MockKnizzle

There's no need for a simulation when you can use your Engineer readouts to figure out dV. A little math goes a long way.

Even through space can be lonely, the Kerbal universe is a wonderfully deterministic place and I can have confidence that if I do my math right, I'll never miss my target.

I mean, technically any KSP planet with an inclined orbit has an effective axial tilt (since no planet has a tilt relative to the galactic plane) and thus seasons to some degree.

I understand not wanting to dump spare nukes on Kerbin, but I don't see the problem with disposing of them anywhere else. I feel like the danger of nukes is greatly overstated, especially with Kerbals' natural radiation resistance (being able to survive in unshielded capsules in Jool orbit and on Laythe and such).

The specific impulse of a cluster can't be higher than the highest ISP of the constituent engines, so unless you have some LV-Ns hidden in there the ISP of that cluster can't be more than 390 (the ISP of the Poodle and Aerospike).

I do believe there is a gentleman on the forums who has circumnavigated Duna, which I hear is quite a drive.

The main benefit of traditional asparagus is that you drop unneeded engine mass during ascent. With proper asparagus design, you have a roughly constant TWR profile all the way up.

Using sequential thrust-limited SRBs is brilliant! Tweakables open up so many new options.

I use solid fuel boosters when I want to make a lot of fire and smoke.

I circled inland seas that fit roughly into the latitude range of the Mediterranean. The blue line is the likely location of a canal, which would be about 45km overland at it's longest stretch. Purple is the likely route of an icebreaking ocean route, which would be about 50km long and potentially an alternative to an overland canal.

As soon as you realize that lower = faster and higher = slower, rendezvous becomes a walk in the park.

Actually, the article says 10,461 km/hr, not m/s. That's only 2906 m/s. EDIT: jk, everybody beat me to it. Derp.

I don't have a full 10, but it's very important to note that cutting payload mass in half will get you much farther than adding twice as many boosters.

Well, ideally you'd plan ahead enough so that that wouldn't happen. But, in the case that it did, you'd probably want to boost your vehicle up into a highly elliptical orbit and make the retrograde burn at apoapsis where you're moving the slowest, and then re-circularize when you come back down. Reversing your orbit in LKO will take a huge amount of fuel, more than 4 km/s worth.

22. I design my ships with verisimilitude in mind, so you'll see a decent amount of part clipping, structural fuselages and rover bodies to blend the shapes of everything together.

I'd like to flesh out the rest of the planets and moons. Multiple biomes for each body, and ideally an additional system of notable or interesting geological features to find and research (cryovolcanic vents on Eeloo, metallic asteroid fragments on Dres, and giant hurricanes on Jool, stuff like that). I'd also like to see improved ground scatter to make planetary surfaces more believable.

Kerbin, then Jool. I sent a three-probe bus on a mission to Laythe, Vall, and Tylo, although I think I might re-purpose the Tylo probe as a sacrificial Jool "lander". Much science was had.

Donsen. The bravest Kerbal who ever lived.

My guess is that you have some lateral velocity when you're trying to close the distance. You described "going around it all the time." ...that's called orbiting. You are orbiting your target just like you are orbiting Kerbin. Am I correct in assuming that you are always trying to burn towards the pink circle-y target marker? If that's the case, then your engine thrust is acting just as Kerbin's gravity does, accelerating you centripetally while you fly sideways. Do you see how that's not gonna get you anywhere? What you need to do is periodically zero out any sideways velocity you have, so that instead of orbiting around your target you are heading straight for it. Set your navball to Target mode by clicking on the velocity display, and then burn towards velocity retrograde (green X, not pink triangle!) until your velocity relative to your target is zero (or at least pretty close). Now is when you want to orient towards target prograde (pink circle!) and burn. You should see the green circle and pink circle line up, which means that your velocity vector is lined up with the vector towards your target, meaning you're headed straight at it as opposed to slipping sideways. Rinse and repeat, zeroing out your sideways velocity and re-adjusting to burn towards target and you'll be docked in no time.

It's a part that mounts in-line with fuel tanks and reaction wheels and such. A little hatch opens and a docking port comes out the side.

By my calculations (adding up the all the surface areas from the KSP wiki), as of version .22 KSP contains 2.31833705x10^7 square kilometers of explorable area, excluding Jool and Kerbol since you can't walk on them. By contrast, planet Earth has an area of approximately 5.10072x10^8 square kilometers. The entire Kerbol system has only 4.5% of Earth's surface area.

To get down to low, circular Kerbol orbit somewhere in the neighborhood of Moho and back, you're gonna need a large amount of dV. Even with gravity assists, and possible aerobraking at Eve, we're talking 4-ish km/s to get down and then another 4-ish to get back up. While that's entirely within the realm of possibility with nukes, your spacecraft is either gonna be a cramped, barebones 1-kerbal affair or a large fuel tanker.

First, use his jetpack to raise his periapsis the next time he goes around so that he's out of immediate danger, but make sure to leave a little EVA fuel for later maneuvers. Then, wait for KSC to pass underneath his orbit and launch a rescue vehicle into a circular orbit that matches his inclination (so you're not mucking about with a plane change). It's pretty trivial to plot a rendezvous from there.

Uhhh... so you want a geostationary satellite...? I'm not sure you really know what you're asking, since an orbiting object will remain in the same plane unless you maneuver to change it (within KSP's current physics model). For geostationary (the satellite remains above a fixed surface point), you need an equatorial-ish circular orbit with a period equal to the planet's rotational period. If you just want to get really close to the same surface point every orbit, but not necessarily stay in a fixed position over it, you can set up a geosynchronous orbit, which is eccentric but maintains a period equal to the planet's rotational period.

It's simple enough to just do some rough calculations for things like TWR. Add up the mass of the stage in question, multiply by 10, and see if your total engine thrust is more than that. If it is, congratulations! you have TWR > 1.0 on Kerbin, which means you'll be able to lift off/land anywhere but Eve. If you don't want massive TWR safety margins on your landers, then just cut your thrust to like a third for Duna and a sixth for the Mun.