Kulebron

Watching Mün landing videos or playing myself (if I'm not busy) I notice very repetitive textures that look very implausible. Nowhere in real life textures repeat at all. But you don't need a fractal generator to make unique patterns. Here's a method used by web designers: the Cicada principle. Textures, with size multiple of big prime numbers make very long non-repeating combinations. Three tiny images make such pattern, which repeats only every 5000px. http://www.sitepoint.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-matters-to-web-designers/ Another designer tried this in two dimensions. http://www.sitepoint.com/examples/primes/lego.html

So this graph practically means that higher Isp leads to spending more delta-v than with a lower Isp. (Of course it may still weigh less than with a low-isp engine.) Correct?

I found that the lander had a strut connected to redux chip. So here's the quicksave without those chips.

@Kasuha, I must admit, I'm bad at quick writing. The point was getting back into orbit. I did land it, but spent lots of fuel. Your results looks much better. I'll re-edit the file and remove the redux plugin part. @tavert: great info, thanks!

Savefile with both models in Tylo orbit. Lander E (2 engines, the one in the original post) is in 50km orbit, Lander G (3 engines) is in 30 km orbit.

Hm, I used this dv map, and it says 2200 m/s. Maybe your one takes into account gravity losses. BTW, I managed to land and take off with 5700 m/s (with 3 NERVAs), no flying aids.

Now I see the reason: you put this bike seat instead of landing can (600kg) as I did. Poor kerbals!

Wow, I tried making a similar thing, with aerospikes and thin tanks, but it was much bigger and not near 11k m/s. Could you share the craft file?

Try removing the docking ports to check if fuel will flow that way.

Hm, what you say fits landers with better TWR, this one has TWR lower than 1 at start, and can't hold vertical speed. An in the end being as high as 5km is a big problem with this high gravity. I tried this at 15, 20, 30 and 40 km, and it worked only at 50km. So your advice is fine for Mün or for a very powerful lander, but this one is very different. I know this can be solved as a differential equation, and studied them once, but don't have skills. @Kasuha: interesting, thanks! @Traches: this works fine if you have good TWR. This one has TWR about 1 (in Tylo gravity) at start and grows it to 1.5..1.7 at the moment of landing. It's very underpowered, and I did try burning retrograde, it leads to a crash, with vertical speed about 250 m/s. The problem was not the trajectory, but that descending from 50 km it hovered too high (5 km) and spent 400 m/s of delta-V fighting gravity. I tried 3 engines instead of 2, and this worked, I could use the usual retrograde burn to land. Anyway, if someone wants to try, I can post a savefile.

@Alistone: so you mean use the vertical speed that will start growing? Interesting idea. @SRV Ron: I tried to minimize the mass, because this one is already 15 tonnes, and the other model with LV909 that I built weighs 25 tonnes, with asparagus pipes going inside out everywhere. Actually, I thought the problem was gravity losses and low TWR which makes you lose too much delta-V on hovering. I added the third engine, and with about the same delta-v of 5700 it landed loftly and took off.

I tried multiple times to land this craft from 50 km orbit, but I either hit the terrain, or slow down too high (4 km) and overuse my delta-v budget on soft landing. You can't make a suicide burn with this, it will collide with terrain before you cancel out orbital velocity. If someone can try and give me numbers to stick to, would be great! Download it (or suggest your lander, if it's within 15-18 tonnes)

Very impressive! Thanks!

Launch from Duna is 700-750 m/s, from Ike it's can be as low as 500. You need rocket engines for soft landing, and to not tear away parachutes. The problem is that parachutes don't always slow you down as on Kerbin, and if they open at 200 m/s of speed, they can break your ship apart. I've written a tutorial on Duna operations, not on interplanetary part yet. http://flyonbudget.onegiantleap.info/chapter5.html

Thanks! I'm doing my best.

Added the 5th chapter. Planning a mission to Duna [edit] fixed the mistakes in images

^^ good point, this way the rocket can't stand stably on the engines.

Go to structure and see triple/quad adapters. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Parts#Adapters.2C_Couplers_.26_Struts like this http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/TVR-400L_Stack_Quad-Adapter attach it with 1-node end to the wide tank, and attach 4 engines in symmetry or non-symmetry mode to the bottom. That's it. See a bigger picture: http://flyonbudget.onegiantleap.info/_downloads/bg_assembly2.jpg

A module for extensions in Python. + more compatibility, python plugins can work with new versions without updating + isolation, less memory editing, can be safer + lower threshold to try own plugin, more people participating or contributing, better community + can design and try out a plugin in IPython shell without restarting the whole program = 1000x faster development - requires time - requires a maintained API Since it should be an event-driven development, gevent framework is the best option. Actually, such a module could be developed by community, but better to have a common denominator to avoid fragmentation.

Do you have calculations how much they weight? Great idea!

I managed to save mass and get better TWR & Delta-V with RCS instead of vectored engines. 2 LV-T45 would weigh 500 kg more, have less thrust than 2 LV-T30. Instead I put 4 RCS blocks (200 kg) and 1 tiny RCS tank (250 kg)

Drawing diagrams for the next chapter:

I've posted a picture in this thread earlier. It's a gradual turn, other posters have noted this as well: 15 degrees @ 10 km, 30 @ 17 km, 45 @ 25 km. And from 20 km I watch more the time to apoapsis (in map view or flight engineer plugin). You can calculate dV manually or with flight enginer redux.

I tried low TWR, and even though my rocket had 4600 m/s of delta-v, it did not reach the orbit. So with low TWR you use too much fuel for hovering. Basically, substract 1.0 from your TWR, which is cancelled by gravity and see how much is left, and how fast you can get to 10 km. 0.1g, 0.5g and 1.0g make big difference. If you have low TWR, sure you get into orbit, but before that the rocket spends a lot of fuel and lowers its weight to start accelerating. The upper stages, of course, may have low TWR, because you don't fight gravity there.

I recommend increasing TWR to 2.0, because 1.5 is really very low. Then look at this flight path.