Hannu

I think that LV-N is not allowed on Kerbin's atmosphere for environmental reasons, near surface bases for safety reasons and also I do not use them on landing stages. Not because safety, the radiation is probably not much compared to levels typical in many space environments, but because it would disturb scientific measurements, for example natural levels of surface radioactivity. But I do not play such that using of LV-N would pollute whole surface or atmosphere of target body. However, normally I have chemical engines on landing and ascent stages because LV-N is unpractical massive and tall.

Insertion burn Duna is small and it's atmosphere is thin and your flyby geometry have very high velocity. It would need very aggressive aerobraking. There has been several problems with kerbals and Proteus in much smaller deceleration values during some chapters. To be consistent, I would say that insertion burn is only choice. Maybe it can be combined with aerobraking or Ike gravity assist, but they can give only small percentage of total dv. I would say that benefits does not compensate for risks.

KSP have simplified newtonian physics model which have not any speed limit. If you want to model relativistic, or any other, physics in computer simulation, you have to program it. Any simulation does not automatically obey natural physics. If KSP had a relativistic physics model and you hacked velocity larger than light speed, it would cause a negative argument in square root and NaN (Not a Number) floating point error. It would probably crash the game.

I started a new game (0.22) and thought that this time I make relatively simple manned explorations to all planets and no permanent bases or stations. I start from Moho and try to make some kind of report about the mission. English is not my own language, so I hope that you forgive errors or strange style things in the language. Or teach me how things should be written. I assume a historical situation, in which kerbals have much experience in operations in Kerbin's system and some experience in interplanetary travels. Now they have great global space boom and the government gives the huge funding to manned exploration of the whole Kerbol's planetary system. I will use following mods: Mechjeb 2 SCANsat EnhancedNavball KAS KerbalAlarmClock CrewManifest DockingPortAlignment I will use also alexmoon's launch window calculator to draw porkchop plots. I assume that it is OK to use screenshots from it, but if it is against some copyright rules, I will take them away and use my own software (which is not ready yet). I use time notation 01 067 which means year 1 day 67 in game's UT. Part 1: Mission plan and Moho Scansat 1 Mission plan First Moho mission Moho 1 (sorry about boring names) begins with unmanned orbiter which maps the planet. Then a rover and a lander will be sent with separate launches. All spacecrafts have transfer stages which have extra fuel reserves and they will act as a tugs and/or fuel stations during later operations around the planet. When the planet has been mapped and the lander and the rover are on their orbits, three man crew will be sent with Moho 1 during a low energy launch window around day 01 341. They will maneuver their craft on inclined 80 km circular orbit and rendezvous with the lander. After that they make the first landing to some interesting place depending on the results of topographic scanning. Mission should have resources for several landings. Return trip is planned to begin at launch window near day 02 057. Moho Scansat Moho Scansat will map the whole surface topographically. Landing places will be selected after mapping. The KSC chooses the launch window at 01 067. It has dv requirement 4908 m/s (from 300 km orbit to 100 km orbit). Ejection dv is relatively low, 1454 m/s and insertion dv high 3454 m/s. Porkchop plot of 01 067 launch window (given by alexmoon's calculator) Scansat is 0.5 t satellite which uses SCANsat mod. The mass of transfer stage is about 40 t and it has dv capability of about 12000 m/s. It is far more than the ScanSat needs but the stage serves as a tug and fuel station during manned phase of mission. Stage has 5 LV-N:s during TMI burn and after that 4 boosters will be jettisoned. This transfer does not need large inclination change. Just about 25 m/s. Therefore I start from 200 km zero inclination orbit. Launch mass is 407 t. Launcher is very rigid and stable. Launch and ascend goes nominally under MechJeb2's control. 01 055 Launching vehicle in VAB. 01 055 First minute goes flawless. 01 055 First staging. 01 055 200 km orbit inclination 0.0 deg. Moho's SOI is so small that it is difficult to get encounter in orbit calculator mode. Fortunately MechJeb's Maneuver Node Editor gives very accurate adjustments. 1 s or 1 m/s change lose the encounter. For some reason Alexmoon's calculator gives slightly greater (10-20 m/s) dv values than is actually needed, although I take Kerbin's limited gravity range into account (it gives energy which correspond to 290 m/s). Trans Moho injection goes nominally. Moho Scansat needs two small corrections before Moho's SOI, totally about 23 m/s. 01 067 Trans Moho injection takes 1470 m/s. 01 070 Fuel is pumped to the large tank and two engines are jettisoned. 01 102 Finally in Moho's SOI. This geometry needs large orbit insertion burn, about 3200 m/s. The craft is on very eccentric orbit after MOI. Scansat is separated from transfer stage. Transfer stage is left 100 km x 8250 km inc 32.1 deg orbit to wait future needs. Scansat changes plane to nearly polar and starts to map Moho's surface from 517 x 520 km orbit.Power consumption of the scanning device is quite high causing lack of electricity when the satellite is in Moho's shadow. Therefore it leaves small hole in the map. But it can be fixed when other crafts are on transfer orbits. 01 102 3225 m/s MOI burn takes nearly 8 minutes. 01 105 Moho Scansat is ready to topographic mapping. 01 112 After a week we have nearly complete map.

