KerikBalm

yes I figured that out, thanks for the replies directing me to the thrust transform problem, I didn't think that it would be linked to the model, but when I had time, I tried it that way, it worked... Mt Happy face, how familiar are you with KSPI? I now want to use their heat radiator models and animations, but I don't want to use the entire plugin.* I was thinking about starting a thread about how I can eploy the panels, but not retract them... but maybe PMs would be better? As mentioned earlier... I think a lot of the stuff in there is a bit too good. While I appreciate the complexity and the attention to physics, it is a bit overly complicated for a game, and I am content to work with generic resources like "liquid fuel" (I'm thinking of renaming Xenon gas to inert gas or reaction mass)

"dont transmit any science that has a percentage less than %100" "transmitting anything but crew/eva reports is almost always a bad idea" I disagree with the above, they need to add the caveat for non-repeatable science. 1 surface sample does not max out the possible science. You can take 3 or so samples and still get science (with large decreases each time). Likewise, seismic readings to not max out after 1 return. The bar will show if it is maxed out after 1 retreival (as in EVA reports, crew reports, temperature readings). I always (assuming I have spare power/power generation capabilities) take a surface sample, transmit it, and then take another sample. This gets you a bit more science than just returning it (I'm pretty sure the sum of the transmitted+ return is greater than the return alone). For every repeatable science experiment, I transmit it, then run it again and store the data. That gets you more science per flight, you don't need to worry about transmitting if your next landing hop is looking bad (ie you can focus on avoiding an impact, rather than minimizing your science losses from impacting) and your next ship that will use tech unlocked by the science can be launched sooner (a hohman transfer from minmus takes what... 2 days?). If its 100% transmit value, transmit it, and you're done If its repeatable, transmit it, then repeat and physically return the data. If its non repeatable, return it.

Not true, my first mun and minmus missiones were kerbal'd, but lacked proper science instruments. So I sent probes after those science parts were unlocked. There was no incentive to make them kerbal'd, as I returned the entire probe. Transmitting with no loss removes the incentive to have a return vehicle, but it is irrelevant to whether or not that return vehicle is manned. In fact, I think its a**-backwards... crew reports and EVA reports are transmitted for full science value. You'd get more science for less rocket, by sending kerbals to a location, and leaving them there, while a small probe takes the science back to kerbin.... IRL, you'd get much more science from a long term data collection station, than from bringing back a thermometer... It would be much more interesting to observe temperature variations from day/night, at perapsis vs apoapsis/as the orbital position varies, etc. Longer seizemic readings will map the internal composition with more resolution/accuraccy, etc. Seasonal pressure readings from duna would be much better than returning a barometer... Meanwhile, what good is a crew report or EVA report? what did Neil armstrong tell us that we couldn't have learned from a robot with a camera or robotic arm? A robot with a spectrophotometer, and a camera that can see in uv and IR, would be much more interesting. Goo experiments and surface samples are really the only experiments that seem to make sense to me that would require returning to Kerbin for full science data. Also, I want a robotic scoop so my probes can take surface samples! When an economy is implemented, you could earn prestige, or something like that from sending living kerbals, and that could increase your funding, and that would be your incentive.

or perhaps have it rotate your spacecraft to keep its orientation the same relative to prograde/ the surface of a celestial body

VASIMR engines have been constructed, and one is planned to be fitted as a station keeping engine on the ISS in 2015. NERVA engines were built and operated at full thrust (in test rigs on earth) back in 1966. Meanwhile, that solar sail barely produces any delta-V change. You can't test solar sails on earth the way you an test a much higher thrust engine. In theory, any reflective surface will function as a solar sail... I still don't see them producing any real delta-V any time soon, or being practical in KSP. If they could operate while at 10000x time warp, then, sure, why not (but if they could, then they should do the same with ion engines, and reduce ion engine thrust dramatically) I'm also not a fan of the duna/eve/jool ICE engines previously suggested. I'd rather do just a generic electric ducted fan/propellor, that would be useful for exploring the planet, but not signficantly contributing to attaining orbit.

