capi3101

I suppose something like that would be easiest... Coming across a bit of a problem - I've gotten out of the nice mods that have their own wikis and now I'm having to trudge through .cfg files looking for the data I need. I noticed that both New Horizons and Extrasolar don't have any specific data on planetary mass, but they both have values for geeASL. I'm assuming this value is the surface gravity in units of standard gravities. For example, Heba from Extrasolar lists 0.886 as its geeASL, which I assume is 0.886 * 9.803 = 8.685458 m/s2. Assuming then that the radius value given (5067800) is in meters, I can derive its mass: g = (GM/r2) (in units of standard gravities) therefore (gr2)/G = M = ((5067800)2 * 0.886)/6.67*10-11 = 3.4115*1023 kg. From which I'd get my values - 2.5 Failsafe = 5,067,800 m at 1,498.3 m/s; 0.625 Failsafe = 7,601,000 m at 1,340.2 m/s. What I need to know is whether or not that assumption is correct. If it is, everything's peachy. If not... (Occurs to me, after all this math is done of course, that I could've just gone straight for the gravitational parameter - GM = gr2 - not bothering with mass at all...) EDIT: realized on my way home from work - six hours ago - that the units match up only if you're using g in terms of m/s, not standard gravities. Means the velocities I calculated for Heba earlier were off - the altitudes are still right. 4,691.3 and 4196.0 should be the correct values.

Alright, thanks for the quick reply/fix. I might have to see what an initial prograde heading does next time I'm playing around with the mod (it'd have to be along the horizon, of course). Got two Moho/Kerbin trips in my near future, looks like... Sometimes I really dislike the KSP forum software...case in point, I have the warp data for the Galileo's Planet Pack ready, but I can't just paste it from my Excel spreadsheet into a forum table...I mean I can do one cell at a time, but who wants to do that, right? Out of time for today at this point - I'll try to get it up tomorrow.

Hey @JadeOfMaar, do you happen to have any data on Niven from the Galileo's planet pack? I was starting the process of putting together the velocities chart and while the other bodies in the Ciro/Grannus system all had nice pictures on the wiki with the information I needed, Niven's page didn't have one. I'm specifically looking for its radius and mass. Haven't had time to delve into the others yet. Recording of the YouTube video is in post at this point. Aside from me rambling on at the beginning of video about Gigantors and botching the final nadir warp over Tylo, it's serviceable as a tutorial; I'm wondering if I need to re-do it. I also realized a little while ago that for certain bodies (such as Moho), instead of an east/west course what might be required is a degree of great circle navigation (to keep a velocity vector's direction in the same plane as the target body), a topic of which I have little working knowledge. Sticking to east/west is certainly an easier proposition but will likely increase the probability that corrections will be required at the target.

Alright, excellent. That oughta get me started... RSS still good?

What planet packs are current for v. 1.3.0/1.3.1? Other than making the forthcoming YouTube video, I'm trying to think how else I might be able to help out people using this mod, and the only thing I can come up with is determining failsafe orbital velocities for planets/moons outside the basic Kerbol system. I'm aware of Kopernicus and Outer Worlds; are there others?

Second-born, third-born...human beings in general are expensive. Kinda like pets except pets very rarely attempt to sass you back on an intellectual level that's on par with your own...

It considers it a single vessel. Case in point - the recent refit of La Perla Negra involved the attachment of a seismometer. The seismometer was delivered in a KIS container along with a KAS screwdriver, which was used to attach it to the rover. The game now considers it part of the rover. That said, you can "dock" two vessels together with KAS winch cables. You plug them into the connector ports and have an option of whether you want it to be plugged in in docked mode or not. When I make my refueling runs, my refineries have the winches and the fuel landers have the connector ports. I connect them together in docked mode and can then transfer fuel and such between them. One time I even "docked" to a crashed lander on the Mun surface; brought along the connector port in a container, attached it with a screwdriver, plugged in a winch, transferred three tourists out over the winch cable...it's not physically realistic but it was valid as far as the game is concerned. Why do you ask the question? I ask knowing full well it likely won't be until Monday until I'm on the forums again...

