magnemoe

This is an KSP shipyard. The huge bay is just to make it look like an dock, this has the capability to build over 300 tons ships, dry weight if I fuel them in orbit who I would do for anything larger. Huge engines as it weight over 600 ton filled with spare parts, if empty I can send it to Jool.

first will an fusion engine work in the atmosphere? if you use an beam of charged particles from an polywell or the classical torus they will be generated in an vacuum chamber air will get in thought the hole and the process will stop. The second idea is an pulsed drive, it might work however the air might mess thing up, its also pretty low trust and require an separate reactor or solar panels to power it.

take an series of pictures during launch, pad, booster separation, main stage separation You will probably want to do an night launch as you can then remove the black easy. Now take an picture or Kerbin from orbit. Reduce size of the launch pictures and add.

Yes and it make it interesting that they selected this design, it probably made the stage lighter and cheaper with the higher drag less of an issue.

One problem with high trust is that it might cause structural faults. main example is telescoping main stage during circulating orbit. as the stage is almost empty and have an huge mainsail it causes an high g-force, this might get the rocket to collapse. as with 5g the cargo is pushing 5 times as hard on the main stage than it did at the pad.

I really love the execute node function. I wanted to go to the Mun, mechjeb set up an path. I modified it to get an polar orbit with an nice and close pe, execute. inside mun soi, I made the pass more polar, then I made an node to get into orbit. executed it, close to ap I was in correct height so I circulated.

Falcon 9 was able to launch with one engine out once. Falcon heavy will fuel 3 of it main engines with fuel from boosters. should still have engine out while crossfeed however it complicate stuff. Engine and dry weight is main reason why its so useful in KSP in short you have low twr. Try to put something like an orange tank in orbit and you find that an serial stacked rocket will be far heavier. Parallel stacking in real world is mostly used as an cheap way to get more cargo capacity on an rocket. In real world you can also use different trust on boosters and main stage, launch something with mechjeb with plenty of solid boosters and watch mechjeb pull the throttle far back to reduce drag loss. Now think if you could do this with liquid boosters.

Yes you can, downside is that you have to transfer fuel manually to inner stage and drop the outer. However its pretty pointless. most of the mass of an ion probe is engines and solar panels and you main problem is low twr, you might want to drop empty tanks, going close to the sun you might also want to drop unneeded solar panels.

Yes I was thinking delta clipper then I saw it, I always add decopler and chutes as an emergency function if I use to much fuel and is unable to land or other problems. I was testing the jet design and found that the basic jet engines work better for jet first stages then the turbojet. Probably as your speed is pretty low all the way and your main concern is trust at takeoff. With two ram intakes I was able to go to 17 km before switching to rockets.

Elegant design, much lighter than my jet ssto. That engines are you using?

Yes, he also used an nuclear ramjet to get out from Jupiter again. Probably used that one to generate heating for the balloon to, this has some issues like the configuration of the intake so this work from low speed up to escape speed. An simple balloon probe should work well, but you would be under time limit, inflate and heat the balloon before going to deep. In KSP I have used balloons to get out of both Eve and Jool, sendt down an probe to try to mine for kerthane on Jool, it did not work, Planing of doing an large Eve mission with an airship. My first mission used the balloons to get up to 20km, but with an electrical propel I would have an airship.

Yes, typical use is like then I landed on Moho north pole while the mothership was in equator orbit. Raise AP high where your orbit intercept, burn to align them and burn to circulate at PE, a bit more complicated as I wanted to match up with the mothership

Why, unless its a manned mission or you want to see how fast you can go or similar its just as well to keep it small. However it look like you forgotten the solar panels?

