capi3101

Haven't used it for a spaceplane, but I did make a proper SSTO probe with a RAPIER (swapped it out for a 48-7S and added a quad of intakes). Pretty neat getting it up to orbital speed at 28,000. I still wound up in orbit with moar fuel left with the 48-7S, though the RAPIER got me there faster.

Still not home. Still can't play KSP. Am about to go out of my mind.

The topic of making a successful transfer to Moho was brought up not too terribly long ago, actually. Maccollo had the most useful piece of advice, a way to get to Moho for ~4,000 m/s of delta-V total. Helped me replace the Impactor instrument on my Moho ribbon with something a bit more honorable. Never did get an actual calendar date pinned down for that first transfer; still working on that. My own transfer wound up taking about ~8,000.

Crapsack Skunkworks. Why not. I've been meaning to make a rondel logo with a big boot coming down on a flaming paper sack. Motto: Sorbet ad esse vos.

Jars of Clay - Safe to Land

I've made it back from the Mün before with the Kerbal X; alas that I don't have pics. IIRC, using KER helps. I will have to try again when I get back to my main KSP box. We'll see if anybody else can do it in the meantime, I suppose.

Asparagus isn't essential for the launch stage (and you don't actually need to do a launch that way), but it is by far the most efficient way of doing things (by which I mean it affords the highest payload fraction of any type of staging - 15%+ of your total craft can be payload with a good asparagus setup). Me, I like single-stage rockets - as inefficient as you can get - but only if the payload is light. Easy to design, not all that terribly difficult to fly. Low part count.

Try sticking your lander legs on a set of Modular Girder Adapters; that'll widen the base of your lander and make it less prone to tipping over. When you get as far as Fuel Systems on the tech tree, you can replace that FL-T400 you're using and the Girders with a set of five FL-T100 tanks, one center and four outboard - with fuel lines running from the outboard tanks to the center and the lander legs attached to the outboard tanks. Incidentally, you need Fuel Systems before you can even attempt a proper asparagus (those darn Fuel Ducts again...). I'ma gonna say you need to make them the next priority for your Science. Since you made the Mün, I won't give out any pointers on the ascent and transfer stages - you've obviously ironed those out. I will say that SRBs have lousy efficiency, no throttle control and short burn time. Good thrust and that's about it - they're good to get a craft airborne that would otherwise start out not being able to (like the STS Space Shuttle). If you can take off without them, you don't need them - you're better off with a liquid-fuel engine setup.

Much obliged - will have to give that a shot when I get back to my main KSP box.

There are symmetry controls in the VAB - the left of the two large circle thingies at the bottom. If you click on that, it should look like a crash test dummy marker; click again and it looks like a radiation trifoil, and so on. Those indicate the level of symmetry going on - 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x and 8x are available. X and Shift-X if you don't want to (or can't) use clicking. The Stayputnik is a good little probe core - its main virtues are early availability and large surface area. That said I'm still more apt to use the OKTO2 as soon as I have it available (because I'm the kind of guy who quibbles over a measly ten kilograms). The lack of an upper attachment node is also a downside to the Stayputni (it's either on the top of your rocket or attached radially - you can't use it as a final booster stage probe core for purposes of self-cleaning).

This may be stupid, but - http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ - to make sure you're headed to other places at the right time. Other than that, only thing I can suggest is what others are saying: you need to make mid-course corrections. I usually do one at the ascending or descending node to do a plane shift; sometimes that's a good time to go ahead and do prograde/retrograde and radial course corrections as well. Of course, the earlier you correct, the better. What I usually do is zoom way out and note the distance to closest intercept. I then set up a maneuver node; usually a couple of days ahead. I pull one direction and see what that's done to the approach - if the distance has increased, I pull the opposing direction. If the distance has decreased, I continue slow pulls until the distance starts increasing again. Don't be afraid to pull radially; yes it's not the most efficient way of travelling, but it often makes the difference between getting where you're going and spending a long time in Kerbol orbit. Once you've got an encounter indicated, make very slow pulls - you want to get as close as you can, especially if you can aerobrake at the target. If you can't get close with a single correction, go ahead and make the indicated burn when necessary and try again later. Ideally you'll get your desired encounter periapsis in a single, early correction burn, but if it takes more than one it takes more than one.

Career at Tier 0...only tank available is the FL-T200 unless I'm mistaken; a single LV-T30 should lift somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve of thems. Make sure you haven't got too many fuel tanks, make sure flow is on for both fuel and oxidizer and make sure you've throttled up. If those are all okay, there's a bug at work. My delta-V calculator says that with twelve FL-T200 tanks and one engine you should have 4,569.87 m/s and a launch TWR of 1.42. Obviously that's a single stage rocket and matters are complicated by the fact that the LV-T30 hasn't got thrust vectoring. Essentially you have what one forum member called a "derp stick". You'll have to fly with SAS toggled on the whole way and make any changes in orientation gently unless you want to wind up pointed the wrong way. Straight up to 10k, 45 degrees at 090 until you're 30 seconds from apoapsis, then follow the prograde marker. Go horizontal once you're a minute to apoapsis. Watch your gee meter as you ascend and throttle back if it climbs out of the green zone (ideally you want it to stay right at the top of the green zone). Stop your burn when your apoapsis is as high as you want it (plus 10k if you're around 50,000 when that happens, plus 30k if you're around 40,000 when that happens). Make a maneuver node for orbital insertion and burn when indicated. You should have enough delta-V to make orbit easily; deorbiting afterwards will require a small burn - 50-100 m/s, tops. Try to land engine down and don't panic when parts of the rocket start 'sploding on impact. You'll be somewhere around 3.65 tonnes empty which is too much weight for a single small chute to slow to a safe speed but not so much that the chute will rip off (provided you deploy the chute early - say hit the button around 40k; it'll do its job once the atmo's thick enough). Once enough of the empty fuel tanks have blown, the rest of the craft should slow to a safe speed for landing (this from experience, BTW).

