KerikBalm

Well, #1) I have not noticed this, and I doubt KSP models this #2) (also addressed to the posts that follwed yours), there is a real world explanation. When its hot, the air is less dense at the same pressure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_altitude This does not affect ISP (that is pressure dependant, not density), but it does change drag. Launching at night, when its cooler, can be expected to result in higher drag losses. As to if it is very significant (especially IRL, where the terminal velocity is really really high) - I doubt it if KSP models this (I think it uses pressure as density, not a combination of pressure, MW of the atmospheric gasses, and temperature) - I highly doubt it

With the new update, I was again hoping that the science lab will become more useful... but right now... its... just flavor/RPing it seems. It has 2 functions: 1) Increase transmission rate: -Problem: the transmission rate never reaches 100%, and is often still quite low (goo, mat bay, surface sample), thus it is preferable to return samples. Sure, it would have a use for 1 way mission, like unmanned rovers, but this thing is manned. Sure, you can send Kerbals one 1 way missions, but I think most players do not like that idea. A feature that is useful for 1 way missions is a poor addition to a crewed module 2) Reuse Mat bays and goo canisters. -Problem: for the same weight, you can carry 10 goo cans, and 10 mat bays. Making them as little modules allows you to land, do the science, store results, and detach them, your ascent stage is then lighter and more fuel efficient. There are few situations where a sciece lab is better than 1 goo+ mat bay modules. Now that parts cost money, there's even less incentive to add 3.5 tons of dry weight to your ships/requiring your landers to carry up another .35 tons of experiments 3) Data storage IIRC, you can store multiple reports of the same type in it so its easy to max out that science in one go (for when 1 experiment wont max it out, like a temp scan or EVA report) -problem: diminishing returns mean there isn't all that much point to this, and you've probably got another command pod to store things in. Synergy? Versatility? Meh, it is nice to be able to do an experiment, do a boosted transmission for immediate science, and then do it again and store the data for max science (esp on long interplanetary missions). You can already do that for all science except the mat and goo - just for less science. You can do that with surface samples, which you can't always do with labs (landing a lab is really inefficient, unless perhaps if it is the very last stop of your journey). It is the main draw of it (aside from RP reasons) I suggest to just make the transmission boost better: Up the transmission modifier from 1.5x to 2.0x (it seems they've already contemplating this, modding it to be 2.0 changed the description from detailed analysis to exhuastive analysis) Or change it so that you get an additional 50% of the remaining science. Ie a transmit value of 20% leaves behind 80%, detailed analysis recovers 40 of those 80, for a transmit value of 60%, while a transmit value of 50, leaves behind 50, and the detailed analysis recovers 25 of those 50, for 75% transmission. Add a smaller uncrewed "automated lab" that has a 1.5x modifier, and cannot reset experiments - something intended for 1 way trips (ie, Eve, maybe Tylo)

FWIW, I would support only "low resolution" textures being visible until you visit planets, and atmospheric density to remain mostly unknown until you visit. They didn't know much about the atmosphere of mars before going - some measurements suggested a vacuum - which is in fact not too far off. Duna's atmosphere is positively soupy compared to Mars. I for one would like to see a planet in the Kerbol system with such a thin atmosphere - one that you won't know is there until you visit. Well, I assume you are referring to in situ resource utilization, which at the moment is limited to electric charge, and oxygen on laythe (athough using closed intakes to store intake air as a resource is faaaarrrrrr..... from practical). With a more realistic atmospheric model, that would matter. Atmospheric pressure and atmospheric denisty are not the same thing. You'd have a much higher stall speed flying through 1 atm of helium than 1 atm of CO2, for example. As far as flying on earth, where the gas composition is more or less the same, you still need to consider denisty altitude (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_altitude) changes with temperature. Stall speed is higher on a hot day than a cold day (all else being equal, of course). Atmospheric composition could be tied into atmospheric pressure and temperature, when determining the atmospheric "thickness" - but given the incredibly bad atmospheric model we have now, I doubt such a sophisticated simulation will be implemented. The other reason it could matter, is if we have balloons, or some sort of simulation of pressure relating to if a kerbal survives or not if a cabin/space suit is punctured. - of which, only the ballooons may be feasible - they may not lift nearly as much in Jools (presumably) helium and H2 atmosphere, nor in Dunas (presumably CO2 but low density) atmophere - but for Eve's (presumably) CO2 atmosphere, even at 1 atm they'd provide more lifting force than 1atm on kerbins (presumably) mostly N2 atmosphere

