kerbalkicker

Try this: http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/wxrak/tired_of_your_large_parachute_coming_off_when_you/

ok, thanks. The last time I tried that my rocket didn't stop and just plunged... down... to a fiery death :/

Naturally it varies. I was looking for guidelines other people use, i.e. 'with a light ship I start my 2nd burn 500 m from my target altitude' or something of that nature.

For Hohmann transfers, how far before you reach your goal altitude do you do your second burn?

Oh... Well, that's going to change a few numbers. o.0

That is one thing I would like to be able to do in the future: have a complete enough collection of parts in KSP to be able to use an aircraft as a first stage to get the rocket out of the lower atmosphere and up to 300 m/s or so.

Okay, maybe this has been covered before but I can't find it using search. So I've been using the java orbital calculator someone made to help get me into orbit, and I've tried a couple Hohmann transfers without much luck. I've noticed some pretty large variations in what the calculator tells me, and what my actual orbit is. If I input altitude and velocity at apogee, errors of 500+ m in altitude between what the calculator thinks my perigee should be and what it actually is are not uncommon (this is for a pretty nearly circular orbit around 45-50k). Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a known reason why I would be consistently getting 'off' results? Using the calculator, I tried to do a Hohmann transfer from 60k to about 40k. I plugged in the values and got my deltas, did the first burn at apogee... did my second burn at 180 degrees around the planet... and watched my goal altitude go screaming past as my kerbonauts plummeted into the atmosphere. When you guys do Hohmann transfers, do you do your second burn when you reach your goal altitude or before it? It would seem like you'd have to burn before you got there, because the ship is going to have some inertia from the descent it has to bleed off. tl;dr: inconsistencies between the calculator output and my results. Wondering if other people see the same, and what I can do to compensate.

All true, but I was more referring to if they had assembled the lunar mission in earth orbit instead of lobbing it all off of the ground in 1 go, there would have been no need for the obscenely powerful first stage of the apollo rocket. It would have simplified the whole rocket design, and drastically reduced the importance of trimming weight (which is expensive as hell). I dimly remember some statistic that was something like every additional pound added to the CM/lander stuff up top required an additional 300 pounds of propellant (or maybe it was 300 lbs of thrust) in the first stage. It would have required developing the ability to do actual engineering-type work in space, which would have set us back a few years. But, and this is a big but, that capability to do detailed rocket assembly in space would have set us up to more easily launch other long-range exploratory missions, such as to Mars. IIRC Von Braun lobbied hard for this strategy. He saw the moon mission as a stepping stone to bigger and greater missions, and eventually having people live permanently in space. NASA saw the moon mission as an e-peen contest with the Russians. Thus, developing the ability to assemble big rockets in space, and having an orbital facility with the capability to do this, looked like a waste of time from the perspective of 'get to the moon first'. Anyway, part of my lobbying for the in-game ability to put rockets together in kearth orbit is, to some degree, to pay homage to Von Braun's idea of doing space exploration the *right* way. Maybe that's silly of me.

This. So very much this. The capability to assemble large ships in orbit from parts brought up individually would make me so happy. Because, from an energy standpoint, it makes a hell of a lot of sense, and if I were running NASA's space program in the 60s and 70s, it's how I would have done things. This game should be about options: assemble your rocket on the ground, or do it in orbit. Use a SSTO, or a 3 stager. There is no single correct answer to any challenge, and as the game progresses in development we should see *more* ways to accomplish tasks open up. Plus, if space stations *do* give us the ability to assemble things in orbit, you can bet the first thing I do in the (non-sandbox) game is start lobbing potential space station parts into orbit as fast as I can.

Aahh ok, that makes sense. I used one because I'd rather just let it run unattended than spend the whole flight trying to keep it pointed where I want it.

Clearly, this game is not hard enough for some of you. We need an 'expert rocketeer' pack that makes everything structurally weaker and makes the engines weaker!

^ I saw that quote and thought, 'This has got to be someone's idea of a joke. Throw someone into a jet engine exhaust stream... really?' I just... I have no words for how badly this will go.

Heh, see this thread: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2230.0 Also, you guys are starting to make me feel REALLY inadequate with the altitudes you're achieving. The best I did with it pegged at WOT is 20,873m. WTF. EDIT: Wait, are you using a SAS unit or not?

The best I've been able to do on a single LFT is about 30 km. Were you using stock parts?

Is that all you did?!? More experimentation is in order! FOR SCIENCE

I managed to get within about 1 km of the launch center by timing my de-orbit burn properly and free-falling in. I was orbiting at about 48 km, burned pretty much an entire tank and let it drop in. About halfway through the burn I thought I was going to massively overshoot my target, but I didn't.

o_0 That's... impressive. And yes, a decoupler to leave the ground is allowed. I forgot about that, but I think I used 1 too.

Not necessarily. I have no idea if the physics engine actually simulates this, but the faster you go the more heat you can dump to the air moving past. So yeah - a rocket sitting still will overheat faster than one that is moving through the atmosphere at a gazillion miles an hour.

The Challenge: Build a rocket with a single LFE, a single LFT, and if necessary, a SAS module (I can't remember if I needed one or not - if it's stable without it leave it out). Launch, and try to maximize your final altitude via careful throttle control. Your final altitude is the point at which your vertical ascent stops. Not when the rocket cuts out. My record, after 4 trials, is 22,586m straight up. I suspect this can be stretched a bit further, perhaps another 1000m or so. This goes without saying, but stock parts only.