I have not yet landed on Eve in 0.22 but that 6.5 m/s landing speed is far from soft landing. In earth gravity you get that speed if you drop something from height of 2.15 m. It is hard shock to heavy spacecraft. I land about 1 m/s on Eve and not more than 2 m/s with any lander. Despite of that I often lose couple of descent engines, but ascent stages remains OK condition.

I renamed him with finnish name Jaakko and he is now on Mün with Urho. They are testing a new Moho lander and rover. Jeb, Bill and Bob lost their orange suits when I renamed them. Is it possible to get orange suits back? I just changed names in file persistent.sfs. I thought that they can be bosses and white guys are workers and scientists.

My current universal rules are: Do not use asparagus staging (it is ugly and too efficient (it is nice to make over 2000 t rockets)). Do not use nuclear engines in Kerbin's atmosphere (for environmental reasons) or descent stages of landers (radioactivity contaminates surface samples). Manned landers must have pod for crew (for some reasons very short visits on smallest atmosphereless bodies (Minmus, Gilly, Bop, Pol) can make exception, if there is mothership in low orbit). Alive kerbals on surfaces or in incapacitated spacecrafts must be saved and returned, if it is tehchically possible. It means that I never make one way or suicide missions and I try always at least one rescue mission if sudden problems arise during some mission. Do not use engine, fuel or structural mods. But they are not eternal rules. I change them when I feel so. The most important rule is that game must be fun or it is wasted time.

I use the nerdy way and select correct launch window and return window by using Porkchop plots, calculate burns, estimate needed corrections and safety margins (Mostly due to KSP's inaccurate orbit calculation) and plan a ship to do that. Porkchop plots can be calculated here.

I suspect that high quality audio files from F1 do not exist but has quite nice sounds if you have a subwoofer and about 100 W amplifier power. If you have just small computer speakers there is no reason to change sound files. They just can not produce low frequency sound at such pressure level that you can feel it.

You can not make sound louder by software. You must buy high power amplifier and speaker system which can produce more sound pressure. Cheap PA-equipment with subwoofer on the 1 kW power class should be enough and quite affordable (maybe cost about the same than computer which can play KSP). Saturn V was one of most loud devices which man has ever build. Sound level was about 190 dB. It is absolutely impossible to produce such a extreme sound level with any existing electrical audio equipment. It would need a small powerplant to make that energy (tens of MW acoustic power and typical efficiency of speakers is (far) less that 10 %). And be happy that it is impossible, because such a noise would kill you immediately and make everyone deaf in range of kilometers, break windows from half city, produce structural damage to nearby buildings etc.

If there were true newtonian physics, for example ASAS could have automatic orbit adjustment function. It would make small adjustments and keep the station on orbit (within given tolerances). Time warps could check automatically all ships at certain intervals (depending on orbits) and make adjustments. It would not be very hard to program.

There are problems with accuracy. Probably due to float-datatype or otherwise bad computing algorithms. You should adjust velocity several times before rendezvous. Let's say 3 days, 1 day, 12 h and 3 h. Typically you have very large delta v and you must start braking burn before you even see the distance marker of target. Little use of mathematics helps to solve right start for burn. Mechjeb is a great help, if you are not against it. When you are in range of several kilometers, do not use time warp. It can move crafts kilometers relatively to each other. Therefore docking takes much time and is boring. There are also some erratic influences, so that you should actively watch rendezvous parameters. I recommend that you should not intentionally plan dockings on solar orbit, but occasionally KSP's orbit calculations make large errors when you return from Jool and if you try to optimize delta-v near theoretical values, you may need rescue missions.

Look at this. It has a rover, a 3 man landing module, a mapping satellite and an interplanetary transfer stage in one (no so) simple packet. You need just one docking when you ascend from surface and rendezvous with transfer stage at Eeloo's orbit. It is stupid to say some way of playing a noob one. If you like to build huge launchers, as I do, it is OK, but it is OK also to make smaller launches and assembly your ship on orbit. You can have much larger and more functional ships by docking at Kerbin's orbit. Single launches are limited to just small flag planting trips to one target at a time. But if you have a powerful computer, it is possible to make also one launch one man trip to Eve with using a real pod instead of just seats and without using the asparagus technique.

