capi3101

Folks have been playing around with finding optimal balances between delta-V and TWR for a while now. Largely depends on how you've set your rocket up, but as a rule you want to keep your TWR during launch somewhere in the 1.6-2.2 range; that best follows the terminal velocity curve. It's also one of the reasons why folks will tell you to use asparagus staging - properly set up, you stay in that optimal TWR range without having to adjust the throttle. It basically winds up having the same affect as throttling back (i.e. when you stage, you're losing some thrust) but with the benefit of chucking off mass that's no longer necessary at the same time. Ultimate benefit is a very efficient rocket that will allow you a substantially larger payload fraction than other forms of staging. Minimum acceptable TWR I find for launch is about 1.2; that's what I aim for when I'm designing SSTO rockets (usually for very light payloads only). Below that and the gravity losses are horrendous. And BTW, TWR still is important once you're in space, just not as important as it was/is during launch and landing. Delta-V is critical throughout an entire mission.

Today I flew a flight in 0.7.3. What an experience - makes you really appreciate how far the game has come in so short of a time.

The 600 m/s delta-V? That's for a Kerbal's jetpack. Yes, that does mean that there are worlds in the Kerbol system from which it is possible for a Kerbal to take off and achieve orbit on just jetpack thrust alone - Minmus, Gilly, Bop and Pol. I may be missing one or two but I think that's all of them. As for RCS, it too provides delta-V and its calculated the same way as any other engines - with the Tsiolkovsky Equation UmbralRaptor posted above. The fuelmass of each RCS tank is as follows: FL-R10: 0.2 tonnes FL-R25: 0.4 tonnes FL-R1: 3 tonnes Stratus-V Roundified: 0.16 tonnes Stratus-V Cylindrified: 0.6 tonnes RCS typically doesn't give you a lot of delta-V, but it is enough to do precision docking maneuvers and in a pinch it can be enough to save a mission from drifting endlessly through space. A quick puff or two right after a long interplanetary transfer burn can improve the closest approach to an encounter; done correctly for a world like Duna or Jool, it can prevent you from having to do a long and costly correction burn.

That's good to hear. If you ever need to know the mass of your payload: 1) Go into the VAB and load up your rocket. 2) Discard the booster; leave the part that you're sending into space. Don't save. 3) If it's a manned rocket, go into the crew selection tab while still in the VAB and deselect everything. The game may gripe at you; it's okay. You want it empty. 4) Hit launch. 5) Go to map mode and click on the little "i" button to the right. It'll display info on your craft, including its part count and its mass. I was asking about the payload mass to see what could be done about designing a serial-staged booster, but if you've got everything worked out, then there's no need.

General principles - build it low, build it wide, include a reaction wheel, encase the critical bits in structural panels and girders. SAS on when you're not turning and either drive in docking mode or remap the keys so that you're using lateral controls, not rotational. Rovers do not necessarily have to be built off of rovemates; the more successful rovers I've built didn't include them and if electrical storage is a concern, add Z-100 packs. Keep all that in mind and you can build pretty much whatever you want. Specific questions you asked - generally the CoM works best as long as it's somewhere along the rover's centerline axis (running from front to back). If that's not centered then steering it becomes problematic. The closer you have the CoM to the exact center of the rover, the easier it is to launch it to Mün; this can be off-center but you'll either need to add a counterweight on whatever delivery system you develop. I've seen rovers that use panels and I've seen some that utilize RTGs. I prefer RTGs myself for rovers as they ensure that I won't completely run out of juice while driving at night (and trust me, I've done more than my fair share of night driving; a scary prospect on Mün). You can enclose RTGs in with structural panels and still have a drivable rover when it flips over; the same cannot necessarily be said of solar panels. That said, solar panels are of course lighter, and with good placement you can keep them relatively well protected and still functional. I've seen some successful designs that included solar panels, and if you're using ion engines for downforce they become essential.

First off, welcome to the forums, Chamandapastel. Here's a procedure for a gravity turn in simple terms: 1) Launch. Burn straight up to 10k; this part you have down. 2) Turn to course 090 at 45 degrees elevation; again, this is something you're already doing, which is good. 3) Assuming you're playing stock, you'll occasionally need to switch over to map mode while your launch is ongoing. That's fine; spend as little time there as necessary and switch back to staging mode when ready. 4) You want to stay at 45 degrees elevation until your time to apoapsis gets to be about 35 seconds or so. Once that's reached, turn to follow the prograde marker. 5) Continue to follow the prograde marker unless your time to apoapsis falls below 30 seconds. If it does, return to 45 degrees elevation for a while. 6) Once your time to apoapsis reaches one minute, steer along the horizon - zero elevation on course 090. You're still coasting upwards so your apoapsis is fine; what you're doing now is applying more thrust to start raising your periapsis. 7) Continue to watch your altitude and your projected apoapsis altitude. If you reach your desired apoapsis altitude and you're still below 50k in the atmosphere, continue burning for a little bit, about another 10-15k or so. Then kill your burn. You'll lose some altitude due to atmospheric drag; this compensates for it. 8) Once you're above 70k, set up a maneuver node at apoapsis. You should only need 200-300 m/s of delta-V, tops (and that's assuming something somewhere was screwed up). Hope that helps.

