capi3101

Switch to the docking controls and turn on SAS if you have a probe core available. The docking controls alone help. If you have a Reaction Wheel on your rover, so much the better. Was driving around a rover on Mun just last nice with this configuration; it flipped over just once, and only because it caught some serious air going over the edge of a crater lip.

Multiple ports - a quad coupler would work, with extra standard struts to hold the ports. Also, seniors generally work well.

The reason why delta-V is used and not acceleration is because the kinematic equations governing how acceleration is defined make one key assumption: that the mass of an object is a constant. With rocketry, this assumption is violated; in order to make a rocket move, you have to dump mass. End of story. Your acceleration isn't going to be a constant value because your mass changes with time, so you'd have to go down one more level of integrated gooiness and come up with a concept called "jerk", which has units of meters per second per second per second. And then if your rate of mass change with time isn't constant (such as what happens when you've got a throttle setting)......well, then your jerk isn't constant. I don't know what's after jerk... In the long run, the Tsiokolvsky Rocket equation (which is used to calculate delta-V) involves a lot less math; just a natural logarithm and some basic multiplication.

I don't think it'd be possible without referring to the map at least once for some details. You'd need to know the initial spherical coordinates of both the source and target crafts (i.e. latitude, longitude, altitude) as well as their initial velocity. I suppose once you had that you could then determine at what point you'd need to make your rendezvous burns; how much delta-V and when. There's some pretty nasty rotational kinematics involved in all that, of course. Of course, I usually perform the actual docking visually. That starts at 500 meters, I close to 100, zero out relative velocity, re-aim at the target, thrust ahead and do the same thing again at 50, 20 and 10 meters. Maybe I'm not understanding the question...

Making a repeat pitch in regard to developing this...

How are you going about with development so far, out of curiosity? Are you planning on building a physical prototype? I ask because I have experience with building mods in the VASSAL Engine, and I feel the need to pitch it. It's an easy way to prototype a game without having to build anything physical. It also has an active community with a server dedicated to the purpose of hosting games. Key advantages: 1) Because you aren't building anything physical, you save money on printing that stuff out. It gets awful expensive to have something like a prototype playing piece printed out only to discover later that you can't use it or to decide later that you don't want to use it. The board alone on my first printed prototype game ran $30, and that was just a laminated poster print job at the local Kinkos... 2) Making changes is as easy as updating an image file (again, saving you money on printing). 3) As long as other people have the same mod, you can playtest the game with folks from around the world. Trust me, getting playtesting input from folks who have no emotional investment in you is pure gold. I think I'll recommend VASSAL to Holo too...I'd definitely be interested in seeing/playtesting some KSP-inspired board/card game. Name ideas......uh......"Delta-V", "Kerbal Card Program", "Kerbal Training Center".....man, those are terrible.

The radial decouplers should provide sufficient force to blow the tanks away from the rover as is. At least, I think so...have you tried that system out on Kerbin both with and without the tanks?

Has the NAM moved in 0.21? I sent a separate rover mission ahead to that area to act as a navigational marker prior to making my landing attempt. I've turned on the debug window for nav coordinates for the rover only (I plan on turning that off before proceeding with the rest of the mission) and according to kerbalmaps I should be in the right place...yet I cannot see it. Mun is a lot bumpier in 0.21, that's for sure...flying at 5,000 m used to be safe...

Lessee.......that whole assembly weighs about nine tonnes, give or take. Right? First thing I'm going to say is that the roundified RCS tanks aren't going to do you any good without any RCS. Unless I'm missing the ports somewhere. I'm going to recommend putting a BZ-52 on the underside of the rover for the sole purpose of giving you an attachment surface to a booster. Make sure to place it directly under the assembly's center of mass or it'll tilt and be a royal pain to fly. Stick a stack separator on that and you're golden. You'll probably have to strut the whole thing down to the booster, of course. Then you should be able to boost it with one of Temstar's Zenith II or Zenith III boosters. I'd recommend the III, especially if your side tanks there are going to be solely for landing (i.e. if you don't want to use them for the trans-Minmus burn) and you want to add a transfer stage.

Delta-V is, as has already been said, "change in velocity", velocity being a vector consisting of speed (a scalar value) and a directional heading. You change velocity either by changing the speed or direction; either counts as delta-V. It's important in spaceflight because you need to know how much a spacecraft can change its own velocity (without accounting for gravitational forces at work) before it runs out of fuel.

