Specialist290

I think we can safely say that the info in this thread doesn't really have any bearing on the current state of the game. Therefore, I'm going to close this. On a side note: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you see a thread that you suspect has been necro'ed without adding useful, relevant and timely content, use the Report Post function. Don't keep bumping it.

One thing that's sort of always at the back of my mind when I read these discussions but that never seems to actually get brought up: What about Minmus? Discounting the fact that KSP itself doesn't run on n-body physics at the moment, would the presence of a second moon of Minmus's size and mass be gravitationally significant enough to complicate the picture in a realistic model as compared to the (relatively) simple one we have in the real world for just the Earth-Moon-Sun arrangement?

Welcome (back) to the forums, and glad to hear you've been enjoying yourself You're probably an old pro at flying rockets, but if you need to dust off a few of the cobwebs, or if you need help figuring out any of the newer features, feel free to ask questions here on the forums.

Actually, no. A few of the "Little Joe" tests for Apollo involved in-flight LES separation, including one where the rocket spontaneously disassembled (obviously not in the flight plan) but the LES did its job anyway. The only instance of a manned flight requiring an LES activation to abort an actual mission, however, was indeed off the launchpad.

To add an extra little tidbit that might help with calculating delta-v on the fly: Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer both have 0.005 tonnes of mass per unit. Thus, you can simplify matters a bit by taking your craft's current mass, then adding up the total amount of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer and plug those numbers into the following formula derived from the rocket equation: delta_v = 9.82 * Isp * Ln(M / M - (0.005 * (liquid_fuel + oxidizer))) Where M = the craft's current total mass. (For some odd reason, the game uses 9.82 m/s^2 as the value for standard surface gravity rather than 9.81 or something close to it. All credit for this formula goes to maltesh, who's the one who shared it with me eons ago.)

It's always nice to see new content in the Tutorials forum, especially when it's this informative I''ll have to use this as a guide for my own forays into spaceplane building -- I've never really been that good at it, but referencing this should definitely help me with troubleshooting my designs.

Pretty much going to second Sirine's conclusion here. From what information I've been able to fish out on the matter, the hydrodynamics of the oceans are even more abstract and simplified than the aerodynamics of the atmosphere, meaning if you're expecting it to behave like regular water would, you're going to be in for a rude awakening.

Glad to see this is coming along nicely. Also, looks like you might want to think about setting up an unmanned fuel depot around Duna before you send the Raven out that way, just in case...

I really do think that some of you are taking this challenge way more importantly than it really deserves to be. I'd highly encourage everyone to relax and wait for shoveycat to make a ruling on the craft himself, since he's the best judge of both his own guidelines and the intent behind them. If he accepts it, fantastic. If not, there's nothing stopping anyone whose entry is disqualified from making a new entry that better adheres to the letter and spirit of the guidelines shoveycat has posted. Remember, everyone, we're here to enjoy ourselves by testing our skills

There's no real need for two threads on the same subject to be active at the same time, especially when this one is in the wrong subforum to begin with. I'd advise anyone who wants to continue this discussion do so at the thread linked in the OP. Thread closed. Have a nice day

Semi-deployment (i.e. "reefed" state) is dependent on atmospheric pressure, while full deployment is dependent on altitude above the surface. I believe you can adjust those figures to whatever suits your needs with the new tweakables system, however. You might find this table helpful in that regard. (Ignore the fact that it uses "density" where it should say "pressure"; I've been meaning to fix that for a while now.)

I'll admit that I've personally fallen into the "Here's a mod that does what you're asking for" trap without further discussion from time to time, but most of the time (for myself at least; can't speak for others, of course) I haven't meant it as a rebuff to their idea, but more as a suggestion that until the idea is confirmed / officially rejected, there is something that the OP in question might want to take a look at in the meantime. That said, I'll definitely take into account how it might sound to someone who doesn't know my motives offhand in the future.

Nicely done! Like your first Mun landing, your first Duna mission tends to stick with you (or at least it did for me).

Unfortunately, as roleplaying is forbidden on these forums, I'll have to lock this thread. You can find further explanation here as to why we take this stance. If you'd like to restart this as a straight, non-roleplaying AAR, feel free to open a new topic for it. Alternately, if you're still attached to the roleplaying aspect, then you might find this website to be more receptive to what you plan on doing. Have a nice day

Agreed. There's something endearing about the way they'll gaze at their surroundings with the biggest, goofiest grins on their faces

Unfortunately, I think the proposed guidelines on this one are a bit too vague to make them reasonable standards for meaningful competition. I'd recommend you review the Challenge Submission Guide and think about ways you can have a clearly measurable means of comparison before trying again. Have a nice day

Certainly a harrowing mission there! Surely Jeb's sacrifice has not been in vain, however.

