zerotwo

My suggestion is this: Until 3km, reach and maintain 100 m/s At 3 km, depending on TWR of engines (under 1.5 twr, max it out, over 1.5 twr go until you start seeing air friction) increase to maximum speed. At 7.5 km turn to 90 degrees and proceed until the apoapsis hits 60~ Turn to 5 degrees above the horizon line and accelerate as much as you can, most of this takes part (for me anyway) from about 22km to 35km~ -- This is a very early orbiter. This is a basic flyby vehicle for passing by Minmus and the Mun. As soon as I hit miniaturization this was the first thing I built. It has somewhere between 6k and 7k Dv, you could get to Jool with it I think-but I use it just for Satellite missions (because I am freaking terrible at getting my Argument correct) The last ship I would consider "Early" because the next iteration moves to 2.5 m parts to replace that silly bottom section. -- In previous versions of KSP I made a beeline to science techs, but after experiencing the change brought on by unlocking fairings, frankly, everyone should get those before anything else. Fairings made the game much much more playable, I highly recommend getting there ASAP. Hope that helps!

I guess given that drag is likely irrelevant this is a good point! I did see and read your original post. Depending on setup you could even apply the decoupler ring to the bottom of a stack, then attach the SRBs to that ring. Interesting idea. Regarding part count: It is a helluva thing to try and get to the mun, do a lot of science, and return in under 30 parts! Those big KD25ks are making it possible (theoretically) for me to haul all the basic (under 100 tech) science with me in one go!

Two things I will add; consider cost and consider part count. It takes half the parts to employ BACC boosters in place of RT-10 boosters and with the 30 limit on the basic hangar this can be a realistic concern early on. LethalDose's post above highlights the only other thing I would consider important to consider: cost. As a matter of utmost efficiency in 0.9 I have spent the beginning 500~600 science or so launching everything with an RT-10 as midstage and a BACC as 1st stage. The price of 2 RT-10s (decouplers) as the basic stage is far too much to accept. If you have unlimited part count and unlimited funds, then yes, huge volumes of RT-10s in hilariously complex asparagus staging formations is more efficient than BACC boosters in a similar setup-however if you're interested in maximum efficiency with unlimited funds and part count, why are you using SRBs at all? The point of SRBs is low-cost and low-part count, imo. Hope that helps.

Thank you KerbMav! That verifies the testing I had just completed. All I needed to bring home was the probe core, regardless of whether or not it was the "primary part" as was hypothesized earlier. e.g. the first part of the craft you are building is a fuel tank, that doesn't seem to matter. So the answer is: Bring the probe core home: get "Recovery of a vessel returned from the surface of X".

Well, I will have to disagree that space stations have so little value. I use the early science to collect enough engine, fuel, and scientific limbs of the tree to allow me to get access to the Science lab. I will then launch a lab, load it with kerbins and then strap an engine too it. I then fly this lab to the Mun (which I should only have had to visit once or twice to get to this point) and then settle it in orbit. I can now send reusable landers to land, collect science, dock to the station, process and transmit that science, then scrub the experiments for reuse. Clearing the Mun and Minmas this way is remarkably time saving, guarantees access to all biomes (you can miss, take off, reattempt, and refuel your lander at the science station), maximizes science collection, and provides a huge boost forward in your campaign rocket program.

Parachutes past the centre of mass. *flip* "Oh... well... haha.... I guess that's working exactly as I designed it."

Dear Duxwing, Press F5 on approach before you hit the atmosphere. Press and hold F9 after you explode. Long ago I did my first aerocapture into Jool's atmosphere probably 20-30-40 times to try and get it right. Test! TEST! Have fun! Regards,

That is an intriguing idea. Thank you for your reply, that will make for an interesting test.

It looks like testing is going to be needed. I haven't had much time to play KSP lately, so I was hoping someone would have some experience with it. The science I am referring to is the bonus after completing a mission that says "XXX landed on the Mun and returned", not a particular science module output. I imagine that yes, the only way to return science from a probe is to remove the science with a kerbal and stuff it in a command pod, but, what I want to know is if grabbing a chunk of the ship that landed will give you that landed science. I will let you know tonight!

In my experience, 119.5km is the perfect zone to leave you in a very oblong orbit. Can make it easier to access other moons in the system.

Good day! I am curious if anyone has tested this: 1. A lander has landed on the mun and returned to orbit. 2. A recovery ship comes out and removes half of the orbiting lander, docking that half with the recovery ship. 3. The recovery ship returns to Kerbin. While the primary vessel itself did not land and return, a portion of it did. Will I receive the land & return science? If so, this means I only need recover a tiny portion of a lander to secure this science on return? Thanks for your response! Regards, 02

Try a mission with multiple objectives: // Option 1 In a "campaign" game, put a station into orbit around the Mun with a rig to carry science probes to the surface and return them for processing at a science station. Build a train out of as many of these processed science modules as you can and bring them all back to Kerbin at once. When that is complete, transfer the station to Minmus. I think seeing 8000~ science at once should be a straight shot of confidence. (For more challenge: repeat the process on Minmus, then transfer the station to Duna!) // Option 2 In either Campaign or Free Play modes: Develop a craft that can travel to Jool and separate into enough parts with enough fuel to land a probe on every moon. I enjoyed this project immensely. Seriously. Immensely.