I decided I need to set down a ground marker at the Armstrong Memorial so that my guys on the Doing it Apollo Style challenge would have a target to aim for. Sent three missions to Mun; the first a Hellrider 7 rover, the second an Apocalypse 7 capsule and the third another Hellrider (the first two missions had to get reverted on account of gross mission failure, see - one of which would've cost me a Kerbalnaut had I let it stand). The third Hellrider is now in the vicinity of the Memorial...or at least, it should be; the debug window's coordinates say I should be there according to kerbalmaps, while the tracking station says I'm too far to the east-northeast still. Houston, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over... I think today I'll be investigating what's going on and see if I can't get the rover into position tonight. She's in good shape so far; landed well and hasn't had any bits blown off aside from the ladder (happened when it overturned at 25 m/s, so that's understandable). Probably taking off the self-righting system has helped; turns out the unit's probe chassis provides sufficient rotational torque to upright it on Mun, and it's equipped with a Reaction Wheel as well. She's gotten some pretty awesome hang time going over some of those craters. It does concern me that she can still gain speed with the brakes on and reverse gear engaged on some of those downhills...

I'm not seeing an RCS fuel tank anywhere on that design; am I just missing it? I'd also recommend replacing the delta wings with delta-deluxe winglets; that way you can use them to steer. EDIT: Damn. Seriously ninja'd...

Designed a "science package" in case I ever want to add one to a mission in the future. Used the prototype as a permanent ground marker at the KSC - my flag continued to sink into the quicksand immediately surrounding the KSC. Didn't have enough juice to fly on Kerbin, so I just rolled it off the pad. I'm sure the taxpayers were a bit nervous about that, what with it rolling over and over on the top of an RTG... Finally got the Castle Zulu Mun mission for the Doing it Apollo Style Challenge off the ground. As I'd thought, I'd forgotten to re-strut the LEM to the third stage when I changed it to account for the dangling rovers. Fixed that, added my fairing panels...and definitely needed that third stage just for orbit. I was sure the whole thing was going to come crashing down when the second stage lit but she held together and eventually picked up orbital velocity. At this point the mission is in Munar orbit and I'm searching for the Armstrong Memorial. I know the coordinates, I just don't think my orbit is overflying it. Descent stage didn't work the way I thought it would; makes me wonder if the 24-77 engine got tweaked for 0.21. Eight of them should definitely be outputting more thrust than a single LV-909, and yet they hardly did anything when I lit them up.

Okay, so I went onto my laptop tonight; it's an older machine that runs the demo just fine but can't handle the full game. For those of us who have never played the demo or for who it's been too long, there are 25 parts. That's it. And here they are: Mk-I Command Pod Fuel Ducts FL-T400 Fuel Tank FL-T800 Fuel Tank LV-T30 Engine LV-T45 Engine LV-909 Engine Roundified Monopropellant Tank FL-R25 Stack Monopropellant Tank RT-10 SRBs SAS Module (remember this is the 0.18 demo we're talking about, so this is the correct term) ASAS Module RV-105 RCS Thruster Blocks Stability Enhancer (the launch towers) TT-38K Radial Decoupler TR-18A Stack Decoupler Tri-Coupler EAS-4 Strut Connectors (the mighty space tape) Atmospheric Nose Cone AV-T1 Winglet AV-R8 Winglet Pegasus I Mobility Enhancer Telus Mobility Enhancer (the smaller yellow one) LT-1 Lander Legs Mk-16 Parachute All other parts are a no-no for the OP's question. So, with Oddible's design, you'd have to use the TT-38Ks instead of the TT-70s (the bigger, nicer to use radial decouplers) and AV-R8s instead of the Delta Deluxe Winglets (AV-R8s have steering authority while the AV-T1s do not). SRV Ron's design...yeah. Just replace the Stayputnik, solar panels and battery packs with a Mk-I Command Pod and you should be golden. The other designs - definitely solid.

Chief problem with both these designs: the only command pod available in the demo is the Mk-1. No probe chassis are available, including Stayputniks.

Gigaforce90's figures are correct - the problems are that you've got a bad figure for the gravitational parameter, that the formulas apply for the distance from the center of mass (so yes, adding the surface radius - 600,000 meters in this case - is essential), and that you've got make sure you're working with the same set of units in all cases (i.e. you can't cancel out kilometers with meters; you've got to have either kilometers or meters, not both). That's the only beef I have with the Advanced Rocket tutorial; I genuinely wish whoever had wrote that had kept all the figures in the base units of measurement. I mean, the game uses meters per second; why confuse folks by attempting to use kilometers per second? (Not attempting to start a flame war, in case whoever wrote the tutorial reads this. Just registering an honest gripe.) In any case, the total delta-V you need is 520 m/s. Not much at all.

