KerikBalm

You assume a "combat". There are multiplayer sandbox games where combat is not the objective. Think multiplayer minecraft in space. It could be fun to just cooperate building up a laythe base with a friend, for instance. No, it doesn't. Compete != battle Race to X with a budget of Y. Players are given a budget, the one that collects the most science wins... etc. Now it may be that it becomes common to carry a detachable probe, and try to fly it into your opponents spacecraft... but that would be just 1 of many viable strategies.

Basically, there are only 4 engines you should use in the game if part count and cost are not an issue: Turbojets: for use in the atmosphere of Kerbin/Laythe 48-7s: for use when high thrust is needed LV-Ns: for when a high TWR is not needed, but you do need decent amounts of thrust Ions: for when a very low TWR is acceptable. All the other engines have very marginal uses if part count is not an issue

"I don't think NTRs have the necessary specific thrust to be useful for SSTOs" Specific thrust? I think you mean specific impulse? Even going with the old NERVA from the 70s... upwards of 800 ISP, TWR of what.. 3:1? (just for the engine?, not the entire proposed nuclear stage) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#NERVA_rocket_stage_specifications ISP vacuum: 850 M_0 / M_1 = 5.2418 9.8*850 * ln 5.2418 = 13800 That is more than enough to achieve orbit, but its the low sea level ISP and the low TWR that are the problem. Adding SABRE precoolers and running it as a combined thermal rocket/turbojet will take care of the first ~1,000 m/s of dV, get you up where the ISP is better, and a pair of wings should allow you to get around the relatively poor TWR... Maybe develop it into a LANTR (LOX-augmented Nuclear Thermal Rocket.) for takeoff... The NERVA of the late 60's could be significantly improved too. Even the Dumbo reactors would be great. You wouldn't even need half the TWR of timberwind for this to work, no? "This isn't something you can engineer away, either - it's the simple fact that any supercritical amount of uranium is heavy, and the radiation shielding is even moreso." Well, you can engineer a lot of it away... the more enriched the uranium is, the less of it you need to go critical, add berrilium neutron reflectors to make subcritial masses go critical... the radiation is a bit of a problem, but sitting on the launch runway, with the reactors never fired up yet, there'd be no need for radiation shielding. Running it for a few minutes at high altitude would really only require a shadow shield for the occupants, no radioactive particle would be thrown out. However, after repeated use, it would be quite hot... as I mentioned in the first post.

You are aware, that as a Eukaryote, you are more closely related to Archaea than the "common" Eubacteria, no? I'm not talking just infections, I'm talking biosphere contamination. If this Europan life could survive, say in lake Vostok... that would mean significant and permenant changes to Earth's biosphere. The attrition rate of microbes to viruses is tremendous, but if Europan life was a separate origin, and we didn't take any europan viruses back/ they didn't make it to (for example) lake Vostok... Europan life would have a significant advantage in the form of a virus free habitat. Then maybe at the edges of its habitat, it starts evolving for more and more Earth like habitats... who knows what happens. The microbes are the base of our ecosystem, if some alien life manages to outcompete them, we're screwed. If that Europan life is essentially the same as Earth life... well, it will likely come under viral attack, and even if it does manage to outcompete some Earth life, given their similarity it likely won't cause a large ecological disruption.

We wouldn't want to send life there, we wouldn't want to bring that life here. We'd want to study it somewhere else.. perhaps a lunar or martian base. Sample return - to mars or the moon! I would be very interested to see if: 1) it uses nucleic acids as genetic material 2) if said nucleic acid is DNA or RNA 3) if said nucleic acid encoded proteins with a triplet codon 4) if said nucleic acids use the 5 bases we use and no others 5) if said encoded proteins are composed of the same 20-22 amino acids found in earth life 6) if said encoding is by and large the same encoding (ie mapping of a tripled combination to an amino acid) as found in Earth life. If the answer to all of the above is affirmative, we'd have very strong evidence of a single origin. It would also have implications for the biosafety required - though we'd still want to get genomic data and RNA seq to construct phylogentic trees and see how the they fit in with us, and based upon that, proceed. I suspect if 1-6 are all affirmative, they'd basically be just as if we found new species of extremopholes on Earth, and they wouldn't represent a hazard, and they'd be outcompeted on Earth, since they adapted to a very different niche.