It sounds strange for me too that so small disturbation would ruin Lagrange's point. Can you continue this simulation until you see clearly that object escapes from L4? If I look a map of troijan asteroids on Jupiter's orbit, they are spread over very large area. It is about 10 % of radius in radial direction and 40 degrees in angular. In Kerbin's scale it would mean about 1 Gm x 10 Gm kidney shaped area. If it is easy, can you also plot a diagram in rotational coordinates so than shape of orbit around L4 can be seen?

It would depend what I would get. If it was new planets like current, new parts, multiplayer stuff, career mode stuff etc. I would not like to pay very much. But if it was even one of these: efficiently programmed bugless realistic physics, procedurally generated planets with non-periodic small level details and weather effects or well thought and programmed information, control and autopilot system, I would pay 50 € immediately.

I got little bored with KSP after intensive gaming period and thought to take a little break (two weeks perhaps). During couple of last days I have programmed a little software to calculate porkchop plots and show these orbits graphically in Kerbol's solar system. User interface is far from completed but mathematics works now.

There is Jool. You can not land on it but you can descend to zero level and try to ascend again. But there are limits with stock parts and physics engine and any significantly more challenging place than Eve's sea level is beyond that limit. And on the other hand, with mods you can do anything so it is useless to try to add many overimpossible planets just to be there.

In real life there are continuous small torques which affect to spaceships. They are due to the solar pressure or some gases escaping from ship. Reaction wheels can resist such torques by increasing their rpm. But naturally there are some maximum rpm value. After that they need so called momentum dumping, during which RCS thrusters produce torque so that wheels can be stopped. So, satellites and probes must have the RCS. Most satellites have both systems because reaction wheels are more controllable and no not consume fuel. Manned crafts do not typically need very high pointing precision and they do not need to stay maneuverable longer than couple of weeks, so they do not have reaction wheels (except ISS). I would also like smaller spherical RCS tanks. For example 10 units of monopropellant. Typically I need one RCS operation during the flight (for example when a lander docks to a station or mothership) and it uses 5-10 units. Now I have to take 80 units (or 40 if I take risk of unbalance and put just one tank) which is just useless weight eating limited delta v.

Eve is good because it is hard but possible. If you increased pressure from 5 to 100 bars, it would make ascent from planet impossible and therefore lose interest to that planet. There is already one impossible planet, Jool, and will be more if they add other large gas planets. In my opinion Eve should be kept as an ultimate challenge instead of just blindly ape properties of the our solar system's planets. Now it is very good because it is possible to ascent from mountains but near the limits of possibility to ascent from sea level (I do not know has anyone made it).

I think that change to Newtonian physics would not increase processor load too much, if it was made clever way, like Mattasmack suggested. Orbital computations would be much simpler than modeling of interacions between ships' parts. I made a simulation of our solar system's planets and Earth's moon (which made things more difficult by an order of magnitude or two) several years ago. It was able to simulate 300 years in couple of minutes in AMD's cheap processor and one thread so, that largest error in position coordinate was 1/1000. JPL's Horizon gave initial values and reference data. I understood that they should be very accurate values during couple of hundreds of years. I used Runge Kutta 4 method to solve motion equations. It is relatively simple but surprisingly powerful method for this kind of differential equations. But if there are not any people in Squad who have experience in programming of physical simulations, it would be quite hard to implement one. Probably therefore they have refused even thinking it. If it is made wrong way it can lead to lag and annoying errors. I would be very interested to see real physics in KSP but I understand that it is not a thing which increase selling of the game.

I hope inclined planets too. Squad could add inclination of 10-30 degrees to at least some existing planets and introduce a new large planet with 60-120 degrees inclination like Uranus. What is particle density in Saturn's rings? It it possible to see anything if you go through? Good easy approximation could be planar rings, which disappears when you go through. One probably easy thing would be to make planets visible from distances. Just bright star like spots like in our solar system.

You can rename KSP folder after unzipping and have several versions simultaneously. I have named them like "KSP-win_0.21.1". At least I want to test new version carefully before I begin any big projects. And I do not delete old versions, because I never know if some problems arise. Couple of gigabytes hard disk space is practically free today. It is not allowed to share old installation files between users but maybe you can ask them from Squad.

This is my 2868 t and little more than 1200 part Tylo freight launcher. All engines, fuel tanks and structural parts are stock. I wonder what computer can handle Whackjob's magnificent constructions.