capi3101

In my thirty minutes last night, I decided to try and design a basic automated mining rig to send to Minmus - I have a contract to extract 2100 units of ore, see. Spent most of the time I had testing out the basics of the design - like would it land, would it drill, etc. - before strapping on top of a booster and shooting it out that way. The rig I've got only has storage for 300 units of ore, so I'll have to send up a storage unit to hook up later; that's probably tonight. I've then got to consider whether or not I should send up a converter, so the thing will be useful after I've got the contract fulfilled. In any event, it's looking like I'm taking the first steps towards a full-fledged permanent outpost on Minmus. Can't say I've done that in KSP as yet.

I use FAR, and I've had to adjust my ways of thinking about how I plane as well; the good old days of getting up to 30k and 1400 on jets alone are definitely over. If you plan for about 1,800 m/s worth of rocket delta-V, you can generally make it; that means roughly half the mass of your plane is going to be rocket fuel, and the higher the efficiency of your rocket engine, the better. That's the main reason why I advocate the use of Aerospikes these days despite the lack of gimbal (you can usually compensate by adding SAS wheels), but I've also had success with Thud engines. Par example... Of course with FAR you don't need as much jet as stock - a single Turbojet is sufficient for up to thirty tonnes of plane, and that doesn't require all that much LF (a single Mk1 Fuselage - before it was tweaked for moar fuel, so about 150 units - is sufficient for most orbital flights). Then it's 10k as fast as you can reach it, level out to 10 degrees above the horizon and hold that sucker until you start losing speed (usually up around 18-20k), then pitch up as hard as you dare, light the rocket above 20k (I usually wait until 25k though I'll light it lower if I'm in danger of slowing to less than Mach 3) and then go from there. You do flirt with danger from heat; that can't be helped. That's one of the reasons why I started using Kerbal Flight Data; its temperature warnings are quite useful - you start seeing them, you steepen your ascent. The temperature will start going down at some point. As for re-entry, put AIRBRAKES on your design, set them for neutral, and pop them as soon as you hit atmo. I would call them overpowered in their ability to reduce re-entry heat. Plus, do like the shuttle did - pitch up to 40 degrees above the horizon and hold it there for as long as you can manage; if you can keep it there until the turbojet engine catches, you're usually golden.

Not really much of anything interesting to talk about this past weekend, other that to say that my six year old has decided to give KSP a whirl. I'm sure he'll do fine as soon as he can remember how to steer; at the moment he's a proper Kerbal. My own self, I was largely doing minor contracts - parts tests, a sat contract or two, and a rescue contract, all while awaiting various crews to make their way out to Minmus. I did decide the time had come for me to get Val and her tourists off the surface of Mun (they've been stranded there for quite some time now), so I designed Hound Dog 7 and shot Bill off that direction with a KIS screwdriver and a couple of KAS connector ports. Going to try piping out the tourists this time around rather than beaming them over a fiber optic winch cable. I'll need to tweak the Hound Dog design if I ever have to use it again; I use PartRecovery to keep costs down, and let's just say there were enough issues with decoupling going on that I didn't recover that many parts. Time to start using Sepratrons...