Its placing a rocket directly underneath another rocket. To decouple the "lower stage" you light the rocket on the stage above it. It doesn't take too long to overheat the part of the lower stage that is attached to the rocket nozzle above it. Ie, since you can't decouple parts, you use your rocket engine exhaust to destroy the parts linking your stages.

I think you mean ideal missions to Europa... Titan has lakes of Methane and other hydrocarbons, not water (they hypothesize that there might be a subsurface liquid water/ammonia mixture... but I haven't heard of any ideas to go down and have a look, unlike Europa) Enceladus would also be interesting to look at

You can rescue them by sending an empty 2 man lander can, controlled by a probe core or another capsule, or a 3 man capsule controlled by only 1 man. There is also the "hitchhiking" module that has space for for, or the science lab that has space for 2. So yes it can be done, and if you are in career mode, then you simply need to unlock those parts. Get more science before your brave Kerbals run out of life support! (I'm kidding, they wont, at least not in this version of the game)

Maybe a more interesting question is what is the earliest in game time that you can max out the tech tree? The journey to the mun is much shorter, and given the lack of an economy at the moment, you can spam launch all the ships needed. A 20 minute orbit around LKO and some launchpad picnics would boost their science output considerably

Well, so far the only idea I'd object to, is the solar sail. #1) no complete designs for solar sails have been made, to be anywhere near practial, they'd have to be made of an extremely thing/lightweight material, yet not transparent. Aluminum foil is far to heavy for instance (not to mention it would lack the durability to be used in a sail), we simply don't have the materials technology to make one. Nuclear jet engines have been made VASIMR engines have been made, and actually used on spacecraft (along with a variety of electric propulsion methods) NERVA engines have been made (ie, the real life equivalent to the LV-N) and tested, although not actually flown in space - and liquid oxygen "afterburning" nuclear thermal engines have been designed, the technology was developed enough for them to have made them in the 70s if they wanted to (or rather, if the funding and regulatory agencies wanted to) Real designs, reactions, etc, have been developed with "in situ resource utilization" in mind. If you had an atmosphere that was 20% oxygen, it would be real simple to make liquid oxygen on site, likewise, it would be real simple to fill a rocket fuel tank (but not oxidizer tank) on Titan. Mars would be harder, but still feasible. Solar sails... still beyond our technical capabilities. 2) Solar sails would have ridiculously low acceleration.... even with 100x physics warp... you'd never get anywhere, unless they were made unrealistically powerful. They've already had to make ion engines unrealistically powerful - to produce 0.5 kN of thrust at 4200 ISP, you'd need about 10 megawatts - assuming 100% efficiency when such thrusters actually operate at 60-80%, a solar panel of the size of a gigantor would produce around 10 kilowatts (assuming the light intensity is similar to that on Earth, but even with much brighter light it wouldn't work out, as the output would not scale linearly) Ion drives in game are about 1000 times more powerful than they should be... you should need a nuclear reactor (not just a RTG) on the craft to supply enough power to operate a couple of them. A solar sail just wouldn't work unless it was unrealistic to even more orders of magnitude. I also wonder if the science "currency" isn't heading in the completely wrong direction. Its not like taking a surface sample of the Moon would help us design nuclear rockets. But the more scientific output a program has, the more funding its likely to get. Thus, if you do more science, you can afford more expensive rockets (since they will eventually have an economy where part cost matters). Or you spend the money to expand research facilities. Then you have various achievements or contract completions to speed certain research topics. "Necessity is the mother of Invention" maybe a flight that hints at the use for a part will boost your research toward that part ie you get pressure/atmospheric analysis from duna, +x to research of drogue chutes/airbags you get pressure/atmospheric analysis from EVE, +x to research of aerospike engines/ballons/nuclear/electric air breathing propulsion systems. Laythe data gets you +x to research of rapiers... Minmus/moon probe landings give you + research to various landing legs, etc etc....

