Anglave

Here's my own brain squeezin's: --- PROCESSING --- The first time you launch you will notice that GAME START TIME is WAY FASTER THAN before. I now SEE a GLORIOUS 80 fps in ALL SCENARIOS, even with GRAPHICS LEVEL PEGGED. MEMORY use IS IMPROVED and LOADS FASTER. The new TEXTURES ARE ALL DYNAMIC and YOUR jaw WILL DROP TOTALLY OPEN. The FLAGS need MORE POLISH BUT I AM SURE YOU WILL LOVE the release.

Also, if you come in "behind" Laythe in its orbit, your velocity relative to it can be much lower, compared to your velocity relative to Jool when you've fallen all the way down its well to touch its atmosphere.

Thanks Signo, that shows a lot more about how things are attached. And thanks sal_vager, that video is awesome and immediately gives me inspiration!

Actually, what I want to know is, how did you make the giant double ring on your space station?

Don't suppose you'd share the craft file? I dig the idea of using the cargo bay as a body, but I don't see how you attached all the parts?

I also felt that the atmosphere was unexpectedly soupy. It seemed like it stayed quite dense up to an unreasonable altitude, given its overall height. I'm curious if you'd share or screenshot your craft. I've been told authoritatively that the ~2800 m/s ÃŽâ€v is correct for sea level to orbit in 1.0.4, but I can't seem to do it for anywhere near that little. I was planning to make and test several variant crafts with higher TWR or better streamlining, but having your lander as another data point would be great.

This has come up a few times recently. I highly recommend the three pages of this thread. Three more pages here. The short answer is, the relationship between drag and heating is currently broken. This is particularly noticeable during the new "turbulent flow" heating, which is engaged if your craft is moving faster than a certain velocity at a given altitude. This doesn't seem to have been balanced with interplanetary aerobraking in mind. Most such maneuvers will flip the "turbulent heating" switch, and pretty much instantly cook anything that's not effectively just a giant heat shield. The disconnect also means airbrakes are magical.

I concede it's possible that a combination of gravity losses (due to low TWR) and aerodynamic losses (due to my lander's pancake shape) have increased my effective ÃŽâ€v requirement. I'll certainly do some more testing. Testing the existing lander design on Kerbin isn't going to be very meaningful, as Laythe has only 80% the gravity of Kerbin. The lander's TWR on Kerbin would definitely be too low. I am, however, inspired to run some more tests from Laythe, with a higher TWR or more aerodynamic shape.

I've run a Laythe land and return mission in 1.0.4 Stock. I found ~3400 ÃŽâ€v (atmospheric) to be an acceptable (minimum) number for reaching orbit from the ground. Realistically you probably want a bit more. In this regard, the Wiki is incorrect, the 2800m/s number it lists will absolutely strand you. I did find that the atmosphere's density seemed to decrease slower than I would have expected as I ascended, but I didn't find any strange dead spots or places where my thrust suddenly cut out. Are you sure you're not losing fuel flow to an engine or something? Are you using any mods?

Signo, I appreciate your feedback, but I have some questions In my experience at Eve I was not diving nose first, but my attitude generally didn't matter much. Either I burned up completely or not. However, I have to ask, what reasonable interplanetary mission is bringing Mammoths? That's one massive heat shield! Maybe if you're planning an Eve ascent, I guess? And cost you a boatload of ÃŽâ€v in plane change, unless your orbit is polar already. I'm surprised. Since the problem is overheating, how do the airbrakes help? Or are you saying they generate more drag for you when you've already slowed enough to make an (otherwise frustratingly ineffectual) braking pass in the uppermost atmosphere? That may be, but what's your overall mission ÃŽâ€v cost for bringing otherwise useless airbrakes? Does it outweigh just bringing the fuel to slow down on engines? That's odd. The last thing I did land at Eve (in 1.0.4), I slowed down to orbital capture on engines, aerobraked through about 15 passes in order to slow enough to eventually dive into atmosphere for a landing, lost a lot of speed and almost died from heat coming in, but after that the atmosphere slowed me down dramatically, and my whole landing was unpowered. Losing the speed was the hard part, once you've done that, falling through the atmosphere to the ground is trivial. I popped chutes and floated down nice and gentle. Wait, if you're doing 2800m/s at 90k altitude, you are not talking about entering the atmo at interplanetary transfer speed (which you point out is ~4km/s). Which is it? Is this braking to land after several previous braking passes? If so, talking about your speed at 90km doesn't make much sense?

