magnemoe

You would want something like the 1.3 ton mercury pod, you might be able to cut some weight using modern materials and electronic. An falcon 1 might take an slimmed down version to LEO.

Long since I had problem with this, however I have had problems with kertane mapping from low orbit as it use decent with power and the low orbit gives lots of shadow so it run out of power at the end of the shadow leaving an unmapped strip. I always add some RTG on larger ship but don't like them on small probes, here I usualy use four small flat solar panels, a small battery and 1 or 2 larger solar panels. Back in the beginning I launched an mun orbiter who only used two small solar panels. I lost control over it for long time as it was angeled wrong.

Here is one simple one. another view seperatron trigger on decouple, I always put the fins on top as the off center drag help separate them, with only four boosters I would not use seperatrons here. Another tips I did not use here is to make the booster larger than the main stage to get better TWR Shows this well, this use three way symmetry because of the design of the base. six long boosters three shorter ones, an nuclear transfer stage I start at 5000m. Idea here is that the outer boosters don't lift the cargo, only the fuel. the three inner ones is responsible for lifting the base so you give them less fuel. Base at Gilly keept the skycrane on top so I can move it. Yes the skycrane is overkill as I can also land it on Mun.

I have an problem with small probes and probe landers. They rotate so fast they are hard to control. The opposite problem from usual:) with SAS they stop fast but rotate as fast as before, rcs will increase the weight to much. Talking about things below two ton here. Any ideas?

At work today I read the forum and somebody talked about low sun orbit, I made a ship just to test and ended up in 14x18 km sun orbit My first Minmus orbiter almost landed as in was below 2000 meter. I did not understand the idea of lateral trust so then I was on impact path I thought I would crash. I burned and got away and into orbit.

Has used kertane a lot, Minmus is the most obvious target as the low gravity makes it cheap to get stuff up, an perfect waystation for refueling ships who leaves the system. Mun has higher gravity making it harder to get heavy loaded miners off, larger engines and you burn more of the fuel. Gilly is another nice target for filling up Eve landers before they go down. This depend a bit on how the resources are distributed. Gilly might be poor of resources. Laythe on the other hand will be easy as you can just crack seawater.

ION engines are not an good example, in real world ion engines have week long burns, this does not work in KSP so they has to accelerate an probe reasonable well while being weak enough to not be exploitable.

I found that the easiest way is to first use one decoupler, add tank and then small tank and engine, struts on it. then remove the entire booster and add the needed number. this makes it easier to adjust height.

Moho don't have an atmosphere, you could use Eve, however I doubt its cost effective. Now if you used an mothership as first stage you could mine on Moho to get the fuel, however I doubt you would not save more than 25% of the dV budget on the probe.

Did it, is in 14x18 km solar orbit. Orbital still takes 6h 49m. I acutaly ended up with 1000 m/s dV left. Did this the simple way, burned from LKO, first an 500m/s burn to avoid Mun, this also gave me an longer second burn close to kerbin, Continued to burn until PE around sun was 100KM, did multiple braking burns around sun. Ship was launched with 1+6 orange+ medium gray tanks and mainsails. Nuclear stage used one LV-NB 150KN nuclear engine, large gray tank and two simlar drop tanks. Ion stage used two PB-ION 5Kn engines, and 9 PB-x300 3000 units xenon tanks where 6 could be dropped. The ion engines might have a bit to high TWR, however I carried two solar panels on struts I did not need.

Using some stronger ion engines from an mod, together with larger solar panels who I didn't need so I manage an TWR of 0.15. Even better I will manage low solar orbit. mechjeb messed up the calculations because the xenon drop tanks. Most frustrating thing now is that most of my orbit is so low I has to use physical warp.

testing this now, should be doable with an nuclear first and an ion upper stage. Unfortunately I used to large solar panels and not enough xenon gas so I can not reach an circular 100-200km orbit. Using droptanks on both stages.

I always put them on top facing inward. As you are under trust the bottom part is below your rocket a fraction of an second after decoupling, the top part might hit the center stage or usualy the other boosters and the top placement let you only use one and and the seperatron rotate it outward. You might get warning messages about damage on center booster but has never gotten any problems with it even with two orange tanks length boosters. Only time I had problems was then dropping boosters without trust, rocket underway to Eve and Gilly, kept the last two boosters as drop tanks for the nuclear engine. During the adjustments for aerobraking they run dry so I press space while not under trust, the boosters rotated around center of mass and their tops hit and destroyed the nuclear engine, I should have separated them manually and done a short burn to get away. First pass aerobraked nicely, the second pass was an crash, I managed to land the Eve lander, but the mapper and Gilly probe was lost.

Horizontal speed of a couple m/s is not an huge issue, its just an problem on small probe landers who tend to rotate to fast making accurate burns hard. My issue is that I tend to chicken and brake to early. One benefit of landing on Kerbal is the atmosphere, it also kill horizontal speed for you so you can pretty much leave asas on and just brake.

One thing you can do is to dock an strut with extra solar panels on, I have done this to add extra functions like protractor to ships so many times the large ones always have an docking port for this use.

yes activating RCS then mechjeb leaves warp and turn it off then its done turning would probably solve this. has this issue myself with an huge rocket who deliver 150 ton spare parts. so I need to turn 270 ton, during circulation I drop the main stage leaving just the 200 ton upper stage.

Landing an base on Gilly Yes it was an successful landing. An larger basemodule 2 on Laythe

Yes, mechjeb has issues, her its that it don't align the ship before doing the circulation burn and a masive ship uses a long time to turn, one way is to use mechjeb for launch but turn off warp, add an node at AP and do the burn, you might use mechjeb circulate to get an rounder orbit then done, works well if the ship is aligned correctly.

This is my current design. 9 large gray tanks, equivalent to 4.5 orange tanks. Just two drills, I should have 4 to increase speed. optionally manned and carry an small rover I can redock and take with me. This was for the grand tour challenge, would replace it with more drills if it was just used for mining. Able to land and take off everywhere but need to mine before taking off on Kerbin, Laythe and Tylo.

Also note that the rovers roll for a long time then after throttled down. you need zero speed to go to space center with an rover not just no throttle.

This is common strategy. I even found that trim tanks are a good idea. I would recommend using quantum or docking struts on your ship, it pretty much removes wobbling.

More like going to Jool and crash with Duna, geting the Mun to mess up you Minmus launches is to easy.

An very simple design is the orange tank on top of an small gray with an mainsail below, use 2-4 struts to connect the gray tank with the orange. use 4 or 6 booster with orange+ large gray tank in asparagus. Now if I want to launch an huge interplanetary ship I either use the nuclear engines on it as the center of the asparagus or add dropable engines on it. Far easier to refuel than to build in orbit.

makes perfect sense as an addition on an probe lander, put one of this on a side and decople it after landing. Put the science instruments on the lander. use it to look around the landing place or close up of an abnormality.

Depend, keep LKO clear, this mostly consist of deorbiting the upper stages. My moon missions created lots of junk from the transfer stages until I found it was trivial to deorbit them but got lots of junk in solar orbit.