Specialist290

Correct on all counts. That's also why lower-thrust but higher-efficiency rockets are often better for your lifting stage if you can get away with them. Of course, too little thrust -- even if it's enough to lift you off the launch pad -- can also be wasteful, since you're not outpacing the pull of gravity enough to justify burning that much fuel. It's a delicate balancing act. The real benefit to solid rocket boosters is their cost-efficiency -- relative to a full stack of liquid fuel and engines that provide the same delta-v, they're much cheaper. This matters less right now, though, since we don't have any campaign finances to worry about. However, I'd imagine that when we have to start actually worrying about money (for those of us who will play the campaign, at least), cost efficiency is going to be just as big a balancing factor as all the technical stuff we think about now. EDIT: Ninja'd by Vanamonde, who basically said everything I did in different words.

Yeah, there's your problem. You actually need to have an RCS thruster capable of firing in the direction you want to go. It'll probably work fine if you throw on some quad blocks where the single Place-Anywhere ones are now (although honestly I'd also make sure the top and bottom sets are lined up, as well).

In the same vein as Vanamonde, I can get quite a bit of reading done to pass the time during an interplanetary burn. That time is only wasted if you let it be so.

Nice to see you found one of the Mun arches! Now see if you can find the other two

No problem Finally, I can justify my countless hours of sitting on an isolated island in the middle of the North Atlantic doing absolutely nothing of note in Crusader Kings II as a constructive use of my time!

They use patronymics, too. That said, don't feel constrained to change it on my account. It's just a little odd, is all.

Actually, a black planet would probably absorb more heat than a similarly-sized planet of another color. ...I'll be here all night, folks. But seriously, I agree. It would be a pretty awesome sight.

I'd still imagine they'd use something like a patronymic, just for the sake of distinguishing two people of the same name who might be in the same group. Unless, of course, there is only ever one person named Freya on the entire island at any given time.

Klemens von Metternich is not amused by this development. ...OK, maybe he's slightly amused.

Freya being a Junker: Called it. A bit odd that you only gave last names for one character, but I guess those are still being worked on. Otherwise, nothing really leaps out at me as being bad.

Alt + F12 (Or other context-dependent key + F12 for non-Windows users) brings up the debug console. From there you have the option to toggle Infinite Fuel for your spacecraft (FOR SCIENCE!!).

Welcome to the forums! I'd like to invite you to take a look at the Drawing Board (link in my sig), which is absolutely chock-full of player aids. Some of the tutorials are intended mainly for newer players, but many resources are quite useful for players of all skill levels. Feel free to ask (or even answer) questions in the How To forums, and to share some of your best or most hair-raising missions over in the Mission Reports section. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! Since I'm guessing you're a new player, feel free to ask questions in the How To section of the forums, or to take a look at some of the tutorials in the Drawing Board (link in my sig). Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! If you ever get stuck anywhere in the game or just want to learn more about how it works, feel free to check out the Drawing Board (link in my sig) or ask questions in the How To section of the forums. There are plenty of helpful resources out there, and plenty of people who can help you understand them. If you want to contribute something of your own, you can create something for the Fan Works or Add-Ons sections as well. Above all, just look around, and jump into any conversation that interests you. Happy landings!