(1.3.0) Last couple of days have been pretty boring, to be honest. I've been trying to find time to continue my son's challenge to use the Alcubierre Drive to visit Eeloo and Moho in the same visit while he watches; right now I'm torn between that and Battlestar Galactica (the good one), which is only on-demand through my cable provider for another eight days. I never caught the first 3/4 of the third season in all the time it's been since the show originally aired. Made it through to "Precipice" (Season 3 Episode 2) last night, so I'm hopeful to be able to get back to warping around the system soon. I did take some time on Wednesday to remember what the hell I was doing with the warp drive mod and circularized Phoenix 4's orbit around Eeloo. I had forgotten to take into account the planetary radius when I originally calculated how fast I should've been going to orbit using warp drive alone (explains a number of things, actually). The probe was corrected to an orbit of 320x303 km over Eeloo, just a little bit over the drive's failsafe altitude, which is good since the probe doesn't have conventional engines at all... After fixing the probe, I re-did the refit of the rover La Perla Negra near the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus, using KAS/KIS parts delivered by the Black and Decker 7 probe lander - the same thing I did on Monday, but I had to revert to a quicksave on Tuesday and the last quicksave I did was before the refit. This time around I made sure and left all the screwdrivers delivered by the probe at the refinery. La Perla Negra then departed to conduct seismic readings at two of waypoints in the Lowlands. The drive took pretty much my entire time yesterday - the first set of waypoints were about 70 kilometers to the southeast of Deepwater Horizon and the second set were about 60 kilometers to the west of there - from the Great Flats almost all the way to the Greater Flats and then back again over the non-flat parts of Minmus. The drive back to DH was about 35 kilometers after that, so a quite a little ways across the surface. I am happy to report that the missions were successful and I did get paid a fair amount; my career program is now up to about √10.8M, still well short of what I need to purchase a single warp engine... After conducting a quick ore-delivery contract, I did another waypoint contract, this time on Mün and requiring the rover Indecision and engineer Leedorf Kerman at the Piper Alpha refinery. This one was in the vicinity of the refinery, only about six kilometers of Münar surface were covered. Easy money, though not a lot of it. Today I'll be launching a Bill Clinton 7b probe to collect some space crap from LKO. Other than that, it's four days until anything noteworthy is scheduled to happen.

If you're not adverse to mods, you might try Atmosphere Autopilot. It's a fly-by wire mod and I know from experience that it can make a dynamically unstable plane design flyable. Definitely better than stock SAS.

