magnemoe

Reminds me of my first Moho mission, however I Was only sending an mapping satellite and an probe rover. Found that I would need more than 6000 m/s to get into orbit so I tried to land instead. Lesson learned, dV requirements to get to Moho is far higher than other places, getting into orbit is just as hard, and you has to be very careful about getting the intercept at the closest point to sun to minimize the orbital injection speed.

Has to be my epic Eve probe trip, first I mounted the decoplers on the side probes the wrong way so the blocked the engine, then I used to much fuel droping the second probe by doing an deorbit burn with the transfer stage, drop probe and back to orbit as a result I did not have enough fuel to get the transfer stage in Gilly orbit so I put it on an impact path, planned to both get into orbit and land with the lander who was top mounted and should have enough fuel. However I pressed space after switching to the probe and decouple the engine and fuel part as it was dual Eve and Gilly use. all three parts impacted Gilly

Yes, I also did not like the 1a scale, rather divide it in two groups, first in primitive or borderland species, some primitive tool making but more important low intelligence, something like a Kzin would not need much gear as an human hunter gatherer, think homo habilis and erectus, late nehantertals would probably fall in next group. advanced hunter gatherers think most homo sapiens hunter gatherer groups like Inuits or the ones in Australia, requirements are decent intelligence and regularly make tools who work well within the limits of the materials they have. For farmers or group 1b I would have the same inteligence and tool use requirements as for advanced hunter gatherers. You wold need an special group for species who are intelligent but don't make tools because they can not. Nivens dolphins is an example.

had an ion probe I put into 11 km solar orbit, it had 22 km/s dV, used moded ion engines but could do the same with stock with 4 times the burn time. Could probably get more out of it if I made some solar panels dropable or made it with less as they are very effective inside Moho orbit.

You are right, this leaves me with 3960 m/s left, counter intuitive for me as I guessed the extra 1 kilometer in attitude was more important than the 50 m/s you kept. But as you say the gravity turn stared before the balloon was dropped. Main bonus here is probably the stability, waiting for speed to drop to 0 or keeping the balloons to long can easy give you stability problems.

I have done plenty of balloon launches, I prefer to activate engines then speed falls to 10m/s, had some stability problems close to 0, simple reasoning, you can climb around one km after you get zero lift, I then drop the balloons a bit over an second later. It might be beneficial to hold on to the balloons for some time, mechjeb should compensate trust to terminal speed. Did some quck tests with an realistic Eve accent craft with 6000m/s dv and 28 ton using 6 balloons. It got 0 lift at 11472 meter, speed dropped to 10m/s at 12598 where I activated accent autopilot. Dropping balloon after a second gave me 3845 m/s left in 100 km orbit. Then I kept the balloon until reaching 14665 meter and around -70 in lift I was left with 3890 m/s Main downside of keeping it longer was that the rocket started to get unstable, had I dropped it a second earlier it would probably saved some fuel.

First don't put the engines on struts longer than they need to be, second don't put them so high. Last you use way to much engines, keep the large fuel tank for now, use two or four of the small orange radial engines, make sure they don't hit the rover, you might want to put two an two on the sides.

Smart, I liked the extra landing legs, you know on an low gravity world you should be able to take that back to orbit if you keep the engine, if the main body was fuel this might even work on Mun. Jump on an hill, optional use rocket for this, then airborne just burn a bit upward and start gravity turn. Has to test this.

This works nice, only downside is that the rover get very heavy. However if you land and want to explore a bit around the area, perhaps driving to an abnormality then you land three km away this is an good solution. Added bonus if you design it to take off and return it to an mothership or station. It also work nice for very small probe landers/ rovers, has one desing with 500-1200 m/s dv and weight less than an ton for the largest version. If you want to drive a lot I recommending an separate rover with an skycrane as lighter rovers handles far better and is less likely to break. At least If you use mechjeb landing its no problem landing on the wheels outside of Tylo.

However the deltaV or how much you can change your speed goes down then weight of the none fuel part of the ship increases. an point of balance here, you don't want an to slow acceleration, boring to burn for an hour and it also make nodes hard to do.

Wonder if they used bump map on the terrain, it would break up if you get to close.

This depend on how much dV you need and the weight of the craft. For small probes the small orange radial engines are very efficient as they are light. However if you want 3000 m/s dV on something heavier than an probe the LV-N is your answerer. If you want more trust, use multiple engines or use some moded nuclear engines who are heavier but give more trust.