The easy, vague, and generally useless answer is: Depends on the size of your payload. The slightly more useful and more detailed answer does depend on math, but thankfully there's only really two equations you need to know (at least for starters): Tsiolkovski's rocket equation, and Newton's second law of motion. The first can be done easily on a pocket calculator that has an "LN" button; the second doesn't even require that. Now, the LVT-45 (and the LVT-30) both have a higher Isp (370 vacuum) than the Mainsail (330 vacuum). If fuel efficiency and delta-v capability are your only concern, then the LVT-45 would be the clearly superior choice; the way the math works out, independent of any considerations of mass (for simplicity's sake, at the moment), The Mainsail can only get about 89% (330/370) of "bang for your buck" of the LVTs. On the other hand, we also have to consider the forces acting on our rocket. A Mainsail provides about 1500 kN of thrust. 3 LVT-30s only provide 645 kN. A Mainsail plus a full "Jumbo-64" fuel tank weigh 42 tonnes. 3 LVT-30s, a tricoupler, and a "Jumbo-64" weigh a hair over 40 tonnes. (This is before you factor in any payloads that may be sitting on top of this stack; again, we're keeping the math simple for now.) To find out if this setup will actually lift our rocket, we need that other equation. Our rockets exert a force pushing up on the rocket ("thrust"). At the same time, gravity is also exerting a force pushing downwards ("weight"). The ratio that will tell us whether or not our rocket will lift (and roughly how quickly) is called the "thrust-to-weight ratio" (TWR), and is relatively simple to figure out. We already know the thrust; to find the weight, you just take the mass and plug in Kerbin's surface acceleration (9.8 m/s^2, just like Earth's), then multiply the two to get the force of weight. We end up with about 412 kN of weight for the Mainsail configuration, and 392 kN for the 3x LVTs. Now, to find the TWR, you just divide the thrust by the weight. For our Mainsail setup, 1500 kN / 412 kN ~= 3.6 , which means this thing is going to shoot up like... well, a rocket. For our 3x LVTs, 645 kN / 392 kN ~= 1.6 , which will still lift off the launchpad quite quickly, but not nearly as quickly as the Mainsail. This might actually be a good thing in the lower atmosphere (where you'll encounter most of your drag, but that's a topic for another discussion). Of course, that's just for the engines and fuel tanks. If we double the masses involved (which also doubles the force exerted by gravity, because of the way the math works out) to simulate a payload, then our Mainsail now gets us a TWR about 1.8. Our 3x LVTs now only get a TWR of 0.8, which, as a number less than 1, means we are not going into space today. So, in summary: It depends on the size of your payload

I like Fel's idea. You can choose to pay more for guaranteed safety, or try to "wing it" with a small chance of failure, but above all, you're making a choice, which I feel to be important in these types of games. I would also like to see part damage actually affect how parts perform (such as fuel tanks that were damaged by your Sepratron exhaust leaking at a slow but steady rate) in the near future, while we're on the subject.

Exactly. The very idea of not sending a rescue mission... Tut-tut. On the other hand, "Establishing a Base" would be a prestigious alternative indeed.

Still muddling through Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just that lately my time has been taken up with other things (including this site). Also reading through "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series, which I finally got a copy of a few weeks back. (It's a multivolume set.) Finally, the closest book in reach of my laptop at the moment happens to be a Penguin Classics collection of selected works written by Marcus Tullius Cicero (though "spoken" might be the better term, since most of them were originally speeches).

Nicely done! ...Any chance anyone will put out guitar tabs?

I sense an imminent "Rescue Mission!"

Nicely done! Hope your experience with Moho proves to be more productive than mine thus far.

You could also try mounting one of the smaller landing legs on the end to function as a self-righting mechanism.

Welcome to the forums! I'd highly recommend that you take a look at the Drawing Board (link in my sig) if you need help mastering any aspect of the game. It has a number of tutorials, many of which are geared specifically for new players. You can also ask questions in the How To section of the forums as well, as many of the people who habitually post there are quite willing to share their accumulated experience to solve your problems. You can also post your biggest accomplishments in the Mission Reports section if you so desire. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! KSP is definitely one of those games that creeps up on you and makes you spend way more time than you realize on just trying to accomplish that one tiny little goal before bedtime... and then your alarm goes off the next morning, and you're still in front of the computer screen, still trying to accomplish that same one tiny little goal (which seems to have somehow morphed into a fully-equipped space station / Munbase / satellite network while you weren't looking). Unfortunately, we've only got one solar system to play with at the moment, although I think I recall the devs saying that more will be added in the future (though whether as part of an update or an expansion is anyone's guess at this point). Happy landings!

Nicely done!