Anquietas314

We're talking a matter of 200m/s deltaV tops - for a full orbit reversal. Considering it takes approximately 6-6.5km/s to get there at all (in stock), it's peanuts and not worth caring about. You should generally have a few hundred m/s spare anyway for a safety margin.

It's a bit less than that. Mun's orbit doesn't take a month to complete; it's orbit (in this case, the same as the rotational period) is 6 days 2 hours and 36 minutes, according to the in-game knowledge base. Also remember that's Kerbin days - 6 hours each.

Technically you can get anywhere at any time, it's just that trying to do it (far enough) outside the transfer window is very, very expensive. A 5km/s transfer during the window could very easily become a 20km/s transfer if you're far enough outside the window - and that's the best case.

Interesting. In that case, perhaps Bobe's combined station just didn't meet the contract requirements?

A polar orbit is the best for coverage. Mun does rotate, but it's tidally locked to Kerbin - it takes a full orbit to rotate once.

Except the exposed seat; that doesn't count, but I suppose you could say that doesn't hold kerbals inside.

Fair enough I guess.

I think what the OP was asking was if you could just launch a new module and dock it to the existing station. As to that, I have no idea.

I get that you're being facetious, but remember the claw can grab ships and kerbals, not just asteroids Plus, bigger is most certainly not better in the world of rocket science

What's wrong with "tailsitter"? It gets the meaning across perfectly, and isn't an excessively long term.

I would imagine eliturbo meant the plane couldn't turn very well in the air. You should be careful with enable steering though, as it's quite easy to make the plane flip over while turning.

Yeah that would be cool, but I think the first two programs you do should always be Mun and Minmus - though perhaps let the player choose the order, seeing as those are easier to reach (and get back from), especially for newer players.

The tier 3 upgrade is 6 million on hard. Yup.

Scott actually mentions later on in the video that something like the shuttle is just a really bad idea for a spaceship anyway because of the huge amount of technical complications from the design. Also, the common term is VTOL: Vertical Take Off and Landing.

I usually do that too, but after thinking about it a polar orbit (except perhaps on planets/moons with very long days) is much easier; No matter where you are on the planet, you can just wait for the orbit to line up with where you are before launching. On higher-speed rotation planets (kerbin and such) you obviously don't get the little boost from the planet's rotation, but being able to reach the poles is probably worth it.

It's 140 tonnes, which is enough for most 1-man missions, but if you want to launch, say, a multiple-landing Mun mission - namely reusable lander, science lab, fuel tank - you need the top tier launchpad. Some of the harder "Build a base on ___" contracts can't be done without upgrading it either.

No problem Don't worry if your apoapsis doesn't match up with the AN/DN perfectly though - just burn wherever those are instead; as long as they're pretty far out it won't matter much. Of course you can always do a radial burn about half way to apoapsis to correct that if it's really bad.

In the atmosphere reaction wheels are not so great. Unless your spaceplane is really crazy, by the time it gets to space the reaction wheel in the cockpit should be more than sufficient.

Hasn't happened for me yet, but I've done plenty other stupid things

Power means a renewable power source. AKA solar panels or an RTG. You don't need batteries at all, but of course they will help for doing maneuvers on the dark side of the planet.

That's why you do the plane change at apoapsis on the edge of Mun's SoI. It's dirt cheap. Read the last part of my previous post; it covers how to make sure you can do that.

Yep, this works. For added stability, you can connect the 4th beam to 2 others; the beam it would be connected to via nodes, and the one opposite it in the square. That way the rover won't flex weirdly quite as much when it hits a nasty bump

JHadden123: Yeah, lander legs have their own problems on the pad. The number of times I've had a larger lander fall over during tests because of glitchiness...

Your best bet is probably to use a polar orbit, yeah. As for getting new parts, you should make your Kerbin orbit slightly inclined long before you get to Mun - with a bit of tweaking that will make you arrive in a polar orbit around Mun. If you make it so your periapsis is very near either the north or south pole, you can burn at periapsis to bring your apoapsis only just inside the Mun's SoI, and then do the plane change at apoapsis for a tiny fraction of the deltaV.

Chewy: That's not a bad way to do it - it does at least make getting the inclination part right during launch a non-issue - but it can be done more efficiently