Dangerous_Beans

Docking struts would help. my current interplanetary ship, which has a few problems, is about 4 jumbo tanks long. it can be flipped over quite easily using the RCS thrusters on each section, though it does take a few minutes. small corrections using SAS modules are possible too, though either approach will make it wobble like mad. the main problem is that if i accelerate at over 4m/s the engine section pops off the fuel section so my advice would be to ensure that all modules have balanced RCS placement (probably just using linear ports, you aren't going to be docking with it so you don't need forward/back control) so you can flip it end over end, rather than taking even more engines. provided you plan ahead and make sure everything is balanced, you can take a fair bit of time to flip over, and it weighs less than another engine pack.

depends which direction you care about fuel in. if you are returning from an interplanetary trip, or from minimus, a high orbit will require less fuel to get to. orbit depends on what you are using the station for; i have one in a 200km orbit, that i use mainly as a fuel depot and changeover point for my space planes and Kerbin SOI shuttle. my other station is in a high minimus orbit (1000km) and is used for storage of my fuel tanker, and as a port for the Kerbin SOI shuttle. a really low orbit (~70km) for the first station would be inconvenient, as i use those orbits for parking junk, and a really high orbit (84,000km) would be hard to reach with a space plane. i could probably improve the stations locations, but the current ones work pretty well. so, what is the station for?

I would let Jeb live in my house, but i think the cat would eat him.

I'm sorry if this has come up elsewhere in this thread, but I'm having a problem that i think is related to the Lazor docking cam. Basically, when i get close to the ship the relative speed display gets thrown completely out of wack (3km/s relative speed, when i'm visually stationary relative to the target). based off this thread (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/38268-How-to-avoid-weird-relative-target-velocity-speed-glitch-when-entering-visual-range?p=623727#post623727) it seems like a Lazor docking cam issue. when it happens i also get the unable to quicksave, or return to the space centre issue others have described here. stupidly i didn't check to see what the relative speed in the docking cam was, but i'll have a look at that tonight. my version is only 2 weeks old, so i think it is the latest. other mods i have installed are mechjeb, kerbal attachment system, and kethane. this aside, the docking cam is a really useful mod. thanks

i've seen this too, having a 3km relative speed at ~100m separation (and for long enough to get confused by why i was still there). the mods i have on those ships are mechjeb and kethane, and i also have Lazor docking cam. given our mods, and the fact it blocks the return to space centre and quicksave options like other lazor mod bugs, my guess is it is the lazor docking cam. which sucks cause it is really useful.

in addition to being heavy, solid boosters are also inefficient (isp 225-240 vs 300-390 for an efficient liquid fuel engine. even a mainsail is more efficient, with an isp of 280-330). if you dumped the solid boosters and replaced them with a stacks of 1 LV-909, 1 FLT-400 and 1 FLT-200, with fuel lines connecting them to the central stage, you would end up with about 1000m/s Dv in the first stage, and a saving of 0.7 ton. you would have less initial thrust (10 M/S^2 vs 19.9M/S^2), but in an atmosphere having a huge initial acceleration is a waste, as you end up wasting fuel fighting atmospheric drag. Hell, you could drop the poodle entirely and just land/take-off on the 3 LV-909s (i think, i may have messed up the maths), and that would give you another 2.5 ton you can use for fuel. That would drop your initial T/W to around 1.25, but that is still enough.

@Dispatcher: thanks. i thought it was something like that, but was too sleepy to remember.

Here here is my attempt; two nukes, one jet, achieved orbit with 1.3km/s Dv

the KSP save files look to be fairly efficient (i'm at work so i can't really tell); it just stores the location of each ship, the status of each part, a list of the parts and how they are linked. the memory intensive part is the textures and collision meshes of the parts, not the structure of the ships. so you could probably build entire munar cities without the save file getting too big. also, a 250w 4.0ghz processor? what model is that? from what i've read the 4 core ivy bridge cpus will use around 200w at 5ghz, so 250w seems a little high. the 4960x apparently pulls 120w at stock clocks. rating processors in wattage is also kind of strange. a fast cpu helps with gaming, but due to the generally poor multi-thread support, going beyond a 3570k is kind of pointless. of course may change if you are doing things other than games.

Hence why things occasionally explode when you get within 2.25km of them.

"Meteoric Ore: A very dense material that is extracted from asteroids. When smelted down (and usually mixed (on kerbin at least) with rocket grade aluminum and steel), it makes some strong and light metal, let's call it kerbanite. The kerbanite is 50% stronger and 25% lighter than normal parts, but can only be made through meteoric ore. How do we get this at KSC, you ask? Simple. At KSC you have a new building, a silo. This silo holds the resources you bring back. You can then do different things with them. You can pay to send them for processing into whatever they refine to. You can sell them raw or in a refined state. You could fuel a ship with them. You could even use them as payload to supply your orbital depot without paying for the fuel. The idea here is that you can still make a decent profit even if you have to outsource the refining. In the case of the ore, it can be sent away and refined into metal, which is further 'refined' or rather fabricated into rocket parts which then can be used to build your ships out of material with 1.5 times the strength and 0.75 times the weight." this bugs me. the stuff in space is the same stuff here, though the frequency that it occurs may vary. so if there is Meteoric Ore in space, then it's down here and we can use it to build stuff. now this seems like an method to make building stuff in orbit attractive; one, by building it up there you can get better things; and two, it gives you something you can take down to the planet to sell. you can accomplish number two by having thing that are expensive to make on kerbin, but are cheaper to make in orbit/space. things involving vacuum or micro-gravity spring to mind . a better way to achieve number one is to have us able to vary the strength of our ships. currently all sections of my interplanetary spaceship have to be able to deal with ~2gs of acceleration, because everything has to be launched from Kerbin, however if i could build it in space then some or all sections of it can be build to only withstand 0.5g, and therefore be built significantly lighter (therefore with less engines, and needing less fuel, so even lighter). so you can get "better" ships by building them in space. of course a ship built to withstand 0.3gs in a vacuum will crumple if you try to land it, but that is no more an issue than the fact a Zeppelin will crumple on the bottom of the ocean. most importantly, it gives you more options for explosions

