Dispatcher

THAT would be impressive. I assume the 50 days does not include flight and orbit time? All in situ, so to speak? Now if it could broadcast color video and stereo audio along with the other science, THAT would be something!

... the dog from getting wet. If you like messing with inventory to make pipes and switches, MineCraft may be for you:

Your photo is of an example of a proposed sterling cycle engined rover. Runs on heat. Should roll fine until it forms a puddle of molten metal. But it might last a few hours or so.

Terraform Venus? Its the future. Earth is just catching up.

Water vapor is only 20 parts per million (in context with the relatively rare noble gas argon, 70 ppm). Nitrogen is 3.5% of the composition (compared to Earth's 78%). Sulfur dioxide is 150 ppm. Sulfuric acid is in the cloud layers. The lion's share of the atmosphere is of course carbon dioxide, about 96.5% (compared to Earth's 397 ppm). Culling carbon from that would be difficult, and the native carbon monoxide (17 ppm) molecule is so tightly bound that its likely to remain the way it is. Entities looking for a larger, earlier return on investment will probably look to the Moon, asteroid belt, Mars and Titan.

A BA decades ago.

Proof positive that Kerbin has He in its atmosphere.

My craft files (at SpacePort) are not spectacular. However, to jazz up one of your own craft, try out my assortment of fueled adapters and nosecones. The rocket ones are colorful (and some translucent), while the jet ones are about as plain as the stock parts. See my sig line: one link is to a pic and the other is to the Port download page.

Yeah, I do the mouse thing with KSP vids too. As for coasting in a car, I accelerate on the downhill and coast uphill.

I did, just last evening. And I feel your pain. My combination lander/ rover/ return vehicle does a fine job of rolling down hill. But even with the torque disabled and SAS off (redundant?), in rover mode going up hill (i.e. powered drive) the thing loved to flip and spew parts. I see an opportunity to improve the design by simply placing some of the fuel tanks more laterally and lower, thus lowering the CoM. I'll let you know how it turns out, and when I get time maybe put up some images.

You've seen that calculations are dependent on several variables which constantly change. An alternative might be to use a mod such as Kerbal Engineer to use in tuning your design. During flight, with the Vessel tab selected, you can see some variables (mass, dV, TWR) change in real time. This can further help you tune your design.

Back to the OP, you could shift from the idea of using an average iSP at a given altitude/ pressure for a simpler (and crude) approach: using the average of the two published iSPs of an engine, with no regard for altitude/ pressure. Example: LVT30 320 345 370; the average being the middle value. For air breathers (or that mode), an example such as Turbojet 800 1000 1200 should be understood in the light of the fact that since an air breather does not actually continue to function in vacuum, the vacuum value is not a practical value, although the maximum functional value approaches it. In a sense, this makes the average value (in this case 1000) a reasonable approximation of the maximum functional value for an air breather. However (and as others have suggested), I go with the initial (surface) iSP when considering dV since I tend to have a little reserve of dV at each stage of the flight.

If you like MineCraft, this may be for you:

Necro thread is back from the dead. As to the Mark 55 Radial engines, take a look at the graphs linked in my sig line. They are from a chart which is based on engine testing I did. You can see that 3 Radial 55s are capable of lifting a total mass of nearly 39 tons to an altitude of over 7200 meters at Kerbin; with half the mass being non-fuel. They lift over half the mass in the same tests as did the Skipper. They carry more mass than the Poodle, to the same altitude. The thrust for 3 of these radials is 360 kn. They really are good not only for launching stages, but for landers. A minimum set up of 3 Radial 55s can act as landing legs too, so the mass and drag and part count of legs is eliminated. Plus the radials do not add to the length of a craft as do inline engines. If you want more thrust on the same stage, just add more engine(s).

I'm using Steam, on a Mac, and yes, I can mod.

Friendly advice from a non-expert forum member. You might read this thread first: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/44738-License-Selection-Guide Then look at Squad's KSP website, EULA page: https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/eula.php . Particularly, "4. COPYRIGHT. All title, including but not limited to copyrights, in and to the SOFTWARE PRODUCT and any copies thereof are owned by Electro Chango S.A. de C.V. or its suppliers. All title and intellectual property rights in and to the content which may be accessed through use of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is the property of the respective content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other intellectual property laws and treaties. This EULA grants you no rights to use such content. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Electro Chango S.A. de C.V.." It might be more fun to make your own tanks and texture those.