So... with 0.23, I set myself on a goal of sending a mission to Moho at the first transfer window on day 6. I scienced as fast as I could in the Kerbin system... and was able to unlock the parts needed to make an effective ship to get there... I then pretty much finished up the tech tree on the mun and minmus, and my ship is still not even close to Moho. So then the next transfer windows... (jool, Duna, Eeloo)... theres a lot of science to gain, and nothing to "spend" it on. Keeping with realism, I don't think we should add any technology that has not actually been invented (even if it was never put to use, like NERVA rockets -yes, antimatter engines-no) So post your ideas for even higher tier'd parts please. Here are mine: * LANTR nuclear engines (LOX-Augmented Nuclear Thermal Rocket) - a dual mode nuclear thermal rocket - the primary mode would work just like the current LV-N rocket, high ISP, low thrust, drains only liquid fuel? (add liquid fuel only rocket fuel tanks?), the secondary mode increases thrust greatly, but offers less vacuum ISP and a bit higher atmospheric ISP (ie, an afterburner on a nuclear thermal rocket), a bit heavier, but may eliminate the need for additional booster engines in some applications * Robotics - let an unmanned probe take surface samples, maybe even fix wheels/landing legs, and plant flags too. * Large Aerospikes (would give better performance than a quad coupler + 4 aerospikes, or at least would give equal performance, but allow for reduced part count) * Airbags/"hard landing techniques" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags For when shock absorbing landings struts just don't give you enough lithobraking power. * Electric propellors/ducted fans? -Could work on Duna/Eve/Jool? * Nuclear thermal jet engines? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto Could work on Duna/Eve/Jool? * VASIMR rockets - two modes, a low ISP/high thrust and low thrust/High ISP mode * Fission reactors (basically, a radioisotope generator on steroids, hugh power production for VASIMR engines, Ions, etc * High def cameras - let a robotic probe give you data that counts as an EV report (but it can't max it out, like most data transmissions?) * Balloons? float to the top of an atmosphere before launching? * Resource extraction capabilities? send a refrigeration unit to Laythe, get liquid oxygen/oxidizer? Add a moon like titan with methane lakes, and have that be a source of liquid fuel, etc.... (or just incoporate the kethane mod?) I would be very very temped to add some sort of fusion power research, that would only be accessible after you've collected almost all the science possible from the Kerbin system.

Generally? Is there any case where you can't? The total delta V required is less, the TWR is less... the skill required to land is less (flatter landing sites, much less losses to "gravty drag" means you can take your time on the landing, instead trying to optimie with a full burn moments before it is too late). I initially ditched my non lander stages too... then I realized with the low gravity and flatness. I could verically land some pretty tall rockets on minmus, just sitting on the nozzle, and the gyros were enough to keep them upright... Sounds good... its generally better to have more fuel than you need, than to need more fuel than you have. My first duna missions... I took way too much fuel.. but I was still proud to have pulled it off, I've got quite a bit of ful orbiting Duna now...

"it becomes more efficient than any other engine at around 6000 meters." - Well, I don't realy agree. Its ISP is higher than anything else aside from ions and jet engines at around 2000 meter. It never exceeds that of ions. Jet engines still work much better at 6000 meters. I don't think you were comparing to those, but the ones you would be comparing it to (the other rockets) have lower ISP at 2000 meters. But efficiency is not neccessarily ISP. It depends on what you are trying to move. A nuke engine is not more efficient than any other engine at putting a small stayputnick probe into orbit, for example. Benno is right... I typed out a reply, and then realized he had already made the point mor succintly So I've deleted a large part of my response In the most extrema case... take a small probe core (Probodobodyne OKTO2), add an Oscar-B Fuel Tank, and then an LV-N or a Rockomax 48-7S... the 48-7S is going to get more delta V. Now make the stages equal weight, ie give the 48-7S stage an FL-400 tank instead of an Oscar-B fuel tank (it will actually still be a bit lighter). Even if you do this with a mk1 command pod and an FL-400 tank instead of an Oscar B for the LV-N, and a LV 909 instead of a 48-7S - the light engine gets to take another FL-400 tank to be "equal weight", and it will get more delta-V - sure, it uses more than 2x as much fuel to thrust a given amount, but in this case it will carry 2x the fuel, and its empty weight will be much less. Less mass to push offsets less ISP in many cases.

