Sephta

Land with your miner - and launch west again (270° instead of the normal 90° east) against the rotation. You don't need that much more fuel for that on Mun and you don't need to launch any more ships. after you carry back the fuel to Kerbin, you can check the next trip to have a prograde orbit at mun. Problem solved.

Problem is: with going close to light speed © your mass increases: the Oberth effect only is defined for a small object passing by a(n infinite) mass, that is not affected by gravitational effects of the small mass (i.e. your ship). If you're going to reach significant amounts of c so relativistic effects kick in: your mass increases - significantly! If you go fast enough, you will be able to pull a planet out of course, if you come close enough. So you're applying an Oberth effect on the planet - if it had thrusters So to say so...

The question is, do you need a spaceplane for Kethane mining on Laythe? If yes: you can use air breathing engines on Laythe, so slam enough intakes on it or use the sabre-engines from the B9-Pack (very useful for larger planes! I also recommend the procedural wings to lower the part count.) Nukes are a good choice there, because the air is thinner than on Kerbal. therefore: use more wings! If you can fly it on Kerbin with 50m/s at ground level and 2000m/s at 26000m, you're good. I'll try and get a design together today evening... the other thing you can try: a mining jet: get a big tank, slap a reactor to it and some drills, practice water landings and off you go for Kethane mining directly on Laythe

Kethane is registered as an ordinary resource, when installed properly - you can transfer it with every system, that can handle regular fuel transfers. Be carefull though: Kethane is quite heavy compared to the normal fuel components - it might be a good idea to refine it low the gravity well and only ship the fuel into orbit.

give it fuel, let it breathe... If it coughs up - give it more air...

Couple more things: * Jets don't really need much fuel, so use them as long as you can. * with enough intakes you can reach 30000m and more with speeds well beyond 2000m/s - go for it. * you can achieve an apoapsis >80km on jets alone - when you have done that you need a rocket engine only to circularize. a stable spaceplane is hard to make, but good ones don't need much parts. For spaceplane design: less is more.

there is a small game called Lunar Lander - there you can practice exactly that.... Keep your lander up-right, turn on asas, burn a bit until you go upwards, then hover and steer with the RCS. Keep hovering, until you reach your goal. Remember: do not exeed speed limit! (which should be around 5m/s )

One reason for the spin can be clipping of parts - if that happens in an unlucky way, the game engine induces force on your ship from nowhere. This can actually rip ships apart without a big explosion. Struts touching a tank can be enought there. Another reason I found: built too rigid - small rolls or maneuvers can induce stress to one piece that breaks, and then your ship falls apart. ASAS or MJ with their constant adjustment of the position of the ship induce the stress, yes - but the explosions are often caused by something in the game engine the ship can't handle. Only way out in this case: build another ship, don't make it too rigid and try not to clip anything.

I wouldn't bather with a rover anyways... you have to get it up in orbit to use ist, so I went for mining landers. No hassle to dock in orbit and I can reach every Kethane deposit on the moon easily. The only rover I had designed was a rescue vehicle - for stranded landers (I ran down one deposit and forgot - next mining op there was sucking on dry ground^^). This one had KAS on board. worked really well!

I did make a suggestion in that area as well - nevertheless: it's not the case, that we will be flying to that other system. So there is no need to have a base set up... (for game mechanics anyway) If you'd like to know, where the best place is to set up such a station: in the orbit of the planet with the best infrastructure and most resources - in our case Kerbin. In comparison to the needed dV for interstellar travel any fuel used to go "further out" is wasted. For that distances to point to it and start your engine...

Where did you get this information? As far as I can read the planned features interstellar travel is not on the agenda. (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features) It is requested quite some time, but it was never confirmed afaik.

It's not that difficult, actually: 1. Make a lander with a Kethane tanks and sensors and some drills - and enough electricity to run the drills. The small converter is practical, because you can refill your own craft (means you have to have less tanks!) 2. Land on a kethane deposit 3. Activate the drills and wait until your craft is fully loaded up (and your fuel is replenished) 4. ship your haul back to wherever you need it. Some general tips: If you stack a fuel tank with a converter, you don't need fuel lines, if you need some, make sure, the lines run FROM the tank TO the converter. Kethane is like electricity - you can access it throughout the ship The conversion rate is not very good - if you can manage it, convert it to the fuel you need on the ground and haul your end product up in orbit. This is much more efficient than getting Kethane itself into orbit. Most of the mining vessels are designed for low gravity moons - to keep the dV cost as low as possible. Therefore the most mining vessels also use nerva engines.

I have a "mobile staton" (Kethane processing, tanks, Solar arras, many, many docking ports of all sizes) and it has 3 orange tank capability (in six grey ones). It can reach any planet and brings a Kethane mining vessel with it. It works, and I found, I don't need more than 3 orange tanks as capacity: refueling with Kethane on a moon takes soooooo long...