I think you're getting Data Size and Data Values confused with one another. Data Size refers to how much data will need to be transmitted in order for the experiment to be received via transmission back at KSC. Its only used if you decide to transmit the data rather than bring it back to Kerbin manually. The antenna you use to transmit the data will determine both how much power will be required to transmit the data and how long it will take to process. For example, the size of a Goo Observation (the scientific experiment for which you require a Goo Container) is 10 mits (I'm going off the wiki here; not sure if the data there has been updated post 1.0 or not but the new atmospheric experiment is there so I'll assume the data is up to date). A small antenna transmits at a rate of 3.33 mits per second and burns 20 units of electricity per second while in operation, so it'll take four seconds and eighty units of electrical charge to finish transmitting the data. Transmission efficiency for a Goo Observation is 30%, so you'll reap only 30% of the science points you could reap if you were to return the experiment to Kerbin. Data Value, on the other hand, is how many science points you can expect to harvest from the experiment. As you've pointed out, the base value for a Goo Container is 10 points with a 13 point maximum per biome/scenario. Kerbin has got some pretty sucky multipliers - 0.3x on the ground, 0.4x splashed, 0.7x in low atmo below 18k, 0.9x in high atmo between 18 and 70k, 1.0x in low orbit below 250 kilometers, and 1.5x in high orbit above 250 kilometers. So, what's happens there is that for each possible scenario, you multiply the base and maximum values times these scenariosm, and that's how much you can hope to expect to get from them. For example -for your first Goo Observation in high orbit over kerbin, you can expect to reap 15 science points (10*1.5 = 15), and the maximum potential value there is about nineteen to twenty points (13*1.5 = 19.5, not sure which way it rounds). So you take the goo and get it back to Kerbin - fifteen of the nineteen/twenty sci points for that scenario have been harvested, leaving four or five points left over. Next time you go, the amount of science points collected is subject to an adjustment that lowers what you harvest quite a bit. Say you transmit your first Goo Observation from high orbit - 30% transmission efficiency, so instead of 15 points gathered, you get four or five. Now, I may be wrong about this, but I think that if you transmit the amount of data you can possibly gain for a scenario still drops by the same amount - so there's only four or five science points still available for that scenario (which is why it's almost always better to return your experiments to Kerbin if you can). The wiki's Science Page is reasonably up to date with this kind of data. Look specifically for the Celestial Body Multipliers table; it contains the "Experiment Subject Value" multipliers used in the post Gaiiden pointed out to you. Hopefully that clears matters up for you.

Last night I docked a refueling probe to the Storax 7 in Munar orbit and successfully transferred sufficient fuel to bring home a group of tourists. Gathered enough science from the flight to finish filling out the 180 tier and bring myself roughly up to par with where I was in my old game, enough to bring some of those same designs into play. Launched a Stratofortress 7a with Jeb and a group of tourists to do a flyby of Minmus, and fulfilled an orbital space station contract in the process. Jeb's group will arrive in about 13 days. Meanwhile, Bob finished his high orbit gravioli scans, and now he's on his way out to Minmus and should arrive in eleven days. I was able to replace the station contract with a contract to drill ore from Minmus, so my final launch of the night was Sojourner 7, my first ore-scanning satellite. All in all, three flights to Minmus. Also got a flag-planing contract for Minmus; since Kacella was already en route to arrive in three days, she'll no doubt fulfill that contract when she arrives. Minmus. Minmus, Minmus, Minmus. Minmus again.

Both Ap and Pe need to be up above 70,000 for low orbit and both Ap and Pe need to be up above 250,000 for high orbit.

Did an upgrade of Bob's Fireball 7 lander with additional science instruments - a gravioli detector, accelerometer and seismometer, and a ladder for good measure (and easier instrument cleaning) - and shot him off again to try and finish cleaning out Minmus. I decided that while I was at it I'd go ahead and science the hell out of Kerbin's orbit; I still had all the other instruments from the first trek (in case there were still points to pick up), and in many cases I hadn't done any orbital sci. Polar orbit over Kerbin; spent the night cleaning up. When I was done in low orbit, I went ahead and got Bob out to higher orbit and began collecting additional gravioli readings. I've still got three or four more Kerbin biomes to hit there before heading off to Minmus; the transfer might be a touch more interesting than normal - let's say I'm not expecting to hit seven biomes once I get out there this time around... Also replaced the capsule with a Mk1 Lander can and added some slap-on solar panels. Overall the capsule's got roughly the same amount of delta-V as it did before, but it should be far more capable than it was.

For a fifty tonne craft, you should be able to get away with four RAPIER engines. You might try replacing a pair of them with something with a higher vacuum Isp...if you reserve them specifically for space use, a pair of Terriers would probably work okay. If you want something you can still use in atmo before switchover, I'd suggest Aerospikes. My first thoughts when I look at this plane are "it hasn't got enough wing for the length of its fuselage (damn, that's a long fuselage) and it's lacking ailerons". But, if it flies okay otherwise... You're also probably not doing yourself any favors with all of those radial intakes in the back. One per engine oughta be sufficient - and you can get rid of them completely if you go replacing them with rockets like I suggested. Less mass, more efficient engines - that's two out of three ways to improve delta-V. The third would disqualify this design as an SSTO, of course... I'm with Scarecrow there - that plane looks like it's begging for a tailstrike. Do you usually just ski jump it?