Masked Turk: Look at the engine ISP and guess where you will be in flight when that engine turns on. Mainsails, LV30, LV45 for going to orbit, Aerospikes, Poodles, skippers, and 30/45 for LKO stage, then 909 for short range (Kerbin influence) or 1 LV-N for any kind of long range. (General rules here, can be broken) TWR in space is meaningless, just Dv counts. If you can keep your fuel ratio high and your engines efficient, you can get anywhere. (Fuel ratio is amount of weight of craft that is fuel, multiple LVNs ruin this) Hope that helps

In my experience the two mods do not react well together under most circumstances. The only way I have found to mitigate this is to launch using only one of the two. Disable all of the components in mechjeb you can and do a horizontal lift into orbit or shut off everything you can in FAR and do a vertical launch. I went looking for a good mod to swap control computers but unsurprisingly it did not exist. (Kind of a rare need) That flip may also be a result of your craft's centre of mass shifting too far backwards due to the way you are burning fuel in flight. Engines always reach for the furthest source of fuel and aircraft designs tend to be heavy towards the rear already, if your craft burns all it's forward fuel in flight it becomes incredibly unstable and the aft weight imbalance can cause the craft to flip into and unrecoverable stall. Try locking forward fuel tanks and draining from the rear first? Hope this helps.

How much for one of these?

Define "Stable and safe"? With six of the new wheels and minimum weight I can get rovers going 21+ m/s, that's 120+ kph (80+ mph) in something that weighs under 2 metric tons. If you are going along in a vehicle with a higher centre of mass, at 120 km/h or more, and you hit a bump, you are going to go flying. That aside... A good option is to spread the weight out as far as possible, when the front wheels hit a bump they decelerate and the rest wants to keep moving, causing the flip, wider or longer vehicles will be more stable. You can also lock the rear wheel steering and shut off the front wheel drive for agility on flat ground. The safest rovers do not attempt to move their top speed except on a flat.

Kaelin/Tingle, I push a 70t aircraft into near-orbit (24 km) with 4x Turbojet engines, 2x scoop intakes, and 2x ram intakes, you can very likely move that craft with 1x turbo, 1x scoop, and 1x ram. Shut the ram at launch, when the ship starts to get squirrely open the ram and shut the scoop, when you get up to like 16-18km open both. CoM and fuel: Where is your center of mass? When the jet begins to fly, the engines draw from the furthest source (usually the front of the plane), this will cause your CoM to move aft. If you've got 60-70% of your weight after the front tanks empty in the back of your craft, even the slightest tip forward or up is going to cause it to begin tumbling, and you will not be able to recover (well, you could, spectacularly) because the craft will fall aft-first towards the ground. Either set your CoM well in front of the CoL and allow for fuel drain, OR, lock your front tanks and draw from the middle first.

My only mission to Dres so far involved a bundled mission to Duna with a set of probes, a long range probe section refuelled to maximum fuel out of all of the mission tanks, detached, and then went from Duna to Dres when the window appeared. If you're talking about approaching Dres with live Kerbonauts, well, anything at Dres or beyond I always launch two missions to, a fuel mission, and the actual "action" mission. I'd suggest launching two ships, have them in orbit around Kerbin about 10 km apart, and when time comes for the Dres transfer window, launch the fuel ship first, wait 24 hours (or whatever you like) and then launch the primary mission. No matter what if your primary mission falls apart or something goes wrong you'll have a fuel depot around Dres you can use. Always handy.

Reduce all available settings: Away from my home computer at the moment, so I don't know the exact setting title but, in the game's options you should find "Max Physics Delta-Time per Frame", drag this until it shows the largest number possible. This will reduce the number of times per second KSP calculates physics (if someone could follow up with the location in one of the game's settings text files, that might help this gent to further tune the physics down). Install mods that involve fewer parts; Quantum Struts or any mod with "heavy" struts can replace struts more than 10:1, if you build smart. Lando's Part Generator 2.3 allows you to create custom parts. Going to need 4x orange gas cans? Make 1x item that does the same. There's also a parts mod out there I can't for the life of me remember the name of that combines "often used" parts into single pieces (to save on drag/processing), that mixes like, a ROCK-64 tank and a large RCS fuel tank into one object, that sort of thing, hopefully someone will know what I am referring to. Watch out for your running mods: I am one of those guys with a fancy fancy computer, real purdy like, and once upon a time I was launching a probe-hauler into space (with five probes attached) and my system ground completely to a halt, not even 1 fps, for big sections of the launch process (14km-60km) and whenever I was near anything my system basically stopped functioning. The problem? All five of my probes had ISA map sat items on them, turning those off solved the problem instantly. Strip down to the basics, get a few simplified parts mods, grab your quantum struts, get your mechjeb, and just run with as little as possible.

