capi3101

Did a Duna trip Apollo-style for a challenge not too terribly long ago: Word of caution - use nukes instead of the four LV-909 quad. You can haul less fuel that way. And don't build your ship like I did - I built that transfer stage wrong (i.e. no docking ports). I've also got this one for my current challenge, which has done very well on Mün but was originally designed for Duna: By which I mean it's pulled all the stuff it has on Mün because it was designed to go to Duna; lemme try to be clear about that. With this design, the crew pulls a rendezvous in a separate crew capsule; the crew capsule contains the fuel for the return stage. You can see the intended transfer stage for that entire load (1700 m/s for about 80 tonnes overall) just below the lander. For specific launch windows, check out http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ A good aerobraking altitude for Duna is 12,000 meters. Much lower than that and you're going in. The atmosphere is thin; you can use chutes but you'll need so many of them that they become impractical. Plan on using a combination of chutes and thrusters. For an idea of how many chutes, try http://ksp.freeiz.com/

I get 1838.16837. If you have to go out to the hundred-thousandths place before you start finding errors, you're probably close enough for jazz (read: one of us is OCD and it's not likely you).

Same here. Time to start being king of the spreadsheets/go print 'em out on my bedsheets... "Flight assistance" mods - typical faire, right? No Mechjeb or similar autopilots, or are we including some of my favorites here (like KER, Docking Port Alignment, Protractor, etc.).

I imagine if Jeb had known most folks were going to opt for "Gimme Death", he might've picked a different callsign... Oof. I've never been out towards Jool before. Of course, this could be a good time to go. I've got a probe headed out that way already... Oh good. Launched the lander bits yesterday; hadn't left Kerbin orbit yet. Going to wait until I get closer to the launch window before sending up the Constipation XI crew.

Spent most of the day writing up my mission report for the Mün missions in the Constellation Program challenge. Pretty lengthy report. Got the first phase of the Duna portion of the challenge underway by launching the various landers. Docked the cargo lander to the Kerbin Return Vehicle. And now I wait for the next transfer window.

Geschosskopf has given you good advice - what he's describing is the first phase of what's called a "bi-eliptic transfer", where you kick your apoapsis high enough that it takes relatively little delta-V to make changes at the periapsis. Massive orbital plane changes is one of the uses of such a transfer; another is to get in close to Kerbol or Moho. You know that low delta-V value that appears on the delta-V map for a Moho transfer? It assumes the bi-elliptic. The trade-off: you use less delta-V overall, but it takes significantly longer to perform (the Hohmann to Moho takes 5,000-7,000 m/s and about 40 days; the bi-elliptic takes no more than 3,000 but it will take close to 250 days just to reach the apoapsis). So take to your pick as to what you want to do.