http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ - for determining when "the right time" is. The latest delta-V map I've seen would suggest that you could get home with as little as 620 m/s of delta-V from a 60 kilometer equatorial Duna orbit (including the orbital plane change). You've got 153% of that, a comfortable margin for error. I'd still quicksave before making the attempt unless you're really confident in your piloting skills...

What kind of delta-V do you have left? If you're low, you're hosed; try again. If however you've got a few thousand to spare, what you can do is send your apoapsis high - just low enough to stay within the Mün's SOI - and make the full orbital plane reversal at the apoapsis. Line up with the target while you're at it and then lower the apoapsis until you get a rendezvous. Only thing I can suggest without a full scrub.

Thanks Peppe; I would appreciate some instructions from anyone with know how in case Peppe can't get back to it first. #hint-hint Does that bug fix also apply to other worlds? Had the same thing happen over Moho the other day.

What's your box stats? I play KSP on an ultra-low end machine, and I too have found the lag to be horrific with 0.23. What I've found, though, is that if you zoom way out for launches and position the camera below the rocket (so that NO terrain is in view once you're in flight), the game's performance is back up to an acceptable level; you have to keep all terrain out of view, though - and that includes once you're in orbit. You can safely look at planets without lag once they're a fair distance away (about 200,000 for Kerbin so far). Does make unnecessarily landing problematic. And for the record, I'm playing on bare minimum settings at this point.

This may sound dumb or may not be in the spirit of what you're doing, but have you turned SAS on after you've oriented your craft for re-entry (while you're still in control of the craft)?

That's usually a sign of a launch TWR that's too high. Throttle back to keep your gee meter at the top of the green zone once you've finished your gravity turn and keep it there (i.e. be willing to throttle back some more). More struts wouldn't hurt either. Myself, I'm still away from my main KSP box for the holidays. I'm really jonesin' for some KSP at this point...might have to break out the demo......

I use KER as a rule, though I do have tricks up my sleeve for handling launches stock only (mainly involves right-clicking on fuel tanks to keep track of when they empty out for staging purposes and throttling back to the top of the green if the gees get too high, turning at 10k and trying to stay between 30-45 seconds to apoapsis thrusting to prograde and going horizontal if I get to more than a minute to apoapsis). Have never used Mechjeb - have stated repeatedly I'll install it if I ever successfully return a Kerbal from the surface of Eve. KAC and NavyFish's Docking Alignment Indicator are great mods. I also like Enhanced Nav Ball. Protractor's useful for determining interplanetary ejection angles, though I've had some serious issues relying solely on it for transfers (alexmoon's web site is still better for that purpose).

~1.7-2.2 is optimal for a Kerbin launch; higher than that and you're losing delta-V to drag, lower than that and you're losing it to gravity. That's one of the big advantages of a well-done asparagus setup; you keep your figures in that sweet spot. That said, I regularly get into space on a single stage booster with a launch TWR of 1.2 just for the hell of it, so really what matters is what works best for you. Incidentally, there is never any such damn thing as infinite TWR; there's always gravity. There's just not as much of it once you get into space.

Bad day yesterday - the Ranger Fox mission ran out of gas at 200 m/s and 5,000 m over Vall, and then essentially the same thing happened with the Ranger Able mission over Dres. That's the third time the Able mission has failed, so it looks like yet another redesign is in order. May go ahead and take the time to care what the Fox says too. Sent the first ATLAST probe off to Eve. Note to self: when the maneuver node vector is straight down, DON'T BURN. The result will generally be pretty spectacular. Ultimately did send a Sandstone probe off to Eve and it arrived successfully - probes now around every body in the system except Bop. Sent a Storax Sedan to Duna; botched the landing badly enough to put one of the two Hellhounds on the planet upside down. There's just enough gravity on Duna that righting it again is probably going to take a pretty steep hill. At least the other one arrived intact and is usable.

Would be neat if we could get together a group of KSP fans who are also Lego enthusiasts to build up general plans; I'd personally like to see some instructions for how to make Lego models of some of Whackjob's ships...

Thanks to help from maccollo, I finally put a satellite in orbit of Moho. I left Kerbin on the wrong date and screwed up the plane change so it turned out taking ~8,000 m/s of delta-V all told; anticipating a screw-up, I went with a Constipation XIII-C probe (14,000 m/s of delta-V available to it)... Eve and Bop are the only two worlds I haven't put sats around at this point (Eve for lack of trying; I've got one around Gilly). Rover delivery is still giving me headaches.

Made it! Took ~8,000 but again I think that's because I had the wrong departure date.

Made orbit last night on two FL-T100s; still trying to figure out how that happened (I'm guessing a rounding error with my delta-V calculator; it rounds up instead of to the closest FL-T100). Two FL-T100s give 4,392.48 m/s; that's now 1.29 tonnes and a total cost of $1,360.