Anton P. Nym

The KSS Constellation during her braking burn at Jool periapsis. Earlier, Connestoga 4 braked into a slightly inclined orbit over Tylo to await the arrival of Heavy Probe Bus "Albert". Back at Kerbin, the KSS Enterprise D attains orbit. After a shakedown cruise to the Mun, she'll take 6 crew and 2 landers to Duna. -- Steve

One small tip, for what it's worth; I parked a rover at the end of each runway and renamed each as a base, using the strip and heading for each. (Ex. "KSC Beacon 09" for the one at the east end.) Before descent I select the appropriate rover as the plane's target; makes it easier to find the runway from over the horizon and line up early. -- Steve

Actually you can... ISP scales by mass and the *square* of the velocity (e=mv^2/2); by using a nuclear energy source you can get a fairly high ISP using RP-1 if you needed to. It's just that LH will get a higher ISP for the same energy output because of its lower mass. -- Steve

I use up to 4 LV-Ns on my craft... and one one of them 4 may not have been enough because the estimated burn time for a Jool capture burn is 27 minutes. (It's a carrier with two aerospace planes and two VTOL landers.) If the craft's dry weight is big enough, the added engines don't impact total delta-V much and the shorter burns make the mission more practical. -- Steve

I'd rather keep the runway as-is, and find some way to make Rocket-Assisted Take-Offs (RATO) more practical for planes in KSP. (Big brother to the Seperatrons?) Adding a ramp* or significantly extending the runway** will complicate spaceplane operations more than they'll help, in my opinion. -- Steve * makes the runway asymmetrical, making a westerly landing approach nigh-suicidal ** much longer and, as noted above, Kerbin's curvature complicates things

If you suppose a LANTR using RP-1 instead of LH, then in-game you could save on mass by using the existing Jet Fuel tanks (that don't also carry oxidiser) for your big burns. Switching to the higher-thrust KerLOX mode would require current rocket tanks. I think the suggestion is mainly workable; the only sticking point I see is the switch-over from high-thrust to high-efficiency mode, but making it like the RAPIER would help. (Come to think of it, something similar would also make VASIMIR engines workable.) -- Steve

I don't think we're going to see many engines with ISPs over 400. IIRC the theoretical maximum ISP for a chemical engine is about 540, and that's using exotic (and extremely toxic/unstable) high-energy propellant mixes like lithium + hydrogen + fluorine tripropellant... I think the SSME's vacuum ISP of ~450 is about the practical limit. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing a 2.5m variant of the LV-N with a 600-800 ISP to mix things up; and I do like the idea of a "middle way" size 0 engine and a "booster" engine for size 1 parts. -- Steve

I re-use LV-Ns as much as possible; they're heavy and expensive! If I do end up with a nuclear-powered craft unable to return for re-use, I either crash them on an airless moon or I put them in an out-of-the-way orbit (heliocentric if posible) to let them "cool off" well away from any future missions. -- Steve

For what it's worth, my most successful RAPIER design had two of them, plus a Turbojet to help get it off the ground as RAPIERS are really low thrust at low altitude. Still had some of the problems with non-RAPIER SSTOs, though, that I have to remember to shut down the jet before it starves out and (of course) it's lugging into orbit an engine that's just dead weight in space... but not as badly as my earlier designs. -- Steve

Long time a-commin', but the Tripgoer 1 probe I launched back in v0.20 finally arrived at Jool. Alas it didn't have enough maneuver fuel to make orbit, but it did have enough to get a 50km close encounter with Tylo's day side. On it's way out, Tripgoer got a decent "family portrait" of the Jool system, though Laythe and Vall are tiny and Bop's behind Jool. Alas and dammit, I botched Joolgrazer's last aerobrake. Sigh. -- Steve

More shots of Project Jool Heist as more of the fleet arrives. (Not shown, Connestoga #3; you've seen enough of those already in my earlier post, right?) Ghost #3, the electroglider probe, cruising in Jool's upper atmosphere at about 40,000m above datum. In the distance, Tylo is whispering, "Soon..." (But not for Ghost #3, which reached a suspiciously-memorable 1138m before my attempts to delve further stripped off its wings and it plunged into the kraken's lair.) Close-up of Joolgrazer before it aerobrakes into low polar Joolian orbit. The clipping of the structural plates made a nice Celtic Knot pattern, I thought. The obligatory shot of Joolgrazer in mid-aerobrake... or at least its first one. I cut too shallow, not wanting to crash it, and so will have to do at least two more to get the orbit down to something manageable. -- Steve

I now use Tweakables to shut off my spaceplanes' fuel tanks near the COM in the VAB/SPH, reserving that fuel and keeping the COM fairly stable until the rest of the fuel is spent. This does bear the risk of flaming out during a burn if I forget to switch them back on... but it's easier to recover from that, at least in my experience, than from a flat spin or tumble. -- Steve edited to add: I generally do not use drogues for spaceplanes, preferring instead to use "S" turns to bleed off excess energy. I use drogues a lot for vertical landers and probes, though.

