WafflesToo

Just did the math and departing to Moho (which I think is the second- or third-most distant point from Kerbin... energetically speaking) from Minmus's orbit (didn't include Minmus's Oeberth effect to simplify the calculation) costs 2090 m/s of dV. Departing directly from LKO on the other hand costs 1670 m/s of dV; saving the mission 320 m/s of dV. But hauling fuel down to LKO from Minmus' orbit costs 230m/s to drop down to a 32km aerobrake and another 160 m/s to get the orbit circularized at my space-station's altitude. Already up to almost 400m/s without taking any orbital maneuvering into account. Without looking too much farther into it I'm thinking that it still makes sense to just go ahead and leave from Minmus, accepting the additional mission dV since the extra fuel will be burnt on your exit burn anyway and its mass will (largely) be gone from the mission; troubling it little more for the remaining burns it would have to make. Of course this assumption breaks a little as mission mass goes up... And this only works for interplanetary missions. For local missions (such as Munar exploration) it makes far more sense to have a local fuel source and not leave its SOI at all.

Kind of what I've been trying to do with my current playthrough of the game. I haven't started exploiting Kethane yet (it's coming) but I have a fuel tanker that can get just over 5-1/2 tons of fuel into LKO for very little cost (less than half what a single one-shot Mun mission would cost). It will become even more attractive once I get a Kethane operation up-and-running.

Because palioxis is trying to maximize the Oeberth effect by burning at absolute maximum velocity. I don't think you can get much more maximized than falling from the edge of Kerbin's SOI down to atmospheric scraping altitudes Getting the ejection angle to line up would be difficult, but it would be a heck of a stunt if you could pull it off

I see what Palioxis is trying to do. It would just be a matter of planning a little more in advance. If I remember right it will take the ship about six days to fall from SOI limit back to 75km above Kerbin so you would want to time your departure to be six days early... of course there could be a big problem getting your departure angles to line up. I suppose a solution to the problem is six-or-so stations in a ring and just pick the one you need in advance... which would involve (you guessed it) even more advanced planning. Some people really enjoy the minutia of the game and if that's their thing then who am I to tell them it's wrong? Personally, that's getting a bit too involved for my tastes

The Kethane mod does add some parts though (such as scanners, drills, and cracking plants). Any ship constructed with any of those parts would require the recipient to also have the Kethane mod. Any ships without those parts would be sharable as is.

Actually I did get to rethinking that a bit after posting. I'll have to run the math to see which way burns fewer tons, hauling the kethane down to my LKO station first, or having the mission leave from the Minmus station.

Five hours if you want a six-satellite network

Very true and you are all very correct that for a one-shot mission it's wasteful... However, if you are operating a small fleet of persistent ships that are being reused from one mission to the next then where you put your stations matters. Yes, it costs make dV to depart from Minmus,. But it costs fewer tons than having to haul fuel down from Minmus to LKO.

It's hard to wrap your head around isn't it? XD But Minmus' local orbital velocity of 274m/s gets totally dominated by Kerbin's SOI velocity moving around Korbol at 9, 284 m/s.

Kethane mod lets you mine fuel from off Kerbin. Dragging it down to LKO costs more than transferring your mission material up to the mining site.

LOL! Why does this have 9 pages worth of replies when it became obvious on page two that OP is just being a troll anyway? At Isp 800 the engines would have to become a large fraction of your mass before other engines become more attractive. Go take a look at Zisteau's "Dres-tacular", even with all those atomic powerplants it still beats out LV 909s for dV

Minmus is even more attractive for the same reason

You do realize that 6dg inclination energetically translates to fiddly-squat once you reach interplanetary space, right? You can translate from a polar orbit around Kerbin and still not have a significant solar inclination.

It can if you've got a joystick plugged in

Then I'm afraid you may be doomed. The only way I can think of to do something as complex as you're wanting to do is by scripting a program to do it :/ Preferably by tying it to barometer data to give it some amount of margin of error. Sorry I couldn't help. Maybe someone else knows some trick that might help. Good luck.

Open the cfg file, find the line that says SIGNALDELAY and set it to "false" Seriously though, this sounds like a doozy. I know IRL probes use a combination of sensors and preprogrammed executions. I know there's a moout there that is supported by RT2 that can do it. I think it's KOS? Anyway, check out RTs front page, it should be listed there

200 units per ton SHOULD be the correct value, though I've noticed something screwy with the game's mass reporting lately. I wonder if they changed something?

Likewise Funny this comes up right now, been banging my head against the wall all week trying to work out some way of at least analyzing the effect TWR has on gravity drag during ascent. This is what I've worked out so far (I make no guarantees I've done this right) Hohmann transfer from the surface to an 80km parking orbit requires 2255 m/s (including Kerbin's rotation of 175m/s). Next I calculate how long it takes to get to 10km (and that is equal to SQRT (20000/(a-g)) in seconds). Multiply that by 1.707 and again by 9.81. That should be a rough guesstimate of your gravity drag. Add those two values together then add 1360 to account for vanilla air drag. And that should be roughly how much dV the rocket will need. Disclaimer: this has not been tested very thouroughly yet, but the results seem to be close based on experience.

Scott Manley, kurtjmac (I wish he posted more often), Thor (just how did he manage to get that off the ground?!), Zisteau (I think his Minmus lander out-masses my entire space program to date), and 5th horseman.

It depends. If I'm already in orbit, I would expand my apoapsis out to x40 my periapsis altitude. Fly out to my new apoapsis, do the plane-change maneuver (tug on one of the magenta colored nodes on the maneuver node, you may need to pull on the retrograde node as well to keep your periapsis from moving). Fly back to periapsis and lower your apoapsis again. Then celebrate.

I think it should be a = 2 (R + h) for a circular orbit? Or a = 2R + h1 + h2 for an elliptical orbit? Other than that spot on.

What use agreement do you have?

The real problem with YouTube is it runs full tilt into Surgeon's Law and there isn't anything to filter it.

I FOUND YOUR GAME!!! http://store.steampowered.com/app/233720/?snr=1_7_15__13 ...anyway, I play KSP because I'm a massive nerd who loves math, physics, space exploration, engineering, mission planning and execution... I also may have been dropped on my head as a child... actually my mother can verify that yes, I was dropped on my head as a child

I'm still trying to figure out what Multiplayer could possibly add to the game...