magnemoe

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.

Not so huge, i think. clue would be to use an combination of nuclear and standard engines. do deorbit and braking with nuclear, activate chemical for final decent. and turn off shortly after gravity turn.

Has used rotation in deep space never during launch as it make the rocket to hard to control.

An 6+1 aspargus with large gray tank+ orange tank and mainsails should not have much problem lifting this to orbit. You might want to use an nuclear upper stage who you can use from circulating to Mun deborbit burn, it has the benefit of also being easy to use on the Gilly launch.

it makes launches easier, also it much easier to refuel in orbit than to build something stable. True, however you don't want to push more than an large gray tank with an LV-N that is no problem to lift with mainsail main stage with two boosters. If you want to move 100 ton you want at least 5. run in parallel with an mainsail it will increase isp with 25%, you activate it at 2000 meter, here the isp is better than chemical. Also for long cargo the rocket can easy become very unstable, this is the main reason I launched the base like this.

Remember my first Minmus encounter, I had already put an probe in Mun orbit and tested how low I could get However Minmus has an smaller SOI so getting where was more of an problem. Probe core, medium 1.25 meter tank and LV-N, probably an RTG. I understood how to use the maneuverer nodes to increase and decrease speed, so I planned an burn, did not know how to plan sideway movement so I did small sideway burns on random to try to get as close as possible until I was on collision course, I had probably not figured this out as the orbit continued and was changed by Minmus so I believed I was safe. As Minmus became larger and larger I realized something was wrong, the orbit also passed inside the moon so I did not like the look of this. At this point my small random burn did not change stuff much so I gave up, Found I could just as well burn retrograde to get an better view of Minmus before crashing. I went lower and lower and was at the height of the surrounding mountains then I noticed I was going up not down. Switched to map view and found I was on an suborbital path so I was able to get into orbit. by trusting some more and then circulate.

As you can only control one booster you lose the other, you also lose the upper stage if you control the booster, so this is just proof of concept and role playing. as the landing fuel is stored separately I don't have to think about it during normal launches Current falcon 9R will recover the first stage, long term plan is to recover the second also. For falcon heavy the boosters should be very attractive to recover as they are dropped earlier than the normal first stage, the first stage is released higher but have no idea how high. As SpaceX plan to launch from Texas they might be able to land in Florida One thing I learned was that return to pad cost a lot of dV, you have to cancel horizontal movement and give you enough speed to get back, yes if you wait with the burn until you get lower most of the horizontal speed has gone but you has twice as long to get back and air resistance, you only need around 200m/s to land

Yes its an later generation orion pulse engine, using small fusion explosions. no the fusion does not go break even, however it greatly improve isp and trust, you need power to trigger them. My main concern is how reliable the engine is. This is also an major headake for traditional orion, however here its mostly mechanic stress.

You could probably fit Jeb inside and he would enjoy the ride but not the landing. As for stealth, you could shoot it down with an good air defense system, however the speed helps as if you can not detect it from decent distance it will pass fast. Stealth is just to make you harder to see on radar. And yes hopeless to talk about passenger planes, first use is missiles, then this work you start to think of space launches. Then this is economical and safe you start to think of passenger planes.

My tips for putting heavy motherships into orbit is let the ship work for you. add some extra engines on it, the rockomax 55 radial engine is nice for this. Put them on radial decoupler and decouple before circulating. This will get the ship pretty empty to orbit so you have to refuel it. Yes it uses novapunch but this could also be done with multiple mainsails. Even better is to let the nuclear engines help from 2000 meter and up. try to put the ship in the center of the asparagus. the two last boosters is then both helping you getting trust and fuel the nuclear engines. Launching an base to Gilly, nuclear engine is activated by hotkey.

Yes, I put the shutdown and disconnect jet first stage on the brake key then imported it from subassembly. I honestly did not think the stock rovers has an parking brake. It look like it work different from the moded rovers. You can only activate it while standing still on stock.

Where is this at the north pole? Can you prove that, sounds suspicious.

LOL. I did not knew the stock rovers had parking brakes. anyway it worked well afterward. that is until I managed to crash during an speed test where I managed to land wrong after an jump.

I made an new roverlander craft, an lander on wheels who also work as rover, after testing at spaceport, both driving and landing I sent it to Minmus. Here however it refuses to move, all wheels are intact, it has power, the steering work, rcs, lights and ladder work but not movement. Yes it has probe cores so it does not required crew. Has tried to restart game but it does not help. Screenshots and information. Any tips? Small probe rovers work.

Very cool, now put some rocket engines on the pod, and you can probably take it to orbit, Anakin was unable to do that

Drills can stand everywhere, does not need to be connected to the kethane tanks, not sure how deep they have to go but if you put them near the bottom of tanks they should reach ground, you will see an drill effect. However you get this even if you don't have kethane, to check if you have kethane underground and did not overfly the deposit, go to another ship or tracking center and back, start up the detector and look at the map for deposit size. If you overfly it will show the size of the last deposit until you exit and enter.

Very low trust engines has problems in KSP as we don't want to run drives for weeks with only x4 warp. this is not an problem in real world where it does not matter if the engine runs for one hour or one month for an long trip. Problem with something like daedalus is that it's marginal capable of reaching an close star, however it would be vastly overpowered inside a solar system.

Already in the game. Try to take an large ship in for Jool aerobraking, using high warp all the time. The invisible aliens at Jool surface tries to get the ship into landing, then reaching surface the aliens eat it.

Tested this a bit, using the novapunch parts as I want an useful payload, else I could just as well used an jet powered first stage. This takes 70 ton to 100km. Main issue was that the first stage would either has to be dropped before or early in gravity turn, or very late. I ended up using two boosters who is dropped before gravity turn and an main stage who is dropped at the end and can land on another continent. Optionally if the cargo is light I might let it go into orbit and deorbit to land at spaceport. At launchpad. Landing booster at spaceport. Main stage flight path, I braked a bit to land on ground. Landing main stage The top of the stages is the reentry packages, contains fuel for landing, mechjeb autopilot. rcs and gyros. I might reduce the size for the boosters as they don't need so much fuel, just enough to brake from 140m/s then landing. For an even heavier rocket I might use four boosters.

Tips, use an jet only first stage. for an payload as this 6 engines, central fuel stage, pipes to engines on struts. use the 2-1 adapter on top of each engine and two ram intakes. Now you need an action group to both shut down the jet engines, decouple the first stage and you can just as well start second as well fire up second stage as well. For second stage use two lv30 on tanks as side boosters for the nuclear stage to get enough trust to get you in orbit.