Holy Overkill!

Fair enough, I should have said the atmosphere won't transfer much heat, rather than saying it's not hot. :-P

Yes, that's what needs to happen. I don't think anyone is suggesting changing Kerbin's atmo. The problem with the current system is that there is no way to aerobrake at Jool from typical interplanetary transfer speeds. If your periapsis is 200,010m you get no braking whatsoever because you're outside the artificially decapitated atmosphere. If it's 199,990m you burn up instantly. Not only is this not realistic, it essentially eliminates a mainstay of Joolian missions in KSP. Much the same is true at Eve. With shields and airbrakes and a very high periapsis, you might survive, but you probably won't capture. A lower PE at interplanetary speeds is death. There is no practical option for slowing down at Eve except to pack along the extra fuel and burn your engines to make orbit. Even thereafter, aeorbraking to shrink your orbit and eventually slow to a landing requires many many passes through upper atmosphere. The "many passes" problem is relatively realistic, but it's tedious as hell to perform in the game. I'm not keen to spend hours watching my ship travel in a circle with no need for control input, and I can't time warp effectively because I keep dipping through atmo. I'm not bothered if it requires a heat shield, but for game play reasons I feel it should be practical for typical craft to aerocapture from a Hohmann transfer at bodies with dense atmospheres. Currently in stock at 100% heating, it is not. 1) The atmospheres don't continue to get thinner and thinner out into space, they terminate at an arbitrary altitude, which means you can't aim "high enough" to not burn up almost instantly. I've heard it claimed that there is actually a curve to the density as it approaches the decapitation altitude, but if that's the case the curve is ridiculously sharp. 2) The heating math doesn't seem to be scaling correctly at non-Kerbin planets. Something about the way it scales off velocity or density or altitude is broken. Example: once you've slowed down enough at Eve that you can make a braking pass through the very highest part of the atmosphere, you make as deep a pass as you dare and nearly fry everything to a crisp, only to find that your velocity is almost unchanged. If the atmosphere isn't dense enough to slow you down meaningfully, it really shouldn't be cooking your craft in seconds. Something about the "turbulent flow" heating wasn't balanced for non-Kerbin atmospheres or interplanetary transfer speeds. - - - Updated - - - I suspect that this is the new "turbulent flow" feature, which kicks in if you're going "too fast, too low". I'd bet that speeds above SoI escape speeds are "too fast" as soon as you touch the upper bound of Eve or Jool's atmosphere (meaning the highest possible atmospheric contact is "too low" and turns on the new Turbulent Flow heating feature. Because obviously my rover is fine sitting on the surface not melting or anything. So the atmo can't be THAT hot, especially not at 80km.

Did you.. um.... did you accept the contract? Because I think that one doesn't expire, so it'll stay in the queue until you accept it and complete it.

I've heard this before, and I believe it. But does that mean that if my rocket is a single vertical stack, its actual shape doesn't matter? What if I build a rocket that goes: Advanced Nose Cone Mk 1 Command Pod Kerbodyne S3-3600 (short 3m fuel tank) Mammoth During launch this stack will have only the drag of the advanced nose cone?

Not to mention the selection of engines is still pretty limited. Eve ascent needs a fairly high thrust, and good atmospheric performance.

The problem is that with the 1.0.4 aero and heating math, plus the atmospheric density curve / arbitrary atmospheric altitude caps used by KSP, the "right altitude" is well above the arbitrary cutoff for atmospheric height. Frequently at Jool and Eve, at typical interplanetary transfer speeds, you can have a periapsis 1m above the atmosphere height, and have zero braking (being entirely outside the atmosphere). 1m below the atmosphere height, and your craft instantly explodes from overheating. Even if it doesn't, you may experience near-lethal heating, yet extremely minimal drag (making aerocapture impossible). The simplest solution is to turn down the atmospheric heating slider (or edit ReentryHeatScale in your save game). 20% heating should work better, still provide some challenge, and not auto-incinerate your craft. Turning this down doesn't bother me personally, since it's obviously currently broken. A workaround at Jool system is to aerobrake off Laythe (which has a marginally more forgiving atmosphere), or try to gravity brake around Tylo. The only workaround I have at Eve is to spend more ÃŽâ€v to slow down before atmospheric contact, bring a heat shield, and brake very high using multiple passes to slow yourself down. This basically means you need to budget the extra ÃŽâ€v to slow down to capture on your engines. You can go from barely captured to landing by using many (ten or more, in my experience) braking passes through the upper atmosphere, but this is extremely tedious.