10 kilometers is the minimum recommended safe orbital distance for Minmus; any lower than that and you risk unintentional lithobraking. 10k is actually what's recommended for most of the smaller bodies in the Kerbol system that lacking an atmosphere (Eeloo is the largest body on the ten-k list, if I'm not mistaken). Key exceptions are Dres, Mun, Vall and Tylo at 12, 14, 15 and 20 k, respectively.

Under the ground? Makes spotting them a might difficult, I'd imagine...how far underground are we talking about?

I haven't had time to check yet...did any of the anomalies move with 0.21, or are they all still there? EDIT: Nevermind, just checked kerbalmaps. I've adjusted the scoring for that anomaly.

The mighty Fireball 7 was first built in the 0.18 Demo... Going off of memory here, the Stage 2 engine is an LV-909, the Stage 4 engine (the centerline) is an FL-T45 that fires by itself, and the six outboard engines that fire in Stage 6 are FL-T30s. I was usually able to make the transmunar burn and munar orbital insertion on the Stage 4 engine, and usually didn't discard it until after the munar deorbit burn. The entire ship lands (in theory) and has enough juice to make it back to Kerbin (as long as there's still at least 80 fuel units in the tank on liftoff). You can right it with RCS if it tips over on landing (which happened a LOT...once I finally got landing down, that is). I ultimately modded this design when I bought the full game. Replaced the TT-38Ks with TT-70s and widened the base of the lander section by replacing the FL-T400 with four FL-T200s. The result was my Apocalypse 7 craft, which became my standard Mun lander design and the basis for all other landers I've built to this point. The Fireball's a newbie's design, obviously. But she gets the job done.

Had family in town; let my niece try to build a rocket. Still trying to figure out why the bottom turbofan stage didn't light; I'm thinking we either got the radial intakes on incorrectly or it didn't have the right type of fuel tank. Debating on whether or not I want to try again or just delete it - something about having a rocket called "Star Stiles" just strikes me as......wrong. Sent a Kerbal X to Minmus at the behest of the same niece. Was surprised that I was able to perform a round trip mission without modifying the design at all; this is the same rocket that stranded three of my Kerbals on the Mun back in 0.19... Had Edwin go out on a Hellhound rover to plant a ground reference flag at KSC. Discovered that the ground near KSC has once again reverted to marshland, firm enough for a rover to ride on, soft enough for a Kerbal to sink halfway into the ground and poof into a cloud of nothingness when they try to jump out of it. I did set my flag; it promptly disappeared as soon as I recovered the mission. Gave up on the Random Task 7; will attempt a new design for the Goodard Rocket Challenge. Launched a Thunderbolt Superheavy 7 to an 80k orbit - mission Typhon 1a is now under-weigh. The accompanying Barn Burner Superheavy 7 launch failed...which concerns me; never had problems with those in 0.20.

I've actually built a lander that looked an awful lot like that one (only difference as far as I could tell is that I had a small stack RCS tank on top instead of the radial tanks) and had the same thing happen to me (with the RCS tank coming off as well). Ultimately still performed a close rendezvous (closed to within 5 meters of the CSM) and just jetpacked over. A problem, but not an insurmountable one if you don't mind leaving a fairly sizable chunk of "debris" in lunar orbit.

First try: The Random Task 7 That pile of Reaction Wheels was originally two lengths of Structural Fuselage and the rockets originally were pointed straight down. Reverting was the only thing that kept me from a pile of about two dozen dead Kerbals... You can see that the can actually separated from the the SAS stack. First time I tried this configuration I was at full thrust when I lit the stage and the whole top came right off. Second time I lit it at 2/3 thrust and throttled up to full. She was remarkably controllable with that many wheels turning all at once. Unfortunately, this design failed. But not bad for a first attempt to fulfill the conditions of the challenge.

Made my first attempt for the Doctor Goddard's Rocket challenge (I don't recall its exact name at the moment). Didn't make orbit but I was at least able to control its flight for the most part. I think it needs moar fuel and not moar SAS. Or Reaction Wheels - whatever the hell they're called today. Learned that the new crawlway really really likes to eat up rover tires. Especially if you hit it head on at about 20 m/s...

Dang...I had thought to ask when you were going to get around to the Kilrathi WC3 designs, but I didn't do it because I knew they were asymmetrical and didn't want to sound like a beast of burden of above average intelligence.