Kulebron

I made a tutorial on this topic. Most of the texts are done, but I still need to do formatting, images and charts. But the first chapter is already there. See it and tell what you think. http://flyonbudget.one-giant-leap.info/

Thanks to all, and, yes, the problem happens yet while on the runway, it tips to one side or another. I know the concepts of aircraft well enough since years ago, but tried to make something rather unusual here. allmhuran: thanks for the tips. I aligned things as much as I could, and the center of lift is perfectly aligned with center of lift. Note: the wings start above the center of the bottom fuselage. CoL is just behind the CoM, so it is stable and yet does not try to dive, so I won't need to pull it with canards all the time. I made similar designs for tests, and they took off well with the canards in the front. Thrust vector is a bit off center, of course, but I still need to take off.

I try this plane on the runway, and just in few seconds it goes off-course and starts tipping over to the side. This happens both in Kerbin atmosphere, and if I set Eve atmosphere properties with HyperEdit. (It's intended for Eve) This is the craft file What am I doing wrong? I also noted that pylons tend to bend, so what is a better part to attach them with?

I checked parts weights, and see the wings weigh about 70 kg each, making less than 500kg, and I need only one aerospike engine to get reasonable speed, unlike a rocket in which I need many engines to lift... many engines and fuel for them. As I tried making a return rocket (only to get into Eve orbit, the return ship will wait there), I got a 2 layers of asparagus staging around LV-T30 and FL-T800 . With rocket engine I needed much less fuel, less staging. I tested a plane with 1 aerospike and another stage with LV909 . I still have no skill in landing, but this looks promising to me.

Has anyone a good mapping for all cases for Dvorak layout?

I was calculating carefully and got a rocket of about the same size.

Thanks to all, I have enough material! This was hilarious! It looks like Cremlin tower.

Hi everyone, I need a dozen of pictures, for a tutorial, of rockets that were made for missions like Jool, Laythe, Eve or Moho. Just to show how big they are. Tell us how difficult it was.

I sometimes put a 1 kg strut between Mainsail and the orange tank.

I got an ion-powered probe into clockwise orbit around Jool, tried to encounter Laythe and aerobrake. It flew higher and was thrown out of solar system instead. Was landing a lunar module and a rover, and decided to put Jebediah into the rover seat. Never flew that ship before at all. With CoG off center I could not control it, R.I.P.

If you are consistent with Spanish meanings, Ike (Y que?) means "so what?". Querbin from ...yerba.

If you're on equatorial Laythe orbit, 1000 m/s is enough, if you shoot from the right place (IIRC, staying right ahead of Jool, on the far side of Laythe). This way you're already high enough and have a good speed. If you descend to Jool, it will take more delta v to fly away from it (or you might need to descend so that periapsis is ahead of Jool, not in another place). Then you need to just play with MechJeb or maneuver planner plugin and find which day to do this to intercept Kerbin when you arrive. This is pain in the neck, and I don't know a tool that could jump exactly 1 orbit forward, always have to move by 1 minute. If you are on an inclined orbit, like 65 degrees (aligned with islands), it takes 1500 m/s to match periapsis with Kerbin, and an hour of playing with maneuver planner. I still haven't found the correct day for it - Kerbin is too far in its orbit at encounter. So, if you want just action, add more fuel and fly to Jool, then plan the maneuver. If you want to play hardcore space missions, like in real life, plan, plan and plan. I think of making a bi-directional calculation tool to calculate travel from any planet to any planet.

You might have a narrow joint in the middle between wide parts, and it's weak and bends. I'd also say don't use MechJeb autopilot. Let it point the direction, but control on your own. It oscillates the rocket wildly by doing many convulsive corrections all the time. You don't need 250 km orbit around Kerbin, 80 kms would be just enough.

Is the speed of light constant related to anything in physics, in a sense that why is it exactly 300 Mm/s, not 100?

I confused Uranus with Saturn, as always. You're right.

Mafia will be interested in this possibility and offer cooperation.

Uranus surface gravity is 6% higher than of Earth, so if it will be the same in KSP, I think it won't be a problem: fly over them and get to orbit. Escape will be really harder though, as at bigger distance you still fight a lot of gravity. to fly over a single mountain. Orbiting Saturn requires 25 km/s orbiting uranus requires 15 km/s (9 km/s for Earth orbit). So it will be a bit more coplicated.

^^ You're wrong, because in the second one pairs of engines fight each other's thrust when you do translation (which is in the screenshot).

Click on orbit in map view and change the parameters. In two words, if you go higher, you go slower, and vice versa. If you want to catch up and are far enough (20 km), it's better to break and get a slightly lower orbit and to catch up 1/2 orbit later, than to thrust directly at target. To be able to catch up with station, its orbit has to be higher than 80 km. 100 is quite enough, >120 is good for time warp. Anyway you need to fly higer than atmosphere. Any orbit that is close to target's orbit is good, the shallower the angle betweer them, the better (means less speed difference, less thrust needed to match speeds).

I wonder, if Kerbin has oxygen, you burn carbohydrates. If a planet has methane atmosphere, why not bring just oxygen and burn it? No need to bring both components. Saves wegiht.

I don't remember getting the first time to Kerbin orbit, because I already did this a few times in X-Plane to Earth orbit, back in 2006. There was a custom plane that added external tanks to Shuttle, and after a dozen of tries and drawing on paper, I got there and did some orbits around without reentering, then reentered on purpose. Earth orbit takes much more time. That was hard. So in KSP it was only a matter of building a proper rocket. I think any background matters: I read a lot on Apollo program technical details, and have no trouble with rendezvous. The only trouble was that the first time I approached it turned out my ships had different docking ports. What is really hard, and where no reading saves you from chores and a lot of trying is interplanetary travel to another planet's moon (Laythe) and back. To save weight and have enough fuel you need to just try, try and try different maneuver parameters. And there's no direct solution to use.

^^ The problem is that whenever I switched to this lander from another vehicle, it started jumping on the ground. I read from a moderator in another section here that these struts are weak. Hope I can fix this with stronger ones.

After I land on Laythe ground and timewarp to rendezvous the command module, my ship starts falling into the ground and then jumping up, and breaks up. Kerbanauts that move around, drown in sand. Is there a safe lander design or just not timewarp/switch ships at all?

http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/ Calculate the required aerobraking and go 150 metres higher, because your ship's drag is slightly more than 0.2. The best maneuver is actually intercept laythe itself on the sun side of Jool. It rotates quickly, so tiny adjustments some 100 days before encounter let you get into its SOI and aerobrake right at Laythe. This aerobraking will be slower and less violent and risky than braking on Jool. And you don't need more fuel to get to Laythe. If you use node editor plugin or MechJeb, you can even enter Laythe at an inclination aligned with islands, to ease landing on the ground.

I used this initially, but figured out that most of this means that you should shoot when Kerbin is on the opposite side. The periapsis/apoapsis of the planet does not matter much: it can add about 50 m/s of launch speed. The is some difference in speeds on approach, but aerobraking can cancel it out.