Thank you all for your informative and illuminating answers. I think I've a much better grasp of the situation now! Humbling to realize I was just doing it wrong every which way, but uplifting to be helped so willingly by members of the community.

This is the crux of my error, thank you. All this time I was assuming that the 1920 m/s value was ignoring benefit from Oberth Effect. I was trying to calculate the actual ÃŽâ€v one would need to expend (taking Oberth into consideration) to achieve the required 1920 m/s change, so as to find value of the savings. Yasmy had the right idea all along. I was looking for a value lower than 1920, assuming some efficiency gain by considering the Oberth effect. Since the 1920 value already takes Oberth into consideration, I should instead have been seeking a higher number; the required ÃŽâ€v with "no Oberth", which Yasmy had already demonstrated how to calculate, here. - - - Updated - - - From this page, about 80% of the way down the page, under the "Oberth Effect" heading. It was the most approachable math I found (including examples) that claimed to address the problem I thought I was trying to solve (how much ÃŽâ€v am I saving).

I'm no math whiz, but I'm interested in a better fundamental understanding of the Oberth Effect, so I tackled some equations. What is the proper way to calculate the ÃŽâ€v gained because of the Oberth Effect? Let's use a concrete example. I'm in an 80km circular equatorial orbit of Kerbin. I want to plot a Jool intercept. I'll assume the ÃŽâ€v required to go from LKO to Jool encounter is ~1920m/s I'm also simplifying things a bit, assuming instantaneous burns and no plane changes, etc. UPDATE -- THE REST OF THIS POST IS JUST PLAIN WRONG. Might as well not waste your time, just skip ahead to the answers. Doing my best to follow the equations and examples provided by nyrath on this page: First we calculate Vesc using: Vesc = sqrt((2 * G * M) / r) where: G = gravitational constant (of the Kerbal universe) M = mass you're orbiting r = radius of your orbit and μ = G*M. I'm using this because μ is provided (as Standard Gravitational Parameter) on the KSP Wiki entry for Kerbin. Kerbin's radius (600km) is also provided there. For Kerbin: μ = 3,531,600,000,000 m3/s2 r = 600,000m + 80,000m = 680,000m sqrt(7,063,200,000,000 / 680,000) = 3222.89m/s or Vesc = 3.22 km/s ------- Then we find ÃŽâ€v, or the total change in m/s required at periapsis to achieve the desired final velocity using: ÃŽâ€v = sqrt(Vf^2 + Vesc^2) - sqrt(Vh^2 + Vesc^2) where: ÃŽâ€v = amount of burn at periapsis Vf = final velocity target [1920 m/s (Jool Intercept) + 2280m/s (your current velocity) = 4,200m/s] Vh = initial velocity before burn = 2,280 m/s [orbital speed at 80km] and Vesc = 3,223 m/s [check on my assumptions: Yasmy's orbital calculations came up with ÃŽâ€v = 4224 - 2246 = 1978 m/s. Mine came up with 4200 - 2280 = 1920. These numbers seem to more or less agree.] So we simplify and find: sqrt(17640000 + 10387020) - sqrt(5198400 + 10387020) 5294 - 3948 = ÃŽâ€v 1346 m/s So, to the best of my ability, I think to get the desired increase of 1,920 m/s, it actually costs us only 1,346 m/s because of the Oberth Effect. A savings of 574 m/s over burning with a solar velocity of 0. --------------- This (if I've done my math correctly, which is seriously in doubt) answers the question "how much ÃŽâ€v do I effectively get 'for free' when burning from LKO to Jool intercept". If, however, you were to burn at some other point, say if you were performing a powered gravity assist past Mun on your way out of Kerbin's SoI, you would gain less 'free' ÃŽâ€v because your velocity would be lower. ----------- How do I reconcile this with Yasmy's well articulated point that the proper way to measure the value of the Oberth Effect is to find the difference between 1) A single LKO to Jool burn, which we've taken to be 1920 m/s, and 2) Two burns, one from LKO to just barely Kerbin escape; and a second from just outside Kerbin's SoI (at periapsis of your solar orbit) to Jool encounter. The combination