Given how awesome the sabre engine is... and given how awesome a nuclear thermal rocket could be... and given that nuclear jet engines have been made... How feasible would it be to combine them into a single, nuclear SSTO? Given the stats that project Timberwind was hoping for (30:1 TWR, 1000 s ISP), I suspect that alone would be good enough for an SSTO. http://www.astronautix.com/engines/timnd250.htm Of course, hydrogen is rather expensive and hard to store... it sure would be nice to use the atmosphere as re-mass as much as possible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto I wonder if the pre-cooler technology of the SABRE engine could be made to work with a thermal-nuclear rocket core, to get an even higher payload fraction. Ie: Pump NH3 through the reactor during liftoff (more thrust, at expense of lower ISP, more mass efficient tankage, easier storage), accelerate to ramjet speeds, stop the flow of NH3, instead use liquified air as the saber precoolers are supposed to do, when air tapers off, pump H2 through it the rest of the way to orbit. The reactor wouldn't run that much for each trip, but would eventually get quite hot... reprocess the fuel rods? Once in orbit, transfer the reactor to a waiting tug for interplanetary or lunar missions (so the "tugs" are all running on old, "hot" reactors, the SSTOs are all running on newish, not-yet-that-hot reactors). Would such a craft be feasible with near-future technology? I've previously been really enthusiastic about fusion technology (Dense plasma foci, Polywell reactors, etc, NOT ICF or toruses like ITER)... but the more I think about it... the power density one can get with plain old fission is enourmous.. some of these compact reactor designs are putting out several gigawatts of power. Even under "ideal" or "optimistic" projections of power output for fusion ractors (like say... 1 gigawat reactor with a 3m diameter core) would be far worse, and would struggle to acheive orbit (either too little thrust, or increasing thrust lowers ISP too much, or chemical power would need to be used, like a LOX Augmented Nuclear Thermal Rocket - where the nuclear we're refering to is Fusion reactions). If you want to go interstellar with long burn times, out to significant fractions of the speed of light, fusion is what you want... But it seems fission is the way for getting to and from orbit... its a shame we can only launch from 1 inhabited planet where the dangers of flighing fission reactors around is so great.

If using "solar" as a name, as in "the solar system", there is only 1. If using "solar" as an adjactive, as in a solar system, as in a system of things revolving around a start that is thus a sun (latin for sun = sol) to them, then its fine.

Drawbacks: poor TWR, high weight.... Other engines in the game probably use LH2, given the ISPs appraochign 400... should we nerf them too? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Timberwind Sadly, this is unsourced, and I think the numbers are switched on the diameters... Vacuum specific impulse: 1000 s Thrust to Weight Ratio: 30 Note, that LH2 doesn't need to be used, you could use a heavier gas (it gets you more thrust too!, just less ISP) http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal--Solid_Core Going to a closed cycle gas core would get ISPs >1,500 s One could then easily go with CH4 or NH3, and still get the ISP desired (and a pretty awesome TWR)

Umm, while I hate the "earth-like" hype, there is no problem with what they said. Just as there is a distinction betwee "a moon" and "the moon" (ie Earth's moon), there is a distinction between "the solar system" and "a solar system" The moon is called "the moon", but we can talk of other moons around other planets, like titan is "a" moon of Saturn. The same thing is true for "the sun", and "a sun" (basically refering to the star at which a specified planet revolves around). So an extra solar planet would have "a" sun, and it would be "a" solar system, just not "the" solar system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet Note they specify "Earth's sun", because to other worlds, another star may be a sun. Most times, planetary system may substitute - but we can also talk of solar systems that lack planets - perhaps still surrondeded by an accretion disk/in the process of planetary formation/ only surrounded by debris/asteroid/comet belts.

It depends on the position that the occupants are in... 3.5 G is a lot worse if you are standing up instead of laying down (assuming the 3.5 G is in the "down" direction). Having personally experienced 6.3 G, and started to have vision problems then (upright seated position, the G's forcing blood from my head to my feet), I'd say, no, 3.5 G is not so bad. I wouldn't want to live in it though, but a few minutes... no problem

Hello all I've found it pretty easy to add new parts, and change waht techs unlock them, but how do I add new technologies... like say I want to add something to extend the tech tree, like a tech that requires metamaterials and specialized electrics, and costs 1000 science points... how would I do that?

