NathanKell

I thought we did add it. Is it missing from the OP? Or missing in CKAN?

@CatastrophicFailure thanks! I run 2560x1600; click on a picture and choose to view it at full resolution to see the actual size. Err, or if it's part of an album click on the gear icon to get that option.

@hypervelocity you're most welcome! During a reentry there's two things you need to worry about: heat load (Q) and peak heat flux (q"). The heat load is how much heat you take in; the peak heat flux is the highest flux you suffer at any instant. The heat load will be in joules, the peak flux in watts. You can watch your flux by turning on "Show thermal data" and right-clicking the leading part; convective flux will change over time, and the maximum it hits is q". For a theoretical primer, see here. By wing loading I mean craft mass divided by wing area. The STS orbiter, for example, has a wing loading of ~580kg/m^2. That's at the high end for a spaceplane, though obviously lifting bodies would be even higher. When I talk about low wing loading, I mean something like 50-100kg/m^2.

First, let's define some terms. Ballistic Coefficient (BC) is the craft mass divided by the effective frontal area. It is basically a measure of how strongly drag slows you down--the higher your BC, the less influence drag will have on you, the lower your BC the faster you'll slow down. Think bullets (very high BC) vs rocks (medium BC--heavy, but lots of area) vs paper (very low BC flat-on, medium BC edge-on). Total heat load, Q, is the total amount of heat a given reentry will saddle you with. Peak heat flux, q", is the maximum heating rate you will suffer in a given reentry. Your BC, combined with any lifting ability your craft has, will determine, for a entry angle and speed, what geometry the reentry will take. Your maximum q" will determine how low a periapsis (more or less interchangeable with entry angle) you can survive for a given entry speed. Your maximum Q will determine how long you can survive reentry (though remember that the lower you are, the more heat you'll get). There's three ways to deal with heat: sink it, reradiate it, and use ablator. Everything radiates heat, proporitonal to its temperature4, so some of the heat you take in will radiate back out. Everything has a thermal mass (your temperature doesn't immediately reach the temperature of the shockwave, it takes heat over time to raise temperature) so you can sink heat for a while. Heat shields have ablator. For Kerbin reentries up to Munar-return velocity, reradiation and sinking is generally enough (there's a narrow corridor for a single-pass Munar reentry, although you can of course make multiple passes, there's no life-support-induced time limit). For faster reentries, you generally need a heat shield which (a) has a higher maximum temperature (i.e. you can suffer higher q" and the higher max temp means much higher reradiation potential) and (b) has ablator which is another way to shed heat. Note that heat rate scales, roughly, with velocity3 * density0.5, while drag is proportional to velocity2 * density. This means that while a shallow reentry will have a low q", it may have a much higher Q than a steeper one. If you're better at reradiating heat (i.e. you can reach thermal equilibrium, where incoming heat == radiating-out heat), you want a shallow reentry. If you're not so good at it, or the reentry is too fast (too high a heat load) you'll need a steeper reentry, but not so steep that your q" goes above the maximum at which you can ablate/reradiate at max temperature (if you are at max temp and in flux > out flux, you blow up). BC is relevant here because, as should be intuitively obvious, the lower your BC, the faster you'll slow down, thus suffering less time at higher (hotter) velocity--and that compounds, due to the cube on velocity! If you have lifting surfaces (or tilt your pod during descent to take advantage of body lift) you can fly a lifting reentry. This allows you to stay "artificially" high in the atmosphere. It also, depending on your roll angle, can let you steer your reentry, just like in an aeroplane. It's no different than gliding. If you're overshooting, roll inverted and increase your descent rate; if you're coming in to the left, roll right so lift pushes you right. Etc. However, lifting reentries--because they stay higher longer--do impose a higher heat load than ballistic ones, though a lower q". So make sure your craft can take the slow roast. One other wrinkle: the blunter the bit that's facing the wind, the more likely you are to get a detached shockwave, rather than one attached to your forward-most part. That will greatly lower the shockwave temperature that you feel. For this reason, if you're flying a spaceplane, always come in bottom-first, not nose-first. Practical examples: Spaceplanes don't have ablator. That means you need to either sink the heat, or reach thermal equilibrium. Given the above regarding detached shockwaves, and the q" limit you have due to lack of ablator, you probably can't come in steep enough to survive just sinking the heat, so you need to fly a very shallow, lifting reentry that keeps q" low enough you can radiate the heat away. Capsules from LKO don't have to worry much, as long as it's just a capsule. If you add on crew cabins or materials bays or whatever, then you do have to worry, because you've not changed your frontal area (it's still a circle of 1.25m or 2.5m diameter) but you've increased your mass, raising your ballistic coefficient. Transmunar reentries are on the dividing line, at least for a reasonable-BC craft. You'll probably be OK without a heatshield if you are careful with periapsis, but shielding would help. Interplanetary flight definitely needs heatshields. A simple chute + Mk1-2 pod + 2.5m heat shield can just barely survive an aerocapture/reentry to Eve at 5.5km/sec. If your BC is higher than that, or your velocity is, you won't be so lucky.