I agree; I think the better solution for beginners floundering in Career mode is to beef up the tutorials provided with the game. This would give new players a lot more useful experience with design and piloting (and a gentler entry to the game) than giving them a few stock craft to reverse-engineer. -- Steve

Finally my 9-ship Jool fleet is starting to arrive... I'll probably write up Project Jool Heist later, but for now some pretty pictures of the Connestoga fuel tankers arriving at Laythe. Connestoga 1's approach to Jool aerobraking; Laythe's lurking in the background. Solar and comms arrays retracted, Connestoga 1 plunges through Jool's upper atmosphere protected by its heat shield. Connestoga 2 managed to get a Laythe encounter before having to brake into Jool orbit, which saved a bunch of fuel for later missions. Scratch one UFO! Oops, wait, this isn't XCOM... it's actually Connie 2's discarded heat shield about to splash down in Laythe's ocean. Sealed with a kiss; Connie 1 and Connie 2 dock in Laythe orbit to consolidate resources. -- Steve

The film's premise is stacked to make that unworkable; the rogue star in their scenario is going to disrupt Earth's orbit, taking it out of the "Goldilocks" zone, and pass close enough to have enormous tidal effects and gamma irradiation. Subterranian shelters would be unlikely to survive the tectonic activity, but even those who somehow survivied would be greeted with a completely sterile surface at best. (At worst, Earth might pass within the star's Roche limit and actually break up.) I didn't finish watching it, as it was a bit too repetitive and "zOMG action!" for me, but I did like that they actually asked real scientists and engineers about the problems. -- Steve

I have literally put boosters on my boosters; SRBs burning in parallel with liquids to quickly get my heavy-lift vehicles off the pad and up to velocities where aerodynamics work to keep the ship stable, then drop off after the liquid boosters have burnt off enough fuel to ensure the right TWR. I have also made all-solid ascent stages just to see if I could. When economics come into play in some future build, I expect to do that more to get cheap Science and/or Budget from missions. -- Steve

I use LV-Ns for almost all my interplanetary stages; the fuel mass generally drowns out the higher mass of the engine in those cases. Only with sub-ton probes do I switch to the LV-909 or the wee Rockomax engines. I also use LV-Ns for my persistant Munar shuttles that take cargos & crews to the moons and back; they've made about a dozen trips each thanks to refuelling missions. -- Steve

FINALLY got a lander down on Duna, after all these months. Not quite where I wanted it; I'd been aiming for the mouth of that big valley, but missed about a 100km south. Sure has some pretty scenery, though. -- Steve

It may be a bug in KSP; a couple of times in .23 I've run the battery down while in full daylight and been unable to recharge or regain control of a probe. (Indicators say the panels are generating current, but none gets into the batteries or probe core.) Saving, closing, and reopening doesn't fix it; only going back before the battery hits "0" seems to work. -- Steve

I have no objection to the "floppy joints" part of KSP; for me it's part of the charm and the challenge of the game. (Those arguing about realism do need to take into account the multiple structural failures in the early days of rocketry... Corporals and Vanguards and SRBs, oh my...) -- Steve

LV-Ns for the big stuff, often in multiples. Everything else so far uses LV-909s or (for the very light probes) ions. Now some of my probes do use the Skipper-powered ascent stage that got them to LKO to start their ejection burn... but the Skipper stages barely make it out of Kerbin's SOI, so I didn't count them in the poll. -- Steve

I have nothing so grandiose, but I do have a small fleet of reusable nuclear cargo tugs that ferry crafts and supplies between Kerbin orbit and the Mun and Minmus. I also have an orbital cargo tug over Kerbin I use to assemble some of my interplanetary missions. (Design stolen from a TV show, of course.) -- Steve

At long last Dres Lander 1 arrives in low orbit to scout out landing sites. Dres Lander 2 is only two days behind it. Gusbro Kerman seems happy to be touring the crash site of my first Munbase attempt. Maybe he thinks there's a salvage bounty or something? -- Steve

Yes, but popular books of the day often described Columbus as the only man believing the world was round... when the spherical nature of the Earth was understood (and even the circumference measured geometrically) 1700 years before by Erastothenes, in Alexandria. Sometimes the history gets reshaped a bit to tell a good story. -- Steve

I haven't really delved into the tweekables much yet, but I gather that thrust limiter is useful for solids and for engines prone to overheat. I may tinker with them when I get some time over the holidays... but until I tinker a bit more that's my best guess. -- Steve