Forum member @kraden and I had a PM discussion earlier today in the wake of a successful mission to use the Alcubierre Drive to land Jeb on Eeloo. I think that discussion would be useful to more than a few of y'all, so I'm copying/pasting my main post from that discussion. Quoth me: I did read through the whole thread - all 47 pages worth (as of this message). Critical hints are on these posts: (Hit the little arrow in the upper-left corner of those links to view the replies - otherwise you'll just get the thread a bunch of times). There is also a GitHub wiki page for the mod here that is very useful. Biggest piece of information I got off of it was how to use Alcubierre Drive to do a plane change. The real trick is to know how to use the nav ball to your advantage, the failsafe altitudes of the source planet, destination planet and Kerbol, and the orbital velocities of those failsafe altitudes. Failsafe altitude is, as stated in @Aelfhe1m's post here, a planetary radius for the 2.5 meter drive and 1.5 planetary radii for the 0.625 meter drive, and you can use the method for calculating orbital velocities posted on the wiki to determine the orbital velocity at that point. Since orbital velocity decreases with altitude, the magnitude of the orbital velocity at failsafe is the maximum speed you can be going if you want to achieve orbit at the destination body on warp drive alone. I've got a table of these velocities made up. Quick note to @kraden - the table has been corrected. Here it is: Failsafe Altitudes and Velocities for RoverDude's Alcubierre Drive Mod Celestial Body 2.5m Failsafe Altitude (m) 2.5m Failsafe Orbital Velocity (m/s) 0.625m Failsafe Altitude (m) 0.625m Failsafe Orbital Velocity (m/s) Kerbol 261,600,000 47,336.00 392,400,000 42,338.61 Moho 250,000 580.71 375,000 519.40 Eve 700,000 2,415.98 1,050,000 2,160.92 Gilly 13,000 17.86 19,500 15.97 Kerbin 600,000 1,715.52 900,000 1,534.41 Mün 200,000 403.54 300,000 360.94 Minmus 60,000 121.31 90,000 108.50 Duna 320,000 686.21 480,000 613.76 Ike 130,000 267.24 195,000 239.03 Dres 138,000 279.00 207,000 249.55 Jool 6,000,000 4,852.22 9,000,000 4,339.95 Laythe 500,000 1,400.71 750,000 1,252.84 Vall 300,000 588.05 450,000 525.97 Tylo 600,000 1,534.41 900,000 1,372.41 Bop 65,000 138.31 97,500 123.71 Pol 44,000 90.56 66,000 81.00 Eeloo 210,000 420.91 315,000 376.48 @Dred_furst's technique helps when you arrive at your destination going too fast. I mention the nav ball - your typical markers (prograde/retrograde, etc.) give you information about the direction of your velocity vector, which is fine and dandy but of limited use when you're making warp maneuvers. Of greater importance is the position of your navball's nadir, zenith, east and west. Think in polar coordinates - the nadir/zenith axis changes your range (altitude) to the body you're around; east/west, if you can hold it steady on the horizon, changes your azimuth without changing your range. And then plane changes are along north/south. So what I do is like this: I begin by leaving my source SOI and head towards Kerbol. I head to an altitude of 1.9 Gm over Kerbol or closer, but no closer than 1 Gm (recalculated this also this afternoon, and the target distance should be 1,638,487,944.1 = 1.64 Gm instead). Why 1.64 Gm? By the inverse square law, that's the altitude at which 8 Gigantor solar panels should produce the necessary amount of power to power the Exotic Matter generator (for 2.4 tonnes. Equivalent other power supplies are 89 OX-4W or 4L panels for 1.56 tonnes, 89 SP-W or L panels for 2.23 tonnes, 52 OX-STAT-XL panels at 2.08 tonnes or 412 OX-STAT panels for 2.09 tonnes; pick your poison - they all have to be pointing directly at Kerbol at exactly the same time, in any case). Once I am at the target altitude over Kerbol, I go either west or east to either point my prograde vector towards Kerbol (if I want to reach a planet closer to Kerbol than the source) or away (vice versa) as needed. I can tell when I'm at the point where I'm travelling directly towards or away from Kerbol when I see the normal/anti-normal marker cross the east/west horizon. I then let Kerbol's gravity help me pick up or lose the speed I need, and while I'm doing that I shut off the drive and turn on the Exotic Matter generator to recharge. Once it's full, I secure the recharging system; don't want to warp with that turned on or bad things happen. I then switch over to relative velocity mode - which will show you what your speed is going to be at the target body. When it's at the target magnitude, I turn on the drive and warp to the target. If the relative velocity starts to increase, I warp to the target anyway and once I'm there I use the same trick - nadir/zenith, east/west - to position myself so that I'm travelling away from the planet, then warp to failsafe and use Dred_furst's technique to yo-yo and lose more speed, stopping to back up to failsafe every ten minutes or so, until I'm finally at the right speed. Then it's just east/west and nadir warps until I get an orbit. @goldenpsp asked me in a post from October 4 if I'd be interested in doing a more in-depth tutorial and I am. I was thinking about doing a YouTube video*. Hopefully this is enough to get you started, though. I should mention that this technique is for linear velocity (default) mode only. I haven't even begun to grok angular momentum mode... EDIT: Video is here.

I was going to walk you through the process of editing the config files; since it looks like you've got it, that's a big "never mind".

Okay...so you're wanting to set up your local copy of the mod to do just custom flags, if I'm reading that right. What are the filenames of your custom flag .png files, and can you give me the agencies of those flags? (For example, for an American Flag, I would say the agency is "USA". For a jolly roger, I'd describe the agency as "Pirates!". That sort of thing). Also, if you're keeping the flag files in a KSP directory other than GameData/Squad/Flags, I'd need to know that too. I agree that there should be some piece of code added to the mod to allow for the insertion of custom flags without having to deal directly with the configuration files; that, unfortunately, is beyond my ken or I'd write the script to do that myself. What I'll do though is get you set up to do things the way you want to do them.

You gotta love Atmosphere Autopilot - turns KSP flying from a chore into something that's actually fun, IMHO. Plane looks really good too. I assume you're talking about a tail-less delta in your second sentence there. In general, those require larger pitching control surfaces with higher deflections than tailed deltas to offset the reduced leverage. Let me explain - torque is defined mathematically as the cross-product of a position vector and a force vector, which comes out to the magnitude of the position vector times the magnitude of the force vector times the sine of the angle between them. Increasing any one of those three values increases torque, which in an aircraft means more authority along any given axis. That's why in a typical tailed design you want the tail as far up and as far back as you can get it; by doing so, you've increased the length of the lever arm (the distance between the control surface and the CoM of the plane, which acts as the fulcrum) and the angle between the two vectors. In a tail-less design, those control surfaces are in-line with the wing, which means there's a greater tendency for the two force vectors to line-up, which you don't want (sin0=0). So, to offset, your control surfaces need to be able to generate more force (hence the reason I suggest larger surfaces). The part about suggesting higher deflection values is also because maths. Higher thrust can also help, of course. I could be completely wrong here; sure would appreciate being refuted by a more senior FAR veteran if I am.