1. Make sure your mods are fully updated. 2. If so: The first B9 proc wings are rated only for subsonic flight. They will be fine for that, but if you go fast, they will overheat. You need to unlock the supersonic wings, and then the spaceplane wings, if you want to go faster.

With the unlocking of Improved Staged Combustion engines, we can make much bigger and more efficient launch vehicles. This all depends on the NK-9 and NK-15 series of engines. While a couple early flights use the NK-9 on their first stages (Emeraldine x2 to replace Emerald, and the new Dravite stage x4 or 5 depending on upper), we standardize on the more cost-effective NK-15 (Dravite B x1 3 meters with verniers, Garnet x2 4m, and Hyalite x7 6m diameter) The NK-9V (aka NK-19 or -21) is our second stage engine of choice, far more efficient and powerful than the RD-0110. It's used on the Cherry 3m stage (and later Cherry C 4m stage) in 1x with RCS for roll control, and in 4x on the Elm 5 meter stage. It's time to think bigger about payloads, too! With this kind of throw weight, we can send off interplanetary orbiters and landers, not just flyby probes, and we can begin to think about more than just spam in a can for human spaceflight. The first test of our new heavy LVs is the Sprite 4 mission. This involves sending an orbiter-lander combo to Venus. The launch vehicle is sized to the maximum our current launch infrastructure can sustain, 800 metric tons. We also design a new 4m upper stage, the Dogwood B. Dogwood A was an abortive 3m upper stage with 2x 11D33M (S1.5400A) engines; Dogwood B is a full 4 meters in diameter and 33 tonnes loaded. It will provide the final delta V needed for orbit and then inject the Sprite 4 spaceraft on a trans-Venus trajectory. To guide this giant, we use the brand new 3.9m Early Saturn IU avionics unit, placed atop the Elm stage, as well as 4x Delta avionics units in the Dogwood. Here are some pictures from the mission. Once the Hyalite-Elm-Dogwood combination is proved, we'll have further use for it: a Mars lander mission (Sprite 6) and the flying the translunar flights of the Dalmatian program!

@nightingale thanks! I'll remember that one (well, I hope I will).

@Mad Rocket Scientist and once again, that's an RD-180, not an RD-108. Everybody and her uncle makes Atlas V/Delta IV/whatever, but nobody makes the old stuff, even though it's still flying today. @legoclone09 SXT has an RD-171. Right now RO clones it to make an RD-107 and RD-108, but it's a model of an RD-171.

@Temeter this is what it should look like. Also, those warnings are normal, in that they just mean we've asked CC to disable some contracts that don't exist (because you don't have the mods installed). Oh, one thing abnormal: you should have Asteroid Day installed, it has an antenna that's fairly critical to early gameplay! If you do see a stock contract again, let @nightingale know. @cytosine whew!

@MatterBeam thanks! Yours is very cool too! More fins would help, but since dry mass isn't at a premium, chutes would probably be used like the SRB/RSRM.

RO does indeed give spaceplane parts appropriate maxTemps. The 1.25m parts are modeled on X-15; the "Mk1" 2.1m parts are modeled on early spaceplanes (and don't have the tolerance of later parts), and the Mk2/Mk3 parts are STS-quality. There are two routes to success here. Both rely on reradiating. 1. Shuttle approach. High ballistic coefficient (for a spaceplane), fairly low perigee.fairly high peak flux but low load. 2. Old-timey (50s) idea of the approach. Low BC, very low wing loading, very long time in the very high atmosphere (80+ km). Using approach 2, I reentered with this: Uh: I reentered that *dry* so like 14 tons. The stated mass is for ascent (it's the third stage). Another note: don't have too high an AoA, you need to keep your perigee up.

Install RP-0 (Realistic Progression Zero) as well. Then follow the tutorials: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/Tutorial:-Getting-Started and https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/Tutorial:-Reaching-Orbit You may also find this helpful: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealismOverhaul/wiki/False-KSP-Lessons

Yes, it's a bug in 1.0.5 (well, it's a bug since the start, but I fixed some other cases in 1.0.5 and missed that).

Mostly @ferram4 (I helped a bit; but his entry is obviously Eotena), but here's the Saturn VIII MLV. October 30, 1979. The first launch of the Ares III mission lifts off, which launches the Flight and Return Vessel (FRV). The LV for the three main launches is the Saturn VIII Modified Launch Vehicle (MLV). Excerpt from: Launch Vehicles, A Concise History (NASA Pub.) Saturn VIII MLV: a product of Johnson’s push to reach Mars in a limited timeframe, making use of all available rocket technology and using existing hardware / manufacturing where possible. In practice, this is a Saturn VIII in name only, since the only remaining hardware from the original S-VIII design is the distinctive flared skirt / thrust plate on the first stage, with all other stages being bulked out to meet the nominal tank diameter of the first stage and using completely different engine specifications. Design consists of an 8 F-1A stretched 1st stage assisted by 8 UA1207 SRMs, a 4 M-1 high-energy, high-thrust 2nd stage, and a 2 AJW3-N130 nuclear transfer stage. Vehicle is capable of 200 tonnes to a trans-martian trajectory.

