Psycix

Although they usually don't, I do like to have a rover collect (imaginary) samples, load it onto an ascent stage and send the samplehome.

How much RCS do you carry for that?

I think a higher TWR will allow for some more exotic (bad) gravity turns. So for this challenge, noob-friendly rockets with a higher TWR are more desirable than fuel efficient ones.

If your spaceship is very heavy and very dense, it will have gravity. (It could just be as big as a moon or planet, but you'd need less mass if it was denser, like a neutron star or black hole) The crew habs would position themselves behind this mass and be pulled by its gravity, while the mass is accelerating away from the crew at the same rate it attracts them. The crew would be weightless, yet accelerating because they are falling towards the ship while the ship moves away. As an added bonus, gravity slows down time, making your trip seem shorter.

I wonder if you guys also do this: I turn of SAS right before touching the ports. This allows the magnetic pull to rotate the ports towards eachother and gives more tolerance, even a terrible off-center dock can easily wobble to center itself.

Common sense.

This is not any more OP than welding the parts together using the welding tool. To me, launching is a grind, and the exciting stuff happens in space. I'll talk to UbioZur to see what he thinks of this idea.

Here we go again. "It is useless." So is science after you filled the techtree. Should career snap into sandbox mode with locked science as soon as you gather all points you need? Of course not. Sandbox should allow you to do what you want, and having no science in sandbox makes it limited. It is fun and doesn't harm anyone, so aside from "it is useless", why the heck can't we have science in sandbox?

With the recent developments in welding parts together, combining multiple parts as one rigid body seems to be a proven technology. I imagine the fairings to work a lot like this, with the added functionality of undoing the welds mid-flight, on fairing separation.

Thanks, that was a good read!

Good point, I'd also like to add that while he may not be the best, he is usually the first [to make a video about it] I have learned a lot of interesting KSP ideas, phenomena and exploits by watching his videos.

Thanks Majir! Keep it comin' I can see a shroud of mystery... what kind of treasures do you have in mind for us? Can we get a hint?

That explains everything then

Pretty sure all that stayed the same. On another note, although you may shave off a few hundred m/s from the 4500 m/s to get to LKO, I am sceptical of your 3800 m/s to orbit claim.

The steam rocket exhaust hits Europa moon of Jupiter in the surface, burning the soil through the menacing spikes of ice. The steel =landing leg= glances off Europa moon of Jupiter's eastern hill slope, 56th valley, scratching the !!ice!! and hacking through a spike, the severed celestial body part sails off in an hyperbolic escape trajectory. (If you have no clue what these posts are on about, you have never played Dwarf Fortress.)

I let mechjeb dock a capsule once. ONCE. It basically spews RCS out of all ports during the entire operation, which is extremely slow. I had a single 3man pod use an entire large RCS tank to dock. About the extra parts, I also try to avoid that. Generally I try to dock RCS-less, and simply rotate my entire space station towards my craft. To make it even easier I am considering to make a space station with actiongrouped bipropellant engines for translation.

AFAIK there is a bug that causes struts to nullify the decoupler force. No decoupler force -> stage does not get pushed away -> fall straight down -> tiny rotation causes collision Correct me if this bug is already fixed, I'm not sure.

You missed the legs of my craft as well (It even carries eight of them...)

The most impressive fact is that this mission cost only about $69 million. (US dollars) That includes satellite, launch vehicle, and ground stations. In comparison, the upcoming MAVEN mission has a pricetag of $671 million.

Tooltip would be fine, but in the corner of the screen so that it does not occlude placement etc. As a workaround, I think you can go to action groups menu and click the part to see what it is. Perhaps the tweakables in the next update will make this easier where we can simply rightclick any part in the editor.

Maybe the benchmark should last one orbit.