1) Answered already plenty well 2) I don't find them usefull for much at all, just little gimmicks. Yes, they are lightweight... but their ISP sucks, hard. But that's not so bad if you can decrease dry mass by a larger % than you decrease ISP, then for sufficiently low dV needs, you end up using less fuel (and for slightly higher dV needs, you can still build the craft lighter, even if it consumes a bit more fuel in the end, which are important considerations for reusable vs single use designs). *However* the tiny fuel tanks are terrible. The Full:dry ratio of the 1.25 and 2.5 meter tanks is 9:1 for the SLS parts (3.5 meter? I forget), its 8.2:1 For the toroidal, its a pathetic 5.44:1, and for the oscar, its an appalling 5.24:1 ratio. Bad ISP combined with bad mass fraction, means I'd much rather use a 48-7s. If you use a good mass fraction tank, you have so much fuel you want to use a higher ISP engine. There are only very narrow cirumstances where the LV-1 is preferable to a 48-7s. Its so narrow that I consider it gimmicky. Also for small, low thrust cases, I'd be tempted to go with ion propulsion 3) SRBs are really only good for your first stage. You certainly can't land on the mun with them, you need a throttleable engine to do that, but you could use a lot of SRBs, and the default liquid engines and tanks as upper stages to do it. 4) it depends, you will want to go manned eventually. Personally, I had docking ports before I landed (I did a flyby with free return trajectory for my first flight into orbit, but that cut it close and I had to get out and push ). So I had an orbiting fuel depot, and just landed, took science (evas and surface samples), and rendevou'd with my fuel depot, got tons of science. Later I unlocked gravity and seismic scans, and sent an unmanned probe to fil out the science - no need to collect samples or EVA again. If you send a probe now, you'll need to send a manned mission later to fill out your science. Maybe by that point you'll have grav and seismic scans, and its just a probe+ manned mission to finish out the biome. Either way, unless you do a lot of other stuff for science, plan on returning to the first biomes you visit after you've unlocked more tech. If you go manned now, you can go unmanned later, if you go unmanned now, you'll have to come back manned later (assuming you're interested in the science, and haven't maxed out the tech tree with other science sources)

True, the definition of "space" for real life, and for KSP, are not the same, but I will point out a few things: You could orbit in theory, with a low enough drag coefficient. The orbital period for earth is about 90 minutes, so you'd have to go 90 minutes without drag bringing you PE down too much. So the question is, what altitude can you "orbit" kerbin at for 90 minutes.... at least with stock aero, it seems to be more than 40km (I don't think you'll even make 1x 30 minute orbit, maybe I need to fire it up to test this). I don't think an orbit of 68km will last for days in KSP either. If we use 40km for KSP, and 122 km for real life, its still about 3x smaller instead of approximately 2x smaller. In RL, you have to consider how long an orbit will be stable, on the oder of weeks for most cases, in KSP, if its stable for a few hours (maybe longer? I really am not sure how long a 68x68 km orbit will last), its stable forever. I wouldn't use the engine limitations to argue the thickness of KSP's atmosphere relative to RL. *When* KSP is modelling atmospheric drag, it seems to be modelling an atmosphere that is much thicker relative to its planet's diameter than ours is, and I think its about a factor of 3, as opposed to the ~1/10th of the actual celestial objects For reference, the Apollo missions, prior to trans lunar injection, went to an orbit of 185km, which is less than 3x the height of kerbin's atmosphere bdito: That summary is nice, but its also worth noting that things in KSP are unrealistically heavy. RL rockets engines have a much much higher TWR, the chemical rockets can get better ISPs (H2 LOX fuelled), and the mass fraction for entire stages varies between 13:1 and 17:1, when the best tanks in KSP (with no engines or anything) are only 9:1. Yes, it took a lot of engineering to get parts to those specs, but in KSP, we don't engineer the parts, we plan missions with the performance of the parts available to use. Our parts performance is sub par compared to what Apollo had, of course, as your diagram shows, this is offset by the required dV being much less. It "somewhat" balanced out in the end. I'll note that the Saturn V was essentiall 2 stage to orbit*, which is quite hard to do with any reasonable payload fraction in KSP (at least before the nasa parts release, and buffing of the mainsail and skipper) * The third stage was needed to get to orbit, but the vast majority of the burn time on the third stage was for trans lunar injection

