Pecan

:-) I have a computer so I can play KSP! It can also do maths ... The trick is you need to understand the maths (enough) to program the computer to do the grunt-work (as you know well).

But they ARE made of cake: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/66404-FanWork-Fridays-A-Sweet-Occasion (or you can make cake out of them, whichever you prefer).

Not me. I'm testing, tweaking and improving a set of launch vehicles which means 20 - 30 launches per day real time. MechJeb flies the same path meaning I can (read a book and) verify the effect of the changes without worrying about my flying being inconsistent. [Granted, a particular gravity turn might not suit all payload mass/TWR launches, but if that's what I'm optimising then at least I know MJ will fly what I tell it to]. Agreed that you're 'better' if you can do it yourself but like the thread on doing all the maths by hand; there's no point in doing the grind as long as you know how it works. But then I'm new here too. And wouldn't trust a pilot/plane that didn't trust the autopilot in real life.

For the simplest, first, step: TWR in lessons on ratios or even simple fractions. This rocket weighs (masses, and the difference between weight and mass) so much and the engines give so much thrust - will it go up, fall over or just sit there?

I don't do maths, I have a computer.

In order for a rocket to 'work' to the extent of getting into orbit it needs to go far enough, fast enough, in the right direction. In reverse order - 1. The right direction is how you fly your ascent path and reading about things like 'gravity turn' and trying some variations is far better than going straight up then turning left/right. 2. Going fast enough means adding engines until your TWR (Thrust to Weight (mass in Kerbin's gravity) Ratio) is higher than 1. Below 1 gravity wins. At exactly 1 your rocket can 'hover' but not accelerate against gravity. Most people recommend a launch TWR of 1.6 - 1.7 because that lets the rocket accelerate through the high-gravity, thick atmosphere reasonably quickly. In the game as it is you'll have to do the book-keeping of your mass and your engines' thrust to work this out. Download Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER) from the spaceport even if it's just to show you this! 3. The third requirement is going far enough (deltaV) which means adding fuel. As you add fuel your mass increases so your TWR drops so you might need to add more engines, which need more fuel, etc. etc. .... deltaV is measured in m/s of acceleration and is something else you'll either have to keep recalculating or use KER for. You need 4,500+m/s deltaV to get into orbit from Kerbin's surface (apparently; I need rather more ^^). So; if you can work out which way to go, have engines that are powerful enough to go that way and enough fuel to get there your rockets will work. [This is the order I learnt in and it's only once I had all three that I started to think I was designing rockets, rather than just making it up as I went along.]

[still haven't set-up an account anywhere I can post pics :-( ] One thing to remember about seats is that they don't count as 'crewed positions' when you launch, so you need to include a pod for your Kerbal to be in at the start. One way to do that is to make it the first stage of your launch vehicle, eva the Kerbal, have him 'board' the seat and then jettison the pod on the pad, even before you start the engines. [i have a set of Jeb riding all the way to the mun in a seat on top of a rocket]

First mun lander fell over on a steep incline. Discovering the pod's reaction wheels had enough torque to get it upright again was a great relief.

I'm trying to develop modularly so I have transfer vehicles that are not designed to land anywhere, just ferry crew, fuel and new modules between stations. Similarly each planet/moon gets its own landers as I reach it. A space station in each place is a 'truck stop' for the transfer vehicles to refuel between launches/descents.

Temstar's step 2 multiplies the expected total mass (given that ony 15% of it will be the payload) by the required TWR and '9.81'. You can see how you would adjust for different strengths of gravity. You wouldn't need such a high TWR for launching from most other places but changing for different deltaV requirements is a bit harder anyway since the '15%' payload ratio wouldn't apply, so the total mass would be wrong. Incidentally, my own testing and designs, using Temstar's and Blizzy's work as a starting point, generally result in payload ratios around 17%, rather than 15%, although Temstar did include RCS in his launch vehicles, which I don't. (v 0.22, tweakables in 0.23 improve things even more but it's too laggy for me to test with much).

Since it uses 4-symmetry it's onion staging though, isn't it. What does it perform like using (asparagus) 2-symmetry?

A lot depends on your cultural references/language; I can't imagine an English 'Jebediah' aged less than 100 ^^

While "no need" is subjective, I'm messing around with minimalist launchers at the moment and reduced a simple 1t payload/100km orbit launcher from some 7.9t - 12.66% payload ratio - to 6.52t - 15.34% - using optimal asparagus staging - which for such a small vehicle includes 2 slack-tank stages because more engines aren't worth their weight. Almost any staging will lift far more than just a capsule, asparagus just does it better. 'Tuning' works better for larger craft because you have more options (there's only really 2 engines to choose from for something this small). Almost certainly more effort than anyone would want to save less than 1.5t but I'm testing my understand, and the effect, of all the design tips I found here. So thanks to everyone who is posting them :-)

Hoorah! I'm messing about with minimalist designs. LV-0-75 (so named because it puts 0 payload into a 75km orbit) is 1.72t on the pad, with 4.9 oxidiser, of which 1.2 is left after circularisation. Pics to follow when I get an account somewhere I can post them ...

