capi3101

Damn, I hate that rover. Sent Jeb and Bill flying more than they ever have before (and these guys go to space regularly, so......) Sliding down...excuse me, that should be tumbling end over end down the side of a steep-ass crater always makes me a bit cranky. Any penalties for breaking off bits of the rover? I've lost a pair of headlights and a cubic octagonal strut already. Don't mind me; I just ain't used to driving something with the center of mass that high. The brake-lights are a nice touch.

I dunno...I started eyeballing that Eeloo challenge earlier today......

I will say that generally the ruggedized wheels are designed for heavier rovers. The 'Hound is four tonnes all told and they work well with it. I used ruggedized wheels on a previous design, the Hellrider 7, which weighed only about 1.5 tonnes. They proved to be a bit powerful; on the other hand, I put the 'riders through a hell of a lot of abuse and most of the time they kept themselves intact. Still, for a lighter rover there's nothing wrong with the big bouncy looking kind (I want to say Mk-2s, but don't quote me on that).

Let's start with the basics: how massive is your payload and what is your final desired orbital altitude?

OP: I don't use MechJeb - though I have plans to install it if I ever successfully pull off a round-trip mission to Eve. Lag's generally caused when you're using up a lot of your computer's available memory. Having more mods installed uses more memory, as does building craft with a large number of parts. Your options for reducing it are A) uninstall the mods you don't use all that often and reduce the quality of your graphics. I'm generally capable of loading 500 part craft without sweat and last night I launched a 600 part craft with an acceptable lag - this with a below spec box, largely because I have the graphics settings turned waaaaaaay down. I suppose there's C) get a better box, but that tends to be a tad expensive. I guess in answer to your question, if you've got lag with what you've got, something's going to have to give - either fly with less mods or turn down the graphics. Game still looks pretty sweet with the graphics turned down. Just sayin'.

Only other thing I might suggest over MrPopcup's design is to encase the critical hardware in impact resistant parts. Take my Hellhound 7 rover for example: The critical parts - namely the probe core and the RTGs - have structural panels above and below it, with modular girders on the side (there's a Reaction Wheel at the heart of the Hound, BTW). Panels and girders have an impact resistance of 80 m/s, which is way faster than what you're reasonably going to be able to drive (without some kind of JATO assistance or falling down a cliff anyway). Benefit: if your rover does rollover on you, you can upright it again as opposed to the whole thing instantaneously blowing up and becoming a worthless pile of debris... Docking mode controls for rovers help tremendously; on Minmus, you have to drive that way (even the Hound, which weighs four tonnes, will flip over on Minmus if the controls are left in staging mode). You can also remap your translation keys. I dunno know IJKL will work or not; I've never tried it. One other thing you can do is provide your rover with some constant downthrust while you're driving it to give you traction. Downforce for rovers is one of those instances where I've actually heard people finding a useful application for ion thrusters. Just a thought.

Lessee...you'd need somewhere between 21,450-22,800 kN of thrust at liftoff. 5360-5700 in the center and 2015-2140 on the outboards assuming eight boosters in an asparagus staged setup. To keep it simple, a quad of mainsails plus eight quads of skippers...that'd be 36 more parts just for engines. You could then combine that with those Procedural Fuel Tanks the admins featured a week or two ago - that'd be another nine parts, plus a few extra to attach engines outboard. The necessary struts on top of that would of course be another ten to twenty thousand parts... Only other options I can think of to get that beast into space without substantially raising the part count are hacking gravity and hyperediting, if those are in the realm of options for you. EDIT: You might be able to mount a quad of boosters on the port and starboard aft section. Put four mainsails on each booster. Again go with the Procedural Fuel Tanks. You do it right, you might wind up with an SSTO...I've done it myself with a ninety tonne payload lately...

Edit the configuration file for the LV-N; look for the parameter "isFairing" and set it equal to "False" (capitalization counts). Backup your save games before you do this in case this doesn't work; I've been searching for this on the forums, couldn't find it (which sucks, because this is one of those questions that comes up every week or so) and am going off of memory here. Only other choice is to not stick anything beneath them, as Johnno said. My original Thunderbolt 7 and Thunderbolt Heavy 7 tugs had five LV-N engines, and there was no way I was editing the configuration files; ultimately I had to launch them upside down, which was a pain but worked...

I've planning to do this challenge for a while now; had to get the Mun mission done first and it's taken me a while to find time to finish planning a Duna run. My mission is underway now and I will be submitting an entry soon - meantime I wanted to bump this thread so I wouldn't have to dig down six pages to find it again...

Best hint I can offer - build them low and wide. Start with a probe core; an OKTO2 works well. Slap a structural panel above it and a Reaction Wheel below it, and slap a structural panel below that. Use modular girders to build your chassis from that - the idea is to encase all of your critical hardware in parts with a high impact tolerance (by which I mean 80 m/s; you shouldn't be able to get a rover up to that speed without some kind of JATO system involved). Add a couple of battery banks and either RTGs or solar panels (I prefer RTGs but that's just me), some wheels and a couple of headlights and you're good to go. Here's my best rover design, the Hellhound 7, driving around on Minmus. You can see that it is low and wide. The Reaction Wheel is there to further reduce the likelihood of a rollover; I could reduce it further by locking the steering on the outboard back tires (the inboard set are locked already). Built in the VAB, incidentally. To get a Kerbonaut into a seat, you have to get them in close proximity to the seat itself. Right click on the seat and select "Board"; if the option doesn't come up, you have to get closer. As for wheels, depending on how you've built up your chassis, you might try 2x symmetry. You'll get a wheel plus the one caddy corner from it. Me, I stick them on one at a time, and then do my level best to make sure they're at the same height and flush with the girders. Test your rover on Kerbin first; a well designed rover will go straight when it's not being steered and will pull to one side if there's an issue.