They can be sued for negligence. What the protections are, are to prevent them from being sued every time someone who takes their vaccines (ideally, everyone) gets sick or has some medical problem. Otherwise, everyone with an autistic kid, or a stupid kid, or a kid with some other disability, would be having lawyers line up to sue the companies, likely trying for an out of court settlement. They can still be sued if their product is proven to be defective, or the lie, or were negligent, etc. They can't be sued just because they made a vaccine and you think it might have some link to something else based upon timing. There is A LOT of testing So are your roads, and your military, and your police... but your vaccines... Obamacare just fines you if you don't pay a private corporation to cover you I can't say, but perhaps there were shortages because everyone was going for them, causing the shortage? Perhaps there is some lag effect - if it was suppressed the years before, it won't come on as strong this year? I don't know. The *biggest* problem, is that the companies, at least in the US, stopped selling the old vaccines that were really cheap - the patents had expired. So they make a new vaccine (using newer genetic engineering techniques to produce just the antigen, rather than killed virus or weakened virus), patent that, then sell it for a couple hundred per dose, when the old one could be sold for a few dollars per dose. Then they lobby to get this new, expensive vaccine put on some list of required vaccinations for school (or something like that, I'm not sure/ I forget what they did to cut out the generic on the vaccines with expired patents, maybe they just have the doctors/health care places push the old drug, or ban the import, and then engage in anti-competitive action and all companies selling in the US agree to stop selling the cheap ones). Now, a marginally safer/better vaccine is making the cost of vaccination increase 100 fold. Personally, If I had a choice, and cost wasn't an issue, I'd go with the new one... but the old ones were just fine, and should still be available. The only reason the new ones are expensive, is because they are patented and the companies wish to make profits. The old ones... with expired patents, their profit margin is so low that they don't really even want to make them. Its a problem of new and patented = expensive, but you can't turn to the old and expired patent... except in other countries... but they won't sell the cheap ones in the US Capitalism fails again when monopolies and collusion/anti-competitve practices or simply pure greed takes root.

All real life rockets have way better TWR than what you see in KSP. All RL fuel tanks weigh much less (when empty, compared to full) than in KSP. Many RL liquid fuel engines have ISPs better than 400, while KSP's top out at 390 However, RL is 10-11x "bigger". If we were to scale things correctly, then 1 Kerbal meter = 10 Real meters. An exhaust velocity of 8000 m/s would only be an exhaust velocity of 800 Kerbal meters/second, and would have an in game ISP of 80, not 800. 1 earth gravity would only be .98 kerbal m/s^2... thrusts would have to be adjusted downwards. In real life, we make rocket stages with a 17:1 empty:full ratio for *everything*, engines and fuel tanks, and all other systems, in KSP, its impossible to get better than 9:1 (and if you want a TWR over at least 1:1, it gets even worse) Lets look at the shuttle external tank + space shuttle main engines, and the tsiolkovsky rocket equation, vs some KSP contraption that is a Mk1-2 command pod, 2 orange tanks, and a poodle engine getting 390 ISP. Shuttle orbiter weight: 68.58 tons Tank empty weight: 58.5 tons Tank full weight: 760 tons. So M_0 = 68.58+58.5+760 = 887 tons M_1 = 68.58+ 58.5 = 127.08 M_0 / M_1= 6.98 ISP: 455 9.8 * 455 * ln 6.97 = 8664 m/s KSP equivalent: pod: 4 tons Engine: 2 tons Fuel tank weight: 4 tons empty, 36 tons full. M_0= 78 tons M_1= 14 tons M_0/M_1= 5.57 9.8*390* ln 5.57 = 6565 m/s RL example gets almost 32% more dV Nerva engines are very real, and were tested in flight configuration, they are flight ready, but they haven't actually been used. * A failed rocket launch with an obliterated nuclear reactor is feared by the public: note that until you switch such a reactor on for the first time, its not veyr radioactive, no more so than the RTGs we already send up * Its heavy, much like the KSP nuke, this means that its not mass efficient to use one if all you want to do is go to low orbit. Planned missions to mars were all initially assuming the use of NERVA engines. However, missions to mars were never undertaken because of the cost of such a project, so NERVA engines became rather unneccesary. They did look into using it as a 3rd stage on the saturn V, but they just stopped the saturn Vs all together http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_C-5N I'd love to see something like project prometheus with a biomodal nuclear reactor. Nuclear thermal for an ejection purn, switching to some form of ion drive for a braichistichone followup, making the travel time shorter. Possibly even make a trimodal one where the nuke helps provide thrust during liftoff to orbit http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#ntrsolidcore

So, now that SP+ is going to be stock, I've downloaded it, and the cargobay is the most interesting item for me... but placing things in there seems a bit... tricky... It doesn't seem to have any decouple ability... if I place something in there, its basically just attached like any other part that attaches radially, no? I've been able to put a decoupler pretty close to the centerline... but...its hard to get the symmetry right. Does anyone have any tricks for placing things inside the bay?