Use Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER) or MechJeb so you can see your TWR and total deltaV in the VAB. 1. Build your payload. 2. Put any fuel tank and your favourite engine under it. 3. Replace the fuel tank with a larger or smaller one until the TWR for this, final, stage is 1.4 or so - by the time it's used you won't need the 'usual' ratio of 2ish. 4. Add an asparagus stage. 5. Replace the two fuel tanks on this until the TWR is 1.6+ (should reach over 2 by the time it's jettisoned). 6. Repeat 4 and 5 until the total deltaV is sufficient to reach and circularise orbit (or whatever you're intending to do). 7. Launch. 8. Add struts if it falls over instead of flying. 9. More struts (and possibly control surfaces, but I've never needed or wanted them).

People just don't read the OP, do they? Everyone trying to help but ignoring the 'unlikely' requirement. If it becomes too difficult to avoid success feel free to call on my spaceplane piloting skills - I have a 100% failure rate so far.

Kerbal Engineer Redux and MechJeb will both tell you the fuel and other stats for each stage. AFAIK neither will allow you to separate stages from the map view but if you use MechJeb you can set it to 'autostage' so it automatically changes to the next stage when the current one is out of fuel.

I am new(ish) to KSP and lazy, so I let MechJeb do my rendezvous for me. That dictates what separation phasing orbits will be established at and, therefore, whether they will be needed at all. At Kerbin, for instance, it wants to create a phasing orbit 100km above/below my space-station. Placing the station at 250km means there is sufficient room below it that MechJab can go directly from 100km launch-orbit to rendezvous, including a margin for deformed orbits and to keep the numbers round ^^. By extension, any required outer phasing/rendevous orbit would be at 400km and my 'traffic control' rules make 550km for parking orbits. At the Mun MechJeb wants a 30km separation and launch-orbit would be 10km so traffic control says: inner phasing/rendezvous 10km, station 45km, outer phasing/rendezvous 80km, parking 115km. Incidentally; I tend to design landers to go only from low-orbit (10km for mun) to the surface and back. Changing and circularising orbit at that height, plane-changing and recovery (rendezvous, docking and returning) are all left to a general-purpose spacestation tender which gets all the fun jobs.

I've just started using .23 as I've only just found settings low enough to make it usable :-( First of all, I should say that my machine doesn't meet the system requirements so Squad is covered. Specifically my graphics card is only an nVidia 8300 with 256Mb RAM. That said, the .18 demo version (that I tried to see if KSP would work at all) and the proper .22 (when I found it did) work much more smoothly than .23. In this latest update, for instance, with graphics set low, eg; quarter-res, launching a simple 4-part rocket it takes 5 seconds leaning on the shift key to throttle-up to 100%! Even then the met tells me KSP is taking 3 seconds to calculate every single second. You can imagine what it's like with a more complex vehicle ^^. Don't use science, haven't used tweakables, mostly use .22 for performance. Not a lot of reason to use .23 at all, and I'm disappointed - but buying a new graphics card soon, I hope.

I find it a pain with small ships and ports as well - from 100m it's not easy to click on a small port. My solution comes from switching to the target ship to turn it so the port faces the incoming one ... 1) get incoming ship within docking distance, 2) 'control from here' on its port, 3) switch to target ship and turn it's port so it's facing AWAY from the incoming ship, 4) switch back to the incoming ship, zoom view out and rotate to see target ship, port will be right in front of you and easy to 'set as target', 5) switch to target ship again and turn the port towards the incoming ship to make docking easier, 6) incoming ship one more time and carry out the docking.

Toal laziness - I'm still new and letting MechJeb handle most of the flying for my Munar landings ... Time to bring a lander back up and re-dock for return to Kerbin, ascent put it in orbit going East from the surface. Command module was going West and had all the RCS fuel (to save weight on the lander) so I told it to rendevous with the orbiting lander. MechJeb's "solution" to matching planes was to come to a complete stop, burning all the fuel and losing so much altitude that the module simply drove straight into the Mun's surface. ^^ (That and on the next mission, delivering rovers, I attached them directly instead of with decouplers, separators or docking ports. All the way there before realising I had no way to detach them)

Probably a totally dumb newb question but then a) I am, and the only really stupid question is the one you don't ask. I have seen people talking about the display of flags and see the toggle for them in the tracking station but I don't see any 'flag' parts in the VAB/SPH and can't find any information about using/planting them. How do you access flags?

Thanks all - 'no' saves hours of pointless trying. I'd better get practicising EVA then :-)

Things are going well so far. I have made a light orbiter vehicle, LKO space-station and a drone tanker to look after it. What I can't do though is transger crew between ships without using EVA. Some VIPs are waiting to visit the station and I can't ask them to do anything that dangerous! So the question is - can you transfer crew between docked ships in version 22 without using EVA and, if so, how?