Silverchain

If the specific impulse is the same for all motors, you use it exactly as is. If you have multiple motors with different specific impulse, the combined impulse is ( Thrust1 + Thrust2 + (...) + ThrustN ) / (Thrust1/isp1 + Thrust2/isp2 + (...) + ThrustN/ispN) if I remember right. e.g. an LV-N and an LV-T30 the combined isp would be: 60 + 215 / (60/800) + (215/370) = about 420

IIRR I had a probe-only version of one of my proper Tylo landers that managed - also ISTR during one of the crewed ascents I thought I had enough to get by, but jettisoned the side stages just to be on the safe side.

You name a ship "IF orbit THEN Eeloo".

Landed and returned. Nifty pilot so I was back then! And I was very happy to rescue Jeb from this prang: Not sure how close the rescue dropship landed, but it was a long trek over the surface for him. I probably left something heavy on the keyboard. ^^ Eve is the only solid body I've not returned Kerbals from now.

This RAPIER spaceplane worked first time, up to orbit and back (apart from a slight problem with the wing falling off on landing, but Jeb walked away...) Much less finicky than using multiple engines, and it only needed a single ram intake. So easy to use, I like it! Spaceplane Poignant Folly coming in to land.

I don't much like Jeb. At the moment mine is sitting in the astronaut HQ, irritating me by being the default choice of kerbonaut for all missions. I keep meaning to pack him and his fellow orange shirts into a truck and leave them parked somewhere remote.

It's a mimetic polyalloy.

Pretty sure it was, yes. After 10 missions I've unlocked a handful of tech areas.

Not necessarily as it isn't a given that gas giants have a solid* core, though given Jool's role as Jupiter-analogue and position far out in the system (so it's cold) it's certainly likely. *edited to add; make that "composed of stuff traditionally considered solid" as in, it's stuff that we'd expect to see as a solid (like rock) instead of stuff we'd expect to see as a fluid (like hydrogen); it's all squashed up into a hot mess, but the composition changes with depth.

Urist Starflyer cancels Sample Mystery Goo: On fire.

A heavy rocket sled, stuck on a mysterious obstacle at the edge of the runway... My attempt at a walker failed. The ScienceRoller - a relatively tough device, capable of rolling indefinitely at a stately 3.9ms-1. It does hills quite well.

This thread has encouraged me to try out alternative rover types, here's the first. SRB-powered rocket sled. Capable of roving a few hundred yards from its start point, then stopping dead and running out of charge. Prone to flip on rough ground. I tried without the beam, with just Sepratron and QBE, but couldn't get it to survive intact.

The minimum a rover needs is a control pod, some form of propulsion, and stored charge (which will usually come with the control pod). Extra power and wheels are optional.

I went to visit KSC2. Well, I did a bunch of spaceplane development first that all turned out to be useless, then I got bored. Skurj I Model AAb Toadstar heading for the inland space centre. Why yes, that is a mod. Usually I wouldn't, but it provides no performance advantage, just pretty IVA. The stock Mk2 and Mk3 cockpit IVAs are uninspiring! Ok, so I landed, which kinda broke one of the wings and two of the engines and trashed the tires and... yeah, it didn't go well. Then I drove the remains closer, broke in half, flipped, drove a bit further on the front two wheels with the tiny remaining amount of charge in the cockpit, flipped again and stopped. And planted a flag, because hey, Anbro's still alive.

Skurj I Model AA Dreadful Dream parked on the cold but sunny beaches of Laythe. It turns out to be a wee bit underpowered as a rover - I landed on a plateau about 500m higher and 7km away and had to stop several times during the descent to the beach to recharge the wheel batteries. Still, looks like a tolerable runway for the launch.

Closest: Bunch of ships and planes at Kerbin / Mun / Minmus. Furthest: Bunch of ships and planes at Laythe. And that's all I've got at the moment. Been to Eeloo before, and had things at Sun escape IIRR (not to mention the occasional accidentally bug-accelerated Kerbal zooming out of the system at Ludicrous Speed), but haven't flown anything silly-close to the Sun.

The simplest way to get to the Mun is to wait in low Kerbin orbit until the Mun first appears over the horizon, then burn prograde (pointed in the direction of the velocity vector on the navball) and watch in map view until you get an intercept.

And the giant-canyon-for-rover-jumpiest.

Launch both vehicles to orbit, dock... that's what I'm doing.

I'm oddly attracted to Dres, but since starting to play again I've visited only the Mun, Minmus and Laythe. It'll be interesting to see if other places have changed like Kerbin and the Mun have.

It does. It means (assuming they're telling the truth, and I don't think an Eve ascent is the most difficult test of piloting skill; Eve is a builder's challenge, not a pilot's challenge) they can fly better than someone who relies on an autopilot; they have superior manual piloting skill. It's your prerogative not to care and not to value that, but trying to make out that they aren't a better pilot in that area is wrong. There's certainly more to piloting than timing and reflexes but that's irrelevant to the simple case of whether someone is or is not a good manual pilot of ascents and descents, which is the case in point.

Not if you're at supercluster escape velocity.

For matching orbits: First match your orbital inclination to 0 degrees with the target. On one side your orbit should be slightly overlapping with the targets (so you get two intersect points), on the other side it should be either lower or higher. If the target is orbiting ahead of you, your orbit should be slightly lower (faster, so you will catch them up) than theirs. If they are behind you, your orbit should be slightly higher (slower, so they will catch you up.) Target in red, your orbit in blue, for a target which is ahead of you: Wait as you orbit until the intersect points will be fairly close on your next orbit. If the target will be ahead of you at the intersect, lower your orbit slightly; else raise your orbit slightly. As you do so you'll see the intersect distances drop right down to within a kilometre or two (or ten); that's good enough. Wait until the intersect rolls around; as you get close enough the thingummy will switch to show "velocity relative to target." Kill the relative velocity. You should now be essentially stationary wrt to the other ship and ready to dock. For docking: Stay in ordinary flight mode, don't bother with docking mode. Provided your ship has balanced RCS get the two ships to within about fifty metres, kill relative velocity to zero, align the docking ports, use RCS to get to about .5 ms-1, watch as the ships move closer, if needed kill velocity again, realign, repeat-until-docked. Trivial once you get the hang of it.

The transfer stage was an X200-16 and an X200-32 with four LV-Ns attached to FL-T200s on the sides, some RCS and control and whatnot. It was boosted to LKO by a Mainsail-powered launcher, not sure exactly what happened but it ended up with the stages separated, with the Mainsail booster still on, so the Mainsail was pushing the stages together and pushing the top bit all over the place because I couldn't shut it off and couldn't control it. The transfer stage ended up in a silly 350x100 orbit or something like that. ...in hindsight, it was quite an interesting problem: should I move the spaceplane, using its comparatively inefficient Aerospike but small mass, up to rendezvous with the transfer stage, or should I move the transfer stage with its nuclear engines and high mass down to rendezvous with the spaceplane at 150x100 or wherever that was, and then lift the whole combination up again... I moved the spaceplane. Might do the maths if I get really bored, guess it was about 300ms-1 deltav required.

Oh, cool, thanks. The spaceplane is about 16 tons all-up with a shielded Clamp-o-Tron on the nose; I picked it up from LKO. The transfer stage had several problems; the final stage separation went wrong, leaving it in an inclined orbit around Kerbin which wasted fuel, the docked craft wobbled under x3 and x4 acceleration (not sure if that's easily fixable, maybe with a different engine layout than I used?) and there was only just barely enough fuel to make it to Jool so I was lucky to get an easy Laythe intercept... I'm not brilliant at timing flight windows so like to have a deltaV margin.