*X*Question: Why are you using ASAS units instead of inline reaction wheels? those are heavier and provide the same torque.*X* Nevermind, I see now that ASAS units are now .02 lighter, and produce almost double the torque.... I guess that changed in .24 The previous ASAS was inferior in every way to the Inline wheel, and was said to be kept in just so old designs weren't broken (back when you needed the ASAS module to get SAS to function) Also, I question the use of SRBs beyond the first stage lifting from Kerbin. I can't really tell from the picture... Are you landing a truss structure with those flat tanks with aerospikes on them to soften the landing, and then the ascent vehicle leaves behind the girders and such? From what I think is your ascent vehicle, I wonder if the TWR is enough. Also, couldn't you save weight on your lander by getting rid of the "soft landing" aerospikes, and instead run fuel lines to the engines of your ascent vehicle?

Use the [ and ] keys to select different ships within 2.5km, or go to map view and click on the vessel you wish to control, and select switch to.

His mind will be blown when he visits the north pole of Kerbin and searches for long enough... And then blown again when he investigates the Mun thoroughly enough And blown again if he finds... "it" on bop, and what "they" built on Vall RIP magic boulder

Set your munar PE to about 8-10km, burn retrograde to circularize your orbit... you should now have a velocity of ~550 m/s, instead of whatever you were coming in at. Next, burn retrograde some more when you feel like it (you're in a stable orbit after all, you can wait), until you see your trajectory intersecting where you want to land (somewhere flat!) Next, put a maneuver node before where your trajectory intersects the terrain, and pull the retrograde marker all the way back. Look at your burn time estimation (I often have to give a momentary burst of throttle to get it to display right for some reason...), take whatever time it says the burn will take and start burning when you have 2/3 to 1/2 of that time until you reach your maneuver node. Suppose it reads 1 minute... start burning 30-40 seconds before you reach that node. This should put you nearly stopped over your landing area with a bit of altitude, now just come straight down like its a 3d version of that old moonlander arcade/Dos game. All this supposes, of course, that you've built a rocket with enough dV to do this.

Umm, its KerbIN orbit, and the KERBol system. If we don't then you can't disregard the difference in full/empty ratios of fuel tanks, and the low TWRs of engines, etc. KSP ships are HEAVY when empty, relatively speaking - to balance out the reduced scale and thus reduced dV - although this solution is far from perfect. Well, we don't even need to do a manned mission.. a robotic sample return would be amazing. All of our missions there have been 1 way *on to the OP's topic* Duna has the following challenges: * Requires using a good transfer window (or a whole lot of dV!) * More gravity than the Mun making the final stages of a landing harder (somewhat offset by parachutes though) * Aerobraking required to get it done in similar dV, or a higher dV budget needed * Ascent stage of a craft requires much more dV than the Mun * Ike has a strong tendancy to muck up your approach * parachutes don't semi deploy until you are very low. For standard chutes, this can be as low as 800 meters- coupled with a fixed deployment altitude, this can mean you are still going very fast when they deploy, and you may just rip your craft apart with them. * because of the issues with the atmosphere, landing site selection and maneuvering becomes even more important IMO, it doesn't even have to be harder challenges, just as long as its a different set of challenges. Its likely to be the first body with an atmosphere that you will visit (or at least return from). Its likely to be the first body you need to have knowledge of transfer windows to get to. Dealing with Ike may prepare you for a visit to the jool system. From a gameplay perspective, I think it is in a good place.

