Pbhead

I used a Jet engine and ION only craft to get to Gilly. (no oxidizer) which was pretty cool.... It only needed like 5% thrust to hover on Gilly... even with 6 ion engines total i believe, and some jet fuel still in the tank for the return landing... It didnt return... because Physics happened when my kerbal returned from quick little trip around the moon...

Needs more boosters. Amazing stuff on this thread for sure.

how do you meansure payload? do you have to decouple something? Is this final vs initial? Can I just launch an orange tank and a mainsail here, and call the empty orange tank my payload?

For some reason my KSP has becone unstable, and will occasionally fail to save the game state, along with other weirdness, so I really am waiting for .21 before I do anything big again.

what? that sounds AMAZING. what. What i ask you. could possibly, possibly more amazing than landing on the dark side of Moho, putting your kerbals in a buggy, and then seeing what happens to them when they visit the sunny side?

So. I think it would be darn neat to land on every single planetary surface in one mission. big craft with a ton of fuel tanks... mothership style. Probably a giant space train, nuclear engines (gimble locked, because physics...) in front (again, because pushing docking ports is recipe for unintentional stage separation) , pulling modules of landers and fuel tanks. But I am wondering what is the best way to go about this. As in, which places should be gone to in what order? I feel like Eve makes a nice first target, because its easy to get to and dam hard to take off from... it needs a huge, non-reusable lander which you really wouldnt want to take to every other planet first. Moho, of course, is a pain, I almost want to save it for last... But I really dont know here, what the most fuel-optimal visiting path here is. I also though about how to visit things, like dres, and eeloo, maybe moho too, not pulling the mothership in orbit around those gravity wells, but instead having the mothership simply do a flyby, while a lander does a suicide burn, quickly plants a flag, and then races to catch back up to the mothership.... Has anyone done something like that before? I think that while it would require a ton of fuel on the lander, and thus a very over built lander, not having to bring the mothership into a orbit, and then later burn away would save a lot of fuel... maybe. Id appreciate any thoughts on the matter, it will not be easy, and perhaps i really should wait for the fabled resource system before attempting it all, but maybe that is most of the fun, getting from kerbin, visiting everywhere, and getting back, without refueling. (though, while certainly jettisoning a lot of empty orange tanks into space!)

throttle was down. had electricity.

after 11 years in orbit, day 4440something, it was time to rev up the NERVA for a burn to plunge me straight into the sun. after using my rcs (my rcs tanks are below my nuclear engine, and ports above it), jettisoned the rcs tank, hit the nuclear engine and.... no fuel. cant click the darn thing. fuel tank above it is full. all the sorrounding tanks are full. all... 24 of them. all the pipes connected. but the darn shield on the engine decided to BREAK MY ENGINE OFF AFTER 2 RL DAYS OF... *sigh* couldnt quickload too, cause for somereason the game refused to quicksave. or let me go back to the vab. or anything like that.

ya, my maching bird challenge entry got over 300,000 into space, but if xenon is allowed, one can go anywhere. (though, only get back from lathe or gilly, maybe pol.)

I have an Idea, but I dont want to bother with it if you think it is exploitational. Would, say, creating a craft with a very very long arm, and then rotating the arm, and then decoupling a probe from the arm such that speed is measured from the decoupled probe... thus turning the rotational speed into horizontal speed, be allowed?

my SSTO((ish) lathe attempt glitched out. It was a mothership, and a lander plane, but they somehow got detatched from eachother while waiting for transfer window, and if I try to redock them, for somereason, the target speed indicator glitchs out, and starts climbing, and i cant save/go back to tracking station.

a center of drag might be nice as well.

I theorize that with careful docking magnet and timewarp abuse, this could actually be used to propel a craft.

You are using 3 bicouplers to make a 4 engine mount, yes? I dont think the bicouplers are perfectly perfect. I have tumbling issues when I try to use them

I think it kinda looks like Atlantis.

THinking about this a bit I thought that weight really isnt the issue here, drag is. Perhaps aerospike engines, with their lower drag coefficient, despite their lower TWR might work better, especially better than solid fuel rockets with their 0.3 drag coefficient. I mean, clearly you want high twr initially to get to high speeds, and you want it once you clear the atmosphere, but i think there is a small section in there where drag is more important than TWR. So I went to test this theory. It has, alas, so far has mostly ended in glorious explosions... and tons of lag... because you have to put the aerospikes above the fuel tanks on scaffolds of cubic struts because of the lower drag making the thing want to flip. Kinda pretty, in a computer killing sort of way. just before it explodes...

To OP. One of the biggest problems with this game is that its advertisement videos show basically no gameplay whatsoever. just kerbals running around doing things. which, while cute to us players, does nothing for people looking to buy games.

I am suddenly having tipping over problems as well even on the simplest of rockets. edit: should really fly straight. but it doesnt.

Wheres Danny when you need him...

wow. ok. I do not think that much faster is possible without two fuel tanks, and transferring fuel between them while spinning, or getting out and pushing, or lots of stack separators or some other something to get free deltaV. For me though Command pod Torque is op enough as it is. I have learned that you want to really go as slow as possible on your orbit, because the slower you go the more thrust you get, and then use gravity to turn that accumulated thrust into speed. If that makes any sense. You dont get your fastest speed at periapsis, instead before while still falling, then you lose speed the rest of the way, but still thrusting to raise apapsis (and keep peripsis low), so that next run you fall even faster. I think I could do better if I actually had less air intakes, but I am done. Take off of the Maximum Airhog MK5 (its ugly, i know already) and we are flying! (surprisingly, perhaps) Separation of fuel tank (our max speed above land at this point with this plane was already 2332) And its gone! (and I really should have ejected it the other way... i seemed to have lost velocity...) About to go in for final run, tied with first place... i can do this... WHOLL SHYT 2340.1!!!!!!!! BLAM! woot.

ok. first. you often do orbit Lagrange points. 2. there is no station keeping anywhere in this game, so this would be no different, we just assume stable and that as close enough. 3. dont need n-body physics, just 3 body restricted... and often not even that.

I tried to simulate a L1 and L2 point by trying to stick something in a high enough orbit so that it would have an orbital period of one year, but kerbin (and no body, really) seems to have a SOI large enough to allow for it. which... makes sense, really, if you think about it. but still. its like. hurrrg, so close, yet so far.

ah, but if you asparagus AND put srbs on...

Hurrg. so close. 4 m/s short! Though it was a really bad run really. going to try again... and add a droptank I think. This is all I need, right? (plus the drop tank staging if i add one)

omg. I got this. excuse me while I take my maximum airhog plane, strip off the emergency parachutes and rocket engines... oh ya. I got this good.