Fascinating. I just didn't think KSP would allow this kind of thing to function... hmmm...thank you stupid_chris, and sorry SpaceSphereofDeath, I will have to find out if this works. I think I can visualize how this would work... also, thanks for adding to my knowledge regarding Oxygen content on those worlds, I don't know where I got that into my head. Off to Laythe then.

If you mean to dip into an atmosphere to gain speed, I am almost one hundred percent certain you will lose speed, not gain any. If you were to bring air intake engines that could move your vessel on a flight to Jool or Eve's, dip in to the atmosphere and begin to accelerate, you could definitely gain a ton of efficient delta-v through that approach. Would be a hell of a thing to prototype. (As this is what I am currently working on)

I was once told a good analogy for delta-v was imagining a penny on a string spinning around a pencil. In order to make the penny spin faster in it's orbit, you have to apply extra energy to it. If the penny was something heavier like gold it would take more energy, or if aluminium, less. Also, the method by which you deliver the energy has a huge effect. Imagine you can only increase the speed of this penny by blowing on it, it would take forever! Breath is a low thrust, efficient engine if you think of it as a long slow exhale (you can breathe for hours and hours a day!) While something like flicking the penny is going to deliver massive thrust much quicker, but the flick is over in a moment. Delta-v is more complex, but essentially it measuring the amount of speed you can add or subtract from that penny based on how efficient the engine is, effects of gravity, and the % of fuel that your craft is made up of. Hope that among all math guy answers this helps. Regards,

Kerboman. There's no set answer to this question (without breaking down KSP's "physics" from programming), there are two guidelines: At a certain altitude, there is no atmosphere thick enough for the engines to run regardless of intake quantity, "space". At a certain altitude, drag is too high to make acceleration worth while. (so climb) Two things keep a jet in the air: Lift generated, and thrust/air keeping the engines flowing. For example, I had a 50t jet with 2 turbojets and two regular intakes. This aircraft could operate to approximately 19,500m and could accelerate to Mach 4.1 (KSP does not handle jets well). I modified that jet up to 60t, with 4 turbojets, a ram intake, a radial air intake, and I increased the lift by about 20-35%. This jet could operate to 24,000m and accelerated to Mach 4.4, it also demonstrated significantly better climbing power, maintaining a 10 degree incline from T+5 until 18,000 m. It was likely a combination of the additional air intake and lift that kept it operating at a higher altitude. One thing the SPH doesn't show you is quantity of lift. If the CoM and CoL match up, but the lift generated isn't enough to get it off the ground, you'll never know! You'll fortunately (yay more ksp!) have to experiment to find out what combination of air and intakes works for you, but there are a lot of examples out there to go by. Realistically (just a guess), I don't see how anything other than an exploit-based jet could operate above 26 km, you'd have to start doing some crazy things to get it working up there, at that height you need to be looking at an orbital or sub-orbital swap i.e. changing from jets to rocket power. From a thread by CaptainArbitrary: Kerbin's atmoshpere: sea level to 8.4km troposphere 8.4km to 14000km tropopause 14km to 35km stratosphere <- atmospheric density 0.1~ or lower starts at 14 km~ 35km to 39km stratopause 39km to 56km mesosphere 56km to 63km mesopause 63km to 70km+ thermosphere

Zerro, Keeping the skies clear is completely up to your design policies. Design sections as single large stages (instead of dumping four small engines/tanks), separate them early so there is fuel remaining, use that fuel to deorbit the object oif needed. Never use stack separators, use decouplers, they leaves the ring behind on the object that is being released (the direction of the arrow will tell you which end it will remain stuck to - the fat side stays stuck), that prevents you from leaving bits of debris from staging up there. Always plan your stages with control computers and potentially a tiny amount of RCS for control and deceleration. Conversely, build them with docking in mind, dock all your scrap into a ball, then crash that ball into the planet (did this, pretty spectacular). The only ship segments that should remain on the map after action should be pieces that you have not selected "end mission" on. Remember to end the mission of any vessels you are finished with. Lastly, something like the Kerbal Attachment System mod will allow you to create things like magnetic clamps, you can build garbage ships to grab larger chunks floating up there and then decelerate it into the atmosphere. Last resort though, this is a biiiig project. Any particular objects proving a pain? Screenshots possible? Regards

As a test, take away a forward fuel tank, and replace it with some structural housings (the 0.4 weight ones), watch the center of mass move, after two or three tanks have drained (the image won't load for me for some reason, so I can't actually comment exactly)your CoM will be WAY off where you thought it should be. Try locking the fuel in forward/furthest away tanks, fuel always trains from the furthest source first.