Initiated Project Storax, an effort to bring an Apollo-style rocket to Duna. Made all the more interesting because on the bit that counts, I will not be using LV-Ns. Two separate launches are involved - the first was the Storax Sedan 7 launch, designed to deliver two Hellhound 7 rovers (designated "Malaise" and "Lack of Prospects") to the Dunan surface to hunt for and mark a good landing site. The second is the Storax Anacostia 7 launch, the main mission. The parameters have me launching the two missions fairly close to one another; the launch of Storax Anacostia occurred after the trans-Dunan burn on Storax Sedan. I'll have to watch my timing with both missions so that they both actually make a Dunan intercept. Going to be interesting in any event. The design of Storax Anacostia wound up in the category of "too long" when it came time to light the third stage for orbital insertion; the Dunan transfer stage sheared clean off. This is a problem I used to encounter with the Barn Burner Heavy 7, so I know I just need to keep the throttles to a minimum. Reverted the flight; will try again tonight.

Might've just been me, but the target looked like it had sunk below the Munar surface when I went to load it up. In any case, I had Jeb and Bob flipped over after just 900 meters, so I'll be making another attempt in the not too distant future.

My bad then...and apologies.

That bit in the central stack, unless I'm looking at it wrong. What parts are those?

Most of that 4550 is spent in the ascent; covers not only the amount necessary to achieve orbit but the gravity and drag losses. An ascent to escape velocity therefore oughta require somewhere in the neighborhood of 5500 m/s of delta-V to achieve. Short answer: shouldn't make a difference at all...

Is there a perfect rocket? Depends on how you define perfect and for what task the rocket's intended. Is there a perfect catch-all rocket for all situations? No. I think others have explained why that is sufficiently at this point.

Shenanigans - that ain't stock.

Finished my 30k drive on Minmus and sent the lander/skycrane back to Kerbin. Chutes are still ripping the lander's probecore clean off the rest of the lander; makes me hesitant to send the design to Duna. I think I still will anyway. Ran my fuel lines. Booster wound up with just shy of 6000 m/s...so that's the difference between SSTO and onion staging, I guess. Both craft are as ready as they're going to be, I think. Time to get that Duna challenge off the ground. Hopefully tonight.

Those values are for both; it takes as much to land as it does to start, provided the planet doesn't have atmo (if it does, you can use chutes and save yourself some delta-V). For example, it takes 640 to land on the Mun, and another 640 to take off again, so you want to plan for 1280 or greater in the lander. Basically, if you can make a lander design that has 5600 delta-V after it's launched from Kerbin, you should be able to visit any other world in the system except for Tylo and Eve. If you build it with 6140 for greater, you can visit Tylo too. Here's what I'd do: design a family of landers, ones with variable amounts of delta-V. Build your Tylo lander first and start removing elements for visits to other worlds. Better yet, consider replacing elements you remove with payloads of equal mass - things like packing rovers or sensor probes. You know, add stuff to do once you arrive at your destination - it's usually an awfully long way for Jeb to just get out, stretch his legs a bit, plop down a flag and then begin the long journey back. That Gilly figure is not a typo - you can launch and land on that sucker with RCS thrust only. Provided you can get an intercept first, of course...

Last night while I was building my treehugger (no-nukes) Duna rocket KER wouldn't give me hard data on the first three stages. It did tell me I had 4500 m/s of delta-V between them, so I went to bed but it still bugged me. This morning, I realized why it wasn't telling me anything: I hadn't run fuel lines between those stages. That means I managed to build an SSTO rocket with a 90-tonne payload...quite an accomplishment if the damn thing actually works. Of course, the challenge for which I'm building this particular rocket says the booster must be three stages, so I'll have to run fuel lines. I might try things once without them just to see if it'll get into orbit...

I think Station One is a sandbox scenario in a sandbox game; you can do pretty much as you wish with it. It's a good practice scenario for figuring out how to work with spaceplanes and how to pull EVAs if nothing else.

The demo is from version 0.18 and flags weren't implemented until 0.20, so you don't have them right now. When you get the full game, if you have a .png file with the correct aspect ratio you can make a flag out of it. There used to be a requirement for the image to be something like 216x160 IIRC, but I'm not sure if that's still a requirement with 0.21 or not. You'd just build the file and copy into the GameData/Flags/(Whatever you decide to name it to distinguish your flags from the stock ones) directory.

10k is probably safe regardless of your orbit for Mun; below that you risk hitting terrain.

There's also the Historical Missions tutorial section of the wiki; that's a pretty good playthrough. Start with Sputnik and go through the Salyut Programme (the ISS tutorial is incomplete).

Leapfrogged a set of 'hounds on Minmus, dropping science probes every five klicks in a straight line. Another five klicks and I'll be able to claim my land navigation device for Minmus. Big test coming up is to see if A) the lander/skycrane has got enough juice to make it back to Kerbin from Minmus and if I've done sufficient strutting up of the whole structure to keep the chutes from ripping the probe core right off the rest of the chassis when they open. If so, this puppy's headed to Duna next opportunity. Speaking of Duna, I finally got around to building a rocket for the Duna Apollo-style challenge; a 600-part behemoth that includes no asparagus and no LV-Ns, that has to be launched in one go and do a round trip. I'm curious to see if it will work; my box starts lagging around 500...