MockKnizzle

If your CoM is already behind the CoL will full tanks, then as the front tank drains it will shift further back and exacerbate the problem. My suggestion is adding canards or changing the design of the wing some other way so that the CoL is more properly positioned relative to the CoM. Make sure to check other fuel loads by using the tweakables to empty the front-most tanks so you can see if your setup works in the worst-case balance scenario.

You have a huge TWR at liftoff with all those mainsails. You could replace every single one of them with a Skipper and it would still be overkill. Anyways, like everyone else has been saying, just watch your periapse as you get up nearly to orbit. Once it's up to 20km or so, just stage and drop your lifter.

I put together a modular base on the Mun using a crawler very similar to Temstar's, and I had to deal with the same issues. Obviously driving slowly and carefully is the number one necessity. I've found that when hauling a load, it helps to disable steering on the middle wheelset, and then disable the motors on the forward and rear wheels so you don't tip yourself while accelerating. If the module is particularly heavy, you might need to enable the forward wheels while accelerating forwards and vice versa, essentially in a "puller" configuration. Additionally, if you have several modules you need to move a large distance and enough base crawlers, you can dock several together and form a truck or train sort of vehicle with perhaps two crawlers, under the front and rear-most modules. Enable steering and turn off the motors of the front crawler, and use the rear crawler as static drive wheels.

Nah, my left hand is so trained to operate attitude/throttle that if I switched modes I'd more than likely find my way to Jool while trying to rendezvous. I also remapped my rover controls to the translation keys so I don't have worry about accidentally making my rover do barrel rolls.

I think the problem with N-body orbital simulations is when timewarp is involved. Realtime simulation isn't really an issue for normal computers, but when you're warping at 10,000x normal speed on the same machine you lose a ton of precision in the integration.

I'm pretty sure the Claw isn't going to make docking ports obsolete, seeing as it's probably not gonna have any magnetism.

A rover can drive just fine on a spinning ring, since its behavior doesn't change while in freefall. Kerbals, however, don't seem to be able to walk unless they're in contact with a planetary body or a landed craft.

I assume that it would be pretty trivial to just replace an aging RTG, seeing as any permanent surface base is going to need restocking well within the operational lifetime of the the RTG anyways. However I doubt that an RTG would even be used in such an application, since it's a very inefficient means of power generation and the power requirements of a manned base would likely be much greater than an unmanned satellite.

I can't recite the math for you and it's all very dependent on your TWR, but generally for a non-atmospheric body your best bet is to get into the lowest circular orbit you can, then burn at max thrust while using your pitch to keep your vertical velocity constant. You should be skimming sideways along the ground until the very last instant, where you pitch vertical right as your horizontal velocity goes to zero and settle ever-so-perfectly down on the ground with little to no hang-time.

Very carefully That miiiight have been a small detail I overlooked, seeing as I threw it all together in a couple minutes more as a proof-of-concept than anything else. But thinking about it now, I can see a few ways of getting it to Eve. The first and easiest one is to remove the command seat and mount the thing upside-down on top of a conventional lifter, bringing the seat along in a KAS container and attaching it on top just before de-orbit. The second way is to attach a small L-shaped structure to the bottom of the core stage that curves underneath the Aerospike to give it a node, and then strap the whole thing on top of a lifter with space tape.

From what I understand, a "landing" on an asteroid is more like a rendezvous where you purposely bump into the thing, and then you fasten yourself to the surface with some kind of screw/hook apparatus. An EVA consists of moving about across netting or rope that is fastened down in a similar manner.

Yes, according to the rocket equation you're right. There's still penalties for multiplying payload beyond just a linear increase in initial mass though, since in KSP you can't just scale the size of engines and tanks and support structures. To get 10 times the thrust on your first stage, you'd need to either use the bigger, less-efficient engines or cluster smaller ones, which adds structural mass. Additionally, your structural joints are experiencing 10 times the stresses, which often necessitates extra reinforcement and again, added mass. Not to mention a larger rocket means a larger part count and a lower framerate