Welcome to the forums! When you're just starting out, you really don't have to know so much what "ln" is exactly as what to do with it when you get to that step. Basically, for now, just remember "Divide total mass by dry mass, then push the 'ln' key on your calculator and multiply that by exhaust velocity." When I was first starting out with figuring out how delta-v calculations work myself, I came across this page on Atomic Rockets that I think does a good job on explaining how the rocket equation works in layman's terms, as well as its companion page on applying those principles to multi-stage rockets. Another set of pages you might find helpful regarding the subject might be the "Orbital Mechanics - Basics" articles over at MyKSPCareer.com, which discuss the concepts specifically from a KSP perspective. Hope this helps!

At this stage, it's mostly a matter of practice, but a few specific areas you might want to work on: About how fast is your final velocity at the moment of contact? Ideally, the slower you're going right before touchdown, the "softer" a landing you'll have. How good are you at gauging the terrain at your landing site? Are you able to make small steering corrections during your descent to avoid slopes and other possible hazards? What do your landers tend to look like? Are they tall and slender, or do you make them fairly wide to give yourself a wider landing leg base (and thus better stability on the ground)? Hope this helps

I can pretty reliably make orbit on ~4500 delta-v, so I usually fine-tune my launchers to have around that much (and usually try to plan for the last stage to be capable of deorbiting itself -- gotta keep space clean, after all). For interplanetary transfers, I generally try to give myself a buffer of ~10-25% extra of what the delta-v chart says, for miscellaneous corrections. Similarly, for landers, I'll aim for ~25-50% extra, since I take the "slow and steady" approach to landing most of the time rather than relying on hair-trigger suicide burns. For takeoff after landing, I'll typically add another 10% extra or so (since it's not as critical to have a buffer as it is for landings). Of course, these are very approximate guidelines, and sometimes I'll use more or less buffer depending on how confident I am with a given target.

I've got pretty well-defined personalities for the original three in my head: Jebediah is always the Fearless Leader, eternally calm, cool, and collected. He'll sometimes act like the semi-sociopathic screwball we all know and love when he's around "fresh meat" to keep them on their toes, but he knows when it's time to buckle down and get serious, too. Bill is Jebediah's "lancer," always there to critique Jeb's plans for things that might go wrong. He and Jeb make a big show of not getting along, but they both have an great deal of respect for one another (especially since Bill is one of the few kerbonauts who will tell Jebediah he's wrong to his face and not mince words about it). He also plays the "good cop" to Jebediah's "wacky cop" around new pilots, although he can get a bit grumpy when the newbie Just Doesn't Get It. Bob is sort of the Quiet One, as well as the group's designated scientific expert. He doesn't like it when Jebediah and Bill argue and largely prefers to be left alone with his experiments. He also gets motion-sick rather easily. That said, he opens up when he's talking about something he's passionate about... at which point the issue becomes getting him to shut up before he bores everyone to death about minutiae that few other than him truly understand or care about.

As purpletarget has already done me the kindness of plugging my own little project, I'm going to return the favor by seconding his recommendation of the Krash Test Kerbals video series, as it is indeed quite a handy resource if you want to dig into the nuts and bolts of how the game's physics work. On the subject of atmospheric drag in particular: A while back I was working with another user on testing and debugging an atmospheric drag calculator, and we managed to fine-tune the aerodynamic equations to be quite precise for a simple 2D prograde / retrograde simulator. Unfortunately, around the time we started working on translating it into an actual plugin that could run 3D predictions based on direct input from the game itself, he got busy, and I haven't heard anything from him since. I'll have to see if I can get in touch with him again and if he's still up for continuing the plugin.

To put it still another way: Specific impulse is essentially a measure of how long it will take for a given engine to burn a given measure of fuel assuming a constant amount of thrust. Purpletarget has a rather excellent video on the subject as part of his "Krash Test Kerbals" series, and I'd highly recommend you look at if you want a demonstration of what exactly that means.

Just found these old pics from back when I first played the 0.13.3 demo: Almost seems like a lifetime ago since I fired that up.

Closing this thread at the OP's request