No, those contracts should be disabled. Make sure you're on Contract Configurator 1.9.5+ and RP-0 v0.43.

There is no formula, but it does depend on altitude only. It's a floatcurve.

Yes, they are in mach. Oops. That does mean they won't even start going orange until Mach 2.5, so you're not "right on the edge" if you're at Mach 1.5. You'll want to mess with the first velocity exponent and density exponent to tune low altitude mach effects.

@cytosine Those contracts keep reappearing until you accept and fulfil them (they'll reappear even if you fail, let alone if you don't accept them at the time). So worry not, just wait for when you're ready. RP-0 adds two classes of contract: repeatables are like the stock KSP contracts you're used to, they're generated, hang around for a bit, then disappear and a new randomized one is generated. That covers things like repeatable human orbits, or suborbiitals, or sounding rocket contracts, or X-plane contracts. The second set of contracts are Milestone contracts. They generally can't be declined once accepted, and until you succeed at one (and sometimes until you succeed a number of times, like for Lunar Impactor or Successful Reentry) they'll keep getting generated. First flyby / landing / etc missions fall under this category, as do First Orbit, First Crewed Orbit, etc.

@Teilnehmer OP updated with a (constantly-updating) link to all craft files and subassemblies. (Technically, it's literally a junction to my save's craft and subassemblies folders, so you get it all, in real time.) @MatterBeam just have fun, really. Get science, get money, research the tree, fly crewed missions...have fun.

With the success of LEO and lunar probes, and GEO satellites, it's eventually time to go for the other planets and for crewed orbital missions. Just placing a capsule in orbit can be done with the booster we have--Diamond with a Birch (using an S1.5400 closed-cycle engine) upper stage. Placing an improved capsule into orbit, or probes on interplanetary trajectories, requires something more. The Beagle capsule on a Diamond B booster. Beagle includes a bottom-mounted LES, a hydrazine-based maneuvering system, and a film camera for film return. The Diamond is fully capable of placing Beagle in polar MEO. Later missions designed solely for astronaut training use a smaller spacecraft--the Beagle alone, with its LES working double as a retro pack--on a smaller Emerald booster with surplus Carbide strapons. To do more, we need a true second stage for the Diamond. It's called the Cedar, and uses an RD-0110 engine. Here's a Diamond-Cedar-Birch launching a lunar orbiter payload. So with that new second stage our options become much wider. Time to reach for the stars! (Or at least the other planets.) Here is Sprite 1, a Mars flyby probe. The first interplanetary probe. Launched on a Diamond B with Cedar second stage and Birch upper. Most of the Birch stage is used for TMI. Sprite 2, a Venus flyby probe. Broadly similar to Sprite 1, just a bit lighter due to higher delta V requirements. And finally we can send up some great training missions: Beagle-M spacecraft with docking ability (launched on a Diamond-Cedear) and Beagle Target Vehicles for rendezvous and docking training (launched on an Emerald-Birch). Here's some pictures from one of those missions.

The only contracts you should have are RP-0's own contracts, the stock satellite contracts (which don't have fine-grained control over duration) and the stock get-science contracts (ditto). We control *all* parameters of our own contracts.

The first mission of note was Carbide 1, as you can see in the OP. However, while the first orbital mission was being undertaken (and various sounding rockets launched), a far larger and more effective LV was under design: Diamond. It could place large payloads into orbit (up to 5 tons or so), and that payload capacity could also be used to place an upper stage into orbit, an upper stage that could then perform a trans-lunar injection. Here then is the Diamond LV and its probe, the first to reach the Moon. Diamond (with Aspen upper) The Diamond probe reaches the Moon!

To get a bit of a break in and to test out RP-0/RO/RSS etc I've been playing a career save in RP-0. To shake things up a bit (I usually fly US parts) I've been using only Soviet engines (with the exception of the Aerobee sustainer and Astris, since stock+SXT+VSR doesn't come with a Russian low-thrust service propulsion engine). Here's an album showing my LVs so far. I'll post replies with some notable missions. You can get all the craft files and subassemblies I've made here.

@Red Iron Crown yep. I find MJ's porkchop plotter much more useful. I keep a satellite in the plane of the Moon (close enough to the ecliptic and easy enough to match planes with) for plotting transfers, then pop them over to KAC.

A proper gravity turn is just that: letting gravity turn you. So long as your velocity vector isn't completely vertical, gravity will cancel out a bit of your vertical velocity each instant while leaving your horizontal velocity unchanged. As you can see, that slowly "pulls" your velocity vector "downwards". So a gravity turn is just (a) kicking over slightly at a fairly slow speed (50-100m/s tops) and then letting gravity do the rest.