have to be a solid line between reality and fiction. let one spill into the other and see how it sits. seconds, metres and kg are all pretty arbitary definitions (espeically kg) so in theoy we can "scale" them independently. of course we have to start with the assumption that (for the laws of physics that apply) some approximation of the constants (Big G for example) are consistant. A simple solution is that Big G is 10x that of our universe. or something

You are confusing spaceplanes with SSTO. its much much much technically easier to SSTO then it is to MSTO, you have 1 engine, 1 fuel load, no explosive bolts (that you intend to use). the difference is in diminishing returns. its cheaper to have a second stage (including expensive rockets and decoupling systems and all the complexities) then it is to lump enough fuel on top of one rocket. Titan first stage had the potential to be a SSTO with small payload, but it was cheaper (i imagine, dont have the numbers on me) to make a smaller MSTO. further you can have a better suited rocket in the higher stages, like shape and fuel type. for example LOX is a great fuel for launching, but maybe a kerosine derivitive would be better suited to your upper stage mission profile. Disclaimer: This is of course assuming you have a rocket with high enough thrust and ISP to be able to reach the magic number. the deltaV tends to a limit as the additional mass of fuel decreases the benifit of each new tank.

you could probably do with less of the small rockets! you dont need a particularly high TWR if you do it right. use the jets to get out of the atmosphere (ballistic curve and all that) and use the rockets literally just for cirularisation - and any further missions. if you are feeling extra brave, just jets and ion drive. dont know if thats possible:)

Basically you are encouraging a negative tax, the simplist way of doing it is to look at everybodies net tax and knock off £5,000 a year. So really what you are looking at is just lowering the tax, and giving those who aren't paying tax benefits. to me this sounds like the same system we have right now, but with a different name and no obligation to try to gain employment - in otherwords if you are happy eating smart price noodles in a poorly heated house you can sit around and sponge off the rest of society. Actually nobody needs to do the jobs people dont want to do. in the situation where work is not required for survival then you can be picky "you want me to clean the gents loo in the club, you better pay me loads!". unpleasant jobs would the work of those wanting to get the most money, not of the desperate. (Note: unpleasant is a different thing for each person, if you have a subset of people who really like wiping poo then that would obviously drive the price down) Truely unpleasant jobs will likely be taken over by technology - its cheaper to set up a hose to wash down the toilets then to hire a go-getter willing to charge extra for the unpleasantness. consider the "thought experiment" we used to play growing up (and still do). the "would you x for £Y" activity. imagine a kid, perfect for this, they dont need the money for food, bills just luxuries. How much would you have to pay a kid to clean your office each morning? now, imagine that kid didnt want to buy a chocolate bar with their weekly pay check, but adult "toys" (a new computer, a car, a holiday) you'd stuggle to get cheap labour.

...and i bet that wasnt "really easy" to make. i can throw together a SSTO sat deployment rocket (parachute landing) quicker then i can make the probe! also i tend to define the size of the payload by the size of the rocket. "not much payload" means "more rocket" - and of course you get diminishing % the larger the mass due to heavy engines and what-not. gettting very offtopic, could you post a pic of it? i'm curious to see the design style!

make sure you are controlling your craft from a part facing "front". so for example, the navball is blue on the launchpad. Also make sure you have the correct engines active before the autopilot kicks in - it uses the TWR to calculate lead time (i beleive) for your 30 minute burn, was the estimated burn time approximately 1 hour? mechjeb i beleive has issues with manually activated engines (it certainly used to) and instead goes on the staging. i have found it ttends to instanteously start a burn if you dont have an active engine and then you activate one, espeically via actiongroup/rightclick. equally messing with the timewarp may trigger it.

so long as you have (i think i worked it out at) 5 tonnes of fuel per engine its more efficent then other liquid fuel rockets. that answers your initial question, but to expand on what others have been saying. i tend to split my manuvures into 100-200 deltav for the first orbit (100km-roughly 300-500km AP) then from there i'll either circularise and carry out the escape burn on the next opportunity (if i've done it right, instantly) or do a few more Pe kicks. the lower your Pe, the shorter time you have to carry out the burn... so raising your Pe makes things EASIER, but not more efficent.

Well i think awaras won THAT one. ok, how about Saturn to Cucumber! 1.Saturn 2.Atmosphere 3.Frost-line 4.Soil 5.Hydroponics -GAR cucumbers are mentioned - but not linked! 6.Root 7.Sweet potato ----8.Root Vegetable ----9.Edible plants Apparently not. 8.Angiosperms 9.Cucurbitaceae 10.Cucumbers! Take 2: 1.Saturn. 2.Agriculture 3.Wheat 4.Angiosperms 5.Cucurbitaceae 6.Cucumbers! 6!

I use it for ascent/descent manoeuvres. it gives you a quick indication of how much of your thrust is going to fighting gravity. generally if its higher then 1.4 you can follow norminal ascent pathing. between 0.7 and 1.4 you'll need to think carefully where to point to get to orbit. if its lower then 0.7 you better be practically in orbit it doesnt give you an accurate rate of acceleration, but then neither does TWR surface. the moment you change body it shows a completely different number. the acceleration stats are far more useful if that is your concern.

totally agreed on the SSTO thing. a SSTO rocket is really easy to make (if you dont want to get much payload up). nobody seems to make multistage spaceplanes (except clearly you Van Disaster). maybe they just like the extra challange! spaceplanes arent really practical for anything anyway and they take a load more effort to A) design and fly. but yes, would be awesome if people got the terminology right!

if the "because of this" was actually true, then it would be fine. i'm getting quite a lot of odd behaviour (in all mods) that quicksave+quickload or drop to spaceport and back will fix. worst case if something REALLY odd happens, close the game and reload it. @drakesdoom: you are right, your mass has not changed (hyperedit i assume?), but your weight has. weight is proportional to the gravity you are under. as you climb altitude your weight decreases. look at it this way. if its greater then 1 you will accelerate up, less then 1 you will accelerate down. I cant remember what its set to be in the version you are using, i think (current) is actually (current max) if that makes sense. then of course you have (surface) to allow you to see what it would be on sea level.

my contribution would be to remember that mechjeb calculates deltaV for in atomosphere and out seperately. so your ship has 4400 m/s in vaccum only. when i was using mechjeb for stats i tried to make the first 2500 m/s from the atmosphere number, and then 2500 m/s from the vaccum number. you are running out of fuel and you have the tools to detect it before you get off the launchpad other then that theres some nice info in the other posts about how to GET that extra fuel, i wont repeat it.