Analysis of stock Kerbal X I've found that the Kerbal X was not *that* bad overall, with the main problem being that I do not understand what it is supposed to do (nobody goes for a mun orbit, it is land&return or bust) I have identified one main concept problem that I intend to fix: It's purpose is unclear. It looks like a munlander, but is incapable of doing a mun return. I believe it would be better suited to give it that extra nudge and make it capable of a mun return, giving new players access to a easy craft to explore the closest rock in orbit. I think the upper stage is too simple and relatively ugly. It's TWR is way too high. The poodle engine is horrid (I avoid poodle engines at all cost), and despite having a massive fuel tank it doesn't perform that great. The decoupler in between is absolutely ugly. Personally I find it more fun to return with an entire lander as opposed to just a capsule as well. So we are going to make a new upper stage/lander! The lifter, however, seems great! I slapped on Kerbal Engineer to check it's performance and it seems hard to tweak. It's TWR is near-perfect throughout the atmosphere: full throttle at all times keeps it close to terminal velocity. I have found to things to change: I think the fins are redundant, and I do not understand why it's got LV-45T's instead of LV-30T's while the mainsail provides all the thrust vectoring we need. The extra thrust from the 30T's will allow us to carry more fuel, which is handy because I also want slightly more delta-V Plan of attack I want to include slightly more overall delta-V, a new lander, and a tweaked, yet roughly identical lifter. If piloted properly, it should be capable of mun return. I want to keep the same size rocket, a 2.5m core booster with 1.25m asparagus boosters. Absolutely no 2.5 meter side boosters. It should look somewhat realistic. I want to keep the following characteristics: -A easy to understand display of asparagus staging. -A near-perfect TWR, flying near terminal velocity through the lower atmosphere at full throttle. -Easy to use in general, mistakes are very forgivable. -Plenty of electrical supply, no mistake may result in an unrotatable craft. Presenting: the Kerbal Xi Although initially named XI, the roman number for 11, the kerbal engineers on the job often pronounced it as 'Xi', and after several miscommunications the project leader decided to officially change the name to Xi. Changes for the new upper stage As said I thought the upper stage was too plain, and I absolutely hate poodle engines. Performance wise we do not need such a high TWR at all. -I'm going with quadruple Rockomax 48-7s engines instead, saving weight and increasing the delta-V on this lander. (2.5t -> 0.4t) -A more aesthetically pleasing design, slightly more fuel. -Got rid of those huge ugly (and heavy) decouplers! A different design can use a medium or tiny decoupler instead, saving weight as well. -Replaced the chute with two radials, to allow for a drogue. Atmospheric landing will be much smoother and nicer in general. (Can also be swapped out for a docking port if needed) -To make landing easy and forgivable, I chose an abundance of landing legs. You can touch this baby down quite hard without breaking anything. Lithobraking! Changes for the new lifter -LV-45T's have been swapped out with LV-30T's. -Larger droptanks to balance the extra thrust, less parts. (2x FL-T800 instead of 3x FL-T400) -Slightly more fuel in the main stage as well. (1 slim tank) -Fins are redundant. -Using standard radial decouplers instead. -Although the nose cones reduce performance, I think the tiny hit in performance is worth the aesthetics, so let's keep them. -I added a single strut at the top of each droptank. Gallery with more detailed descriptions Staging: Conclusion: The Kerbal Xi offers a Munreturn-capable lander and launcher. It is designed to be easy to use and foolproof. Reaching orbit is a piece of cake, if you do a gravity turn (to any angle) after the last pair drops, stop burning once apo reaches the desired height, and then burn prograde to raise periapsis, nothing can go wrong, even if you did it wrong. The upper stage is very easy to use and the large amount of landing legs can take a lithobrake, so that first-time Munlander pilots won't have any problems putting it down. It's still got all advantages of the old Kerbal X, featuring a very clean and easy to understand asparagus layout (everything is perfectly aligned due to editorextensions) Upon returning home, you can choose to keep the service module with the landing legs attached, or drop it, and both will work. The addition of a drogue makes parachute deployment a very gentle operation. The partcount raised to 110, but that includes launch clamps and a few struts that the Kerbal X didn't have. It is easy to understand, and easy to modify. For example, one can easily replace the drogue chute with a docking port, or add some science equipment to the lander, as the lower stages can carry slightly more payload than it is currently loaded with to LKO. >CRAFT FILE HERE< Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

I'm watching this. This is going to be good. Do you use any welding?

To fix the pull-away scene, they should have made the entire contraption (the station+the chutes+them) rotate. This will put a constant tension on the chute lines, and Clooney will fly away when released. Other than that: Great movie! Very immersive, lots and lots of scientific accuracies!

Well, looks like we have found our solution haven't we? Screw power usage! Perhaps make deploying the scanner take an hour, during which it drains energy, this can be considered a benchmark. If works throughout the entire benchmark, allow it to work without using energy so that we can scan unfocused.