Awass

Really interesting. Much more goes into re-entry in real life than Kerbal Space Program would have you believe. So many factors involved.

So how do you design a parachute to "idle"?

I mean within the use of a single parachute, it usually does not fully deploy immediately. It will remain somewhat folded and semi-deployed until a certain altitude, and I'm wondering how that works. Watch how the final parachutes fully deploy at the last second. That's what I mean.

What makes parachutes go from semi-deployed to deployed at a set altitude, not just in KSP but in real life too?

Bump. This thread must never die.

That's awesome and really funny. Looks like an N-1 to me.

How did you mount multiple engines like that under the same fuel tank (pic 1 and 2)

How did you launch the ascent stage of the lander? I see no fuel or engine? Was it all RCS?

So how do people post pics then. And btw, that is impressive.

Did this actually work?

So as for the second part of my post, why don't I have permission to post attachments?

What's wrong with asparagus? They're yummy.

Ikr. I can barely comprehend how Whackjob put that much stuff into space. I am humbled.

Well be sure to put up some pics when you do

Words cannot describe.

My record is 101 tons using a hybrid asparagus-septaengine main stack, and I wish I could post a picture, but it says I can't post attachments. Anyone know why that is?

Here's Johnny!!!

I'm pretty sure he's kidding. Not sure how "vall" is reverse Spanish for "safari key rings." "Llave" simply means "key," but it is not a very strong connection.

This deserves some big font: putting Clampotron Sr. Docking Ports on backwards Ruined my first space station. I had to relaunch it. Be very careful, as from the side, it is hard to tell at a glance whether or not it is oriented correctly.

I could not agree more. Great community and a bunch of helpful replies to my post.

It's all about isp. Even at 11k meters, the LV-N was already at 760 isp out of a possible 800. That's up from 250 I believe at sea level, so the LV-N was already almost optimally efficient. However, for reasons stated by the others, the LV-N has its own strengths such as when it has a ton of fuel to work with.

Well actually, the isp at 11k feet was already 760 out of the optimal 800, but yes, I was not using the atomic motor as it really should be.

Thank you. That is incredibly helpful. You should go get it pinned it up somewhere on the forums. But could you add in the skipper and poodle engines to the graph? I use those a lot.

The engines were lit at near optimal isp, so that wasn't much of an issue. However, burning from an orbit would allow for greater delta-v, so it probably would better highlight the LV-N's strengths.

Well obviously the whole launching vertically scenario is not a practical one. I was merely using the test to show some general trends about the atomic motor. I had had a notion (I thought this was generally accepted) that the LV-N was the undisputed best for travel in a vacuum, so the results came as a surprise to me. The latter part of my conclusion was merely speculation, so you you may very well be correct, but for the situations I was considering (a Minmus mission, possibly interplanetary landing missions), the LV-N is not worth it. (I was considering trying to use it instead of a poodle for my main ship and on my lander instead of LV-909s). In fact I'll go edit my conclusion to be a little more specific.