Lose the top set of canards; they are doing nothing. I imagine your design is indeed top heavy as well (at least, it gets that way as you go up). Is the tip over happening at a roughly consistent altitude? What's the mass of your payload and how far along are you on the tech tree (assuming you're playing a career game)? If you object to asparagus, what's your stance on parts clipping?

Launched a top-mounted rover lander tonight, rendezvoused and docked with a lander stage heading to Mün. Pretty hefty payload and I'm pretty sure my box was trying to download updates while I was playing, so the lag was terrible. Landed the rover near the NAM and after I finally figured out how best to get it decoupled I drove it to a habitat nearby. Next step is to stick that lander I brought with me right next to the habitat with a loadful of Kerbals. It's for a challenge, of course; I have to get the lander within 100 meters of the habitat. It's going to take the best precision landing I've ever managed - my personal best is around 800 meters to date.

Sitting here this evening beginning the manned Münar landing phase of the challenge...dreading that 100 meter limit on setting up the outpost. Best precision landing I've ever pulled off was 800 meters, and that was the other day when I landed the habitat lander. Landed the rover tonight...4 kilometers off. Had to drive the thing there. In that terrain by the NAM. At night, naturally. And all those extra lights on the Hellfury design did squat. I'm hoping to finish up the Mün phase of the challenge over the weekend; pics and a full report on Monday.

Quite easily actually; at the end, Mechjeb says he's got 833 m/s of delta-V still available. You can return from the Mün easily on as little as 620. I've done it before with a direct ascent lander on 70 units of fuel, and that included a re-orbit of Mün before I headed back. Just for grins...the lander you had earlier is fifteen tonnes full. Eight of it is fuel, so with a Poodle the whole thing's got roughly 2,405 m/s of delta-V give or take. That's a bit short of where you want to be for a full Mün landing and return after launch (2,560 give or take), but it's doable with careful piloting. You get 620 m/s of delta-V at seven tonnes of deadmass and a 390 Isp with 1.41 tonnes of fuel. 200 fuel units per tonne at a 9/11 ratio between fuel and oxidizer - that comes out to 283 units total. So your "bingo" fuel with your lander oughta be 127 liquid fuel units. Say 130 to be conservative - if your fuel reserve gets that low, hit space or Jeb's going to become a permanent resident.

Make sure you're completely out of timewarp, make sure you've got electrical power, and make sure you don't have your capsule's onboard reaction wheels disabled. If you still have no control, try turning off SAS. If that doesn't do the trick, your rocket might be heavy; consider adding RCS for steering purposes next time you visit the VAB. And if all that doesn't work, its time to try SCE to AUX.

10k's a bit high to start braking for landing. Your Munar TWR with 15 tonnes and a Poodle engine is right at 9 on full throttle, so you can afford to wait a bit (say somewhere around 6k until you get good at it). Your suicide burn altitude should be somewhere up around 560.....let's say 600 m AGL just to be safe from an initial falling speed of 50 m/s. Learn to go IVA and use your radar altimeter to get an estimate of where the surface is - not only is that good for estimating the altitude of the surface using your main altimeter, its also good for letting you know how low you can get before you need to burn. 6,578 AGL is your suicide altitude with a falling speed of 200 m/s, just for reference. So try not to get falling that fast. Burn retrograde until you go vertical, then you can afford to kill it for a while. If you get above 50 m/s going down, burn a bit; you don't need to keep the burn going the entire time until you get closer to the surface. As for large payloads - make sure you launch with SAS on; shut it off when you want to steer, and make sure you've got a few LV-T45s in your engine mix (and later Skippers/Mainsails). You could use Mk-55s for the same effect - basically, you want a gimballing engine, and the -45 is your best bet in the early going. If that doesn't work, try a reaction wheel or two. Make sure your winglets are down near the bottom of your rocket and that they are controllable surfaces (AV-R8s are controllable, AV-T1s are not). Once up out of atmosphere, you could use RCS for steering if you're still having major problems.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2618059/in-java-what-does-nan-mean So I'm fairly certain it is indeed from Java. Or rather the IEEE standard upon which Java is based. C# probably adheres to the same standard - I'm not familiar enough with the language to be certain of that, however.

