Torquemadus

Two of my kerbonauts are engaged in a spot of surveying. The rest are busy helping decorate their newly renovated astronaut complex.

When you decide you don't need to waste money on expensive building upgrades. After all, those silly patched conics things are a luxury you can happily do without!

In Career Mode, you can use the rewards sliders to adjust resource gains from contracts. The funds penalties slider is used to control the cost of building upgrades, and thus has a significant bearing on the amount of "grind" required to overcome the limitations imposed by building tiers. Reducing rewards shouldn't cause "grind" if you're planning and executing missions efficiently and successfully. If you can't perform efficient missions, or if something goes wrong, then some flights might end up costing more to launch than they earn back in rewards. This might then lead to "grind" while recovering from a mistake. Increasing the cost of building upgrades can lead to some "grind" if the limitations imposed by building tiers become too constraining. A good example is the Launch Pad. Working within the 18t limit of the tier 1 Launch Pad makes for some interesting challenges, but it sets an absolute limit on the size of rockets you can launch. Sooner or later, you'll want to move on from the early game and start launching bigger rockets. Adjusting the cost of building upgrades lets you control the pace at which these barriers are overcome.

The easiest way to make the game harder is to use the custom difficulty sliders. With very low contract rewards and zero starting funds, it can actually take quite a while to scrape together enough money to build an orbit capable rocket.

In Career Mode, there are constraints that make it difficult to get a payload into orbit. These include cost, technology, weight limit, and part count limit. None of these constraints are present in Sandbox. If launching stuff in Sandbox seems easy, I'd say it's working as intended.

The potential pitfall of using a shuttle in KSP, is that you can end up making the wrong part of the vehicle re-useable. In KSP, liquid fuel tanks have a high cost compared to the fuel they contain, making it highly desirable to recover them after use. Solid rockets are worth next to nothing once empty, they are "trash bins full of boom". Therefore, if you want to make an efficient two-stage-to-orbit lifter in KSP, you can afford to throw away solids, but you want to recover any liquid fuel tanks and engines you use. The largest stock solid rocket in KSP at the moment is the SRB, which has quite weak thrust compared to the bigger liquid engines, such as the Mainsail. If you build a lifter that looks like a NASA Shuttle, you'll probably use a pair of SRBs and a bunch of liquid engines. The liquid engines will end up doing most of the work and will end up using a heck of a lot of fuel, all of which is drained from an external tank that you aren't going to re-use, and you won't have much of a mass fraction left to haul cargo. Therefore, what you're actually doing is making an expendable stage-and-a-half-to-orbit launch vehicle, that lifts a re-useable upper stage (the orbiter), which has incredibly high dry mass. The upper stage only has OMS engines for propulsion, which have limited fuel. The orbiter then offloads the payload, which has much lower mass than the orbiter. The orbiter then de-orbits and returns to the runway. Recovering the orbiter means that you get the engines back, but most of the parts you recover are parts you could have done without having to lift into orbit in the first place! Of course, what you really want to do is make the launch vehicle re-useable! By the way, if you want to read up on the development of the real Shuttle, there's an online book here: http://www.nss.org:8080/resources/library/shuttledecision/index.htm

I used to rely on a stacked configuration. However, I've since found that my bigger shuttles are much more stable if I mount the boosters at the sides instead.

I play Career Mode on hardcore custom difficulty. In 0.25, I found I was able to comfortably make progress in Career Mode on 10% contract rewards. In 0.90, I've opted for 20% rewards, since I need to make extra money to pay for building upgrades. Playing on the settings I've chosen requires delaying building upgrades and working with much lower tech. My launch vehicles need to throw payloads while working within severe launch mass and part count constraints. My launch vehicles need to be very cheap, or very recoverable, or a mixture of the two. I currently rely on two-stage-to-orbit designs that expend a "trash bins full of boom" solid first stage and recover a liquid fuelled second stage. Making it harder to get payloads into orbit would have a big impact on Career Mode, especially if the only way to get stuff into LKO was to use late game rockets launched from late game buildings!

I suspect that the idea is that they want you to test the part after surviving a splash down to see if it still works. If the part has already been activated during the flight, you can edit the staging sequence and add it to new staging events. This allows you to "activate" it as many times as you like for contract completion purposes. This is very handy, as you can complete engine test contracts by using the engine to get to where you need to be.