of which is just less than 3727. Giving an answer of something close to 1740 m/s saved. due to the Oberth Effect. Which answer is correct, and why? --Update-- trying to answer my own question. What happens if I try to explicitly use velocity in the solar frame, rather than the Kerbin frame? Is that my error above? ÃŽâ€v = sqrt(Vf^2 + Vesc^2) - sqrt(Vh^2 + Vesc^2) where: ÃŽâ€v = amount of burn at periapsis (solve for this) Vf = final velocity target: 12.01km/s [velocity at Kerbin's orbital radius of a Kerbin to Jool transfer orbit. (from Yasmy's example)] Vh = initial velocity before burn [Kerbin's orbital velocity 9.2km/s, plus your Kerbin orbital velocity 2.28km/s = 11.48km/s] Vesc = 3,223 m/s simplifying: sqrt(144240100 + 10387729) - sqrt(131790400 + 10387729) 12053 - 11924 = ÃŽâ€v = 129 m/s. Meaning we'd only need to expend 129 m/s at periapsis to achieve the desired 530 m/s change. A savings of 401 m/s. That's not closer to Yasmy's answer! ---- Something above can't be correct. I know I need more than 530 m/s change to reach Jool from LKO. Obviously I've done something wrong. What if I just force the difference between Vf and Vh to be 1920 m/s? That would mean if Vh is 12,010 m/s, Vh must be 10,090 m/s simplifying: sqrt(144240100 + 10387729) - sqrt(101808100 + 10387729) 12053 - 10592 = ÃŽâ€v = 1461 m/s. Meaning we'd only need to expend 1461 m/s at periapsis to achieve the desired 1920 m/s change. A savings of 459 m/s because of the Oberth Effect. Grrr, now I have no idea where I've gone wrong, and none of my answers are any closer to agreeing with Yasmy's. ---- Another Update ---- I just realized I'm still using Vesc for Kerbin, not Kerbol. Maybe that's where I've gone wrong yet again? Recalculate Vesc: Vesc = sqrt((2 * G * M) / r) where: G = gravitational constant (of the Kerbal universe) M = mass you're orbiting r = radius of your orbit μ = G*M. μ = 1.1723328×10^18 m^3/s^2 r = 261 600 000 (Kerbol's radius) + 13 599 840 256 (Kerbin's orbital distance) = 13,861,440,256 m Simplifying: sqrt(2,344,665,600,000,001,165 / 261,600,000) = sqrt(8962788991) = Vesc = 94,672 Which we then plug in: sqrt(144240100 + 8962787584) - sqrt(101808100 + 8962787584) 95431 - 95208 = 151 m/s Telling us that we need only expend 151 m/s to achieve the desired 1920 m/s change. A savings of 1769 m/s Well, at least that's closer to Yasmy's answer. Can anyone tell me if I've finally solved it, or simply plugged in enough random numbers to get lucky? Spoiler -- it was the second thing. Also (and finally), I know from experience that it takes considerably more than 151 m/s ÃŽâ€v to transit from LKO to Jool encounter. Why is that? ---FINAL UPDATE TO OP--- Snark pointed out the error of my ways in post #2. My basic assumption was incorrect, and therefore the math above is nonsensical.

When I built my first craft using LV-Ns in 1.0.4, I didn't know their heating had been fixed. I also saw the radiators and thought "Neat, new parts to solve the heat dissipation issue!" I put a ring of radiators (the extending kind) around the main tank (Mk3 liquid fuel tank) of my interplanetary stage. They seem to work (in this application) as intended. The radiator gets hot and radiates a lot of heat. The rest of the craft gets less hot than it would have without the radiators. Given that it's a large area, lightweight, flexible structure, I had never considered deploying it during aerobraking, assuming it would simply shear away. If you did deploy such a thing during atmospheric heating, I'm not sure what I'd even expect the behavior to be. It's a huge surface designed for efficient heat transmission. Would it absorb a lot of heat from the surrounding atmosphere and concentrate it into the part it's attached to? Possibly. IMO, the radiators are intended to radiate waste heat more efficiently into deep space, and they work well enough for that purpose, though they may not be strictly necessary now that the LV-N's heat generation has been corrected. Using them during atmospheric braking is off-label and may possibly have unanticipated results.