Y'all suggesting types of flight other than keyboard should point the OP to a tutorial for how set that up in KSP. I mean, I'd like to know - you guys are absolutely right in that it overcomplicates things (particularly with FAR on an underpowered box), I also fly with the keyboard and I've got a flight stick sitting there gathering dust...

Roll, then pitch up - that's how you turn a plane. Try not to pitch too hard if you like your pilot and want him to have a spare supply of working brain cells; especially if you're flying with the FAR aero model, too many gees can cause structural failure. Rudder helps to make fine course corrections at best. For landing, you need to have a reasonable glide slope - here's one place where the stock game really is lacking. If you're not adverse to mods, try NavUtilities; it'll give you a fully-functional ILS to work with. If you want to stay stock, you can make Runway markers with pretty low-tech equipment - folks have done it before with a Kerbal and flags, but I find that using low-tech probe rovers gives you something that A) you can see from further away and won't spontaneously vanish. A Stayputnik, a little batt or two, a stick-on solar panel, a piece or two of structural fuselage, a Wheesley engine and bush-plane landing gear will do (maybe also a radial chute). You put that together and park a pair of them on either end of the runway (just off the sloped bit - it's important to get them as well-aligned with the center of the strip as you can manage and off the sloped bit if you don't want the game to try and get rid of them_). When you get them in position, set the brakes and then re-class them as bases. They make handy markers for figuring out where KSC is - and as bases, you can see them from a 100 kilometer orbit pretty easily. So anyway, when your little end-of-runway-devices are in place and you're out flying and getting ready to land, note the distance to the closest marker. Multiply that distance times 100 and add 100 to that result - the final number is roughly where you want your altimeter to read, plus or minus 200 meters. More than that and you're too high, less than that and you're too low. You can also use the markers to align yourself longitudinally with the runway; a third marker a kilometer from the land-ward end of the runway helps with that aspect of the landing. When you're within about ten kilometers or so, quicksave (always important in case you botch it), kill your throttle (or get it down to one notch, tops) and lower your gear. Airbrakes will help here if your speed is...say, above 150 m/s or so (in your case, I might recommend 100 m/s, or not much more than the minimum speed at which your plane takes off). You want to be descending at a rate not much more than five meters per second when you make contact with the Runway; much faster than that and you risk collapsing your gear - which I'd wager is what's happening after you bounce.

I and some of the FAR gurus might be able to help you out there - post some screenies of your plane on the Official FAR Craft Repository thread. I'ma guessing you probably just need to shift some mass (read: fuel) forward before you attempt re-entry but a screenie would help confirm that. I've got a cargo plane my own self that needs the fuel pumped forward or it flips out all over the damn place.

I haven't got anything to add that other folks haven't said already. Check the alignment of your gear and lengthen the fuselage (a piece of structural fuselage or two will do just fine there). I might also suggest a bigger tail-fin; the one you've got looks fairly anemic; some additional yaw stability might help alleviate some of your waving control issues. What kind of part is the tail, anyway? Is it an all-moving part? If it isn't, then you should add a rudder; an Elevon 1 cobbled onto the end would probably do the job. If it is, on what setting do you have it set?

Spent my hour last night with two probe launches. The first probe's mission is an attempt to rendezvous with the Storax 7 lander in orbit of Mun to deliver enough fuel to bring home a group of tourists. Launch was successful if a bit wonky on the first stage - insufficient strutting, and something that'll need to be fixed if I ever decide to go with that design again. Second launch was an attempt to put a probe up for money. Almost got it right on the nose, but my periapsis is about 20k off the target...and it'll be ten days before it swings back around to the apoapsis... Making preliminary plans to send Bill to rescue Val and her tourists from the surface of the Mun. He's done it before; he can do it again. Also thinking about sending Bob back to Minmus with a better-equipped lander to try and finish tapping out its science.