Scoring question - should be the last one. You saw how I delivered the rover to Mün in my last mission set (piggybacked the cargo lander with an unmanned crew lander). Would that count as "can be delivered with either the Kerbin Return Vehicle or the Duna lander" for purposes of those last two design points, or am I going to need to make other arrangements? Plan is for the same lander design to serve as the Kerbin Return Vehicle for the Duna mission.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: YEAR 1 DAY 46, 0730 HOURS KERBSTON (AP): Crapsack Skunkworks announced today that their hardware, specifically intended and designed for use on Duna, has completed its final battery of operational tests through a series of exercises in and around the Mün, including a double landing of the Constipation VII mission, a landing above the Mün's arctic circle and the establishment of the first permanent Münar outpost designed for long-term habitation. Crapsack, in their partnership with NASA, has given their go ahead to plans for Constipation XI, NASA's planned mission to the most decidedly not-green world of Duna, at the earliest possible opportunity, which sources indicate will be sometime around Day 58 of Year 1 (roughly two weeks from today). NASA spokesmen revealed that KSP rookies Lodwin, Edlan and Dondo Kerman will accompany veteran Kerbonauts, Bill, Bob, and Jeb "Gimme Boosters or Gimme Death" Kerman for the historic flight, and assured the concerned masses that despite the rumors and the physical realities of such a journey given the level of technology available, they will make every effort to ensure it will be a two-way trip. PREVIOUS SCORES: Design 64, Mission 24, Science 1 NEW POINTS CLAIMED: Design +4 (68), Mission +12 (36), Science +2 (3) All Points Previously Achieved in the Following Categories: Crew Launch Vehicle (Thanatos 7) Heavy Cargo Lift Vehicle (Thanatos Heavy 7) Crew Vehicle (Scorpio 7) Space Station - Scorpio/Thanatos DESIGN POINTS Munar Lander (Katapugon 7 Series): +4 pts Can perform Munar orbit insertion from Kerbin-Mun trajectory for both an Altair and and Orion capsule (either Block I or II) without using any Orion fuel (+2) Pressurized rover: Develop a rover that can seat at least two crew in a pressurized pod. This rover can be delivered with a crewed or uncrewed Altair lander, an Outpost Variant lander or a specialized Cargo Altair that brings only the rover (+2) Duna Lander (Katapugon 7 Series): +0 pts. Develop a rover that can seat at least two crew in a pressurized pod. This rover can be delivered with either the Kerbin Return Vehicle or the Duna lander (+2) MISSION POINTS R&D: +0 pts Use an Ares I in at least one Duna mission (flyby or landing) (+1) Use an Ares V in at least one Duna mission (flyby or landing) (+2) Mun - Scorpio/Thantatos/Thantatos Heavy/Katapugon Series: +12 pts Demonstrate that your Altair can, on its own, brake the Orion and Altair into Mun orbit and perform a polar landing (+2) Land at least 4 Kerbals in an Altair on the Mun within 1km of either above Altair (+3) Return four Kerbals from a Munar landing to Kerbin (+2) Munar Outpost: Using at least one crewed Altair lander, an Outpost Variant and a pressurized rover set up a Munar Outpost. The Outpost Variant can join a crewed Altair already on the Mun or can be part of a separate Altair/Outpost Variant mission to another location. The Altair and Outpost Variant need to be within 100m of each other. (+5) Duna - Scorpio/Thantatos/Thantatos Heavy/Katapugon Series: +0 pts Have already successfully completed a Mun landing and return with Orion and Altair Land an un-Kerballed Kerbin Return Vehicle on Duna. Can be either Duna-Kerbin direct ascent capable or dock with an orbiting Duna-Kerbin return stage (+4) At least 4 Kerbals pass withing 5000km of Duna (+2) Land at least four Kerbals on Duna within 10 km (100 km if by rover) of the above Duna lander. To earn these points, the un-Kerballed lander above must be landed and remain powered. Successful landing must take place before the landing crew has committed to Duna re-entry (+5) Duna Outpost: The Duna lander uses the Duna Outpost Variant which stays on the surface and includes a pressurized rover. (+3) Each landing crew over 4, up to 6 crew maximum (+1 each; max +2) Return the Duna landing crew and any remaining Duna orbiting crew to Kerbin (+4) SCIENCE POINTS +2 pts Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope: Using an Ares V/EDS, deploy a science package to Kerbol synchronous orbit (Pe and Ap at 1 508 045.29 km +/- 1000km) (+2) Altair descent stage science: +1 for each science-equipped Altair landed on Mun (maximum +3) Kerbin Return Vehicle: Pre-landed Kerbin return vehicle on the Duna mission contains a science package (+1) Duna Lander: Lander on the Duna mission contains a science package (+1) No other mission objectives remaining. Only got one stop left with this challenge......it's been a good one so far.

Beat me there...I'd even prepared a nice little step-by-step imgur album for it. Behold the power of the BZ-52... I'll point out with my specific design that had I used an X200-16 in the center, with the six outboard X200-8s there's the same amount of fuel as an orange fuel tank. Much more compact, much more structurally sound IMHO. For those of you who may doubt that little thing is structurally stable, I invite you to look at my entries in the Konstellation Space Program challenge. I put a 65 tonne lander on top of this, a huge booster below it, and it makes orbit fine (with that particular booster, it's never this part that fails).

