arq

The Lazor mods have the option to extend this distance from 2.5km out to 99km, which may help. Even then, you will need to not split them too early (certainly not high in orbit), I'd say wait for 50km or lower to split.

Really, resources have no place until after the economy is in place. Without a notion of money, Kethane is really the only resource mod that make sense at the moment, and even that can be shaky at times. Why do we think Squad would have done it better? Once Squad implements the economy, we'll see what modders come up with. Chances are, I'll be happy enough with that. If Squad thinks that changes to the core game could improve those mods, THEN they can mess with resources more seriously. The whole reason resources were delayed was because they were uninteresting in the form they had. KSP is designed to be heavily modded, Squad is focused on the parts that modders can't do. This is why Squad has been so slow to add new parts and instead focused on a tech tree and tweakables. I actually like what they did with multiplayer - let the modders work out the concepts and then take a look. Since the modders are limited in what they can do, Squad is stepping in to enhance that experience. If KMP worked flawlessly and as Squad wanted, they would just drag-and-drop it or leave it as a mod. Even though I care much more about resources than multiplayer, this is an efficient development model that gets us the maximum content in the minimum time.

I'm with the others. The heat tolerance of the airbrakes is higher than it had ought to be. Many parts have tolerances that seem unreasonable, especially structural parts. While I'm willing to accept that for girders and plates I've had stuff come down with a decoupler on the front and do just fine, which I disagreed with (actually I'd intended for it to burn up).

Are you using Deadly Reentry? In that mod, if your Kerbals are exposed to too much force for too long, it will kill them.

When I design ships, I naturally seem to end up with an acceleration of about 1.5m/s^2 in space (TWR ~0.15). I would very much discourage anything below about 0.08, as at this point your burns are so long that you may be losing significant dV to long burn times. Even with 0.15, you will likely need at least two burns to escape Kerbin (you will need almost 10mins, which is a little too long to do in one orbit).

I doubt you are using all that jet fuel, I often find that I can run two turbojets from a single tank, or at least 3 from 2. Shaving off that excess mass might help some. Also, the Mk1 fuel tank is universally inferior to the Mk2 (heavier, less fuel), though you may really want the Mk1 shape. I don't like to encourage excessive airhogging, but adding air intakes is the simplest way to make getting to orbit easier (unless you don't have enough thrust/lift to get to 20km).

There is nothing wrong with a coast phase. In many cases it may be more efficient than a direct injection. For example, from about 40km up, terminal velocity is well-above orbital velocity. The gist of this is that it is possible to insert into a 40x<apoapsis> orbit from here without massive drag losses at periapsis. Let us assume for a moment that the drag losses are actually nonexistent at this point. Then the most efficient way to get into a higher orbit is via a Hohmann transfer. This means that you should pick up as much speed at your current 40km orbit as desired to get to your target altitude (plus a little spare to deal with the small drag losses). Then, at apoapsis you should circularize. Of course, this is half an orbit later because you just left periapsis. This is a 'coast phase' and is part of the most efficient way to get from 40km into stable orbit. So yes, it is reasonable and efficient to use a coast phase to achieve orbit.

Part of the issue with allowing LF/LOX sliders to go all the way up to the tank's capacity is that increasing one would mean that the other slider's top limit would need to be adjusted, which may not be easy in the current setup. If this is a limiting issue, one could do something like have one slider for total quantity and another slider for the ratios (really, controlling the ratios in 5% increments would be plenty, since the current rocket fuel mix is 45/55%. This could probably be done easily in a mod. Of course, this would still not work if you also wanted to include monopropellant, but that is less of a concern for me at the moment as there are already monoprop tanks in all the standard sizes. My main interest here is for making appropriate fuel ratios for jet/rocket hybrid craft, like SSTOs.

They couldn't just make Kerbin a nice round 10m/s^2? I guess it doesn't matter so much when you have the computer to do TWRs for you...

Unless it was changed very recently, every part is placed with staging relative to the stage it is attached to. For example, engines are usually added to the current stage and decouplers to one stage sooner. Parachutes usually go one stage later, IIRC.

I find the drag difference to be negligible. Speed is irrelevant, as the drag coefficient only affects drag force linearly (even if the velocity effect is quadratic or cubic), it's the same percentage increase (except that the drag coeff increaeses with speed, but it caps at 2.00 very quickly). Get Kerbal Engineer Redux or some other mod to measure drag and you'll see the difference is tiny. Technically it exists, but it's worth more to me to keep it simple than to save 1% of my fuel on my way up. I just toggle all my intakes in the same actiongroup as my jets.

This. It would be silly if they were better (or even equal) at both compared to other engines. They're meant to save a little mass when you need both on a craft.

Perhaps the easiest way might be to do a flyby of the planet where you don't quite capture. You'll leave on a slightly different orbit than the planet, so if you then go around one orbit and match the planet's, you will be a little ahead or behind.

I find there are some parts that can survive re-entry just fine with DRE. Decouplers actually do very well (though they seem bugged, barely heat at all), engines, and some other stuff. It wouldn't surprise me if structural elements (including the plates) had the tolerance to survive, too. On shallow re-entries, I find that parts seldom heat above 1800deg, so somewhere above there is probably safe.

The problem with low TWRs is that to get to orbit with low TWRs requires extra dV. Getting extra dV costs extra fuel, which requires more mass and parts. This requires more struts, which further increases partcount. For large launchers, mass is bad because it increases joint stresses, leading to Rapid Unplanned Disassembly. Additionally, it increases partcount, which increases lag and personal suffering. So low TWRs can actually make things much harder in many cases.

Your TWR is waaaay too low. Aim for ~1.7 on the readouts and that will serve you well (that should make it fluctuate between 1.7-2.2). At least do this for the first 3500m/s, that last 1000m/s can be lower (>0.8 should be okay).

Go the the SPH, place a decoupler or any other dummy part as your base, then build your rover from there. Then, select everything except for the base piece (ie your rover) and save it as a subassembly. Load the subassembly in the VAB and you should be set. ...unless subassemblies don't transfer between VAB and SPH. Someone care to verify?

Yup, period-matching is the way to go. With Kerbal Engineer or some other mods, you can get it down to 0.1s accuracy or better.

Agreed, I find that fine controls reduce the necessity of meticulously trying to balance RCS. It also helps if while in this mode, you just repeatedly tap the translation keys rather than holding them down.

SSTOs can actually achieve very high payload fractions. If I recall correctly, they can easily surpass 30% without airhogging (compare to 16% for rocket-only asparagus). Of course, a staged jet-assisted launcher would do better yet. Mostly, SSTOs are a way to challenge oneself after regular launches have been mastered.

Nope. Looks upside-down to me. Flip the decoupler over and it should eject properly.

I agree with Tex, KJR works wonders.

In the config file in your KSP directory, there is something like a "conic draw limit" that determines how many encounters it is allowed to draw. Increase this number.

Unless you do some serious airhogging, an LV-N alone will not get you to orbit. Add some 24-7S engines or LV-T30s to get yourself out of the atmosphere, then turn them off once you can maintain speed/climb with the LV-N alone.

If you're using RCS, why not just put on a small fuel tank with an LV-1 or 24-7S? They have higher ISP, so it could actually be lighter than using RCS. Ions have higher ISP, so it would make sense to use them, but that would prevent you from actually landing and returning from anywhere except Laythe and maybe Gilly. It would also be conceptually possible to reach orbit using just jets on the craft and a Kerbal to push it out of atmo at apoapsis. Or by spinning some fuel tanks while moving fuel between them. Anything that provides dV could do it. As others have said, you will never hit Mun on just jets. They cap out at 2400m/s.