Okay...so I got Bob to Minmus yesterday for the first time (I don't get to play KSP in much more than 45-90 minute spurts, and I was filling the 18 day gap with doing contracts for money - with the exception of the SPH, Admin Building and Tracking Station I was able to get everything fully leveled up at KSC, those three buildings are at a solid Level 2). Stock science parts only - I had goo containers, materials bays, thermometers and barometers locked. Built a probe-controlled capsule like Geschosskopf suggested with these instruments and shot the whole thing off to Minmus. Plan was to hit three or four biomes, tops - I wound up with a good enough position and enough delta-V to hit seven of Minmus's nine biomes (missed the Flats and the Poles - could've hit the Poles but the numbers said I wouldn't make it back to Kerbin again if I did). Wound up netting just shy of 4000 science from the single trip. Now, I have a question: I have unlocked the other three stock science instruments at this point (gravioli detector, seismometer and atmospheric technobabble-thingy). If I'm reading the wiki's science page correctly, the base/maximum science values of those three instruments are equal (and in fact slightly higher than) the combined values of the four instruments I brought. It seems to me that a second trip to Minmus with those three instruments with visits to those two biomes is in order, yet the old wisdom was that once you hit a biome it's generally not worth it to hit it again. Does the old wisdom still apply, or should I begin plans for a return trip? Does it still take four visits to a biome with a specific instrument (or one visit with four of the same instrument) to clean it out entirely? It's pretty nice to be only about 25 days into a career save and already have nuclear engines and mining capabilities. I'll just throw that out there - these strategies work, no question.

Assuming the port on the rover is not upside down, it could just be that Kerbin's gravity is overriding the magnetic force of the two ports. Try hacking gravity and see what happens.

Last night it was all about Bob. Having finally arrived in Minmus orbit for the first time in my career save, Bob was tasked with pillaging as much science as possible from the moon's surface. He was supposed to hit three, maybe four biomes before returning to Kerbin. He hit seven - for reference, Minmus only has nine biomes in all. He might've collected more science had there been more instruments unlocked, but as he was going there to get the science needed to unlock said instruments, well... In any event, the trip was an unqualified success. There were a few nervous moments on the return - I had to lock a battery down so he'd have enough juice to pop his chutes at the end and so he made most of the trip back in an unpowered capsule, it didn't want to keep retrograde during the re-entry and he wound up on an eleven degree slope in Kerbin's highlands, causing his capsule to tip over upon landing on Kerbin - but other than that his trip was a success. 3880 science brought home from Minmus, enough to unlock the remaining science instruments, most of the Mk2 spaceplane parts and nuclear engines. Not much left for for Kacella to do when she arrives at Minmus in six days besides hit the Flats and the Poles, and since she's in a capsule identical to Bob's, she oughta be able to hit them both without issue. Probably won't be as fruitful as Bob's trip was, but every little bit helps. Now to turn my attention to other matters - I've got some tourists to bring home from Mun.

Spent the weekend doing this and that. Sent a group of tourists to Mun. Landing went well, reorbit went well...but the craft only has 170 m/s of delta-V left at this point. Ship does have CoT Jrs so a refuel mission is being planned. Meanwhile, another Death Fortress 7 mission was sent to pick up Jeb (whose own Death Fortress tipped over on landing) along with the two Kerbals he was sent to rescue from Mun (one from orbit, one from the surface). That mission went comparatively well; I was able to pick them up, gather the science they'd picked up while they were there and get the whole crew back to Kerbin safely. The DF design could use a set of Seperatrons to clear the lander bit from the CM, but other than that and a high center of mass there's not much wrong with the design. Meanwhile, Bob has made it to Minmus orbit. Never did get the Explore Minmus contract, but at least the game gave me a contract for a Minmus flyby and a Minmus orbit, so there is that. Tonight he lands. Hopefully he should have enough delta-V to hit three or four biomes before he has to return to Kerbin. I'm hoping his mission will rake in some serious amounts of science; short term goal there is to unlock the remaining sci instruments. Admin building's been upgraded to Level 2 - that leaves Admin, SPH, VAB and the Tracking Station to upgrade to full.

Not much done last night - sent a white suit to Mun to try to pick up Jeb and company while earning some bux in the process. Nina turned out to be a scientist, so I loaded her up into a Fireball 7a and shot her out towards Minmus; she'll arrive in eighteen days. Bob arrives there in two; still haven't unlocked the Explore Minmus contract and I've pretty much given up hope of that happening. Did another Kerbin-orbit rescue mission as well. I need to go ahead and clean up some of the crap capsules that are still in Kerbin's orbit. Still trying to get the Level 3 VAB unlocked - I'm close but I need to make good on some scratch before I'd feel comfortable about pushing the button.