No... but that is the same thrust transform that the stock engines use... Or is thrust transform somehow linked to the model? The interstellar "stock" thrust transform was called "TT"

I'm trying to make a high performance engine within "reasonable" bounds. Basically, a 30 kN plasma thruster with an ISP of 7000 seconds, that consumes 1 gigajoule per second (the reactor part that supplies this is quiete heavy...) and also consumes massless "coolant" I made something similar back in 0.18, and I just duplicated stock parts: the 3d model of the engine was of an ion drive, and the radiators that regenerate coolant were simply the XL solar panels that didn't rotate. Now I've decided to spice it up a bit, and downloaded the interstellar mod, (not to actually use that mod, but to use the 3d models in parts that work as I specify. The engine (from the MPD folder for those familiar with the interstellar mod) lights up, consumes resources, and shows that thrust is being produced... but the ship doesn't move. (btw the engine performance is weaker than that found in the Interstellar mod, less thrust, less ISP, more weight) It seems to me this is a similar scenario to when one has a part attached directly under an engine, but I'm using the same stack attach points and such as in the mod. Here's the relevant code: PART { name = smallerMPD module = Part author = Fractal mesh = model.mu scale = 1 rescaleFactor = 1.0 node_stack_top = 0.0, 1.1615562, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.1832844, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 fx_exhaustFlame_blue = 0.0, -0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, running fx_exhaustLight_blue = 0.0, -0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, running fx_exhaustSparks_flameout = 0.0, -0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, flameout TechRequired = ionPropulsion entryCost = 14000 cost = 5700 category = Propulsion subcategory = 0 title = Plasma Thruster manufacturer = Ionic Protonic Electronics description = A larger and more efficient cousin of the ion engine, it is best not to attempt to power this engine with witchcraft and instead opt for a very large electric generator. attachRules = 1,0,1,1,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.75 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 breakingForce = 200 breakingTorque = 200 maxTemp = 3600 stagingIcon = LIQUID_ENGINE MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = False ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 30 heatProduction = 300 PROPELLANT { name = MegaJoules ratio = 23 } PROPELLANT { name = Coolant ratio = 2.4 } PROPELLANT { name = XenonGas ratio = 0.1 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 7000 } } MODULE { name = FXModuleAnimateThrottle animationName = e9 dependOnEngineState = True responseSpeed = 0.5 } RESOURCE { name = Coolant amount = 100 maxAmount = 100 } RESOURCE { name = MegaJoules amount = 20 maxAmount = 20 } }

I wonder if KSP is the game for this guy.... Maybe I'm going to be too harsh and some of this is due to language problems (asssuming English is not his first language) He complains "Im also at a loss as to how to get science in the career mode without taking months of real time", then when someone starts to explain, he says "I've played career mode plenty but it seems you misunderstood my question. In the new limited science model where u can reuse modules without the science pod." - uhhh, sentence fragment much? but mainly, this statements seem to jump out at me: "im totally looking for star trek ships" - star trek ships are incredibly unrealistic, and this mod you've installed is definitely going OPd with this warp drive KSP is a realistic spaceflight simulator. "I can't learn to use KSP components without knowing how they work." You're really saying you cant learn to use Interstellar mod components... they aren't KSP stock components. "I added interstellar mostly for the possibilities. Such as mining and such" Maybe you should consider the Kethane mod instead. "after my failed attempt to manually o to another planet. ( orbited the sun for ages waiting for a chance to transfer).I actually never thought of just going to minimus first." Maybe you should learn how to do an interplanetary mission in stock KSP before trying to get there with a ship made of parts that you don't know what they do. It should have been pretty obvious to go to minmus to collect science before going to say... duna or wherever you were going. It sounds like you don't think things through much, and then you're frustrated when they fail. KSP requires forethought.

Simple math would say that your weight is 70% more on eve, due to the higher gravity, and a 1.3:1 ratio on kerbin wouldn't be sufficient for liftoff on EVE. Your thrust would be the same, but your weight would be 1.7x and 1.3/1.7 <1, not enough for a vertical ascent, and since you're at the top of the atmosphere, you can't use wings to help.I suppose it would still be possible.... get going really fast in the upper atmosphere, but in this case you'd be thrusting nearly horizontally. Of course, the gravity will be a little bit less at the top of the atmosphere than at the surface... I'd say take your 1.3:1 TWR and multiply it by 1.6 to get 2.08 - although I haven't done any eve ascent yet, I'm just doing simple reasoning here.

