MarvinKitFox

Whack those three science bays of yours side-by-side. Sure, its a lot more draggy going up, but you can overcome that with engine power. It will also be a lot more draggy on the way *down*, dropping well below 250m/s, which is more-or-less the safe speed you are looking for. in short: Your rocket is too...... rocket-like.

Changing the engine choice or stack dimensions simply to make it look more like a rocket, is *the worst* criteria for design you could possibly use.

Air drag losses are of much less import than gravity loss, under the current physics model. The sole exception would be that you should avoid riding on/very near the speed of sound, as this causes significant additional drag. (and other funky control issues). If your rocket is capable of smashing past mach 1, then do so. If it gets stuck at mach 0.99 for an extended time, you might as well drop the throttle to 50% and idle at mach.90 for 20 seconds, then throttle up and go supersonic.

The problem is that you are flying sideways! Don't blame the fairing, blame the pilot/navigator who thinks it is a good idea to aim 15 degrees off prograde while flying supersonic!

You should do what the Earthling humans do, and carefully deorbit each and every piece of space debis. Look how meticulously clean their low earth orbit is! Close-in More distant view

erf? rooftops? ROOFTOPS??? gwarsh!

Closer to the moon would be *less* cold, as even the coldest darkest side of the moon is still much hotter than deep space background, and is thus radiating (some) heat towards you. Earth itself is positively toasty, in LEO you are typically 60-80 degrees K warmer than in a very high orbit, simply because of this nice ~290K radiator filling almost half of the sky.

Sort of. The first stage just lobs the craft to about 50-80km, and about 3km/s. Basically, it gets the second stage out of significant atmosphere, where it can use its more efficient vacuum engine and several minutes to burn to orbital speed The second stage provides about 85% of the orbital energy. At staging, the falcon9 is still below 100km altitude, sometimes much lower. But its Apogee is at least 160km, sometimes 400+ (the falcon9 uses rather extreme variety of launch profiles, depending on intended payload orbit, and whether they want to do a boost-back/recovery or not)

Ok, lets rephrase my comment. Your rocket has the intrinsic smooth aerodynamic shape of... a feather duster. That is being shoved backwards. in a barrel of treacle. You should expect to see some slight steering issues. If you really *must* use that configuration, then at least have it flying directly prograde. Your problem is that you are presenting a very draggy, long, and likely wobbly shape to severe crosswinds. Either smooth the shape, OR add so much drag at the back that it overwhelms the turning forces, OR fly so close to prograde (surface speed!) that there is no crosswind.

Yep. Its like starting a campfire, then going to sleep. And wondering why the fire is out when you wake the next morning.

The same way you get back anyone that you have killed... Forge evidence that your roommate did it, and move to another country. Where all you have to worry about is your conscience gnawing at you every night.

Its a simple case of too much drag up front. That second container ship on the forward bulkhead simply does not counter the wind drag of the portside oil refinery. . . At least not while you are sideslipping at 500 miles per hour.

I have a really radical, innovative idea for you. In Windows 8, click on the magnifying glass thingy. type , without the quote marks, "persistent.sfs" Write down the locations where this file is located.

With 30 parts, you can go to duna, land, and return.

And that, grasshopper, is why you fail.

So your rocket starts tumbling at about 500 meters altitude? 1) use a smoother turn. 2) consider wrapping a fairing around that 3) use struts to reinforce your jello.

I suggest you start with: bone up on some: and a smattering of Or alternatively, if you prefer the hands-on approach, go the Scott Manley way:

I'm seeing an image of a small child sitting in a library, surrounded by mounds of Lego blocks, looking at ample art supplies, and wailing that he is soooooo boooooored, there is *nothing* to do.

Don't Trust the Mun, I hear he is jealous of MinMus. Oh, tHrust? You want to know how much RCS is needed to tilt a vehicle, on Mun as opposed to Kerbin? If you are not fighting gravity, it will be the same, as mass and thus inertia remains constant. If you *are* fighting gravity, figure 6X the gravity force to fight on Kerbin. Mun is not very grabbity. If your Kerbin vehicle is at sealevel, you are already operating at a massive 60% penalty due to air pressure. RCS does not operate well in air. So in the end, your answer is that on Mun you need somewhere between 1 and 0.07 as much RCS as on Kerbin. Most likely never more than 0.17 as much

Actually, the *whole purpose* of the heat shield is to stay cool, by dumping most of the re-entry heat into the bit of the heatshield that ablates off. Obviously this process has a certain maximum rate, and if you force heat in faster than the surface can slough it off, you are making a bomb.

I have a deep space probe hanging out there at about 25x Eeloo orbital distance, if I take it to zero orbital velocity it takes 12 minutes to get up to 1m/s due to sun's gravity. Does that count?

Too lazy to whack F5? Suffer!!! muhahahahaha

If you are unable to get your rocket onto the surface of EVE, you are ***way*** unprepared to launch a return manned mission from Eve surface. Trust me on this.

Starting in low kerbin orbit, and final desired destination is a Kerbol-centered orbit of arbitrary inclination, perigee near Kerbin, apogee anything same or further out? In worst case, doing a 180 degree u-turn and having to enter circular orbit at Kerbin orbital distance, you can manage with 6700m/s from LKO. Just go out to basically infinity, change plane, and enter the desired orbit. Tested in practice. See other posting in this board, here

Using measured speeds from practical testing , starting at about 120km orbit around Kerbin. Cheapest is: 1) from low orbit, go to infinity-1 Kerbol apogee. (about 2750m/s) 2) change plane to desired angle (about 0m/s) 3) circularise. (about 3875m/s) i.e. about 6625m/s (and something like 500 years.... orbit to infinity-something is very very slow) by formula, i expect its something like: .414 of LKO speed to just barely escape kerbin. (850m/s) .414 of Kerbin orbital speed to get to infinity. (3843m/s) 0 to change plane .414 of kerbin orbital speed to slow down to circular orbit (3843m/s) Note that the second term gets massive gains from oberth effect of combined Kerbin orbital speed + LKO orbital speed, as the entirety of this burn is done at LKO altitude and speed. note also that as infinity is not practical, one uses something a lot less. in my test, about 4* eeloo orbit distance. The plane change in term 3 was then about 150m/s, but reduces term 2 and 4 by less than 5m/s each