I would recommend launching the lander with some boosters, say add six orange tanks+ mainsails around it and use as an outer asparagus layer. This way you get the lander engines to help lift themselves, the orange tanks just supply fuel to the lander and the mainsails lift the orange tanks.

Pretty much this, steam work great for most games but not for KSP who is during development. Not only mod incompatibility. Imagine you are about to do an Jool aerobrake but has to leave for work so you exit the game, coming back reentry heat is added. You are inside Laythe orbit and has less than 1000m/s dv left

It is, less danger of getting lost. However how do you refuel the jetpack? Seeing the size of the ships some are building this is an concern

The most effective way of getting to Mun or minmus is to use one rocket with an lander, use the same pod to return to Kerbin. Most one way trips for anything the size of a medium base or smaller can also be done this way. However if you want to land on Duna or harder places you want an separate lander.

This could be avoided with more backups, for me just the idea of updating the game without taking an full backup is surreal. As for mods, play around with the new parts a couple of days and all the mods get updated.

Some, first how fast an technology come in use is dependent on development cost and how much payback you get. Payback does not have to be profit but also usefulness. Development of fast planes stopped up as it is very expensive and has limited usefulnesses, military stopped being interested then missiles could shoot down high flying fast planes, better to go stealthy and low, civilian use is limited because of the high cost, it would only atract they who currently fly first class. Only other use is space launches where you need an very large and fast plane who again is to expensive and you have no use for the steps getting where. Technologies who will advance fast is things who don't cost to much to develop and is useful from the start. Microprocessors is one example, mobile phones another. Fusion is interesting as its the opposite, hard to do but the payoff once you get something working is large to extreme. First is power generation, rocket engines is secondary and also a bit different, an rocket engine does not have to produce lots of energy just high isp who is easier. Nanotech is one of the useful from first step technology, everything from surface treatment to processors, later you improve the technology. My guess is that later use will be sensors, chips who manipulate small stuff like dna and thin things like displays and variable surface properties, let you set reflectivity and absorption on an surface. Unlike fusion lots of this will be consumer products. Organic computers has one downside, they have to be better than existing ones to be useful this is hard, upside is that they just has to be better in one area to become interesting. This is true for many types of technology. Notice that nothing has been able to replace standard computer ram, ssd and flash can compete with standard harddrives on everything but price/GB, in the start they had only the small size, robustness and low power use benefit.

150 years ago they had enough knowledge to understand that the problem with powered flight was TWR, you needed an light and strong engine in an airplane. This was solved then the gasoline engine was getting good enough. Main issue with space is mostly the huge launch cost, but also the lack of interest. Satellites are useful and is doable with current launchers. Everything else is pure science and have limited budgets.

This look real good and is very fun, might be an way to remove derbies with to Works well now, behaves like an pulse engine should, next should be to make weight and trust more realistic, one of the main benefit of an orion engine is the huge trust however as I understand this might be hard, might even be better to return to using constant trust and add the explosions, plate animation and g-force variation on top. Another request who should be easier is to make the pulse units an transferable resource like kerthane.

Grip is an huge issue on low gravity worlds, it make the rover handle as you drive with racing tires on ice, even an issue turning as you end up drifting, the latest might give you problem is you jump and come down sideways.

The industrial revolution happened because steam engines and mass production increased productivity a lot, part of the increased productivity was reinvested into even more productivity increase. Without hydrocarbons it would be harder to get this effect and the productivity gain would be lower and perhaps getting eaten up by increased population fast, mass production would not be affected but power would probably be mostly hydro, with electricity this enables large scale industry, downside is that this will be more location dependent and have more need of an good government, this would have to last until they get nuclear. On the other hand an solar system with two planets with life would give an huge boost to space industry as it would be an huge interest in colonizing the other planet. Think an larger mars.

1) apollo was retrograde, for some reason it would make landings easier however I have no idea how. The point of free return is that you get an slight slingshot effect around the moon who will give you an landing or aerobrake path. 2) No, retroburn work best in low orbit, you want to get close for the burn. You might even want to first get into an very elliptical orbit then lowering the AP at the closest point. 3) two effects, one is that doing an small change far away will have larger impact, the other is the Oberth effect, its even more effective to adjust your PE before you reach the target SOI.

If you drop the probe pretty low at low speed it should land before you get 2.4 km away, another option is simply to turn and circle the area until it lands.

Don't add all parachutes to the command pod, try to put most on the main fuel tank, another option is to use struts between command pod and fuel tank. An picture of the ship would help. 4 parachutes should be enough,