magnemoe

Note this is more fun if you are about to do the burn to get into orbit around Mun or other places. Will not comment on all the probes I have launched for mapping kerthane and has to little battery capacity to map all of the dark side leaving an stupid horizontal band on half of the planet.

Did some testing of landable first stages in KSP, naturally to do an landing I has to switch back to first stage after decoupling. My experience was that landing again was pretty cheap, however if you dropped after gravity turn you had to use lots of fuel getting back. this could fast cost more than the 250m/s needed to land. Does not the same problem apply in real world?

Yes, they are nice then the TWR at launch is low.

Think of poor Jeb, give the man an Orion spaceship today. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom It kind of fit his personality.

Yes, using an mix of normal and nuclear engines works nice for this, keep nuclear off at liftoff, engage at 1500 meter on kerbin, start turning normal engines off during the middle of gravity turn and finish it on nuclear only. However I don't think this work so well on Eve because of the brutal TWR requirements.

The sabre has an worse exploit than the 800m/s isp in vacuum. The 23600 m/s in atmosphere, this is an normal isp for jet engines, however on Eve the sabre work like an normal rocket engine and would have an isp like one. Only way around this would be to use an nuclear jet engine like the pluto engine. You would need an small rocket engine to get you up to speed

I always mine and convert to fuel during drilling as drilling is slower if you don't use loads of drills. 4.5 orange tanks with fuel, just an small kerthane tank for drilling at night. This was used on the grand tour mission so it carries an rover for exploration. This is so large it can act as an mobile fuel depot, take it from Minmus to LKO, use it to refuel multiple ships and send it back.

Played a bit with this. One issue is that the trust is very dependent on SOI, this can be very confusing, however even 40kN free trust is nothing to complain about,

Correctly, an SSTO who is cheap to operate and can haul an useful payload is hard. Test in ksp, an mainsail and two orange tanks is an ssto, you can bring up an probe and have fun landing. Increasing the size a bit or using jet engines you can get something who take 3-7 kerbals to LKO and dock, making the thing two stages where both is able to soft land and you increase payload from 6 to around 20 with the same sized rocket. Yes but an well working scramjet would be useful for it.

Have an bussard ramjet runing on the file server

I start around 70% before, only exception is then the burn take you to far inside the atmosphere. Do not aim for perfect accuracy but do an correction burn afterward, this you want to be accurate with, you might want to do an late adjustment burn, 3-5 times the distance to sphere of influence, this to get into either equator or polar orbit and and good attitude, this is rarely needed for mun or minmus. Finaly inside SOI adjust for correct attitude and set up the burn to get into orbit.

Yes, its proven that the stars are not other suns far away but probably lights on the plane who is the inside of the sphere. Main question is how far away the inside is and that will happen if you hit it with something real fast

Eve, LV-N probe transfer stage with three probe landers and isa mapsat. Looking back it was an noob mission, get into solar orbit then burn for eve, the side mounted probes had the decopler the wrong way so the engine did not work. Dropped second probe on eve by doing an deorbit burn with the transfer stage and then burn back to orbit and managed to land. Run out of fuel on transfer stage Doing the Gilly transfer so I just let the transfer stage impact it and decopled the top lander. After switching to it I pressed space and decopled the engine and fuel from probe and parachute. All three parts impacted Gilly who is pretty impressive.

Pretty much this, mods worked well from 18 to 19, one option might be to put mod parts on dockable struts. this also let you upgrade mechjeb to 2 and add new functions in orbit. On large ships I always have an docking port for this. However changes like adding reentry damage will break existing games, this will break them independent on mods if you are incoming to Jool and has to aerobreak to get into orbit.

Use the orion to get up in speed and then activate the bussard, Jeb approve of this solution. Only downside of this is the lack of other star systems

Was thinking fuel economy, saving fuel so you can make an smaller missile. I know they don't expect to shoot many of them. Going low would also make you harder to intercept as you would has less time from lock on target to impact. Thinking of it they high angle is probably to increase accuracy, you burn upward in an angle instead of messing with gravity turn. You can not depend on GPS or ground stations during an nuclear war. it also make it easier to use multiple warheads. Before KSP I would never think of it

That is very impressive and efficient. You have an ratio of 0.16 who is pretty extreme. Did an launch My largest regular is 150 ton spare parts, on an around 2400 ton launcher. total weight to LKO is probably 250, as its reusable and with an upper stage only for docking.

Yes benefit of sas is that it keeps an jumping rover level, you need to turn it on and off the driving in hills, but overall I found it usefull

That is high, would it not be more economical do do something like an gravity turn towards target. Do this then doing suborbital jumps with landers.

Aerobraking asteroids into LKO is about as kerbal as you get.

Had they made it three man the 4.5 ton weight would be ok, but not for one kerbal. I use the cupola as bridge for large ships, having room for three and I can send on on eva and still have it manned.

The Poodle is nice for larger landers like an kertane miner, main downside is that it's to heavy. Newer used the aerospike much, for small rockets I tend to use jet first stage. Never used the ant engine, however have used the radial ant from kspx many times. Have used the 55 sometimes, but now uses the home radials however the 55 is probably easier to put on end of struts and draw pipes to. Putting 55 on radial decoupler and pipe from fuel tank is an nice way to get an 150 ton nuclear powered ships into orbit easy. Use them to get more twr during gravity turn.

Using an 180 liter tank and an typical probe payload, iso mapsat, small kertane detector and science parts you get the around 4200 m/s dV from two 24-77 and 4400m/s from the 909. the LV-N gives 4300. If you go down to an 90 liter tank, the 24-77 win with 3400m/s while the 909 gives 3150 m/s. Going up to 270 liter and the LV-N start to win with 5700 against 5400. One benefit of the 24-77 is that it's nice on landers and skycranes, one flat 2.5 meter tanks and 2-6 engines and you are set.

Is not the Alt-L just an safety against pressing space during flight. Decouple the pod from fuel and engine then inbound for an Jool aerobrake has some downsides.

For the impact it will be mostly dependent on the hit angle, hit square on with earth sized bodies and you get very little, hit on the side with not to different speed and you might get lots of the impactor in orbit. For light bodies most will end up in solar orbit.