beardysi

Cheers folks, the 50km orbit was just a figure pulled out of the air, I agree, 20km is more than sufficient for Mimimus! Turns out it's all a little academic as the smallest lander I built to meet the mission spec holds enough fuel for about three round trips and it's light as a feather to boot!

Interesting.... Have always been a big fan of cluster motors but as yet I don't seem to have the little girder cubes needed to make them. Hadn't though of using the bigger girder segments on the sides of a large tank! Must give it a shot later on!

Cheers for that folks, seems the maths is less daunting than I'd feared! I reckon I can manage that I was just going to build a dirty great fuelling station which would have met all my needs (and then some) but I just couldn't lift the bugger up at my current stage in the tech tree... Rather than going for the overkill I'll consider my needs and plan appropriately!

Firstly, i'm not one for advanced maths, I'm sure the answer to this question could be worked out with a pen and paper but that's somewhat beyond me! Is there an app or addon or anything what give you figures for the dV costs of landing on or launching from various bodies, and also orbital velocities at a particular altitude? For instance, I'm planning a lander which will land from a 50km orbit of Minimus and be able to launch back into the same orbit, along with that it will need to have enough dV to alter it's orbital inclination by up to 90degrees and back again - basically it's intended to be able to land anywhere on the moon from orbit and then launch and rendez-vous with an orbiting ship where it will refuel and set off again... I know I could do it by trial and error with a bit of fudge factor and some Kerbal gaffa tape, but I'd like to know how to come up with the proper number (as long as it doesn't involve calculus!)

I managed to get 5 oranges up (full) in one go a while back... (think it was in 0.19) though it did take me the guts of a week to get it right! Each of the outer tanks had a stage consisting of 2 orange tanks and cluster of LVT-30's around a central LVT-45. Outside those was a layer of mainsail LRB's. It was an absolute ***** to fly (and dock with my fuelling station!) but it did the job. Sadly I don't think I've got any pics of the finished station... Just about scraped a 75k orbit and I sent down a heavy tug to bring it up to the station.