This is an accurate description of how I perform this kind of ascent. Blood pumping indeed, and I wouldn't want it any other way! I've tended to view the ascent as consisting of two manoeuvres. The first manoeuvre is the near horizontal take off burn that places me on a sub-orbital trajectory. The second is the circularisation burn. The take off burn is the part of the manoeuvre that is most hurt by low TWR, as I will inevitably waste some fuel fighting gravity. The circularisation burn is an orbit change manoeuvre, and is most hurt by factors such as dry mass and specific impulse. Thrust affects the efficiency of the circularisation burn, but carrying heavier engines around also increases my dry mass, which hurts efficiency. In practical game terms, adding extra engines to my Mun lander increases it's dry mass, which has a knock-on effect on the size and cost of the launch vehicle I need to get it there. I play on custom difficulty, so I tend to launch missions that are very marginal in terms of mass.

So, I'm trying to get into orbit from an airless body using minimum fuel. At take off, I burn as horizontal as I possibly can, taking care not to collide with any nearby mountains or other intervening terrain. This puts me on a sub-orbital trajectory with an apoapsis high enough to avoid crashing, but no higher. As I approach apoapsis, I begin a burn to circularise into orbit. I try to time the burn so that it occurs as close to apoapsis as I can within the limits of the thrust my spacecraft can produce. This puts me in a minimum altitude orbit that only just barely clears the terrain. In practice, flying just barely above the terrain is pretty scary! I usually give myself a small margin of error for the sake of safety.

I try to make my ascent path as horizontal as possible, but I rarely take off from locations that are completely flat. Normally, after take off, I would aim for a near horizontal sub-orbital trajectory that just barely clears any nearby terrain, with an apoapsis at the lowest safe altitude for safe orbital flight. I would then coast to apoapsis and then circularise.

Yes, I meant to say apoapsis!

The paper mentions taking off via a Hohmann transfer. This implies taking off horizontally and giving myself a periapsis on the opposite side of the planet. I would then coast to periapsis and circularise. In practice, to take off from the equivalent of sea level from an airless body, I need to clear any mountains or other terrain that might be in the way. Therefore, I would perform a short burn to go sub-orbital, with a periapsis at a safe altitude. I would then coast to periapsis and circularise there.

Debris can still be recovered, but you don't see the recovery dialogue telling you how much money you got back. Check how much money you have before and after recovering. Solid rockets are cheap "trash bins full of boom". Almost all of their cost comes from the fuel they contain, they are worth next to nothing once empty. This makes them ideal for use as expendable first stages, since you can afford to throw them away.

Launch pad bunker!

If I'm reading the article correctly, the idea is to throw the spacecraft towards Mars on a trajectory somewhat similar to a Hohmann transfer, but without enough speed to make it all the way to Mars' orbit. The idea is that if the spacecraft passes close enough to Mars to be considered to be within Mars' gravitational SOI, then Mars' gravity will grab hold of the spacecraft and pull it the rest of the way. A Hohmann transfer has to be aimed precisely at Mars, while a ballistic capture only needs to be aimed at Mars' SOI, which is a much bigger target. This therefore allows for much greater flexibility in terms of launch windows. I'm not an expert at mathematics, so if I misunderstood the article. Please correct me!

The best I could manage within the 18t limit was an orbit and return mission.

Launches can now be watched from the comfort and safety* of the tier 1 launch pad bunker. *Warranty void if exposed to explosions.

The game can be as grindy as you want it to be. In custom difficulty, by adjusting the funds penalties slider, you can adjust the upgrade costs of the buildings.

In-situ resource utilisation. Also, I'd like a 2.5 metre SRB!

As an aside, I've found another possible exploit. By placing a manned spacecraft in Mun polar orbit at the correct altitude, I can overfly all of the possible Mun survey contract locations without expending any fuel. Every time I complete the contract, I'm immediately offered another one.

To clarify: I'm not asking whether editing the staging sequence is in itself an exploit. I'm asking whether using it to complete test contracts is an exploit. I've spotted quite a few posts from new players complaining that testing a BACC booster in flight is too hard. This is because they think they have to haul the part unused up to the required altitude and speed before igniting it, requiring them to build a large rocket to carry it there, whereas in fact the BACC itself can be used to get there and simply "activated" through the staging sequence. I myself didn't immediately figure out how to do this. I personally don't see this method as an exploit. However, I don't think that this method has been clearly pointed out to new players.

I can't help but wonder whether the devs intended these contracts to be so easy.

It turns out that Mun survey contracts are spammable. I put a spacecraft into polar orbit, as it seemed like the most sensible way to overfly all of the waypoints. After completing the contract, I checked Mission Control to decide what contract to do next and noticed that there was already another Mun survey contract available. I completed it from the same polar orbit without expending any fuel. I checked back with Mission control and guess what they want me to do next...