Pecan

You are replying to a post which is almost a year old. For anyone failing to reach the 'milestone' of making a successful SSTO in KSP, try the very first rocket in my tutorial :- A Stayputnik probe-core, FL-T200 fuel tank and 48-7S engine. No action groups, fly a 'standard' beginner's ascent and gravity turn.

Hello and welcome - can't have enough modders :-) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forums/30-Plugin-Development-Help-and-Support will probably be most useful to you, along with its parent sub-forum

FIFY ;-0 KSP still has more appeal to simulator fans than pure gamers at the moment, which is why Squad keep adding to career mode.

It is! It's own proud boast is "Totally useless, totally fun". As you also say, it adds so much to the feel of the game that it's pretty essential to me (makes it to No.8 on my list). While FAR and DRE are good realism mods I think RT just solves a problem it introduces itself, LS mods too mainly. For probes I think SCANSat adds depth more without forcing complexity and the resizable fairings of Procedural Fairings are much more useful than the fixed KW ones (although I think FAR and PF are not playing nicely together yet in KSP 0.25). MJ and NRAP are important to me but wouldn't be to most people, especially when they're starting. Conversely a docking-alignment mod - the one I list or Navyfish's original - NavUtils for runway landings and 'the IVA suite' add loads more really useful and important instruments, especially bringing flight from the cockpit (or probe control-room) to life. IVA's a bit like Chatterer to be honest; no-one needs it but it makes the game feel so much better. Finally in my list AGX and the Goodspeed pump are just conveniences that are probably more complicated than useful until you know you want them. Best place to look for tutorials is The Drawing Board, My own tutorial will explain basic design but is designed for stock, not FAR/DRE and other realism mods.

Let me guess ... command pod oriented up, navball pointing at sky. Go across a hill, navball thinks it's steering off-course. Solution - use (or fit) a probe core oriented forward, right-click it and and 'control from here'. Result - rover autopilot works perfectly in all the times I've tried it.

I land at KSC. Or crash with only debris to recover.

Do you know, I can't remember the last time I had a part just disconnect at launch (without the whole launch-pad/ship exploding anyway). Was it 0.23 that fixed that? Anyway - yes, insurance sounds like it would make a good finance strategy. Maybe as a mod rather than being important for stock.

Nice selection :-) I have over 400 computer games from the early 80s onwards. The Civilization, SimCity and Elder Scrolls families have to be in there and Tropico is a lot of fun still, with good humour and the only soundtrack I don't switch off. Homeworld and Black & White are forgotten gems and for any 'tycoon' fans I can recommend the (free) open-source Transport Tycoon clone. For multiplayer Eve Online would have to be in there although I like the openess of Second Life (unfortunately they keep trying to make a 'game' out of it though and gamers have spoilt it). Machiavelli The Prince has incredible depth for a trading game, The Incredible Machine surely the most, well incredible, puzzle style. For me, though, the games I keep going back to are the Total War series, especially Rome.

Squad willing I am still intending to write an Interactive Fiction (aka: text adventure game) based on KSP so keep story-line ideas coming ^^. The original version I wrote to test the idea got quite a long way but that was prior to 0.24 and, well, so much is being added to flesh-out the career mode that the 'feel' of KSP has to reflect that and I'm waiting for 'feature complete'.

30-odd designs and 50-odd missions, from driving a rover around KSC to placing space-stations around all the planets and moons in KSP - link in my signature. If you don't want to read text you won't like it much though. THE place to find tutorials is - The Drawing Board. TV generation - the undoubted (ie; I don't doubt it ^^) master is Scott Manley; many videos on YouTube.

Rockets should be leaning well over by the time you get to 40km, possibly even flat, engines off, cruising to orbital altitude. Getting into space (>69km) is easy, getting into orbit, so you stay in space, means going sideways fast enough that you keep missing the ground as you fall towards it. The most efficient way to do that is to gradually lean further and further as you ascend so that more and more of your thrust is given to horizontal acceleration. This is generally known as a 'gravity turn'.

Ooh, Abdu has recently been regretting the lack of Arabic speakers (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97960-Sad-Times). Welcome from the rest of us, but you might find a special friend there :-)

By default that line shows a different title dependant on how many forum posts you've made, so it changes as you post more.

Write a tutorial about SSTO rockets (and, with Wanderfound, spaceplanes/VTVL). Later - Write a tutorial for people who've never seen KSP before (installation, settings, game options, KSC buildings). Re-design and submit vehicles for http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93779-SSTO-Spaceplane-Airplane-Design-Contest-II-Akademy-Awards

75km 'temporary' launch and de-orbit. 150km low rendezvous and phasing. 250km station. 400km high rendezvous and phasing. 600km+ parking.