(1.3.0) I can honestly say that I didn't accomplish very much at all in my career save yesterday. I had decided to continue the journey of the rover La Perla Negra to a set of waypoints 70 kilometers southeast of the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus. 20 kilometers from the target area, the rover flipped, destroying the KAS container with all the refinery's screwdrivers in it in the process. Reverted...right back into the middle of the refit I was doing two days ago - a definite rage quit moment. The only other thing I did was to go through my inventory of craft in the VAB and SPH to get rid of any craft that I hadn't used in a couple of versions. My litterbox save...well, that saw a first for me. I had decided it was time to put my newfound skills with the Alcubierre Drive mod to the test, and leave it to my 8-yr old to come up with something grueling. With the Phoenix 3 warp freighter successfully launched to failsafe altitude with Jeb aboard, I launched the lander Pita 7 and set it to rendezvous: Why do shots like these always have to happen at night, anyway? After successful docking, Jeb engaged the Alcubierre Drive and began the maneuvers to get an encounter with Eeloo. Maneuvers were successful and Pita's landing engine was used to pull the craft from failsafe altitude down into a 30x30 orbit. Jeb then conducted a landing: Jeb at Eeloo's Fragipan. Tonight the challenge is to return to Kerbin, pick up another Kerbal and then send that Kerbal on to Moho...with the same lander. Could be interesting.

(1.3.0) After a long wait, the second Black and Decker 7 parts delivery probe lander finally arrived at Minmus and affected a successful special delivery to the Deepwater Horizon refinery on the surface at night. At daybreak, engineer Theony Kerman used the KAS/KIS parts delivered by the probe lander to connect up the Jiffy Lube parts lander to Deepwater Horizon and to attach a seismometer to the nearby rover La Perla Negra. He then conducted an extended mission to dismantle the probe, placing the additional parts it had delivered on various points of Deepwater Horizon, stowing non-essential parts aboard the Jiffy Lube module and stowing more crucial parts (including the extra screwdrivers and EVA tanks) aboard La Perla Negra, where Black and Decker's container was finally attached: To get it closer to the Jiffy Lube module (center, background), Theony took the probe apart into manageable chunks and then reassembled it on La Perla Negra's driver side bumper. Not the best place to put it, but it worked. La Perla Negra wound up with the probe's battery and container module, as well as its solar panels. With the refit completed, the rover departed Deepwater Horizon on a mission to complete two seismic surveys, beginning with a set of waypoints 70 kilometers southeast of the refinery. I had time to drive about halfway there, southeast to the end of the Great Flats and then up about 2.5 kilometers to the top of the Lowlands, about 35 kilometers from DH. Got LPN up to 50 m/s on the flats but I was sure to slow it down when I got to the base of that slope... LPN at the end of the day. Why I put the container up on the mast, I don't know. Going to have Theony fix it when the rover gets back to DH... In the litterbox, the Phoenix 4 warp probe made orbit around Eeloo: It's not a great orbit, but it's an orbit nonetheless. Since Phoenix 4 lacks conventional drive systems, this orbit's about as good as I'll get it. Any orbit's a good one, right? I think I have this whole Alcubierre Drive thing down at this point, so the time has come to launch a practical warp module to test and see if construction of a working Heighliner would be feasible. To that end, I constructed a booster for the Phoenix 3 craft and launched it into a 629x615 orbit around Kerbin with Jeb aboard. Phoenix 3 cutting loose its final booster stage. The craft has the same general power setup as Phoenix 4 and uses the same 2.5 meter engine as Phoenix 1. Big differences between this craft and Phoenix 1 (aside from it being a manned craft) are that it has more SAS wheels and a set of docking ports amidships, as well as one docking port aft. The hope is to attach various modules to the craft to both enhance its capabilities and to deliver other vehicles to remote destinations. I'll likely be launching the first of those missions this evening. Going to close out today with a glamour shot: Jeb's view from Phoenix 3's front seat.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/27292-what-did-you-do-in-ksp-today/&do=findComment&comment=3190350 After reading through this entire thread over the weekend, I finally got the basics of using linear velocity mode down; was able to make it into Moho's and Eve's orbit yesterday. I attempted to reach Eeloo earlier this morning from Moho; somehow I managed to flip the direction of my velocity vector. Still trying to figure out how I managed to do that. So the Moho-Eeloo run is still not open for buisness just yet, but I'm getting there. I need to thank @jd284 for the final missing piece of that puzzle, which was how to do the plane change properly. I figured it did have something to do with warping along the north/south axis; I was just doing it at the wrong place. @AeroEngy's technique for adjusting your vector also works well, as does @Dred_furst's "braking" maneuver; most of the links to those post in this thread are rotten (on account of the Great Forum Chrysalis of 2015), so I've relinked them here.