A Mün base can be pretty much anything you want it to be...in specific answer to your questions: 1) No. If you want to do that though, you can; build your pieces on Kerbin and try to assemble it there so that you can work out any kinks in the design before you launch. 2) Pretty much whatever you want. I've got enough rovers out by the Neil Armstrong Memorial in my Sandbox game to open up a used car lot now, and about a half-dozen probes. All I did was add a permanent habitat and called it a base - and that was just 9 Mk1 Lander Cans on a lander. 3) You bet. Since you've got an orbital space station, it doesn't even need all that much delta-V; your crews can "escape" there in a pinch. Better still, have one on the surface, one at the station - and set up a two-way ferry. EDIT: Ninja'd

Matter of perspective there...I used to like the way the 88-88 looked on my Hellhound rovers. Now, it's a tad on the large and somewhat gaudy side.

Finished the Mün missions for the Constellation challenge; it's on to Duna (again) now. Performed a personal best for a precision Münar landing and didn't even screw it up this time...

I'll have to try to take a better screenshot when I get an opportunity. Incidentally, that setup (an X200-8 in the center and six X200-8s outboard) gives 1,939.29 m/s of delta-V for an 86-tonne payload. The TWR isn't too bad; 0.26 or thereabouts. Still not great, but what can you expect from NERVAs? The BZ-52s work kinda like Tail Connectors; they allow fuel flow and allow you to define symmetrical attachment points easily. The big advantage of the BZ-52 over a tail connector (aside from being a smaller part) is that's it's mass is a tenth of the mass of a Tail Connector (always a good thing).

Hell, I'm pretty sure any orbit with a 2k variation is good enough for NASA...yeah, they don't get it exactly right either. That includes their geosynchronous satellites too, BTW; they occasionally require adjusting to keep them in the correct position tolerance. You're okay if the two are within a klick of one another for pretty much anything you want to do. The only place I've seen really close precision count has been in forum challenges (and not all that often).

I'll tell you right now - you do need to go ahead and add the decouplers and arrange the LV-N sheaths like everybody's saying. You then need to add a clamp-o-tron to the bottom of the decouplers, and then pick up construction with four more clamp-o-trons below those (so that the top of the rocket is "docked" to the bottom part). "Why would I do that, capi?", says you. Well, it has to do with the branching nature of .craft files. Long and the short of it is that you can't form loops and expect your rocket to behave the way you want - you can't branch off into four separate stacks (which is what the quad-adapter does) and then later rejoin those stacks. What winds up happening is that the .craft file will ignore three of the reconnects, you wind up with a wobbly rocket (think insufficient strutting) and you can look forward to seeing a nice big explosion when you finally decouple. Like this one: No actual damage to the craft in this case, but seeing this will still make you jump a bit. The clamp-o-tron trick is the only way I know to get around this; basically, the game treats the lower half of the rocket as a separate craft. When the whole thing is loaded on the pad and the physics engine releases, the docking ports automatically clamp together with a rock-solid connection, just as they would with a multi-port docking setup. When you're ready to utilize the stage, you just hit the decouplers like normal; the docked docking ports slough off with the rest of the lower stage and you can go on your merry way. Provided you aim those sheaths the right way, of course...... Actually, I've pretty much given up on the notion of using quad-adapters in my designs (they'd be a lot more useful if you could form loops with them). What I do instead is stick the NERVAs on the ends of BZ-52 Radial Attachment points, then use a long girder segment or two and an adapter to attach it to the rest of the rocket. Like this: With sufficient strutting, this will stay attached to a booster (quite well, actually). You also avoid headaches with the sheaths that way, since you make the connection by the girder and not by the engines themselves.

