Pecan

Wait, that's a pretty important observation! No-one else has mentioned it but that pretty much means you still need to add a fairing around the engines :-(

I see what you're getting at but the 50th anniversary of my birth was several years ago. Still, thanks for thinking of me.

Wide is not good, so pancakes are out. If you're using side-boosters already, however (eg; standard core+2 design) you still get better performance by making them asparagus. The only cost is no pretty Korolev cross with core+4. Lots of fuel-handling strategies are easier because of the new priority system, which means hardly ever needing a fuel line. Almost everything's a lot easier now though, with typical rocket payload-ratios above 20% and twisted candle over 30%. All so that people can easily build spaceplanes that fly the entire system, using ISRU to mine resources and refuel themselves as they go. KSP still definitely isn't arcade but it's started to forget (because to commercialism?) "We choose to do these things, not because they are easy ..."

Are still going. It's still the second-best way to stage behind twisted candle. Space and, especially, spaceplanes have got easier in almost every release though, so lots of stuff is SSTO.

Congratulations! Your first visit?

Too much love. (You can only 'like' a certain number of things per day and have probably reached your limit)

Local equitorial comms relay constellation & polar interplanetary relays ScanSat & resource mappers One-way landers ISRU, which co-incidentally refuels the landers and ... Spacestation, which reuses the landers Reusable crewed landers With never-landing space-only tugs/ferries running between all the stations.

True, of course, but he did say 2 degrees, which probably means the wider strip covered with a higher orbit would be more than offset by the longer period, almost anywhere. Again though, you're correct that it does depend on how fast the planet is rotating, so if a planet is tide-locked to its sun it'll take a local year to fully rotate (and therefore 6 months to scan). Ultimately if it has a day the same length as its year it would have no apparent rotation and you'd have to do a hemisphere at once or have no chance, since precession isn't a thing in KSP. The question then is whether you could find an orbit far enough out to give you such a wide view while staying within the body's SOI. Apart from that if we're talking about ScanSat or anything else with specified orbit ranges then there's no real choice but to use those (and avoid resonance within the given bounds).

It's possible with any field of view or even a constant scan-width (eg; 1m). Obviously the smaller the coverage of each orbit the more orbits it will take but the basic approach of an almost-polar orbit remains the same. For orbit altitude consider how far the planet rotates beneath you each orbit. A Kerbin day is 6hrs (and 360-degrees by definition) and you scan two strips per orbit (one going N, then going S). You want the lowest (fastest) orbit possible while avoiding a resonant orbit that repeats the same strips before covering the whole planet. Most orbits won't scan 'in sequence' but will gradually fill-in the gaps between initial widely-spread scans.

I have trained a kraken to grab planes from the air as they glide passed. Next up - training it not to eat them.

Yes you need to buy it again. I'd be surprised if 0.24 is still on Steam though although I haven't tried old versions there so I don't know. 1.0.5 appears to be the oldest 'beta' available. Why do you want a five year old version?

"about 1800 dV" Mun it is then (860m/s each way), or Duna (1,130 m/s each way) without drawing breath and hoping to get good aerobraking. "11-20 million km from Duna" See, the thing is you can do some stuff with a weak rocket and you can fly a good rocket with weak skills. Both weak together - doesn't really work. You could try MJ getting your Duna intercept but I wouldn't even trust that with so little fuel. You're just going to have to practice with the maneuver nodes to get a better intercept.

The map is there so you don't need to learn the maths (I never have, although I looked at it to make sure I understood it). The rocket equation is fairly easy although, again, I use KER or MJ (mods) to work it out for me these days. Find the dV you need from the map, build a rocket with at least that much from the rocket equation. Make sure you have enough TWR to launch - everything else is down to how you fly it ^^. Good luck.

Yes, the overall signal strength is the average of all the strength of each link in the chain.

No you don't have to build a relay satellite around Kerbin. You have to build a constellation of relay satellites around Kerbin. Quite simply it doesn't matter how powerful your transmitters, relays and receivers are if there's a planet in the way so you need to guide the signal around the rock until it has line-of-sight on KSC. That or just enable the other ground stations and assume Kerbals can run cables around the world. The British had telegraph cables across the Empire in the 1800s so a long time before radio, let alone radio satellites. (At a minimum you might get away with 2 relays - 1 in synchronous orbit above KSC, the other on a long , eccentric polar orbit so it is nearly always far enough above the plane of the planets to get a signal. More generally you'd want 3+ around each planet/moon as well as a couple on polar orbits.)

