Francesco

you're right, the higher you are the easier it gets since the ships move slower, but it's also less efficient. I usually stay below 100 km. what matters more to me, though, is the difference in altitude, and thus in speed, between the two ships: while you can go straight to rendezvous from launchpad if you're accurate enough, I prefer putting ship #2 on a lower orbit (let's say, 10 to 20 km lower), so that I can perform the rendezvous burn when I'm 25 to 50 km behind ship #1.

no need to guess, we already know, the devs can't keep any secrets from us KSPX won't likely be fully implemented (yet), but I bet we'll also see the 2.5m "Atlas" engine in 0.20.

no, going straight up is never the best option. the only thing you could do would be to go directly to kerbin ejection/duna injection without circularizing your orbit first, but the gains in terms of efficiency are small and such a maneuver requires a high level of accuracy.

well you can actually go even smaller than that, I remember seeing something like this on the forums: that gets to orbit in a single stage as well. but I wanted something more aesthetically pleasing.

too good to be true?

there are a lot of ways to get rid of debris. there is no way to hide it on the map, at the moment. but you can easily target your station by using a plugin like haystack: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/haystack/

SSTO satellite: goes by itself all the way from launchpad to LKO

okay, but... what does qualify an entry as better than the others? how does one win this challenge?

it's not essential, nor it is minimalist no problem putting it into orbit with an adequate rocket, though. the question is, do you need to bring that specific lander to the Mun, or just a generic 3-seat lander? also, does your lander fire its engines to transfer from Kerbin to the Mun, or does it need to be carried there with full tanks?

here's my entry: 91.652 tons on the launchpad, payload fraction 16.366%. I used the payload from my previous post. the core stage has 2x LV-T30 and 1x LV-T45. the lifter itself, therefore, weights just a little more than 76 tons. it gets to orbit with only ~40 m/s left:

Those of you who are on imgur may have already seen this... http://imgur.com/gallery/AFmhnGr LOL P.S. Welcome back on Earth Chris!

here's a payload that weights exactly 15 tons, and has a purpose also: basically a small fuel depot with probe, electrical system and RCS. we could use that as the standard payload for the challenge.

I knew it anyway, I could sort of cheat by putting a command pod and an ASAS module on the payload itself rather than on the lifter part of the rocket, thus making it easier to pilot... maybe we should have a specific rule about that.

uhmmm... is the payload tank going to be full by the time you reach orbit, sjwt?

this should be a request thread in the spacecraft exchange: how is one supposed to win this? one thing could be payload fraction: for a 15t payload, an efficient lifter should weight around 80-85t.

I still hear both. the medium sized (0.05 tons) landing legs produce a sound when deployed, while the big ones (0.1 tons) don't. and the parachutes produce 2 sounds, first when deployed, and then a more "violent" one when they fully open. what I actually miss from 0.17 is the sepratrons sound - now it's effing annoying

Duna is the easiest planet to reach, people say it's Eve but that doesn't account for orbital inclination change: for Duna it's only 0.1°. with some careful piloting, you can get there for something like 5500-5600 m/s: 1050-1100 for the ejection burn, plus pennies for a correction burn. Jason already gave you thorough advice, I would add this: you can get a nice equtorial orbit when arriving on Duna with a single, stress-free correction burn, by doing that at the AN or DN node (shown by setting Duna as target): 99% of the time, that would be outside Kerbin's sphere of influence, as you're orbiting the Sun. at this time, you can also roughly set your desired periapsis for aerobraking: usually in the 10-12km range. lower than that, and you'll probably go straight to landing I say roughly because if you're still very far from Duna, even a little puff of RCS can change your periapsis height noticeably, so you may not be able to be sufficiently precise right away. therefore, another very small correction burn may be necessary a little before you encounter Duna's SOI or just after you've entered it: this is to fine-tune your periapsis as mentioned above, and set it to the desired value. in general, use the maneuver nodes: take your time to play around with them once you're in LKO, move the handle slightly forward and back and see how your "closest approach" value changes.

PB-Ion Electric Propulsion System a.k.a. ion engine there are no "must have" utility parts: a parachute is useful on Kerbin, but totally useless on the Mun. the only must have parts that I know of are boosters

great work, will definitely use this. last time I went to Eve, I dropped a pod and wrote down terminal velocities at various altitudes, but forgot about pressure values. no need for another launch thanks to this and yes, the data on the wiki is correct.

I would say yes, since it's powered by a LV-N. but questions like "Will this make it all the way to Duna/Eve/Jool?" are best answered by knowing the delta-v of the ship, not by knowing the fuel carried.

yup, solar panels generate half of their power when you are near Jool than when you are near Kerbin. but I second your question about using ion engines for travelling to outer planets: since you do the escape burn on the dark side of Kerbin, how do you guys manage to do this? batteries, batteries and more batteries? if my math is correct, a 4 minutes periapsis kick consumes 2880 units of electricity at full throttle.

yeah that thing likes to misbehave, try rotating it (wasdqe) and attach it in a direction different from the "fresh out of the box" one. it should become green.

the real question is, wasn't the face of Duna buried into the ground? how come you can still see it??

before 0.19, I built a stock SCUD launcher which I considered to be pretty cool. while on the ground, it was powered by two 24-77s and it steered by RCS, but because of this, its range was quite limited. now that we have rover wheels available, I've upgraded it to a new version: also, coolness factor +100 for the atmospheric FX. here are the craft files, if you're interested: SCUD - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23334071/SCUD.craft SCUD [0.19.1] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23334071/SCUD%202.craft about the first weapon system I posted (the W.T.F.): I consider it an unfinished project, but here it is anyway: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23334071/WTF.craft

this is either a case of bad trolling, or bad humour. dismissed.