Home can produce fuel in an atmosphere with electricity afaik - there is nothing else out there besides Kethane. Dev already announced a resource system, so there isn't really much drive to develop an own...

Hm, can you do another dry-run and post the log, that's displayed afterwards? There probably some useful information, what is actually happening.

Ok, here's my reading of the chart: 210 to get captured into Mun Orbit 640 to land 640 to take off Mun 210 to leave Mun Orbit to Kerbin 860 to circularize to LKO ( you can save here already with an aerobreak maneuver XXX to land at Kerbin (would be 4500 for a non atmosphere planet) YYY to cover minor hickups ----------- 2560 + XXX + YYY total "If YYY is 1000, then the lander needs 3560 + XXX. Is this correct? And what is XXX?" So, aside from the things you do with the dV your calculation was correct. The XXX would be the dV to bring you you into the atmosphere long enough to break there (should be around 50m/s on a 100km LKO) but keep in mind: all these numbers are estimates and the transfers between the planets are including the plane change, but also a proper injection angle (so you launch directly fom KLO!) if you put your ship on a solar orbit first, you need more fuel.

Actually: everything on these charts is reversible (except the atmospheric starts/reentries) due to the physics used in space flight: you need the same amount of dV change to get there and back. For the rest: simple add the values for your planned journey and add a safety margin of about 1000m/s If you plan to go to Jool, Eve, Duna or Laythe: you can safe massive amounts of fuel by aerobreaking.

Your best bet: Place a maneuver node and place the landing quite a bit east from KSC (for the drag.) Remember how far east you were and start decending. If you go down too far in one direction, adjust your node. Rest is practice. Keep in Mind, it works totally different for Spaceplanes (depending on how many fuel you bring back), as they tend to glide much longer in the atmosphere and you usually don't go backwards with them...

if you have a really lightweight probe - the torque from the ASAS can keep you up on one leg and you don't "land". Shut down ASAS or everything else that could keep your probe from setting down completely. If possible, force your probe to the ground using RCS.

1: get your apoapsis and Periapsis as close to your orbit height as possible 2: at Apoapsis use RCS (with ASAS active and trimmed on prograde) to get your periapsis close to a couple of meters 3: do the same at your periapsis for your apoapsis. 4. repeat 2 & 3 until you get to the desired orbit Hint: when firing RCS, you should stop when apoapsis and periapsis are at an equal distance to your ship (given you startet at one of the two points)

Ok, some things you can do: * check your staging (perhaps a decoupler is triggered too soon?) * fit radial stages with sepratrons and pull them away (exspecially if they get separated in your gravity turn!) * MOAR Struts strut all parts with high stress on connection points - if possible divide the force to different parts of the rocket. Check one thing after the other - perhaps you solve more than one problem with only one fix you do...

Normally ships don't fall apart randomly. There has to be a reason somewhere... Take a look at the log and try to figure out, if there's one part failing most of your crashes. If a rocket crashes regularly, there is a weak spot somewhere, you can fix. I had a problem with one rocket once, that would only start, if I manually helped Mechjeb to start it - otherwise the engines would overheat and explode. Got around that with minor tweaks... I still have a rocket i can only start if mechjeb steers and I do all the fuel adjustments... (Yes - I have to pump fuel between stages to get this thing flying: Jeb does not approve most of the time...)

I had several crashes as long as I have KSP - but in my case all related to unity. There is a known bug, that Unity has problems with multi-core GPUs (it switches quite often until it decides, which core to use... ) other than that - shiny

Esactly the point, why I wonder... there's no competition anywhere in KSP - you have to think of a way to achieve your own set goals. If you do, great, if you fail: you'll find another or a better way. All by yourself. Mechjeb, editing the persistent file... all different kinds to safe time, make it more comfortable - or is it cheating? I'm replenishing my Kethane deposits - a complete refill of my interplanetary carrier takes more Kethane, than Mün normally provides (it also takes around 20 trips to the surface an back, so yes, I use mechjeb - after the 200th time I was bored to steer manually). On the other hand: I stay away from overpowered mod-parts - for me, the way to get things to other points in the system is too easy then. Comes back the question: when cheating is different for everybody in a sandbox game, why ask? You can't get a reliable answer anyway.

I think, it really depends on your trajectory: if you have enough time to catch up with your tug, everything should be fine. It should be high enough to get you in an area, where drag is not relevant any more, it should stay there at least for 5 to 10 minutes. Your Tug should have it's peripasis there with a proper Apoapsis to catch your craft and get the orbit stable enough afterwards. Quite a challenge Some things, I'd consider: Your tug should have a big enough TWR to get everthing in a proper orbit. I'd use KAS (so you don't have to dock - only capture your craft, which should be much faster.) Starting phase angle is quite difficult to judge or calculate live in an atmosphere - i'd use mechjeb for that. Prepare your tug before you launch. Safes time for docking or catching