Actually, Temstar's Zenith II should be capable of lifting a 10.5 tonne payload; trouble is you don't have the tech levels to actually use his design, so here's how you replicate a substitute: below your payload, stick two of the X200-16 tanks. Put two Modular Girders on the bottom of the bottom tank by the narrow end, and attach two LV-T45s to the end of those; the girders allow fuel flow, but add fuel lines if it makes you feel better. You then want to add six TT-70 radial decouplers, each with two FL-T800 tanks attached and an LV-T30 on the bottom of those. Set up asparagus staging with these outboard stacks. Finally, add some AV-R8 winglets to the bottommost tanks. Actually, you're running a fifteen tonne payload, aren't you? Well, a Zenith II replica should still handle that, but if it doesn't work, you could always try to replicate the Zenith III; that's two -16s and an -8 in the center with three LV-T45s, along with eight outboard asparagus stacks with two FL-T800s, an FL-T400 and an LV-T30 on the bottom. That should be good for payloads up to 25 tonnes or so. If you need help with asparagus, we can delve into that too.

Launched a science probe intended for heliosynchronous orbit around Kerbol; performed the first phase of a bi-elliptic transfer for it by raising its apoapsis up to the orbit of Jool. Will be lowering the periapsis is about 220 days. Also docked a lander to a capsule. Both for the Constellation Challenge, of course. Slow day on account of Halloween.

The techniques are applicable, though you'd probably need something like KER to get your initial parameters.

Kerbal X is a stock asparagus craft (not a particularly good one, but the idea is to demo asparagus). You can make a Münar landing and return with it if you fly it well (read: stick a KER flight chip on it). Lessee....your payload looks like it's roughly 10.5 tonnes; you've got 6 X200-8s in the center and 9 FL-T800s on the sides being lifted by 9 LV-T30s in the booster stage, right? That's 10.5 tonnes payload, 68 tonnes of fuel, 11.25 tonnes of engine, and 0.45 tonnes of tri-couper. 90.2 tonnes of rocket and 1935 kN of thrust (ignoring the SRBs)...TWR is 2.18, so you should have the thrust to handle your payload. Not much in terms of steering authority though. For that you want LV-T45s. So let's look at delta-V. That booster is going to be 29.7 tonnes dry, Isp is 320, plug in the numbers......3487.28 m/s. You don't have enough delta-V on the booster to make orbit. That said, you should also have enough fuel and thrust to be getting well past 12k. My recommendation is to check your fuel lines; make sure they are running from the bottom of the central stack to the outboard tanks and not the other way around. Check your piloting too...straight up to 10k, 45 degrees elevation on 090 until you're 35 seconds from the apoapsis, then follow the navball. Go horizontal when you're no closer than 45 seconds from apoapsis and burn until the ap is at the desired altitude. Engine not powerful enough, huh? So no Skippers? I can work with that... EDIT: Time out - those are -16s in the center, not -8s (always getting those mized up) So you've got 94.5 tonnes of fuel...and 118.95 tonnes of rocket. Even with LV-T45s, your TWR should still be around 1.5. 10.5 tonnes dry...delta-V is 3844.84 m/s. Still not enough delta-V, still should be getting past 12k.

Install the mod as normal. For each part involved, you need to crack open the configuration file and add these lines to the parameters: TechRequired = start entryCost = 0 Put these just above the "cost" parameter - I'm not sure the exact placement is necessary, but it at least keeps things cleaned up. Once that's done, fire up KSP, go into the tech tree and activate the part (click on Starting Tech and then click on the part's icon). That should do it. That reminds me - I installed Protractor the other day and still need to update the parts so I can use them in career mode. Incidentally, if you want to set it up to where it's available later on down the road, find a part that becomes available with the unlocking of the desired technology, open up its .cfg file and take a look at its TechRequired parameter. Then for the part you want to add, instead of adding TechRequired = start, you say TechRequired = {same as the other part.}

Congratulations: your first attempt, your first botch. Try again. I'm not trying to sound smart, it does happen and it's frustrating when it does. But really all you can do is practice practice practice. And make sure the gear's down. And be proud of yourself: if all that happened was that you knocked the engine off without anything else exploding, you did exceptionally well.