While I admire your audacity in terms of part count (that monstrosity is approaching Whackjobian proportions), you can certainly make an EAV that is faaaaaar, far smaller than that. For example, something I whipped up the other day: Weighing in at just a hair over 33 tons, you can easily achieve 11k+ dV with a minimal part count. The number one rule of construction: NO UNNECESSARY MASS. That means no command pod, no RCS, no batteries, no docking ports, nothing. By minimizing your final-stage mass, you can exponentially decrease the size of your rocket. Additionally, only use the most efficient engines for the job: Mainsails have terrible atmospheric ISP, and Skippers aren't much better. For my boosters and first core stage I'm using Aerospikes which have the highest atmospheric ISP in the game, and for my second and third core stages I'm using the 48-7S (in a dual-engine configuration on the second stage and just a single engine in the third stage), which has a reasonable ISP in the upper atmosphere (same as a Skipper) but has the highest TWR of any engine in the game. All parachutes and landing legs pop off when ascent begins, and I'm carrying a bare minimum of control surfaces up with me while I'm burning the Aerospikes.

I would suggest being a little more thoughtful with the engines you use. Just slapping more fuel and more Mainsails on your rocket might work, but it certainly isn't very realistic or efficient. Once you're lifting truly massive payloads, a single Mainsail on your core stage simply doesn't have enough thrust. Additionally, the Mainsail is a very inefficient engine and you're firing the one on the core for the entire duration of the flight. My recommendation is to look into engine clustering on your core stage. A cluster of 8 LV-T30s with 4 LV-T45s in the middle gives you 70% more thrust than a Mainsail with a specific impulse of 370s instead of a measly 330.

When you look at the horizon, your computer has to render much more of the terrain mesh because much more of the surface is visible. On Kerbin specifically, there's also a mesh for the ocean which must be rendered as well, which essentially doubles the rendering load. On the Mun, however, there's no ocean mesh to contend with and no the Space Center buildings that could potentially be in the vicinity, so the rendering load is lighter and consequently you get higher FPS. Anyways, if you're playing on a laptop (as am I) you're definitely gonna get lower FPS in all situations than you would on a desktop, since most laptop CPUs aren't as powerful/fast as their desktop brethren.

I normally play sandbox-style, and I've been burned out for a while after building a modular Munbase, a station in Kerbin orbit, and several SSTO spaceplanes. I started a new career save though, and now I'm actually excited about doing SCIENCE again

Try and trim your final stage down to an extremely minimal, bare-bones design - any weight savings there can have a huge effect on how much fuel you need in your early stages. Don't bring your science pods, don't bring RCS, don't bring any extra batteries or RTGs... literally all you need is a 1-kerbal pod for the science.

Do you really need that big of an ascent vehicle? Even with FAR, I'm positive you can get 11k dV for less than 260 tons.

I finally figured out how to do the math I've been wanting to do for days now! We're gonna show that burning the same amount of dV lower in the gravity well of a planet increases the specific energy of our orbit more, for the case of an elliptical orbit. We have two ships in orbit around Kerbin. One (orbit A) is in a 200km circular orbit, and the other (orbit is in a 70km-330km elliptical orbit. Both of these orbits have the same specific orbital energy, since they have the same semi-major axis (800km). In this case, that energy is -2.20725 MJ/kg for both orbits. We can also find the velocity at periapse for each orbit. For orbit A, the periapse velocity is just the circular velocity, which is 2101.071m/s. For orbit B, the periapse velocity is 2475.397m/s. Now, we're gonna add 100m/s to our ship's velocity at periapse in each case (doesn't matter where we add it for the circular orbit). For orbit A, our new velocity is 2201.071m/s. For orbit B, our new velocity is 2575.397m/s. By speeding up at periapse, we have now increased our apoapse. For orbit A, our apoapse has changed from 200km to 372.764km. For orbit B, our apoapse has changed from 330km to 536.713km. Since we applied our dV at periapse, those values don't change. Now, we can go back and calculate the specific orbital energy of each orbit again! For orbit A, the new specific orbital energy is -1.99214 MJ/kg. For orbit B, the new specific orbital energy is -1.95471 MJ/kg. And now calculating the change... For orbit A, the change in specific orbital energy is 0.21511 MJ/kg. For orbit B, the change in specific orbital energy is 0.25254 MJ/kg. There it is! We added the same amount of dV - 100m/s - and we got different values for the change in specific orbital energy, because in the case of orbit B we burned when we were traveling faster.

You wanna minimize floppy bits however possible. Use Seniors, multidocking, or KAS struts to stiffen things up. That's really the only solution.