Never!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Phoenix 4 in orbit over Moho. Not as exciting of a place as your kerbal lore would suggest... (1.3.0) Spent the entire weekend in an attempt to grok the Alcubierre Drive mod. Finally did it. Only took reading through the entire thread to do it...but then again, apparently Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive in a moment of insanity, so it makes sense that I'd go mildly insane my own self trying to grasp it... Phoenix 1 over Eve.Got the time warp going a bit fast waiting for alignment; she did four laps around Kerbol before I was able to slow things down... Also had my first warp drive related incident... Phoenix 4's first flight out of Kerbin's SOI...was directly into Mun. On a collision course. Below the drive's fail-safe altitude. And that is the standard reaction drive - you know, the part of the craft I needed to get out of a collision course - floating off into space... With that out of the way, I can get back to my career save today. I now have a funding goal of √26M to afford a warp-capable hauler in that save - a Heighliner, if you will. Got √8M+ at the moment, so I've got a ways to go...might have to do some of the Duna-related contracts I've got the old-fashioned way...

(1.3.0) Spent the entire day yesterday continuing my attempts to grok the Alcubierre Drive mod. Tried once again to make it into a stable orbit of Eeloo, no joy (made it there, but I was going to fast to sustain an orbit). Revised my methodology and attempted to go to Moho again - still no joy. At this point, I'm pretty sure my failure has to do with the significant plane change involved and my apparent inability to find the right spot to make that change. Got one other thing I want to try, just haven't found the time to do it today...

I don't have very many screenies of the Auk II, as it turns out - which is kinda surprising considering how often I use it, but kinda not considering I've only been using it for about a year (and that's if you don't count the hiatus from the game I took early this year). Found these two: Not entirely sure the second screenie isn't the very first pic I ever took of the Auk II.Both of these shots are prior to a refit I did of the entire Auk series a while back (flipped the orientation of the docking ports onto the plane's belly so they could all dock up to Kerbinport without the fins bumping into one another). Like so: Two Auk IXs, an Auk Ia in front and an Auk II in the back, if you were wondering. She flies reasonably well in atmo, though I can honestly say I've never tried to use her for any job other than the one she's designed for: transport of passengers to and from LKO. I purposely designed her with a wing loading around 0.5 so she does have a fairly high takeoff speed around 120 m/s, and the thrust is a little on the low side considering her 40 tonne takeoff weight (which just means I have to keep the angle of the initial ascent a little more shallow than I prefer).