Most things in the kerbin universe are roughly 10x smaller than their analogue (when they have an analogue). Atmospheres are not one of those things. Kerbin's atmosphere is approximately 1/2 scale if I am correct. The traditional definition for "space" on Earth is 100km. Kerbins is roughly 69 km. Relative to its diameter, kerbin's atmosphere is really really thick (as is that of even duna, and especially Eve) You can orbit just fine at 68 km for quite a while in the game. Drag is very low at that altitude, but not non-existent. For the sake of gameplay and due to computational limits, it is non existent above that. There'd be only the physical 4x timewarp if it wasn't implemented this way (and we'd still have the problem of treating craft 2.5km from the active one as "on rails", or burining up your cpu trying to similate everything at once)

I don't remember how much my mun exploration mission cost, needless to say, it went beyond the mission requirements, I got the following to low munar orbit: A station consiting of: 1 mk1 command pod 1 science lab 1 orange tank 2x FL-T400 tanks 2x LV-N engines. 1 docking port Batteries, solar panels, com port It was send with a lander consisting of: 2x FL-T400 tanks 1x FL-T100 tank 2x science JRs 2x goo cans 1x LV-N batteries, communitron, static solar panels, landing legs, docking port, thermometer The lander's tanks are not filled up most of the time, only for reaching the poles ( I should have just entered into a polar orbit directly). I've got almost all the mun biomes covered, and I still have 3/4 of the orange tank, I think I'll pack up and head to minmus, making it one rocket for all biomes on minmus and the mun. I did the math, and the LV-N is the most fuel efficient way to get around if you're carrying a manned pod and 2x materials bays and 2x goo cannisters - which increase your dry weight to the point that the LV-N is better than the 48-7s - if you are going to repeatedly refuel, use the LV-N, if you're only going to make one landing, use the 48-7s, don't include an orbiting fuel depot(well, at least not a big one, you can do orbital rendevous, but its not so attractive on the mun when you only need a couple hundred m/s to dip your PE into kerbins atmosphere) and science lab, and have a much smaller launch. I also sent a small probe that I used to get the seismic and grav scans, sine i didn't have them unlocked for the first launch - I didn't have nukes unlocked either, but I had an experimental contract to test them. I also covered one of the biomes (all science except mat and goo) with a Rapier SSTO, as I had a contract to test the rapier on the mun. It only cost me the fuel to get there and back... but the dV budget was tight.

I agree with you on the mk3, but the mk2 - that is very useful, much more than the mk1 for everything except flying from IVA

He didn't specify if you could use mods are not, so I'll just mod a 100 kN thrust engine that has a specifc impules of 100,000, call it an antimatter engine, and hope my suicide burn is good enough that I stop somewhere in the SOI of the various bodies.