Geschosskopf: Do we both agree that the formula for calculating kinetic energy is .5*m*v2? Good. Let us do some math: A rock is sliding on some ice that is frictionless. It has a mass of 1kg. It is currently moving at a constant speed of 10m/s. It is accelerated to a new speed of 20m/s. What was the velocity change of the rock, and what is the change in kinetic energy? Delta-V = V2 - V1 20m/s - 10m/s = 10m/s .5*m*V12 = KE KE1 = .5*1kg*(10m/s)2 = 50J KE2 = .5*1kg*(20m/s)2 = 200J KE2 - KE1 = 150J In this case, increasing the velocity of our rock by 10m/s increased our kinetic energy by 150J. But wait! our rock is accelerated again, to a new speed of 30m/s! What is the velocity change, and what is the change in kinetic energy? Delta-V = V2 - V1 30m/s - 20m/s = 10m/s .5*m*V12 = KE KE1 = .5*1kg*(20m/s)2 = 200J KE2 = .5*1kg*(30m/s)2 = 450J KE2 - KE1 = 250J HOLY SPACE KRAKEN the same velocity change resulted in a larger energy change! This is where that "extra" energy goes.

I suggest you read it as well As explained in that article, our spaceship is coming in on a hyperbolic interplanetary trajectory. As we enter the SOI of the body we're Oberth-ing around, we have some hyperbolic excess velocity Vh1 beyond escape velocity (this is what makes the trajectory hyperbolic). As we hit our periapse, we burn X m/s worth of fuel, increasing our speed at periapse by X. We then zoom away from the planet, now on an even more hyperbolic trajectory, with even more excess velocity than we gained at periapse, such that Vh2 > Vh1 + X. I can't stress this enough: The Oberth effect doesn't magically give you more speed at periapsis than the conservation of momentum dictates. The effects are felt afterwards, in the form of an increased semi-major axis for elliptical orbits and an increased hyperbolic velocity for hyperbolic orbits.

I mean, you can do the algebra and type the numbers into a calculator yourself if it makes you feel any better, you'll get the same result. Jouni and I are applying the same concept to the problem (conservation of momentum) and are arriving at the same conclusion: He (she?) is just keeping track of the kinetic energies, while I took the simple route and only kept track of the momentums.

Your car example isn't actually an illustration of the Oberth effect, it's just a conservation of momentum problem, and you don't get any extra speed when traveling faster. I'm gonna tweak your numbers a bit so I don't have to type as many things into my calculator. Say we have a car of mass 1000kg and a bullet (cannonball, really) of mass 1kg. The car and bullet are traveling to the right (positive direction) at a speed of 25m/s. The bullet is fired backwards from the car with a relative muzzle velocity of 400m/s. How fast is the car traveling after the shot? Since the momentum of the car-bullet system is conserved, the math is as follows: ptotal = pcar + pbullet mtotal * Vtotal = mcar * Vcar + mbullet * Vbullet (1000kg + 1kg) * 25m/s = 1000kg * Vcar + 1kg * (25m/s - 400m/s) Solving for Vcar we get 25.4m/s after the shot. Since we started with our car traveling at 25m/s, shooting the bullet has given us a dV of 0.4m/s. Now, say our car is suddenly traveling at 1000m/s (nearly mach 3 in a land vehicle, quite impressive) and we do the same thing: ptotal = pcar + pbullet mtotal * Vtotal = mcar * Vcar + mbullet * Vbullet (1000kg + 1kg) * 1000m/s = 1000kg * Vcar + 1kg * (1000m/s - 400m/s) This time, we get Vcar = 1000.4m/s. See? Throwing the same reaction mass out at the same exhaust velocity has given us the same instantaneous dV, regardless of our initial speed. The Oberth effect doesn't have to do with the instantaneous dV you get from a burn. It has to do with how much your orbital energy (and thus the SMA of your orbit, which is directly related to your orbital energy) changes when you apply the same dV at higher initial speeds.

Obviously your speed changes by the amount of dV you spend, but you do not get any "bonus speed" out of your burn. If you burn 100m/s worth of dV when you're going fast near a planet, you don't magically get an extra 5 or 10m/s out of your fuel. You do, however, get bonus energy out of your fuel that goes towards increasing your ship's orbital energy, more so than if you burned that fuel when you ere going slower.