Could be worse... For the record, that plane had a tail when it took off... Yesterday was slightly more productive than the last couple of days. It began with a burn of a Boop-Boop 7 probe on a mission to put moar crap around Minmus that i ultimately won't care about but will still get paid to do; the probe will arrive in seven days. After that I turned my attention to the Auk VI ore hauling spaceplane docked at the Kerbinport space station. After delivery a load of 1500 ore to the station's on-board ore tank, the plane departed and headed for home, landing safely at KSC 09. Next up was an aerial survey of Kerbin in a region about 500 klicks to the south-southwest of KSC, which pilot Newburry Kerman performed using a Bad Idea 3 surveyor plane. Newburry conducted crew reports at four waypoints in the 15-20k altitude range before returning successfully to KSC 09. The completion of that contract was followed up with one to mine 1100 units of ore on Minmus, which was rapidly done using the Deepwater Horizon refinery already there. I picked up a contract to test a 10m Heat shield in flight over Kerbin in the wake of that contract's completion. I had previously launched a Bill Clinton 7b long-range grabber probe to Minmus on a junk hauling mission for what turned out to be a Cargo Ramp, and since the BC7b is equipped with a 10m heat shield, I figured it could clear that contract as a freebie, which it did: The successful return of the Bill Clinton 7b probe with its target paywad. Also known as "I make a lotta lotta moola..." Between the ore mining and the retreival of the cargo ramp, I made √600k yesterday, which is not bad for a day's work. With the replacement contracts both offering to pay me in order to destroy my working communications satellite constellation, I decided to wait two hours for a Mission Control alarm so that one of them would be past the expiration date. Replacement was another double-moon tourist mission, which I happily snapped up owing to another contract to expand Kerbinport with more pilots and more capacity. Newburry along with scientist Sidbrett Kerman joined tourists Organ, Frandous, Nanby and Lemski Kerman aboard an Auk II 8-passenger spaceplane, which then launched to Kerbinport and docked successfully with the station to close out my day. Glamour shot of the Auk II's undercarriage, with docking port open. Because it's been a while since I've done a glamour shot just for the hell of it. The plan is for the tourists to have an extended stay aboard the station while Next Objective remains deployed; the return of Next Objective will fulfill the conditions of the station expansion contract. I'm already counting on Next Objective to fulfill a similar contract for the expansion of the Minmusport space station. Leaves me in a position where, once again, all my contracts are waiting on things to get where they're going before I can start knocking them out, unfortunately... Still trying to grok the Alcubierre Drive mod in my litterbox save. I think my early success with getting Phoenix 1 in orbit of Dres had more to do with the fact that Dres and Kerbin were closely aligned at the time; i.e. the direction of the velocity vector matters. I'm still hoping to get Phoenix 1 into orbit of Eeloo, and at this point I think I know how to do it. Keeping my fingers crossed there - I'm going to have to fly awfully damn close to the fail-safe altitude over Kerbol to do what needs to be done unless I'm very much mistaken. Kinda worried about things overheating...not to mention the risk of putting myself on a sundiving course and suddenly not being able to engage the warp bubble...gotta keep an eye on that altimeter...

Had another relatively light day yesterday. Big thing I did was deliver a load of ore from the surface of Kerbin to the Kerbinport space station using an Auk VI ore hauling spaceplane: I don't get the Auk VI out the barn very often, so I figured I'd post a screenie of it since I had the opportunity. Was concerned about whether or not she'd dock up to the station with that Auk II there for a little bit... A contract to deliver 450 units of ore from Mun to Kerbin's orbit was fulfilled when the plane made orbit - which was not in the spirit of the contract but the game still gave me credit for it. I designed that plane to land ore not deliver it, though, so I'll still take the money and run... I also launched a Boop-Boop 7 probe and set up a burn for Minmus; have yet to perform that burn. As far as my career save is concerned, that's all that happened yesterday. Today, I need to perform the burn for that probe, undock the Auk VI and return to base, and maybe conduct an aerial survey over Kerbin. Other than that, I'm mainly just waiting for stuff to get to where it's going - Next Objective is still en route to Minmus, the Black and Decker 7 replacement probe still hasn't reached Deepwater Horizon (got two contracts that are hanging on its delivery mission, which I've already had to redo once) and I've got a Bill Clinton 7b probe en route to Kerbin. Nothing particularly exciting. In my litterbox, I continued experiments with the Alcubierre Drive mod. Having achieved success with an early morning orbital jaunt to Dres, I tried to transfer to Moho next. Discovered the fail-safe altitude over Kerbol the hard way, and was headed directly towards Kerbol at the time. A revert later, I made an attempt to go to Eeloo. After futzing about for quite a bit using the same method I employed to go to Dres, I did arrive but did not achieve orbit - relative velocity minimized around 1130 m/s. Still trying to figure that one out; I think it might've had something to do with the direction of the velocity vector relative to Eeloo. I'm still very much enjoying this mod.

Thanks for the data. I was asking the question for planning purposes; if I know how close I can jump, I can find out what I want my velocity to be at that point. I'd be interested, though it may be a while before I could do it. For one thing, I'd have to find the time. For another, there's the fact that today is only my third day with this mod...