My thoughts: *Regarding the science for contracts, it makes more sense to me. I don't see how taking a soil sample of Duna is supposed to help you design a nuclear thermal rocket, or advance R&D in any meaningful way. R&D consists of testing various experimental prototypes and such - thus I see no problem with getting science after testing parts. More on this later *Some of the contracts are too trival though, and thus are pretty stupid; - Some weird combinations of speed and altitude - though some combinations make sense, so that you actually test the part in a way similar to the way you "should" use the part - like perhaps a Lv909 at high speed and altitude as a circularization engine, or drogues when you are coming in "hot". SRBs on the Mun? not so much -lets say all the landed on Kerbin ones -Testing jet engines on airless bodies, or on other bodies in general - however, I recently got a contract to test a rapier while landed on the mun, and I must admit, that was fun. I've never made a rapier design for use beyond getting to low Kerbin/Laythe orbit. Using it in its pure rocket regime was somewhat new to me. Of course, I still made use of its turbojet function during the launch too. Generally, my SSTOs I design are never meant to do more than lift a payload to low orbit, and maybe hitch a ride to laythe as a reusable lander. This contract inspired me to make my first SSTO spaceplane that can launch and land vertically on airless world. The procedural "random" nature of the contracts makes for a variety of stupid contracts, but occassioanly, it produces an interesting contract. Note it does have some contracts that are straightforward and make sense, like "explore *insert name of celestial body here* " * Back to science, as I was saying - why should doing a seismic scan of tylo, or a surface sample of minmus, be what finally allows you to use ion engines, or docking ports, or nuclear engines, or structural girders? What it does do, it make the space program look better, and probably help attract funding. What if contracts give you science, and science experiments give you rep and funding? * I like the experimental contracts, giving me early access to aerospikes, rapiers, LV-Ns and ions.... but this needs refining. The contract gives you access to the ion engine, but not xenon tanks, so you can't do anything with it, it doesn't help you test it to decide if it is an unlock priority. I've heard similar issues for the jets - they aren't giving intakes, although I didn't get these contracts before unlocking the parts. Overall... its okay, but can use refinement to weed out the obviously non sensical ones + some check to make sure it gives you all you need to use a part (ie, xenon tanks and ions, intakes and jets I would like some sort of Repuptation based basic funding, so that you could ignore contracts if you want, and just do your own missions that build your rep (though, they do have those exploration contracts, for 1 time pay). Adding contracts for you to establish "bases" (much like launching a sat into orbit X that must contains parts A& would also be fun - although the "plant flag" contracts do sort of encourage that. I always make my plaques for those flags something like "your advert here" or "advertizing space for rent"

I very much like the experimental contracts - I got an LV-N experimental contract that was much appreciated to put LV-Ns into use very early. I then got an ion experimental contract, and was hoping to pump out some ion powere probes early too. Then I realized they hadn't given me any xenon tanks... I stuck the ion engine on the nose of one of my SSTOs, fired it in space (I forget if orbit was needed or not), landed back on Kerbin. Oh well, the science helped me unlock it sooner. I still have a turbojet test on the mun contract - I think I'll pass. I also have a Rapier engine landed on the mun contract - this one interested me enough to make a tail sitter vtol rapier SSTO - its a bit light on fuel, and I already have to use sepratrons to get it to launch vertically from Kerbin (it also has a pair of chutes on the nose for landing - fly over the runway, cut power deploy landing legs, pop chute, land vertically) Still, its my first SSTO that was designed to land on the mun and come back - my other SSTOs have the dV needed, but not the landing leg arrangement (i'm not going to try a horizontal landing facing retrograde on such an uneven surface)