The standard dV map is at: https://i.imgur.com/gBoLsSt.png The rocket equation, as you now know, tells you how much dV a rocket can generate, so in mission-planning it will only tell you what it is capable of. If you want to work out the values on the dV map yourself what you need to know is how to calculate orbital velocity for given altitudes and then the transfer cost. Since you know how far Mun is from Kerbin, for instance, you can then find the difference in Kerbin low-orbit and high-orbit (at Mun altitude). Alternatively, work through the calculations for Hohmann transfers, which will lead back to the orbital velocity calculations.

That's quite enough serious answers, I'm in a strange mood. Here's how to use the rocket equation:- Borrow a piece of paper (till-roll, napkin, whatever) and write on it "dV = (Isp.g).ln(Mwet/Mdry)" Then explain that that means the more efficient the engine (Isp.g) and the more fuel you use (Mwet/Mdry) the more the rocket can accelerate (dV) but, because of diminishing returns caused by the mass of the fuel (ln) twice as much fuel doesn't mean it can accelerate twice as much. Then ask her to write her phone number beneath it. The rest is left as an exercise for the student.

Wow - that's a coincidence because, amazingly, the OP starts with the words " I like what the SXT's dontstayputnik name ..." *grin*

Thank you, Flart, for that insight into the Russian language and culture. Disregarding the American explanations for the moment, as the first artificial satellite Sputnik did 'stay put' in space unlike everything sub-orbital (and albeit only until its orbit degraded)

I'm the old man that lives on a yacht, so doesn't have much of an internet connection, for most of the year, doesn't use social media but does use Tor browser and a secure email host. Don't have a TV or subscribe to magazines (no signal/delivery/my language). Many of the 'debates' I get into on the internet (text forums like this usually get through fine ^^) end with "yeah, I just don't live in that consumerist advertising world any more". Damn, and there's still another 11 years before I can claim my pension. (There's possibly a reason I've spent 4,000hrs+ on KSP in there somewhere!)

A. Yes, because it absolutely is an abhorrent bit of legal repurposed bovine waste that demonstrates the shamelessness of businesses. B. Yes, and that fact that every other business says almost exactly the same thing in their own EULAs doesn't make it right. C. Yes, because the worst bit (it's probably in there somewhere, something similar always is) is the one that mean you don't own anything, whatever you think you own can be taken away at any time and even while you have something it might not work at all, or do what it said it would. D. No, because these standard EULAs are so excrementsty that in many jurisdictions they may well be considered 'illegal contract' but haven't been tested in court yet. E. No, because GDPR expressly denies businesses the right to do most of what this EULA does. F. Yes, because as soon as a company gets caught by this all the politicians 'protecting their citizens' will change the law, take the money and run for cover. G. No, because Google already knows everything about you. (I almost think it reads better after the auto-censor has changed it)

Strangely, drinking coffee makes you sober

A lot depends on the mass the engines can lift, since you have to keep the appropriate TWR in each stage but as a first approximation roughly equal dV. The next questions are ... what does 'appropriate' TWR mean and is it vacuum or sea-level ISP that counts when calculating dV? Anything above about 3km you can use vacuum ISP. Launch needs at least 1.3 TWR (I find) and each stage doesn't really benefit from more than 2. Higher stages can get away with lower TWRs since they're mostly building speed but not altitude. So: Pick an upper-stage engine for its vacuum ISP. Load it with (the payload, obviously) and as much fuel as it can lift. Pick the next stage engine for its sea-level thrust and see if it can lift the upper-stage to at least 3km and contribute the dV to orbit that the upper stage lacks. (If the upper stage doesn't lack then you've got a SSTO!). If that doesn't work change the engine for vacuum ISP and make it a mid-stage, then repeat for the initial launch stage or strap a couple of SRBs on it. If you need more than 3 stages to launch your rocket is too big :-)

Yes, exactly that, probably 5 of the longest sections I can launch. Dock them in orbit and land in one piece to avoid ground-construction problems (to say nothing of the inherent bridge-building ones). That's the plan anyway - quite what will happen ... *shrug*. Whatever I do is unlikely to register compared to the monsters in KSP. There have been specialists in huge construction that take what I consider a giant rocket as a mere launch booster.

New Year Resolution: during 2019 I will finally get around to bridging the Dres canyon, ending 2 years procrastination.