mass drivers are a pretty good idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver), and it's a pity we don't have them in KSP. i would love to build a bunch and use them to fire rocks at kerbin (i read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a kid, and it left an impression ) that seems like it would be less efficient than just using a rocket. the benefit of mass driver type things is that you can use external power sources, using a rocket car seems like it would just have to be heavier than a similar rocket. maybe if you can use it to pickup lateral speed with a low initial T/W ratio it would be worth? but my experience of high speed cars in KSP is that they mostly want to fall over and explode.

My first lander fell over and crashed. No one died. A rescue ship was sent, and Bill fell asleep at the controls, and the ship crashed. No one died. My third attempt was unmanned, and succeeded in landing a 8 Kerbal house for them all to live in. Before I lost the save, the Munar disaster memorial base had a permanent population of 6.

I agree, but you are missing the important fact that nuclear rockets are cool Edit: I redid my numbers using LV909s, and you get better T/W, though slightly worse Dv (2000 vs 2700). You get similar results with 24-77s, and 48-7Ss give even more Dv. As others here were saying; the smaller you make the SSTO, the larger the proportion of vessel mass that is accounted for by the engine mass. So doable but not practical. It's a pity we don't have hybrid nuke/LOX or liquid core ones.

The limit looks like the poor thrust to weight ration of the engine. We only have 60KN of thrust per nuke to work with. I did some maths, and a 12T space plane with 2 LV-Ns would fly as a rocket pretty well, though the one i was designing had quite a low T/W at take-off, which i am unsure about. I'll give the design a try when I get home this evening. The design i was thinking about is, from the front: docking port, mk2 cockpit, small to mk2 adapter, mk 2 fuselage turbojet, two flt200s on the side, nukes on the end of the flts, appropriate wings and canards.

Hate: the bugs at this stage; rover wheels always braking, and the phantom forces. i'll also throw in the wobbliness. "wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble, rocket ship in space" Love: it's space lego but with more orbital mechanics. also Jeremiah Kerbins grin.

thanks, that all makes more sense now.

watching my 10 ton Mun bus pull stoppies on the space centre runway was pretty cool though.

on the right of the altitude display there are 3 buttons. the bottom red one is the parking brake, and if you click it the brakes will be locked on (top one is lights, i can't remember what the centre one is). you can also press b to engage the brakes, though they will disengage when you release the key. the brake button will change colour when you press b.

The scale of the game might make re-entry less difficult. I guess we'll see if they introduce re-entry heating/damage. Yeah, i missed it too. Spend enough time on the net and you get good at ignoring sigs

We do have gender neutral pronouns in English (ze), you can use a singular they, or you can use the persons name. None of which is hard (and is less offensive to those of use who don't like male pronouns).

Probably because they are trying to build an easy to learn, fairly educational game, not a ridiculously accurate simulation. I couldn't see any mention of proper life support, radiation exposure, solar heating, or the need for radiators either (though I may be wrong with any/all of those), all of which would be realistic but would make the game significantly harder. So they are omitted in the interest of being easier to learn/play. All of which can be fixed with mods. (Personally I like their approach; reality is nice, but I wouldn't want to spend much time there ) That does get irritating, and I am tempted to steal you sig.

then why is the cutoff the end of winter? or are you just trying to confuse us southern hemisphere people?

Hi Something that has been confusing me; Isp independent of thrust (unless i missed something), so why do the more powerful engines in KSP have lower Isps? (or is it just a game balance thing ) Shouldn't you be able to build more powerful versions of a rocket engine, while keeping the Isp the same, by building a larger engine that uses more fuel but has the same exhaust velocity? Or is it just an engineering issue; for a given Isp it's easier to build a 1kN engine than a 1MN engine, and conversely for a given thrust, it's easier to build a less efficient engine? AKA, add more boosters . I just have the sneaking suspicion that I have missed something here. Thanks

Why the turbojets, rather than normal jets? When i was messing around with similar things, i found that by the time the turbojets were making more thrust i was at 15km and getting ready to dump them for the switch to rockets. Also i needed more turbojets as i had to aim for a T/W > 2. With basic jets I could have a T/W of around 1.4, so needed less jets, and they were still making 110kn-ish of thrust when I had to stage them. Of course my jet stages were there to mostly lift the damn thing to 15km+ altitude, not really for gaining any velocity, so you may be using them differently.