This is brought up again and again - no, it won't work in most cases. Once it leaves the physics render range - 2.5 km, the game stops simulating it in full - all the game does past that point is check its status and calculate its (dragless) trajectory. The game checks if it collides with a celestial object, and deletes it. The game checks if it enters atmospheric pressure greater than 0.2 (? not sure on this, I think its about 40km), and if so, deletes it. Only the active craft may be in the atmosphere and "in flight", all other craft are deleted if in the thick atmosphere, and not "landed" or inside the render range. A quirk of this is you can have things in "stable"/non-degrading orbits at 50km, as long as you do not make them your active craft (at which point, the orbit will decay for as long as it is the active craft), or take your active craft within 2.5 km of them. If you jettison boosters after 500m with parachutes set to deploy at 50m, the will probably land before you reach 2500m, so you should be able to recover those. Likewise, if you drop a stage above 40,000, on a sub orbital trajectory, you can put your main craft on an orbital trajectory, and switch back to the stage (which hasn't despawned in the thin atmosphere), thus making it the "active craft", and follow it all the way down to a landing. Basically between 500m and 40,000m, everything you drop is a total loss. Regarding the mono-prop, I advise you to remove the monoprop from the command pod if you don't use RCS - it adds weight and thus brings your dV down - on the 1 kerbal lander can, it adds .06 tons- not a lot - but it makes a different on very light lander designs - although its even better to use massless RCS ports and get extra dv out of the stored RCS - but basically, until you unlock RCS ports, drain the monoprop from all command pods. I had heard that they intended kerbal jet packs to use monoprop, and when a kerbal re-entered the pod and filled up the jet pack, it would drain monoprop from the capsule - but due to some bug this wasn't working - I don't know if thats real, or a rumor -since it was added in .23, I was expecting it to be fixed in .24 if that was really what was intended. I believe it is what they intended, and thus "get out and push" will eventually no longer be viable for those times when you run out of fuel just before getting your perapsis back in kerbins atmosphere for aerobraking

Funds have somewhat killed the whacky aspargus designs... still, I'd go for fuel lines soon. I still use small aspargusing in my upper stages. I don't asparagus my lower stages anymore though. the top priorities for me: docking ports Science parts fuel lines nukes turbojets

The cost of the command pod, like a fuel tank, includes the fuel contained therein. When you see the recovery screen, it displays the fuel separate. You got 588 for the pod, and 12 for the monoprop. 588+12 = 600

But in general - the less frequently a window comes, the "wider" that window is. Moho windows come often, but they are "smaller" and the % extra dV you need for being a day late is more than the extra % dv you need for say... going to Jool

Well... not so fast. Once you get out of Kerbin's SOI, orbital rendevous starts to become very attractive (although I am impressed by that small duna design that did without it). This means having a tug or mothership with docking ports... these can be reused. I think that now you've still got to use a standard design - well a set of standard designs - modular craft. Once you unlock docking ports, you want to start designing ships that can perform multiple tasks. Using LV-Ns? design a transfer stage so it can work as a re-usable tug. If you can get it to orbit, try and think of a way to re-use it. Think "what do I already have up there that I could use on this mission", and "if I leave this up there, can I use it for anything else, or is it just going to be junk?" I had previously made a SSTO that could haul 100 tons to orbit... I could just use that, one size fits all (I can't imagine needing more than 100 tons for a payload in LKO, that can't be launched in two peices) - but I didn't like using it because it took so much of my time to get something to orbit - the SLS nasa parts were much quicker and simpler ways of getting my stuff to orbit. I'm currently using small SSTOs to launch small probes, using a 1 size fits all appraoch there. So, the way I see it, its a combination of customizing your ship so you don't go "overkill" ever time with thousands of m/s of spare dV - and modular design so you can get re-use out of stuff that you've already got in orbit (sure you could deorbit it near the KSC and get a near 100% refund, but to use it again, you've got to pay to hoist it back into orbit - mainly the sort of thing I re-use are LV-N modules with a small fuel tank, probe core, and docking port, which can rendevous and connect with a payload that has the needed fuel. No more payng to lift nearly 5 tons of LV-Ns into orbit anymore (for a pair of them).