Good job! Planes were/ are so hard for me to land that I made some "self flying" planes. But sometimes those are not technically correct, as the CoL is ahead of or close to the CoM with some of the planes. I also made a few "self orbiting" rockets because starting out, getting to orbit was hard for me. But maybe I've learned a few things since then.

Without taking aerodynamics, lift and horizontal flight into account, you might find these graphs interesting: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67403-Graphs-of-Engine-Comparison-Flights?p=949688&viewfull=1#post949688 Of course one reason for the RAPIER's performance is the fact that the engine mass is limited to itself and not to a combination of jet and rocket engines. Notice that the zoomed in view (without the RAPIER) shows subtle differences in maximum ship mass, while showing reasonable differences in altitude between the remaining air breathers. Small differences in payload may affect engine choices. As others have suggested, if using multiple engines, it may be more practical to use a combination of turbojet and rocket engines rather than multiple RAPIERs.

Bungie's classic Marathon Infinity:

You might ask the author of the model & image file to do a few things. Some normals may need to be flipped. Also, it might help if the texture within the panels on the texture image is grown by, say, 3 pixels. It looks good in the author photos, but it looks like those are views within an editor.

Excellent summary, and your English is better than my Russian. Thank you!

While there have been good explanations above, I'll just make a few comments. dV (delta Velocity), as someone wrote, means change of velocity. The other thing I want to comment on is: think of things this way: Rather than thinking of yourself or your craft in stationary, non moving points, think of being in an always moving situation. On Kerbin's surface, while sitting on the launch pad, your ship rides the surface around the center of mass of the planet, "orbiting" as the day and night progress. In order to move your orbit higher, and to be able to more easily escape from Kerbin's sphere of gravitic influence, you need to change your dV by about +4500 meters per second. That's true for a rocket, regardless of how big it is or how many stages you have. When you launch and fly, you are not just flying straight up or horizontally; you are flying in a new orbit, which always changes dimensions as your dV changes. It might seem to be an arc in map view, but the hidden part of the orbit is now under the surface of Kerbin. When you achieve orbit, it is a new orbit which is completely visible in map view. Not only do you have the apoapsis (high point) displayed, but also the periapsis (low point as well). In this case, KLO (Kerbin Low Orbit) is in space, a little over 70,000 meters altitude above sea level. The same principle applies when you change your dV to move from Kerbin orbit to another planet or moon; or coming back to Kerbin. Changing dV is how you change your orbit from one sphere of influence to another. During an interplanetary flight you may leave the SOI of planets completely, and find that your craft is orbiting Kerbol (Kerbin's sun) during part of the flight. So you are always in an orbit, and you get from one place to another by changing your orbit; done by changing your velocity.

Beware the Water Kraken!

I like the fact that Squad is mod friendly; even supportive to an extent. I do understand what you wrote about a dV indicator; which is why I use Kerbal Engineer. If such an indicator was incorporated by Squad into KSP, I'd actually like to see it become part of the tech tree; somewhere in the second half of the tree. Even then, I'd rather that it be something that we can choose to use or not (as are the KE parts), once we unlock it. Given Squad's tendency to embrace (eventually) some reasonable amount of realism, I would not be surprised to find in future updates: more realistic aerodynamics and "deadly reentry", along with heat shields. Perhaps the devs will even require us to feed, water, shelter and supply oxygen to space bound Kerbals in the future, but that's speculation. Imagine radiation and solar flares; did we think to add that shelter module to our space station or interplanetary ship? The game is fun and seems to get better as the updates roll in, so I tend to think Squad will continue in that direction.

All in code, eh? Nice work then. As to your comment, I think both apply. I think lighting in the VAB/ SPH is restricted or limited to some extent, relative to the dynamic game state. I do encounter rendering differences between apps (Blender, Unity and KSP). I usually have to tweak my render settings to get what I want.