Thanks, and yes I have sent multiple probes, and perhaps 10 tries with unmanned exit burns. I had an deck with an probe and pod to lower down below 0 attitude. Later I found it was not dangerous to go below 0 meter except camera issues. Think I needed over 10.000m/s, ejected everything not needed to get out, used balloons to over 40 km and activated engine. One benefit over Eve is that gravity is only 0.7. Main problem is that atmosphere goes to almost 200km, and you need an orbital speed of 5800m/s at 200 km. As Jool is so huge the gravity turn is long and you spend long time in the upper atmosphere. I should probably have put me in a 300km orbit or even higher to reduce time in it. If I do it again i will use more nuclear engines, Probably the kspx 150 Kn nuclear engine, as center stage, then some asparagus with LV-30 for more trust. Current design was based on my Eve exit rocket with an larger upper stage. I even tried to send an probe down and tried to drill for kertane on Jool. it did not work. I did the ladder tricks to get in and out of the decent capsule on my Jool lander it worked well.

I always use Protractor as an guide, then to launch and estimated angle, then I make an node and burn after it. Trying to burn blind with low TWR is likely to be expensive to fix. The important thing with moho is to get the intercept at the pe of the solar orbit to reduce the speed as much as possible. Going to Eve its not so important as you will aerobrake, for Dres and Eeloo you move pretty slowly anyway but putting your orbit inside Moho's give you an serious speed. My first attempt came in in over 6000m/s, no chance of getting into orbit so I tried to land

Had an Laythe encounter who was over 6000m/s, main issue with it was that mechjeb landing autopilot was unable to find an attitude who put me in orbit, either I would pass or land and I did not want to cut it to close, however I started to brake at once I was out of the atmosphere, a 500 m/s burn put me in orbit and the next aerobrake gave me an low orbit. An Jool aerobrake with laythe encounter whould be more expensive. Its best to slingshot around Jool so you catch up with laythe but this is not always posible.

As they are more fun and versatile than probes. Mind you I use more probes than Kerbals. with the new KAS mod manned present become far more important as they can connect cables to anything even debris, this let you haul stuff away, or dock with things without docking ports.

With planning I always test landers and rovers at spaceport. I also launch huge structures unmanned as they have far more problems during launch than manrated ssto. Use mechjeb to get delta-v for stages and landers. But I don't detail plan huge multi goal missions, my grand tour had plenty of improvisation, like checking out the hole at the north pole of Moho, even sent an Kerbal down to 10 meter over the surface of Jool and back with an special launcher / airship I sent while the grand tour was on way to Duna.

Also [] is on US keyboards, other languages might use other setup, the button right of P is one of them.

I often do the same, but dependent on fuel left, if its just an fraction I tend to drop during circulating. Another option is to give the stage an small probe core and four small solar panels and drop it with 50 dV left. this is enough to deorbit it with an high AP who is typical for transfer stages. If not transfer stages is usualy used for the deorbit burn.

LV-N is an fission rocket, fusion should work but is pretty marginal for star travel while making travel inside the system very easy. One reason for an jump/ hyperdrive might be that they can increase performance by unloading the kerbal solar system with ships from memory and load the new system. On going back the fast forward, to current time, easy if they separate out the few crafts who might get into other SOI for analyze. An satelite in LKO would just require placement, something an orbit from LEO to outside Mun will have to be simulated for the duration.

Yes burn with low trust to empty tanks or use mods if you want to match up with an tanker in orbit. This also let you have some fuel in tanks, like letting an miner go to minmus. You can also use this mod to let an mothership spawn probes. Thanks for this update.

Should work but was not reliable for me with my Jool decent missions so I put down ladders everywhere. http://imgur.com/qLGX4FW http://imgur.com/5T9heU6 http://imgur.com/NG7ZFzM It was an manned mission with the purpose of sampling jool surface. Jool exit make Eve exit look simple. You has to reach an orbital speed of 5800 at 200km, below you are still in the atmosphere. Only benefit is that the gravity is low so you can use nuclear.

I do this to, benefit is that all the boosters are aligned perfectly and you only has to strut one booster. Downside is that you has to add fuel lines one and one and sort out decoplers and seperatrons manualy.

As for base building, one way would be an option to recreate spaceport somewhere else, either on an base or in orbit. This should be possible, system need to keep track of part at base. One mod, orbital construction does part of this, it enables you to create an dock, you launch raw materials to it and can spawn the constructed ship at it, this will remove raw materials equal to the weight of the ship. Resources is coming, guess domes to. for the mega scal project no, engine will not suport it and the scale is much larger than practical in the game.