Specialist290

Welcome back to the forums!

Welcome to the forums! We're generally a nice, friendly lot. As long as you don't talk about multiplayer or start a discussion about whether it's better to use an autopilot. Then it seems like the place turns into a madhouse Feel free to jump right in to any discussions that interest you, help out anyone who has questions, or even ask a few yourself.

Welcome to the forums! (Also, nice nick. Love the Ace Combat series.)

Welcome to the forums! Always nice to see more fans of classic science fiction around. I read the Foundation trilogy back in my teens. Asimov's a good writer; I'll have to check out his Robots series some day. I've read a bit more of Clarke and Heinlein than him, so I'll have to make up for lost time.

Welcome to the forums! Sounds a lot like my first experiences with the game, to be honest. I'm still working my way out to the rest of the solar system as well. I've got a few kerbalnauts around Moho who are going to need a fuel tanker sent their way to get home (on the subject of rescue missions, funnily enough). Docking's indeed a challenge to learn, but all it really takes is patience and a willingness to learn. There's a few tutorials at the Drawing Board (linked in my sig) if you want to take a look there, and you can also ask specific questions in the "How To" section. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! I've been working on a little project to collect as many links to useful info as I can. Be sure to check out The Drawing Board; it's got many helpful tutorials, graphs, and other such information that you might find useful.

Welcome to the forums!

Before the forum crashed back in April and wiped several months' worth of data, there was a mod called Debridement and Salvage which added a part you could stick into a crewed ship, then send it to rendezvous with a piece of debris and collect it manually (and salvage any spent fuel, as well). If you're into Planetes and / or want to re-create the "thrill" of collecting garbage in space, I'd advise checking that out. Unfortunately, the Forum Kraken seems to have eaten the thread entirely, and it's not on SpacePort, so I wouldn't know where to find the link.

Nice writeup. Adding this to the Drawing Board

Basically this. You'll want to perform a "rendezvous" with the orbit of the first craft at a point where it will be 90 degrees away from the second one. You can use the targeting system and the maneuver nodes to set this up just like you would for a docking approach, but instead of getting the two encounter arrows lined up, you'll want them at the appropriate angle (or "right angle" -- excuse the bad pun ) relative to one another.

A few tips: If you're calculating the delta-v for multistage rockets, you need to calculate it for each stage individually, including the combined weight of the other stages "on top" of your current stage as part of the payload. Then you add those together to get the combined delta-v total for the whole rocket. For asparagus staging or droptanks, each iteration of dropping tanks technically counts as a "stage" for the purpose of the math. Again, Atomic Rockets goes into a bit more detail for that. Also, if you have multiple engines firing at once and some of them have different Isp values, you're going to want to find the mean Isp for all of them. I don't remember the equation for that offhand, but it's a bit more complex than just dividing the total Isp by the number of engines. Those are the two things that tripped me up when I was learning the equations myself. I can understand your reluctance to use mods, but I'd advise that you use Kerbal Engineer myself while you're learning, although if you're adamant about not using it then don't feel like you have to. Do the math out longhand yourself first, then compare your results with the totals that the Engineer gives you. They probably won't be perfect matches, but if they're pretty close, then you can satisfy yourself that you know what's going on. If they're way off, then either you probably didn't account for staging correctly (again, remember that for asparagus staging, each time you drop a set of tanks you need to start the math all over), or you're getting the order of operations wrong for the equation (which means you should have paid attention to your algebra classes ). That's what I did -- I worked out the math myself before I even put the Engineer chip on the rocket, until I was satisfied I understood the equations.

One method you could try is just to build a lander around the rover in such a way that the rover just has a short drop to the ground. (I probably could have done that better with a normal rover by using just one fuel tank and attaching the rover to the bottom, but the kethane sensor (mod part) was already taking up that node and couldn't take anything on top.) Another way you could do it is by copying the Lunokhod profile and putting the rover on top of the craft, then drive it down using a ramp of some sort. I've also seen rovers slung to the side of a normal lander that just drop down to the surface, though you'll need some sort of counterweight on the other side as well to keep the lander balanced.

Quite so. Everyone should try extreme spacediving at least once.

