magnemoe

Sold a lot of KSP licences so he can by an truckload of bananas.

I have got it to work some times, mostly out of luck. Note an return from Minmus while low on fuel/ rcs only can be helped by Mun, Jool slingshot can take you to Laythe without Jool aerobrake and then raise orbit for an Laythe intercept. Note Laythe atmosphere is thinner than Kerbin and mechjeb mess up with +6Km/s incoming but its fun an Jeb loves it.

Done more testing with ion engines, they have an sweat spot for around 1 ton probes, large solar panel, 2-3 xenon tanks probe, control an medium battery, isa and kertane mapper. This give 4-6Km/s dV. Next step down is ant engine and oscar tanks but it would give you less than 1000 m/s and is only good for adjusting orbit. Going up in size you TWR drops from 0.2 who is livable and fast downward against 0.1 and below. So if you want to bring an lander or more gear you will fast be better off with an LV-N and a 4-6 ton craft. As solar panels and engines is most of your weight, adding more will not improve things much.

Using an balloon to get up to 20 km I was able to get out with around 6.000 m/s, the thick atmosphere is the real killer on Eve and the balloon turn it into an good thing.

The new Kerbal attachments system has an winch with an grappling hook I wonder if this could be used to grab it, however it require an surface. Perhaps the monolith could be used?

Tylo would be an serious challenge. harder than Kerbin. However I wonder if an combination of nuclear and chemical engines would be an good idea. Use both nuclear and chemical for last part of landing. and first part of takeoff, run only nuclear the rest of the time. And yes you do not need an TWR of 1 then starting to deorbit, just on the final part.

RTG is to power probe bodies and science packs, not to run ion engines or large trucks. just as it is in real world. Ion engines are to strong, this is for gameplay reasons as we can not use week long burns. They are a bit to weak still, perhaps scale up 5 times. RTC is to strong, again this might be gameplay reason as most is wasted. Something like an mechjeb smartass who controlled it would be nice. Using torque combined with variable trust to offset center of trust/ weight errors and prefer torque for minor rotations.

The Russians even used this for their space shuttle. Granted the shuttle is far shorter and wider than the Saturn 5. Not sure how its done for falcon 9, ariane and other medium sized rockets.

I use an mod with a 5Kn ion drive, 10 times more powerful, heavier but not 10 times. I used two of them to put an probe in 18 km orbit around the sun. 9 tanks with 3000 units xenon, 6 can be dropped, the solar panes are larger than stock, now I would need three around Kerbin but close to the sun they are almost 10 times more effective so one would be enough. Not sure how much you get with solar panels around Jool but it would be interesting for an mapping probe with lots of small jumps between the moons. For probes to Eve and Moho they should be considered as you don't need much solar panels.

Launch to orbit first, you might save some dV by doing an direct launch however the liftoff is the most critical phase and is often delayed so you want to keep the craft in orbit for some time before the burn, this also gives time to check things out and do stuff like unfolding solar planes and antennas. You do not use an moon slingshot as you can launch in any angle anyway. Has you ever used Mun this way in KSP, here you can use it then returning from Minmus.

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.