Never mind - I figured out what I was doing: Just took a few tries is all. I figured out that if you go sundiving first and switch your speedometer over to target relative mode, you can gauge when to engage the warp bubble by when your target relative velocity is minimized. I'm not entirely certain that the speed listed in the screenie - 138.4 m/s - wasn't what that got to on that attempt to make it to Dres. Actual warp jumps were short enough; the mission time above was mostly spent in close proximity to Kerbol decelerating to Dres's orbital velocity. I guess my last question about how to use this mod is this - for the 2.5 meter engine, is the 600 kilometer failsafe distance for all bodies, for just those bodies with atmosphere, or is it specifically Kerbin? I ask because I tried Eve last night and the bubble collapsed closer to the planet, IIRC. Going to have to play around with the other engine sizes now...I'm having fun with this mod.

Another slow day in the career save - I launched a Auk II spaceplane with three KSC staff and five tourists aboard to LKO, rendezvoused and docked with the Kerbinport space station, transferred said kerbals to Next Objective docked at the station and the ship departed for Minmus: Next Objective departing Kerbinport. It's like I'm running an airline sometimes... She'll arrive in eight days. Botched the timing of the ascent so rendezvous took longer than normal; while I was waiting, I launched tourist Rontop Kerman to LKO aboard a Kerbal Tour Bus 7c for contract, then returned him safely to Kerbin about 90 klicks from KSC. I think I may have figured out what I'm doing wrong as far as using the Trajectories mod to do a precision KSC landing (finally), and I'm anxious for another up-and-down contract to become available in order to test my theories. I also had time to launch a Boop-Boop 7 probe into an equatorial orbit around Kerbin for contract, dubbing said orbital space crap Kerbin Iota when all was said and done. I spent more of my time in the litterbox doing experiments with the Alcubierre Drive mod, mainly trying to figure out how to navigate with the thing properly. Took the Phoenix 1 experimental warp probe to Duna and Eve. Hit Duna going way too fast - wound up doing a Tunguska the moment the ship hit atmo. Learned my lesson there; when I went to visit Eve, I first did a little sundive to pick up speed, to try and match Eve's orbital velocity around Kerbol a little moar closely. That worked - I made it to Eve at a reasonable orbital speed of about 1100 m/s. Probably should've tried to use the warp drive to get into orbit instead of attempting aerobraking, though; I haven't attempted an Eve aerobrake since v 0.9, before the deadly re-entry rules kicked in, and discovered 75 klicks is a bit too far down when your orbital velocity is above 4000 m/s at that point. In fairness, I did put what was left of the probe into a stable orbit around the planet...but what I realized overnight was that I should've used the warp to go prograde at the velocity I was at when I first entered Eve's SOI in order to swing into a stable orbit. Which is what I did this early morning when I visited an untrustworthy region of space, again with Phoenix 1 (after reverting, of course): Now I just have to come up with a disaster- or nuclear weapons-related name for the production model, like I do with all my craft. Phoenix is just too full of hope...don't know what I was thinking... Not every day that you can visit another planet (such as Dres) with your final booster stage still attached. Just saying... Today's agenda: build a production warp ship in the litterbox, then do some tests with the current infrastructure to see if I can incorporate it into my existing career save or not. In the career save proper, I've got a satellite to launch, a plane or two to fly, and ore to mine. Twiddling my thumbs mainly until Next Objective arrives at Minmus, trying to pick up some cash. Those warp drive units aren't cheap...

Depends on which engine you're wanting to go with. My own self, I just started playing around with this mod yesterday; the 2.5 meter engine has a bubble size of around 40 meters, at least according to the VAB. Haven't tried futzing around with any of the other engine units just yet, so I'm of no help there. The 0.625-meter unit's bubble is not particularly large, I will say that; probably wouldn't want to do much more than a probe with it. Incidentally, if you want to stow the engine in a fairing prior to launch and the game gives you fits, try shutting off the bubble visualization... So yeah, been using this mod for all of two days now. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the notion of the conservation of momentum; engineering physics/vector mathematics was twenty years ago, and not something I've had cause to use much since. Let me ask you guys this: as I recall, the two components to the any vector are magnitude and direction (in crude, my-body-needs-moar-covfefe-right-now terms). I get the idea of lining up for a dive towards/away from Kerbol to use gravity in order to pick up or reduce your orbital velocity to match the orbital velocity of the target. I'm having trouble with the notion of direction (of all things); does your direction component include your current movement around the source body?Say, if I was orbiting Kerbin, does my initial direction component relative to Kerbin factor in it at all, or just the direction component relative to Kerbol? Do I even need to be concerning myself with direction, or is it sufficient to just worry about magnitude? Corollary: anybody know about any mods out there that would do the necessary calculations?