Impressive work as always

Actually, I think the translation keys (as well as the rotation keys, for that matter) are mapped the way they are because that's how it's done in most flight simulator games, where the keyboard directions correspond to the joystick directions. The "up" key is the same as pushing the joystick forward, which pitches the nose down, while pulling back on the joystick / pushing the "down" key brings the nose up. I've never had problems with the default scheme, but that might be because I used to play a ton of Red Baron as a kid.

If you want a good explanation of why the factors in the rocket equation matter (including what, exactly, delta-v is), I'd highly recommend checking out this page, which explains the things you'll want to know in pretty simple terms. Wernher Von Kerman also has a fantastic video on delta-v (although he still apparently hasn't finished anything beyond the first part). As for thrust: Once you're in a stable orbit, you can basically get away with as little as possible, since the only thing that really matters for orbital maneuvers is the total delta-v change, regardless of how long it takes to make that change happen. For taking off from Kerbin (and landing on / taking off from other worlds), however, you want to make sure at a bare minimum that your engines can provide enough force acting to push the rocket up ("thrust") to overcome the force that the gravity of the body in question exerts in trying to pull the rocket back down ("weight"). The number that measures this is your "thrust-to-weight ratio" (often abbreviated "TWR"), and can generally be figured out in a few easy steps: 1. Take the maximum power values of all the engines that will be firing on takeoff, and add them together. This will give you the total thrust for your first stage in kilonewtons. 2. Find the total mass of your rocket in tonnes. (It's assumed that the mass values for all parts in KSP are given in tonnes -- or megagrams, which are exactly the same measure, if you're anal-retentive about making sure everything is in proper SI notation.) 3. Plugging these in to Newton's second law (Force = mass * acceleration, or F=ma) and solving for acceleration will give you the initial maximum acceleration your vessel has. (This value will go up in flight, because burning fuel reduces your mass.) 4. Once you have that value, divide it by the surface gravity value for the body in question. (Kerbin's is 9.8m/s^2, same as Earth). The final value will be your rocket's TWR. 5. If your TWR ends up being less than 1, then you can either reduce the weight, add more engines, or use more powerful engines, or any combination of the three. Then redo the equation until you're satisfied with the results. Hope this helps

Seconding that; it's your connection. Your sig shows up fine on my end.

Nicely done! It would be nice if the values under 1 atm were scaled logarithmically rather than linearly, though, as otherwise the far right end is a bit hard to read. Impressive work nevertheless.

I'm using the data I got from the wiki, which admittedly might not be perfect. When I'm in the neighborhood of Jool with one of my upcoming missions, I'll check on that myself.

If the person who submits a challenge wants to allow or disallow certain mods, that's their prerogative. "Harder" does not necessarily mean "better." It's harder to hit a target at 200 meters with a smoothbore musket than with an M16 assault rifle, but you don't exactly see soldiers rushing out onto the battlefield with Brown Besses to prove a point. If I were to see someone climb up the side of a building using the window ledges as handholds instead of going inside and using the stairs, I admit I'd be quite impressed with the feat, but I'd also think that the only sane explanation for such a thing is that he's trying to rob the place. Before we proceed, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I don't use MechJeb. I make it a point of pride, actually. I'm glad that I can do everything that I've done so far manually. But I don't feel any sort of need to make myself feel better by telling the people who do use it "YOUR AUTOPILOT IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD" every time the forsaken subject is brought up here.

I'd say it's a good idea to be selective about who you consider your friends. It's better to have a tight-knit circle of companions who you know you can trust than a large net of "fair-weather friends" who are only around when things are going well (or worse, who turn around and actively profit from your misfortune). Also, people's brains are just wired differently. Some of us are extroverts, who live for social interaction. Some of us are introverts, who shy away from the spotlight when we feel the need to recharge our batteries. There's nothing inherently wrong with being one or the other. Personally, I've always been one of those quiet loner types myself. I enjoy getting out, doing interesting things and meeting interesting people as much as anyone, but I'm often quite content to curl up in a corner with a book or my laptop and let the world carry on as it will outside my little bubble.

For whom does the comparison matter in the first place?

Welcome to the forums! One setup I've seen includes both landing legs and rover wheels on the structures themselves. You land on the legs, then fold them back in and use the rover wheels to get into the proper alignment.

Updated the list with some description tweaks and new additions.

I just want the arguments to stop.