Seconded, and couldn't agree more.

Based on personal experience in 1.0.4, Laythe surface-to-orbit is more like 3400 ÃŽâ€v, rather than the 2600 listed here and on the Wiki. Check this thread for more detail.

I date from the 0.17 era, played a considerable amount in the 0.24 era, and have played 1.0.2 and 1.0.4 fairly extensively. I don't know a lot about the way skills and classes are implemented, but what you say seems to make a lot of sense in this regard. I like the idea of my Kerbals having skills and gaining experience, but the current system seems kludged on, and doesn't add value to my game play. The experience system definitely needs a rework IMO. Launching and piloting large, complex craft on long and difficult missions should add SAS experience, even if it goes to a destination that pilot has previously visited. Operating a mobile science lab in orbit around some distant body for years should add science skill. As of 1.0, the experience game for me consists more of figuring out how to abuse the system to rapidly level my pilots and scientists, rather than designing interesting missions of exploration. Regarding the cost and flexibility of hiring Kerbals, all I can add is "100% agree". My current behavior is simply to rescue Kerbals until I have a crew of the size I desire. While this is generally viable, it makes the entire hiring interface completely irrelevant. What bugs me the most is that gaining science has always felt pointlessly grindy to me. I feel that KSP should at its core be a rocket launching and orbital mechanics game, and I hate doing gimmicky things like rolling around KSP to collect arbitrary science points so that I can successfully do those things. I approve of some form of "tech tree" as a player limitation, and as a way to introduce parts to career mode in some focused manner (so new players aren't overwhelmed by thousands of unfamiliar parts). However, I think some hypothetical other system could do it much better than what we've got currently. It's super frustrating to me that I want to do a Mun mission (and I get the contract to Explore Mun) well before I unlock the parts to make a reasonable Mun lander. I accept the "Explore Mun" contract, and then struggle hopelessly to complete it with my current tech, rather than taking a boring series of suborbital crew reports or whatever. For the average player to successfully Explore Mun, they will want radial decouplers, fuel lines, struts, the Terrier engine and larger fuel tanks, solar panels, and possibly a heat shield in order to do it properly. That's six new tech unlocks to reach seven components; and each of those nodes contains many other pieces that I'll practically never use, but one which is critical. It really feels like I'm being artificially and arbitrarily constrained. It may be an interesting challenge for an experienced player to make a Mun landing without these technologies, but I imagine it would be hugely frustrating as a novice for the game to be suggesting you go to Mun before you have the techs that enable it. (Lacking the Terrier, you have no good vacuum engine, and no low profile engine that matches with your landing struts. Without fuel lines, you're limited to very inefficient designs. With tiny fuel tanks and no struts, you're significantly limited by rocket flexion). In essence, if you can manage to build a Mun landing mission lacking some or all of these tools, essentially the game has taught you the wrong way to go about it (tall floppy rockets, layered onion staging, no efficient fuel line utilization, etc.) I can see an application for randomly generated contracts, but I would unlock them as part of the end game, to add continued play to career mode. For the beginning of career mode (most new players' introduction to the game), I would script a specific (possibly branching) development path with specific objectives and rewards. I would combine the concept of tech tree and contracts and call it a career path. The game almost already does this with the first few contracts, and the planetary exploration contracts. I would basically expand this into a whole program, leaving randomly generated contracts as a minority, or simply as end-game content. I would have a scripted series of contracts or mission objectives, that would progressively teach a new player how to accomplish more complex objectives in the game; gaining a certain altitude, leaving the atmosphere, making a suborbital flight, making an orbit, etc. I would have each mission reward certain technologies, and build on a path to achieving increasingly challenging goals. Eliminate the existing tech tree concept entirely. This speaks to Geschosskopf's concerns about having what you do during a mission affect what you learn from the mission in a rational way. The introduction of new technologies would be specifically guided by player choice, in order to set the player up to achieve the next mission. How a player chooses to solve a given problem (with wings and jets, or rockets, or whatever) might affect which path they're on, and which technologies they unlock as a result. We're familiar with the concept of a tech tree from many games, and we're used to progressively filling out such a tree. But sadly this system hasn't mapped well to actually playing KSP. The tree feels artificially limiting, parts aren't introduced in a rational order, and gaining science quickly becomes a repetitive slog. I'm in favor of a complete overhaul of these systems. In general I share Geschosskopf's concerns regarding the MPL. It is possible to leverage it in order to gain a lot of science, but this requires multiple high level scientists, and placing the MPL in orbit of a distant body. Honestly by the time you can achieve these things, you're likely approaching done with the tech tree just from picking up science on Mun, Minmus, and Duna. Where you'll want to be going anyway in order to level your Kerbals. It bothers me that the early game is significantly science/tech constrained, yet once you can build a craft with a couple basic science instruments capable of hopping on Minmus, the science game is essentially over. Gathering science feels repetitive and grindy. Doing simple contracts to build cash feels repetitive and grindy. Doing a dozen LKO rescue missions in order to fill out my roster feels repetitive and grindy. Leveling any but my first generation of Kerbals feels repetitive and grindy. The arbitrary, randomly generated contracts, and their terrible gibberish text, feel repetitive and meaningless. I remember so eagerly looking forward to systems in KSP where I had to carefully manage my Funds and Reputation, something like "Space Program Tycoon"; getting the public to believe in the program so that I could fund the next mission, praying it doesn't explode and wipe out a huge chunk of reputation, using what I learned form that mission to build more advanced parts and take my program farther out into the unknown. Sadly, the KSP we have today doesn't make me feel that way at all. Endless funds and reputation are available by repeating any simple, tedious contract. Gaining science is mostly a matter of repeating the same few experiments across as many biomes as I can afford to reach. The difficulty slider only affects the costs of things, and the amount of reward you receive for contracts, which equates to an "increased grindiness" slider. It doesn't, IMO, add any genuine difficulty to the game in any way. The hard (and enjoyable) parts of KSP remain: designing and piloting ambitious missions, learning the laws of good rocket design, learning orbital mechanics, and getting your Kerbals home alive (or blowing them up spectacularly). None of the new career systems encourage or add value to these activities. An in-game mission planner (Achieve equatorial LKO, Achieve Munar orbit, Land in Farside Crater, Collect a Surface Sample, Transmit an EVA Report, Achieve Munar orbit, Achieve Kerbin orbit, Splashdown within 100km of KSC), which gave rewards in science points (or funds or reputation or some other metric) for each objective, would be much more engaging. Perhaps with a difficulty modifier for accomplishing your mission within certain time constraints, budget constraints, ÃŽâ€v constraints, with an inexperienced pilot, lacking certain technologies, or visiting a body you haven't before. This would, IMO, really leverage KSP's greatest strengths, which have always been player-guided missions of exploration, testing the limits of what you yourself can achieve, and how efficiently you can plan and pilot a mission.

