Specialist290

Again, I'd imagine that KER is using idealized circular orbits rather than the actual elliptical ones.

Nice to see this is being maintained! Incidentally, NathanKell, I posted a ModuleManager config set in the previous thread to put the Deadly Reentry parts somewhere on the stock tech tree. If you want to, feel free to use it as the basis for your own efforts in that direction.

Pretty much what capi said. It's less that TWR ever stops mattering and more that there's always a trade-off involved between having a high TWR and a high delta-v capacity. Many of the things you can do to increase one in a design will end up decreasing the other, by virtue of the fact that you're altering the craft's mass ratio with every part you add or remove.

Welcome to the forums! I think I remember you from the IRC channel, if you're the same lokee I think you are. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and make yourself at home!

Welcome (back) to the forums!

In that case, you'd have to find the name of the technology in question you wanted to assign it to, then replace "start" with that. The simplest way to do that would be to take a look at what's listed under the configuration files of whatever stock parts are in that same node on the tree.

That sounds about right from my experience.

I like the idea. It's a shame that Youtube videos aren't loading half the time on my computer, though...

Like, say, the Civilization series? Clearly those aren't any good, despite the fact that I enjoy them so much... But anyway, I'm all in favor of additional and adjustable difficulty levels, whatever form they may take.

I'm aware of that. I'm just noting that technically, there was never such a thing as just a "Saturn C."

Nicely done! I like the diagrams you've used to illustrate your points. EDIT: One thing, though: What you've labeled the "Saturn C" in one of the images is actually (what would eventually become) the Saturn IB.

If you don't have anything against using mods, I'd recommend downloading and installing NavyFish's Docking Port Alignment Indicator. Otherwise, one option you can take is to place a Communotron 16 on both vehicles right behind the docking ports, then line them up to one another on your docking approach.

I'll grant that's a fair point. I haven't actually had a chance to get "eyes-on" any of the old German stuff, myself, so my secondhand sources might be in error. I'd also like to note that Imperial measurements do have a perfectly serviceable unit of mass that isn't a "pound-mass," so it's still possible to have consistent measures in an equivalent fashion to SI units. It's just that no one ever uses it, apparently. At this stage in the discussion, though, it's a bit of a moot point...

Well, this is certainly a blast from the past...

Welcome to the forums! My advice: Start small. A capsule, parachute, and fuel tank + liquid motor (or just a solid rocket booster) should be able to safely land, even without any decouplers available. Even without probes and decouplers, it's perfectly possible to build a rocket that's safe to use. Take crew and EVA reports close to the peak of your trajectory, then another EVA report and a surface sample after you land to get yourself a nice bit of science right at the start. (You could also get a fair bit of science from the launchpad without ever leaving the ground, but I consider that a little "gamey," personally.) Hope this helps!

To round out the "end mission" answers: If you safely bring back a craft to Kerbin's surface, you also have the option to recover your flight, which allows you to reuse the pilot(s) (if any) for future missions. You can either hover over the altimeter until the button appears, or you can recover from the Tracking Station screen.

I'm going to second OP's suggestion, with the caveat that I think that repeating experiments should still allow you to get extra science on both transmissions and return missions. However, I do agree that there should be some kind of incentive for returning samples home rather than just transmitting data, so I agree that there should be an extra data pool set aside that you can only get science from if you recover rather than transmit. To summarize, using OP's own summary format: RETURN REPEATED a few times = all points TRANSMIT REPEATED a lot of times = many points RETURN + TRANSMIT REPEATED = many more points RETURN REPEATED + TRANSMIT REPEATED = all points

Seconding this. Having the ability to quit straight to desktop would be quite useful in situations where you have to be leaving now and don't want to or can't just leave the game running.

Let's set the record straight here: The reason "specific impulse" exists as a measurement of engine efficiency is because the United States military on the one hand did all of their measurements in Imperial units, while Wernher von Braun and his fellow German rocket scientists did all of theirs in metric. (Note also that the metric system was not nearly as universal in the 1950s as it is now; see also here.) Internally, both did measure their engines using raw exhaust velocity, like you're sugesting -- the Americans in feet per second, the Germans in meters per second. The "specific impulse" measure arose so that scientists from both sets could talk to one another without having to constantly resort to the tedium of converting units or confusing the other party.

I know that feeling. We've all been there once before I've put the correct answer in bold. Barring a few special cases (which we won't go into right now), there is no friction in space. Once your craft is on a given course or in a given orbit, it'll stay on that orbit unless it fires its engines, it hits something else (or vice-versa), or it comes under the gravitational influence of another body. (The obvious example of this last one is if it leaves Kerbin's Sphere of Influence -- i.e. the area around Kerbin where other objects are affected by its gravity -- and enters the sun's. KSP uses a simplified (though still quite accurate) model compared to the real world, but again I won't go into detail simply because I don't want to confuse you even more.) I won't go into the math because it's complicated, but a rocket's orbit around another body (planet, moon, star, whatever) is effectively defined by its position and its velocity (i.e. the speed and direction of that speed measured as an angle) at that position. Again, that's going to stay constant at any given point unless something else acts to change its velocity, which is literally what "delta-v" means -- change in velocity. To give a slightly better idea of what delta-v means: Imagine you have a rocket in an otherwise perfectly empty vacuum, standing completely still. With its fuel load, the rocket has 1000 m/s of delta-v. If you burn all of that fuel in one direction, your rocket will be traveling at 1000 meters per second (that's what the "m/s" bit stands for) in the direction your rocket is pointing. If you burn for 500 m/s delta-v (which is not exactly half of your fuel), you'll only be traveling at 500 m/s at the end of your burn. If you later turn around and burn the rest of your fuel, which is worth another 500 m/s delta-v, opposite your direction of travel, then you'll be at a standstill again. As I always do when this topic comes up, I'm going to refer you to a couple different resources that I think are most helpful: MyKSPCareer.com will explain a lot of the basics from a KSP-specific perspective, and these four web pages over at Atomic Rockets are also aimed at explaining basic rocket science to your average Joe. Finally, I also maintain a list of other references in a thread called the Drawing Board, including links to a number of video tutorial series. Hope this helps EDIT: And I've been ninja'd, several times! That's correct. You may actually end up needing slightly more, as most delta-v charts tend to assume ideal minimums and averages, which of course doesn't account for errors in steering. If you've already gotten your launching technique pretty well down, though, it shouldn't take much more than 4500 m/s.

From what reading I've done, that's also how they can be made to work in real life as well. They're kept reefed by means of a mechanism that keeps the skirt drawn tightly together, much like a drawstring on a bag. At a predetermined command, this mechanism can be released, effectively "cutting the string" and allowing the air to fully open the chute.

I'd like to point out that technically you don't really need the octo struts in that case; if you place them correctly, the bracing struts will actually clip through the decoupler.

Nicely done! And that's a rather clever use of Procedural Fairings for the LES on the Unity capsule Also, nice to see the transition to color photography. It's a nice and subtle cue for the overall progress you've been making.

Maximum thrust per engine is indeed the value under the (wrong) label "Max Power" in the VAB. As for the weight you'll be thrusting against, that's the total starting mass of the craft, multiplied by standard surface gravity (9.8 m/s^2). You divide the total thrust by the craft's weight, and if it's greater than 1, you'll actually be able to lift off the pad the moment you fire up the engines.

This idea is brilliant, and is a godsend for anyone who wants to do a true Apollo-style Munar orbit rendezvous mission in Career Mode. I'll be downloading it immediately.