There is still much optimization you can do - in that first screen shot (what I assume is) the Duna Lander is much more massive than any duna lander I have ever made. 6 Nukes is more than you need, but I can understand if you want to reduce burn times. That rover... I don't see why it needs all that fuel. It should pop chutes and maybe have enough fuel for a couple second retrorocket burst, but no more... Reducing the size of your lander and rover would llow you to reduce the size of your entire ship, saving a lot. As Twreed87 said: When I go to duna, I drop a science lab (hoping for biomes and a compatible save), and leave kerbals there a while. I've gotten so many plant flag on the mun contracts, I just have a guy there drop a flag then delete it - still in the process of hopping from biome to biom on the mun, I may later land a more "permenant" base there just for a kerbal to get out and plant flags for money - I like to thing of it as advertizing money. If you've been to duna already, you should already have all that extra stuff. If you haven't then you're completing more than just the flag contract, so you'll get more than just what you described

Currently in a lander docked with a fuel depot+ lab, orbiting the mun, I'm thinking I may switch him into the space station and give another crewmember a chance to see the mun up close.

Some need tweaking, for sure, Eve landings are not trivial, unless your program has already done them. It should only be trivial if it is something you've already done. Getting to duna initially gives a lot of prestige, doing it again and again... meh, and that makes sense. At some point, you can always develop a fully reusable SStLKO launcher - I've got one that will launch 100 tons. Add a few re-usable interplanetary tugs, and the cost of additional missions becomes substantially reduced.

Yes, they are pricey, I think its mainly the cost of decouplers. As many predicted, SRBs are more attrative due to their low cost now.

I would like eternal youth (assuming that is what people are really talking about, not the "survive being shot by a tanks main cannon, then nuked, then dropped in a vat of acid, and come out just fine like you were wolverine), but I doubt it can be done as a one time "cure", it would likely require constant upkeep to prevent cancer and rejuvenate damaged areas.

If it can get 100 tons to LKO, I'm sure it can get at least 50 tons to Munar orbit (particularly using an orbital tug, and not trying to move the whole SSTO+ payload) It took a lot of trial and error (lets call it refinement) to get it working though. I made a payload for it that was 2 orange tanks (actually, 1 orange, and enough FLT-800s to constitute a 2nd), a nuke, ions, RCS, chutes, a probe core, reaction wheel, and landing legs as a supply ship, since maneuvering the airplane part in orbit would be very inefficient.

The advance is not the full value of the contract, correct? But as others have suggested, the agency can continue you are just "fired" as its director when the reputation gets too bad. I assume spamming contracts for the advnaces, and then not completing them, will kill your rep. Didn't they say they'd have a difficulty slider anyway?

Learn Orbital Rendevous first. Getting to orbit from eve's surface is hard enough, getting there with over 1,000 m/s of dV left is an order of magntiue harder. Leave fuel for the return in orbit (even a small ion stage with a probe core, so it maneuvers to the pod, not vice versa, as the pod will likely be very low on resources once back in eve orbit) It can also help to make it more manageable to even get your craft to Eve. Launching a 12,000 m/s lander to LKO is difficult, it can help if you use the landers engines (but not its staging), and then refuel the lander in kerbin orbit, and attach the transfer stage. A single launch to eve and back is very difficult. Doing it without orbital rendevou at Eve is - in my opinion - insane.

Hmm, I woulda stuck some ions on there for those correction burns, but on the other hand.... While SSTO is cool, I really don't see the point - aside from the challenge (good job btw, I also try to make SSTOs with no clipping, I consider part clipping to be an exploit) when you can do 100% reusable multi stage craft. Considering the travel time of years, I really don't see the problem with waiting 30 minutes for an SSTO refueler to top up the craft before going to laythe, nor waiting 30 minutes to rendevous with a fuel cache left in orbit before descent to the laythe surface. So far I've only done no part clipping heavy lifter SSTOs that take a laythe mission payload to LKO, and the laythe mission payload consists of a transfer stage and a laythe 2 person SSTO lander. Everything can be brought back to kerbin and refueled... but... I never tried to land such a large craft on Laythe. My Lifter did have enough dV to do a free return flyby of the Mun after delivering a 100ton payload to LKO... I wonder if it could do it if it just carried 100 tons of fuel tanks and Kerbals (it might be hard to design a suitable payload that would fit in the payload area though)