You know the regular rotation keys are WASDQE, right? Hold down <Shift> as you're doing it. For reference: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Controls X and Shift-X can be particularly handy to know.

Well, the whole point of doing a bi-elliptic transfer is to save delta-V. Case in point: you do a Hohmann transfer to get to Moho, you can expect to spend somewhere in the 7,500 to 10,000 m/s of delta-V range getting there and back again. If you do a bi-elliptic transfer instead, you can pull it off for around 4,000 (i.e. what the delta-V map will tell you). It just takes a lot longer to do, obviously (it takes somewhere around 45-50 days to get to Moho with a Hohmann transfer, about 220 days just to get out to Jool's orbit). Nao mentions that you can get a gravity slingshot off of Jool, so perhaps going there on your way towards Kerbol/Moho isn't that bad of a notion...

Of course not - but then again, when it comes to just the booster itself, the only place I want to go is LKO. The payload can do the rest of the work. IIRC, the most I've lifted with an SSTO rocket was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 tonnes - which was for a payload capable of sending three Kerbals on a Moho flyby. Hell, did y'all think I was including the payload? I mean, the shoot the whole thing into space as one big piece with no decouplers whatsoever? No way...

I've heard of folks doing it for transfers to Moho and for getting into heliosynchronous orbit around Kerbol; in both cases, the recommended apoapsis is somewhere in the neighborhood of the orbit of Jool.

Actually, the SSTO rocket would still do 4500 m/s of delta-V for orbit, but you have to be a little more careful about how you pilot it. That's from observation/experience. The booster's TWR increases as you go, typically reaching the magic 1.6-1.8 range about the time you reach the tropopause. Turn at 45 degrees along 090 and hold that course until the apoapsis is 30-35 seconds ahead, then start following the navball. Meanwhile the TWR will continue to rise as the atmo gets less dense and the rocket gets lighter; eventually it'll get above the 2.2 mark, which is where folks say you start losing delta-V to atmospheric drag. That's when you throttle it back into that 2.0-2.2 range. And you keep doing that. Once the apoapsis is greater than 45 seconds ahead, you can start burning horizontally (090 along the horizon). Continue to monitor the throttle - actually, the best way to keep checking this is the gee meter; you want it near the top of the green zone without climbing out of there. Kill the burn when the apopasis is about 10k above where you want it (you'll probably still be in significant atmo when this happens; this compensates for the drag as you coast), then burn like normal for orbital insertion when the time comes; I usually do this at one-third thrust.

Landed a six-Kerbal expedition above the Mün's arctic circle. Still didn't find any cheese... Launched said expedition back into Münar orbit, plane-shifted to an equatorial orbit, MOR'd with another lander in orbit, then attempted to send that same crew back down to the surface for a precision landing. That attempt did not go well; fortunately I quicksaved beforehand. I still need to read up on precision landing it seems, though.

Glad to hear of your success. I will say that particular design looks a bit tall and narrow, but the important thing is that it works.

An FL-T100 has a fuel mass of 0.5 tonnes; its total mass is 0.5625 tonnes wet, 0.0625 tonnes dry. The amount of delta-V you can get from that depends on the mass of the payload you're attempting to move with it and the efficiency (specific impulse) of the engine - and to calculate it, use the Rocket Equation that both previous posters have generously provided. If you want a specific value, we need to know the payload mass and what engine you're using. I'm assuming this is for a probe or something small given the small size of the tank, so a parts list will also be acceptable.

Expounding on arq's post, a typical single-stage to orbit rocket usually has (my observation) a payload fraction of only about 4%; your booster needs to be 24 times as heavy as your payload. You also will need to adjust your throttle as you go with that kind of design (all that thrust you had at launch isn't necessary when you're further up and if you keep it at full throttle you'll pancake your stack). It's about as inefficient as you can get. The advantage is that construction is much simpler, but that's about it.

Had a bit of a change in plans - I think it'll make the Mün missions a bit more interesting but it also means it'll take me longer to finish up. You'll see what I mean...