So simple answer, your craft is way too heavy, with not enough chutes, and no drogue chute to slow you down so the main chutes don't rip the craft apart during landing. The spacecraft design is the main problem

No, I use reaction wheels, but IRL, a reaction wheel could only do so much.... although now that I think about it, you could time the RCS thrusting so that the delta-V from monoprop is not wasted

One technique I've been using with my landers, but I haven't see discussed here, is what I'm calling the "hammerthrow" - you know, the olympics event, similar to the dicuss throw, or the shotput, a person with a relatively heavy weight spins, gaining momentum, and releasesthe "hammer"/"shotput" "/discus at the appropriate time (there's not so much rotation with the shotput, but... whatever) Well, I do the same thing with my lander and interplanetary stages.... I get the craft spinning really really fast, and decople at the right moment... my lander gets a lower perapsis, my interplanetary stage gets a higher perapsis, it saves a little delta-V.... it sort of exploits the unrealistic reaction wheels (you can only spin them so fast before you can't spin them any faster and break them, so you'd need to use RCS while the reaction wheel decelerates to "reset" it). On my Duna mission yesterday, I had a ~16 km perapsis on my 2nd aerobreaking go-around, and had the desired apoapsis, and wanted to raise the interplanetary stage's perapsis (to take it out of the atmosphere), and lower the lander's (to put it deeper in), so I spun up the craft, and released the lander... the lander was flung off and enfed up with a ~7.5 km perapsis, I forgot what my IP's perapsis was changed to, but it was higher, and I burned to raise it to 43km. The lander's trajectory was acceptable for its landing site (It went a little farther than I wanted, but oh well), and no additional burn was needed. So far, I haven't read about anyone else doing this... is it just me? have other people had the idea, but the delta-V savings are too small to be relevant? is it too cheezy to "exploit" the reaction wheels in this way?

An approach that works on Eve, or even Kerbin, will not neccessarily work on Duna. You can basically come in perpendicular to the surface of Kerbin for a safe landing (given current game mechanics allow you to enter as steep as you want without burning up) - all it requires is deployment of chutes at the right time (set the full- deployment altitude low, so you don't rip your craft apart - give it more time to decelerate to terminal velocity). With Duna, you need to come in shallow, if you come in steep, you'll cut right through the atmosphere as if it wasn't even there (FYI, the real life Mars has an atmosphere 1/20th that of Duna's and ~25% higher gravity, hence the airbags and sky cranes and such). For your capture set your perapsis at about 13 km, I did another flight to duna last night, 13 km perapsis on the first go around, and then a 17km perapsis the second time, then ejected the lander, raised perapsis to 43km, and lowered the lander's perapsis to 7 km. You want to be coming in relatively slow (ie orbital velocity, not some high speed flyby trajectory launched outside a transfer window that relies on heavy aerobraking for capture), and shallow - you should still have a perapsis visible when you enter the atmosphere (your trajectory shouldn't intersect the surface prior to entering the atmosphere). My lander used 6 radial parachutes, and 2 drogue chutes (carrying basically 2 fl-800 tanks worth of fuel, and a 2 person lander cabin, 2 aerospikes, and a manned rover). The drogue chutes will semi deploy at 10km, I set them for a full deploy at 5km (beware opening shock - I used them because their fully deployed drag is smaller than any other chute), then I staged my remaining 6 to fully deploy at 2.5 2, and 1.5 km. I aimed for a low spot, atmospheric pressure at the landing site was .107 atmospheres, so if I had aimed better, I could have slowed the craft even more (its .2 at the lowest spots I believe). 6 chutes was a bit overkill, and the landing was survivable with no engine thrusting - the landing legs were all damaged, but I was able to repair them and right the craft for 0 fuel usage, I think I came in at 14 m/s? 16? eliminating some chutes might be better - spending 20 extra delta v for a soft touch down may be regained by reduced weight during the ascent (not to mention reduced weight getting the lander to Duna, but the chutes are pretty light, so I'm not sure, and I leave the lander in orbit - after refueling it - to be reused by the next craft coming to duna). So... shallow trajectories, low flat landing spot, staggered , high altitude full deployments - the first deployment is the most important, as that will be the most G load, so that chute/pair of chutes should be "well strutted", I again recommend drogues, as they slow you the most partially deployed, and generate the least force when fully deployed

