csanders

I labeled this thread badly. I meant from kerbin to mun back to kerbin again. I forgot there was a "challenges" forum. This topic is probably more suited for there. Checking out the ".24 cost effective lifters" threat at the moment.

Curious what people could come up with. Or how little someone could make work with a good launch profile/landing/return. EDIT: I labeled this terribly. Cheapest ship to take off from Kerbin, land a Kerbal, then go back to Kerbin.

What's it's TWR on Eve? It doesn't look like it will be high enough.

Yeah, when you're coasting downhill with the engine in gear, the momentum turns the engine, and the injectors shutoff. If you put it in neutral, the engine needs to burn gas to keep it idling. I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference one way or the other though.

With the new version, inside the VAB, one could also accidentally click on an engine and reduce its thrust. Another thing to keep an eye out for.

You can also try to use Duna's moon (Ike) to slingshot you to a better inclination. For insance: aerobreak the AP to around Ike's altitude, if you're not in its SOI this time round, raise PE to above Duna's atmosphere and wait a few orbits. When you get into it's SOI, play around.

Thanks. It's most certainly an "alt-click" problem for me. I always do that.

They could easily have an "easy mode" that doesn't use money, and a "hard mode" that does.

Does anyone have a bug where the fuel lines get "cut" when loading a saved sub-assembly?

How do you propose we build smaller more efficient fueling stations? When moving large amounts of fuel, multiple LV-Ns makes sense. For other craft a lighter less efficient engine might get more dV. Some just like the look. Like all things Kerbal, the answer is "it depends."

Just the other day I was working on a ship, and moved some stuff around, and forgot to re-add the parachutes. Landing back on Kerbin without them, using only thrust, was a challenge and fun in its own right. It's a feature not a bug, or something.

The questions people should be asking is "will this feature likely change in the future? Will any craft that uses this feature be broken beyond repair? Am I willing to live with that?" Personally, I don't want to get used to something that will likely change drastically in the future. So I don't stack intakes.

My SSTO

I get that. I hope they fix it. They've done a wonderful job with the maneuver node interface, but it's hard to see the result without fine mouse pointing. Often, I set up a maneuver node in the right direction I know it should be. Then I point my craft in that direction, stop rotation and kill the maneuver node. Then I burn with my mouse pointer over the periapsis (it's almost always the periapsis I'm interested in. It could be something else, in which case I hover over that). Then I kill thrust when it hits the value I want. UI wise, I find that to be easier. If you don't know where you should be pointing, and you have RCS, you can try this: You know the -v- pointer that shows where your craft is pointing? I typed that out with two minus signs, and a 'v'. Have the direction the minus signs are pointing perpendicular to the horizon on the nave ball (if that's possible). That way you know forward/back thrust is prograde antigrade. Left and right thrust are radial-in, radial-out, and up is normal (if the ground in your navball is to the left) and down is anti-normal. That was a bit technical, here's picture: Ok, orient your craft that way. Fire up the RCS. Put your mouse pointer on the node you want to monitor. Fire ikjlhn, see which one gets you closer the easiest. Take note. Setup a maneuver in that direction (not to large, say 10m/s), then point craft at maneuver node, remove maneuver node, burn and watch with your mouse hovering over the node of interest. Also, with midcourse corrections, sometimes RCS alone can do the trick. EDIT: Also, sometimes you can only correct things so much. For instance, if you want to align planes, and your not at an ascending (an) or descending node (dn), you can only correct it so much. However, you can try to make either the an or dn align with closest approach.

http://growlersoftware.com/users/kerbal/Phalanx%20System%20II.craft Here's the craft file for the landing craft. If I recall, the launcher is a bit finicky. Sometimes an SRB will strip off the thing. NOTE: With the landing legs being changed in .22, I'm not sure how well it will land. I'm guessing it might knock off the center engine, but I'm not sure.

I'll see if I can find it.

Went to Duna before Nukes with this ship. I had docking ports, skippers and poodles. I didn't take pictures on the trip, so I did a LKO mission to show the design: Whoops. I totally forgot I borked the staging on this one. The top tanks were supposed to separate. Once in parking orbit, this has some fuel left to assist on the burn to Duna This goes the rest of the way. Aerobrakes on Duna to save fuel. Landing craft and command module separated. The command module has the RCS fuel, and a probe attachment so it's unmanned. The lander is tricky to land on Duna, as it has a low TWR there. But it's doable. Landing craft with tank separation. Landing craft reconnected to command module. Bottom stage of lander separates to save weight. This would take me back to Kerbin if I was in Duna orbit, after I transferred any excess fuel from the lander to the command module. Separate on reentry. Ta-dah!

Thanks! FYI, this was my first attempt at this. COMPLETELY inadequate. Also, protip, two orange tanks stacked on top each other, pushed by a mainsail, barely has over 1.0 TWR on Eve (when it has a payload anyway). I don't have a pic of that failed design. It doesn't matter how wide you make it, it's not getting off Eve.

Almost identical for me. I found after my first failed landing on Eve (and later success), take what I think needs to be done to fix it, and multiply it by 10.

Currently this is in hyper-edit testing I was curious what it would take to land a 3 kerbal canister from sea level from Eve. It's surprisingly hard to find the right google search terms to see what others did to accomplish this - so I started building things, and testing them in hyper edit. Here are the results. (Just successfully did this tonight, so I'm giddy). I did onion staging, since it's easy to copy/paste, but I imagine if someone wanted to use real asparagus, they would get better results. It has one major thing going for it: It's SSTO, meaning I can get it into Kerbin orbit in one piece, so it's just a matter of refilling it, flying it to Eve, and refilling it again (that is NOT going to be fun). Technically that's easily do-able, it's just oh so tedious. So tedious. Oh so tedious. There aren't sentences to describe how tedious that will be. Technically, that's just a matter of rendezvous and docking, which of done hundreds of times in KSP and Orbiter. I figure this might double that figure. But it does the important stuff, unreliably. It can survive landing on Eve, sometimes, (on very level surfaces) and returns to orbit from 120m off of Eve. I still want to get the landing struts more robust. And I have to add ladders... so many ladders. At this point it might be easier having a landing craft docked on top that the Kerbals will fly to the surface and use to return to the top of the craft. I'm joking of course. I hope. Jesus I hope I'm joking. I think I will dub thee "Spider Web" (the struts look more like a spider web in full resolution) 139 Meters, and most of the legs survived! If you've never been to Eve, and wondered what the fuss about altitude is about, here it is. The craft only needs to be this big to take off from 2700 This big at 3500 Close to the size it needs to be at Eve's highest peak. Big even for an Eve lander. This is why people use seats and ladders instead of a 4 ton capsule. Almost there! Great success! Running on fumes on that last pic. And this is what happens when it's not reliable. (Herman seems distraught, rightfully so)

I'm going to move this to another thread. Hope you don't mind.

Also note how I have SAS modules on the outer stage. Provides enough torque to orient the craft during take off, then gets released early. The earlier one rids excess weight, the less it effects DV.

Little known fact: all Kerbal parts are coated with ablative paint.

You need something like this (note the "to Eve" craft is a bit over engineered)

Why not? Real rockets have them. We're building with legos. Where we add 4 generic identical struts, real world engineers would use a single strut specifically designed for the task.