I started with .18, I never had any issues with the launch tower. What I still have issues with occasionally, are those darn end of runway lights. Where was this quoted sentiment on the thread I started about those? The responses in that thread were basically: deal with the obstacle

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n5/full/ngeo2137.html#f1 "Mars would have formed with ≥6–10 bars CO2 equivalent of carbon assuming the same initial [C] and [Kr] as Earth. 40Ar/36Ar and 129Xe/132Xe suggest that 90–99% of the initial atmosphere was lost before ~4.1 Ga (ref. 26). Subsequent loss rates are less clear; Mars’s C/84Kr ratio suggests P ~ 60 mbar following the Late Heavy Bombardment26." 60 millibar is about 10x what it is today, and would allow for water to be liquid (if the water is warm enough), but that is far too low for humans to breath, and the late heavy bombardment was over 3.8 billion years ago.... so lets say between 4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago, mars went from 6-10 thousand mbar, to 60, and today its just 6 mbar. It lost atmosphere quite fast, and its in even worse shape today with the lack of volcanism, and the solar wind. "Our technique rules out a thick, stable palaeoatmosphere and cannot exclude atmospheric collapse–reinflation cycles on timescales much shorter than the sedimentary basin-filling time. General circulation models predict that atmospheric collapse to form CO2 ice sheets and subsequent reinflation might be triggered by obliquity change5. If sediment accumulated at 1–100 μm yr−1 (ref. 20), our DTMs could integrate over ~106–108 years of sedimentation and contain many collapse–reinflation cycles. Therefore one interpretation is that smaller ancient craters formed while the atmosphere was collapsed, whereas rivers formed during high-obliquity, thick-atmosphere intervals." Cycles of atmosphere collapse and return? interesting concept.

I seem to remember reading the timescale being 10,000 years.... I'd ask you for a citation, but I'm having troublt finding one myself. I'm assuming terraforming whereing you simply add the atmosphere, and the mantle is still solidified, and it still lacks a magnetic field. The liquid H20 on mars lasted about a billion years it seems, which basically marks when the atmosphere became too thin (to retain heat, or prevent water from sublimating, water can't exist as a liquid on most of mars due to the low pressure). During that time the atmosphere was protected by a magnetic field, and regenerated by volcanic outgassings. Volcanic activity has ceased, and the magnetic field is gone. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/21nov_plasmoids/ Plunking down a 1 atm atmosphere composed mostly of lighter O2 and N2 (rather than CO2) would create an atmosphere that wouldn't last nearly as long. Unless you want to place some fusion reactors on mars that somehow pump massive amounts of energy into its core, melting the interior again and restarting a strong dynamo to give it a magnetic field.... but that it a huge task, much large than the more limited terraforming scenarios

Just because you've been vaccinated does not mean you are safe, or safe for the rest of eternity. If something compromises your immune system, your resistance is weakened (ie, you may get something as a 2ndary infection). Immunity to many diseases fades with time. If it is nearing the time that you would need a "booster shot", you'll be glad for Herd immunity. The more a disease spreads, the more chance it has to mutate to a strain you won't be protected against. Not being vaccinated by choice, is choosing to be a ticking time bomb, it is choosing to become, at some point, a disease factory that will test the immune systems of those around you. Its pretty irresponsible

Learning to quicksave has saved me a lot of trouble. I'm not sure what you mean... were you using a hitchhier pod? The probe cores have very little torque on their own. You can supplement this with reaction wheels, RCS, gimballing engines (although this doesn't help much when you need to rotate but not thrust), or a manned pod that has its own reaction wheels (Not the hitchhiker module) #1) Why did you wait, if it was for the sun because you had solar panels, then problem solved. You can add more batteries (some of them are even "massless" for the games calculations), or solar panels, or (if you're not doing science mode, as they are at the end of the tech tree) RTGs. Or if you have a manned pod cobined with an unmanned pod, you can still fire the engines, which if they have an alternator, will recharge your craft. Did you use a manuever node to make sure you were being optimal? Also, get out and push - its cheaty and time consuming, but your kerbals can refuel their jet packs indefinitiely and push your ship. Those orbits are quite hard.... you need to launch a rescue craft, then kick its apopasis out to match the time and place of the PE of your other kerbals, and then at PE burn to match velocity - the timing is very important. If it is ahead of you, drop to a lower orbit (ie, take the inside track), time warp until you're very close to it, and then kick your orbit back up to its level. Do the opposite if its behind you. Counterintuitively, this means that if it is ahead of you, you burn away from it (retrograde) to catch up. If it is in a very low orbit, you can go to a higher one, and let it get so far ahead of you that it comes up behind you again. Only if the science bay had a "command" pod of some sort attached to it it, ie, a cockpit or probe core. Probe cores, as mentioned, have weak torque and should be supplemented with an empty manned pod or a reaction wheel unit. Otherwise, its essentially like floating debris. Alternately, things stop spinning when you time warp- its a bit cheaty, but you can time warp to stop its rotation, and then try docking with it. Until you dock a command module of some sort to it, you'll always have this problem Yes, You can click on a tank, and then alt click on another tank, and you should get the option to transfer fuel between them. You can do this to move fuel around in your single ships constructed as 1 unit (assuming you used more than 1 tank part) to try this out.