Update since OP I redesigned my craft, bringing more ÃŽâ€v and slightly higher TWR in the lander stage, and switching to LV-N on the interplanetary stage, so I could bring enough ÃŽâ€v to push the heavier lander, while retaining the same Kerbin lifter design. The interplanetary stage uses an LV-N / Poodle hybrid compromise between ÃŽâ€v and thrust. I realize a lower thrust (carrying less engine mass, just one pair of LV-N ideally) would be more efficient, but 20+ minute burns to get out of LKO are not acceptable. Even doing multiple periapsis kicks, you end up on escape trajectory with entirely too much burn time remaining, leading to much less efficient transfers. After landing at Laythe, I did on-site tweak the aerospikes to 60% thrust limit, in order to provide more relative vectored thrust at lower throttle settings during ascent. My mission was a success, completely ignoring aerocapture at Jool, and instead burning the engines to slow down and establish a survivable aerocapture encounter with Laythe. The return portion of the mission (from Laythe surface back to Kerbin) worked flawlessly, and I confirm that it does take about 3400 ÃŽâ€v to get from Laythe surface to orbit. Shall we edit the Wiki? The ~2800 ÃŽâ€v number stated there will absolutely strand you. Also, regarding aerobraking in 1.0.x, from a related thread: This is a clear and concise statement of my observations in 1.0.4 as well. Until this is addressed by fixing the heating math, or fixing the atmospheric density slopes, or raising the arbitrary atmospheric height caps, I plan to play with my heat setting at a much lower value. Reentry from Mun and LKO is already easy. Making it even easier doesn't concern me, but making aerobraking from interplanetary speeds even possible is of much greater interest to me. Screenshots added: Note that the lander stage looks much the same, but the (mostly cosmetic) adapter cones have been replaced by fuel containing cones.