I recently did my first stock mission to Duna (previous times, I was using self-modded parts to "simulate" a spacecraft with a 1 GW reactor -> 30 kn 7,000 ISP engines for interplanetary travel, 240 kn thermal engine with an 875 ISP, turbines that worked without oxygen - I did not wait for launch windows, and used extreme amounts of delta V, and very very deep aerobraking). I did it in sandbox (my career mod I'm sciencing as fast as I can at the Mun and Minmus for a Moho launch at day 6, since that is the first interplanetary launch window.) I then did it again slightly differently. I *hope* you are waiting for the launch window (first one is about days 57-62 with 59 being the optimal) - that helps a lot. Then go into your config file, and set your conics mode from 3 to 0. This helps a lot! Once you get your intercept, focus on duna, your trajectory (within duna's SOI) wil display there, and you can actually look at it well. Use RCS (or in my case, I used Ion engines) to set up your orbit to be prograde and equatorial, if you're coming in on a hohman trasfer from Kerbin, you'll want to set your perapsis at 12,000 to 12,000 - Remember not to time warp across SOI changes (ie during kerbin escape, and when entering Duna's SOI), otherwise you may find this changing significantly, of course, once you enter Duna's SOI, make sure to set it to 12,000-12,500 again, this allows you to spend very little fuel to circularize your orbit in a stable orbit with an apopsis between 50-100 km. One thing you can do, is avoid a "direct ascent" from Duna. I've gotten better at orbital rendevous (I don't use mech jeb, or any addons like that), there is no sense in taking the fuel you need to get from Duna's orbit to Kerbin, all the way down to Duna, and then back up again. Leave that fuel in orbit around duna, and simply link up with it again after getting back into duna orbit. What I did twice last night was not optimal - I had way more fuel than I needed (using 2x nuclear engines), and I took 2 command pods (the 3 person capsule, and then a 2 person lander) - extra weight, I could have eliminated the 3 person pod and put on a light probe core. You could easily just leave a fuel tank with a docking port - no need to make it a fully functioning ship like I did (with its own pod, engines, RCS, etc), or maybe a fuel tank with a small probe core and some fixed solar panels, and docking port. My 1st lander used 2x flt-400 tanks, and that flat rockomax tank (I think it holds the same amount as an FL-800?), and 3 aerospike engines with the two outer under the fl-400 tanks, feeding into the center (making it a 2 stage asparagus design). The aerospikes were not chosen because the atmosphere was any concern, but because they are short, they have a much better thrust to weight than the nuclear engines (which were left in orbit), and they have a good ISP (the highest non nuclear ISP is 390, which they have and they have the higher TWR of all the 390 ISP engines) I actually came in an aerobraked retrograde, and forgot to put separators, so I ended up taking the whole thing into orbit again as an SSTO - a retrograde orbit, because thats how my interplanetary stage was orbiting. It made it into orbit, despite carrying as deadweight 2x aerospikes (only the 3rd was going for the last part due to the fuel lines). So the 2nd time, I used only 2 aerospikes, and instead of the central aerospike, I put a little rover underneath for the kerbonauts to use (clearance was sufficient). It landed at a higher altitude (only used about 1 second of burn prior to touchdown), got into a prograde orbit without issue, linked with the interplanetary stage (nukes and ions), and since I had brought way more fuel than I needed, I refueled it, and left it in orbit, transfered the crew to my interplanetary stage, and waited for the return window. Now for all future launches, I won't bring a lander, I'll just bring fuel for my SSTO lander orbiting duna, and whatever payload I want to soft land. The 2nd time, I also launched my interplanetary stage, and lander stage seperately, and did a rendevous in kerbin orbit - no fuel savings there (its actually a bit of a waste), but the rocket launches were much more manageable than the very complex and high part count behemoth I launched the first time. Using this method, I need to scale down my launchers (7 large orange tanks, asparagus staged), as I basically brought over fullly fueled orange tank's worth of fuel all the way to duna - ie, my central orange tank - the orbital insertion stage had plenty of fuel left for both the lander and the interplanetary nuclear/ion "tug", so I shut off their main engines, and took them to duna too, I also left them there (like I've done with many fuel tanks around the mun and minmus), I'm now in the habit of over-building my rockets, and when its time to head back to Kerbin, I guess how much fuel I need to get back (ussually with a good margin, and my main stage normally has ions, so I can ussully get it home if I run out, though it may take a while), and leave the rest in orbit with a small docking port for future use.