I think your question needs to be worded better. "If I use a engine with say 215 thrust. Is it better to fill it up completely with fuel tanks before adding a new stage." Fill it up? what? "In another wards is it best to only add an engine and decoupler when u need too? Of course based on what twr you want and such" What defines when you need to? I'd say its better to add an engine and a decoupler when it improves your dV... Adding a decoupler won't help your TWR at liftoff, and it TWR won't be a problem when its time to decouple stages... so... "but basically if I have 215 thrust that can lift 21.93 mass tons. Should I use 21.93 mass tons of fuel, minus the payload of course and other stuff?" No, that leaves no room for another stage, and also leaves you with a TWR of 1. Go to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. Basically: dV = 9.8*ISP* ln (m_0 / m_1) Essentially, every engine+decoupler you add, ads dead weight at the start, and removes deadweight at the end. This breaks it up into essentially 2 stages. Lets consider an example rocket, all monoprop drained, an aerospike engine, 13.5 tons of fuel+tanks, a mk1 pod, parachute, optionally staged with 1x decoupler and 1x Lv-909, so the ISP is almost always 390, Total deadweight/empty weight as 1 stage = 0.8 (pod) + 13.5/9 (empty fuel tanks) + 1.5 (aerospike) + 0.1 (parachute) = 3.9 Loaded mass = 15.9 dV as per the equation= 5371.2 Now if we break it up into a 2nd stage with x tons of fuel tanks (and thus 9x tons of full fuel tanks), that 2nd stage has an empty mass of: 0.8(pod)+ x (tanks) +0.1 (parachute)+ 0.5 (lv-909) = 1.4+x Its loaded mass is 1.4+9x Its dv is thus 9.8*390* ln((1.4+9x)/(1.4+x)) Now lets find the dV of the first stage in terms of x. M_1 of the first stage will be the weight of the 2nd stage + aerospike + decoupler weight + empty 1st stage tanks The empty weight of the tank is (1.5-x) M_1 is thus: (1.4+9x) + (1.5) + (0.05) + (1.5-x) = 4.45+8x M_0 is the same as in the first case + 0.55 (for the Lv-909 and decoupler) = 16.45 The dV of the 1st stage is thus: 9.8*390 * ln (16.45/(4.45+8x)) total dV of both stages is thus: 9.8* 390* ( ln((1.4+9x)/(1.4+x)) + ln (16.45/(4.45+8x)) ) I'm not going to do the calculus to find the maximum, I'm jsut going to use my computer to plot it. x reaches a maximum at 0.55066, with a dV of 6881.6 m/s X is the empty weight of the tanks, so that would mean the 2nd stage basically gets a FL-T800 tank Compared to the original 5371.2... we gained a lot of extra dV (1510 m/s) by staging it. Note we'd get even more if we used a 48-7s, but that would change the optimal x as well. Granted, our rocket was .55 tons heavier, if you want to throw another .55 tons on to the non-staged rocket, we can.... *assuming a 9:1 empty full ratio as most of the tanks have: 9.8*390*ln (16.45/3.961111) = 5441.77 So 2 rockets of equal weight, 6881.6 vs 5441.77 m/s of dV. 26.% more dV / 1440 m/s more dV by adding 1 staging event. Use the same math, but tweak the numbers to correspond to your engines and pods and payloads and such. You can do similar math for 3 stages and more. Or you can do it iteratively... Like suppose you want to build a 100 ton rocket, find what x gets you the most dV, and use that to determine the amount of fuel you use for your first stage, then you've defined the size of your 2nd stage, and you can just repeat the math to optimize your 2nd and 3rd stage (as if they were 1 and 2)