Alright - you've got your source craft and your target craft. Start by targeting the target craft on the map screen. First thing is to put the two of them in the same orbital plane, which means decreasing the nodes (ascending node/descending node) to zero. Assuming you're going east (090 is prograde), you want to burn north at the descending node or south at the descending node. Make it a slow burn and watch the other node; stop burning when it gets to zero and be realllly proud of yourself if you can get it to say NaN (Not a Number, Java's way of telling you you're right on the money). Next is to adjust the orbit of your source craft. If the target craft is ahead of the source craft, put the source craft's apoapsis at approximately the same altitude as the target, then lower the periapsis as far as you can safely put it (around 70k for Kerbin). If the target craft is behind the source craft, put the source craft's periapsis at the target's altitude, then raise its apoapsis. Then watch the intercept chevrons. If you get things to where two of the chevrons are really close to one another (within physics range at about 2,250 m), that's good; you'll get a rendezvous there. If not, you might need to wait a few orbits. Don't be afraid to adjust the source craft's orbit if it looks like you're going to overshoot on a given pass. That's rendezvousing. Docking itself is another ball of wax.

Of course, to transmit the reports, you need to include an antenna in your design. Fortunately, you've got the Communotron 16 in your arsenal from the get-go and it weighs almost nothing; its one of those parts you can place on your ship without balancing out the other side and still expect your ship to fly straight.

Scott Manley's video is probably best for the first attempt. If you want to change anything at all from his design, use the Mk1 Lander Can instead of the Mk1 Command Pod; it weighs less and thus will give you a little more delta-V. I'd also suggest swapping out the FL-T400 with an FL-T100, connect three more FL-T100s radially to the central tank, run fuel lines from those outboard tanks to the center tank, and attach your lander legs to those outboard tanks. You shorten and widen your stack that way without sacrificing any fuel in the process; as a rule it's easier to land something with a short and wide stack. This is an older video (circa 0.18 IIRC), so yours will need to add three OX-STAT solar panels on the outboard tank and maybe two of the little Z-100 battery packs. Some Quick Landing Tips for Beginners: Landing's tricky when you're starting out. Accept that you will botch it at least once and you can have fun with it. Before you start, hit F5 to quicksave - when you botch it, hold down F9 for a few seconds and you can try again. When you de-orbit on Minmus for the first time, aim for one of the mara - those flat, low areas. They're great to practice on and your altimeter is actually worth something (on other worlds, the surface is not necessarily at zero meters; even on Minmus's maras, it's usually at 1 meter). When you get good at landing in the maras, pick somewhere else to land and get used to going IVA. There's a gauge there called a radar altimeter that measures your actual altitude over the surface, and you can use it to better gauge where the surface is. That's the tricky part of landing - you've got to know where the surface is and slow down to <10 m/s before you get there (but not too early; you waste fuel that way). Make sure when you're landing that your speedometer reads "surface". If it says "orbit", click on it until it says "surface".

Alright then; I'll count those as awarded. One quick thing - I've only landed one Altair with science on the Mun so far (I discovered that the descent stage with the 'riders had no science instruments installed), so I should only have one science point. It helps to turn the graphics settings down. Seriously - I've been told I'm playing KSP with an ultra-low-end box before, and these big ships have some serious lag going on (especially during the launch). That 46 second SRB burn on the Thanatos Heavy 7 takes about 2:15 in real time. I might have to post the in-game settings I'm running it under; my specs are a Dual-core 2.9 GHz with 2GB RAM, running an entry-level nVidia GeForce 7000 series onboard graphics chip. My laptop uses the same settings and can barely run the 0.18 demo. Turns out I do have those in-game settings with me: low terrain detail, disable WIP and SM3, 10% terrain density, 1024x768 fullscreen res, AA off, every vBlank, 60 fps, 0 pixels, 0 cascades, simple rendering, 1/8 res, fallback true, aerodynamic very low, 25 persistent debris, 0.1 sec delta-T/F, flight UI quite small. The rest are default settings. It looks terrible (as per my screenshots), but it does let you play the game with a low-end box. My "company" really needs its own flag. Or logo at least. Something else for me to GIMP up.

Winglets (the AV-R8 in particular) and gimballing engines are what I'll recommend. If you're not using at least one LV-T45 in the center, you should be; its a gimballing engine that gives you steering authority; it works very well in concert with LV-T30s for raw thrust. That's assuming you haven't got access to the Skipper (with Heavier Rocketry).

Yeah, I've had that happen before...always makes for a good Homer Simpson moment. In my case it was over Duna, so the annoyed grunt was particularly loud. Wound up having the CSM do the flying for docking in that case.