I think for EVE, given both its atmosphere, which is very bad for the nuke, and its high gravity, which is again very bad for the nuke (its TWR is terrible), aerospikes are pretty much the only engine you'd want to use. I also figure that a mk1 command pod with an FL200 and an lv909 gets more dv than the same with a nuke (due to the nuke's weight). For upper stages of equal weight, the nuke doesn't seem to get more dv until you're feeding the lv909 with an fl800 tank. Realistically, all you want your craft to do is get to orbit around EVE. The upper stage, the one operating at low atmospheric pressure, should be so light, that I doubt its worth carrying a nuke up from the surface, because the nuke won't do much better for your stage that should just get a command pod/mk 1 lander can into orbit. Eve is so hard to get to and back from, that if you are trying the "direct ascent" approach, rather than the "oribital rendevous", you're a masochist. Heck.... you can even put on 2 RCS thrusters on the lander can, jettison everything and just push the lander can alone with RCS (you can get some significant dv from just 0.01 weight of RCS thrusters), and then bail out and jet pack your way into a stable orbit. Then you rendevous with your interplanetary stage that you left up there in orbit. Do not bring the interplanetary stage down to Eve's surface, its a huge waste.

You realize you get those 600 m/s back when you eject from the mun's orbit. When you fight gravity, that delta-V is *LOST* This is most obvious if you sit there, hovering over the mun, your tank could have 2km/s in it, but hover long enough, and you end up with *nothing*. fight gravity for half that time, and you've lost 1km/s When you thrust perpendicular to gravity, that delta V is stored, and eventually counts towards your escape velocity when you do your burn. *assuming you time your ejection burn right* No you aren't there is a big difference between thrusting opposite gravity, and thrusting perpendicular to it, as I mentioned above. Of course the lower gravity is, the less it matters. On Kerbin, you are losing nearly 10 m/s every second you thrust in opposition to gravity.... on Gilly, well, who cares?

I know KSPs aerodynamics models is still a WIP... and its also probably the least realistic part of KSP. So, question #1: I've heard that drag is proportional to mass - or rather mass is used as a stand in for its aerodynamic cross section - thus any part witha drag coeeficient of 0.2 will have the same terminal velocity.... But is the mass of fuel in a tank included? Ie does a full tank have the same terminal velocity of an empty tank. If the mass of the fuel is added to the tank before the drag is calculated, I guess it would be like that... but if the weight of fuel does not affect this (as it shouldn't... really), then fuel optimal ascents would generally be done at much higher velocities, no? Question #2: If drag is proportional to the part's mass, does it work the same way with lift? I saw a youtube video on making SSTs (ram air intake spamming, bassically), they recommended using swept wings because the lift rating/mass was higher than delta wings... but when I look at the stats (given that I fly and my dad is an aeronautical engineer), I look at the L/D, and that would imply that delta wings are best (at least within the atmosphere, I suppose there is a point where lighter wings are preferable for maunevers in space, even if they are aerodynamically less efficient - and getting to orbit uses ore fuel). I've also heard that lift increases linearly with velocity, not ^2 ... does it work like this with drag as well? If it was changed to exponential... would this allow control surfaces to work at higher altitudes (assuming you're going faster), or are they modeled in some funky way -perhaps like reaction wheel torque?