I've always been under the impression that KSP pretty much just cuts atmospheres off at the Karman-line equivalent, effectively ditching the atmo (on Kerbin anyway) much above the mesopause. As far as a weather model is concerned (for Kerbin anyway), we could probably get away with not having to model much of anything once the pressure gets much below 100 mb / 10,000 Pa (i.e. approximately the level of the tropopause, the level around which balloon-launched rawinsondes start measuring a significant temperature inversion). That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 kilometers for Kerbin; they used to have the formula on the wiki or I'd figure the exact amount. As far as the other planets are concerned, I would need to do some more research. TL: DR - I think we should leave the atmos as is.

Yeah, forget this thread existed, unless you're being nostalgic and whipping out anything from 0.9 on back. Might recommend the admins lock the thread, purdy-please.

Ah, okay. GoSlash27 has given you some good advice to follow there. Myself, I have a plane that'll haul six Kerbals at a time to LKO - the Raven 7 (of which apparently I don't have any screenies - which is weird, because I could've sworn I'd taken a whole bunch...). My main space station over Kerbin is orbiting at 85 kilometers and I do use it as a refueling depot and staging area for tourists. I designed the Raven with 1,800 m/s of rocket delta-V; if it's refueled in orbit, it'll make Mun or Minmus orbit easily enough and I have used the design for that purpose on a couple of occasions (that particular craft earned itself a name - Free Bird 7). I also have a refuel plane that I use to top off the station's tanks when they become depleted - the Vulture 7: I tried using it to refuel the Mun space station once; it's coming back from there in this picture. Did the mission reasonably well. So planes then. You're working with stock air, right? General guidelines for stock air are to assume a 25% payload fraction and either 13 tonnes per RAPIER or 15 tonnes per Turbojet and around 200 kN of rocket per jet (I use Aerospikes - despite the lack of gimbal, they have reasonable thrust and relatively high Isp - the high Isp in turn lets me get away with carrying less rocket fuel. Another decent choice are pairs of Thuds). Your payload in this case is going to be your cockpit or control module, the docking port and the hab module, plus you're going to need a source of RCS fuel (two roundified RCS tanks in a cargo bay would be plenty), a couple of solar panels and a battery or two. Put that together, note the mass and multiply the result times four - the result is how heavy you can expect your plane to be, and from that you can determine how many engines you're going to want to include. I really like Slashy's designs...I wonder how they'd fare in FAR...and I still wonder why I don't have any screenies of the Raven; I'll have to remedy that.

Last night I made the mistake of trying to build a craft that would fulfill a whole bunch of missions all at once. It was going well until I tried to pick up Kilessa from the Munar surface. I now have two crews stranded on Mun...and though at least Jeb's bunch is all KSC staff and can EVA out to a rescue ship, that craft tipped due to the grade of the landing zone. Rescue mission tonight if I can manage it. In the meantime, I did get a fair amount of contracts done. Still no Minmus Exploration contract - with only three days until Bob arrives, I don't think I'm going to make it...

I've got something similar set up at the moment in my own career save. Caveats: I use FAR, I haven't upgraded from 1.0.2 and I haven't got mining technologies unlocked just yet. I also still recover the planes at the end of the flight rather than re-launch and refuel them, though I did a set up where I would haul a plane back to the start of the Runway with a crash cart and refuel it a couple of versions ago (0.24, IIRC). I would say that KAS (and KIS) would be essential mods if you're wanting to go with something similar. I've been led to understand that DRE handles heating better than stock at the moment, so that might also be one to consider. Let's start with the basics: are you going to want your plane to handle passengers, payloads, fuel loads, or some kind of combination thereof? What kind of capacities would you like to target?

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com has a fair amount of information on it. Some of it's out of date at this point (like the tutorials on the wiki), though much of the data is still good for the game's current version.

I SSTO as much as possible, going both ways - rockets or planes - as I feel appropriate. Admittedly these days I'm using FAR. I've also stuck to 1.0.2; from the way things sound from all y'all's posts all over these boards, it sound like not upgrading to 1.0.4 was a sound decision (though I've considered going to 1.0.4 and installing DRE - which apparently is kinder than stock at this point as far as heating goes).