I am amused that mine was the last post before this thread was resurrected and how much my views have since changed. At the time large ARM parts, cost and recovery didn't exist so the big change is that I rarely use asparagus any more. Furthermore I have since worked out a more-or-less consistent set of vehicles that I use and hardly ever need to design a new launch vehicle. Like many people, I have moved towards spaceplanes and SSTO rockets/VTVL vehicles as I've had more time from designing launch rockets.

Because, in answer to my question "WHY do you care?" you only answered "Because it's a challenge" - which left me with no more idea of what it was you wanted advice with. Specifically on the subject of Mun transfer my only point was that the possible savings are minute compared to a change in vehicle design or (with a single stage) flight through atmosphere. So would you have thanked me if I'd just posted "This craft can single-stage to Mun and back ... fly it like this ..." or would it have ruined the challenge? See why I asked WHY you cared?

I'm sorry, this crossed with my last post. So - you can potentially save, by your estimate, up to 110m/s deltaV overall. How much would you save by not carrying the mass of the wings, etc. all the way to Mun and back or a very slightly different ascent to orbit? How much would you lose on a plane-change for the designated landing-site or a less-than perfect landing? SSTMu isn't hard - a Mun round-trip is roughly 3km/s deltaV. Flying a bad ship can be hard, but if you're making things hard for yourself just for the sake of it, where's the challenge? Yes, 3% better flying isn't to be sneezed at, but a 10% better ship will be 10% better every time. If someone wants to single-stage to Mun or somewhere that's their business but the best efficiency saving would still come from a fit vehicle. Aircraft wheels (small gear bays) are NOT massless.

Oh man; I'm an ex-professional software guy and the people here always laugh when I shout at the computer (approved technique) "Stop being HELPFUL! I KNOW what I want you to do just just do it!" At least the buggers can't take over the world as long as we can still turn them off ^^.

Which is rather my point. You think you not only can do it all but have done it all; yet you design and build a ship which can't go to Mun then ask how to get it there? Shouldn't you a) be telling us or, designing a better ship? The thing is, Mun is a straightforward transfer and there's either Hohmann or bi-elliptic transfer. Beyond that, what can anyone tell you? If you want a better ship I'll design one for you - for a start I would make it Mun-worthy. If you want a better flight-path you'll have to argue with physics (KSP implementation, thereof).

*Groan, headbut-desk* I haven't actually said anything nice yet, have I? Sorry about that. Well done on your mentions, I really, really expected a lot more *woot!* posts and didn't realise the extent to which I was derailing. Second time I came in was a flying visit and responded to specific point I saw.

*Raise Shields* (narrowcast) Tx: I regret the possible affront but why do you care? If you're dragging all that messy, massy, awkward load of wings, wheels, etc. etc. to Mun WHY are you worried about fuel? The first thing you should do is leave the SSTO in Kerbin orbit. If you don't know how to calculate and design for a Mun landing, why inflct a SSTO approach on yourself? (broadcast) Tx: attacks are now expected, do it to make the point, the shields can suck it up. *Brace For Impact*

Yeah, but that's the point isn't it - YOU don't have to do it, just know what equation to use. The rocket equation (which I gave you) isn't actually that bad when someone explains it - it boils down to "you can do more with more efficient engines or more fuel", which makes sense ^^. deltaV (how much you can do) means: Step 1: (Isp * G) -> how efficient your engines are Step 2: (Full_Mass / Empty_Mass) -> how much (what proportion of the ship's mass) is available fuel Step 3: LN(Step 2) -> unfortunately there's diminishing returns because you need to burn more fuel to lift the rest of the fuel as well as the rest of the rocket Step 4: Step 1 * Step 2 -> more efficient engines and more (usuable) fuel means you can do more As Starman says, it's a lot easier with a mod.

I can't see a toilet - I see ofuro. Ahhh, cultural references are soo difficult with humans, Kerbals, whatever ... (hehe, it's just impossible to say anything, isn't it?)

Grab a spreadsheet (LibreOffice is free). deltaV = (Isp * G) * LN(Full_Mass / Empty_Mass) Where: Isp = engine ISP reported in the VAB/SPH (right-click on the engine in the parts menu if you haven't made a note of it. The Mark 55 is 320). G = gravity of the body you're launching from (9.81 - or 9.82, I can never remember - for Kerbin). Full_Mass = the total mass of your vehicle (32 tonnes, you say? Check by launching - but not going anywhere - switching to map mode and getting the figure from the 'i'nformation button on the .right). Empty_Mass = the mass of the vehicle without any fuel (ie; once it's been burnt-off. Check this by right-click tweaking the fuel out of the tank(s) and getting the mass as above). [LN() is the natural logarithm function which, in LibreCalc and Excel at least, is written as 'LN']