Smallish

Thanks 5th Horseman and Aqua I now see more clearly! So what happens when defining a satellite of Earth, as Earth has a "wobbling" axis I suppose to make coplanar launches to the space station etc they define the ISS inclination at the time of needing it? Maybe they have a more advanced Mechjeb at SpaceX and NASA : )

Hi I have managed to get by with my understanding of inclination for a long time, but more and more it's starting to bother me that I don't thoroughly grasp it. I would really like to know: I assume that the orbital plane of a planet is solely related to the star, so... How is the 0.0 plane derived/defined in a solar system? Are satellites around planets also calculated from the Stars defined plane? With highly eccentric planets moving up and down across the plane, am I right to think that the satellite's plane would actually always be the same when read as a parallel to the star's plane? Minmus has a 6deg inclination. If you were preparing a launch to a coplanar orbit with it from Kerbin, setting off on a 6deg inclination on the ascending or descending side has a seemingly very different appearance. If you were to use MEchJeb and ask it to send you off on a 6deg inclination on the ascending side it looks fine, but why isn't it a -6 inclination or 354deg if taking off on the descending side of the planets rotation?! I'm so very confused and uneducated, please help clarify some basics if you can Thanks o/

Yes, that is correct. AT times they generate, more often they don't... Oh, I just read the post from Starwaster...this seems like the sort of thing that a half wit like me would do....I will check Thanks! *Just checked, it does seem like I was indeed not aware of the difference. Thanks Starwaster !

Hello, I'm hoping someone may help with an issue I've managed to create for myself. I have the latest update, am using .90 KSP. I'm now finding that often when I attach the fairings to the fairing bases no separators are generated. I'm really confused, but pretty sure it's me doing something stupid. Any suggestions? Thanks o/ MJ, KE, PlanetShine, Surface Lights.

This is really enlightening stuff, thank you! I had a few hours messing about around Jool today, and with the quantity of bodies around in close proximity it was helpful to see the effect of using near misses..However, when trying to use planets en-route to another planet, you would only normally have the target planet showing when you setup your nodes, so how would you even know if you have a chance of an encounter with a helpful planet. The only way I could imagine is if you see your orbit crossing another non targeted orbit, then you would have to target that particular body and try and tweak your node to see if you get any interaction. Would that be about right? Because obviously, you couldn't just rely on waiting till you got chance encounters that clearly showed up on your predicted path. - that would mean missing many chance encounters that are helpful but are literally just outside of your "A" path. I hope that makes sense, and again, thank you for all the helpful information...This game has been extremely educational! Oh, and a tip for anyone of similar rocketing skills as myself; make sure you enter Jool's influence going in the right direction! (unless you like having moons coming at you like trucks on the wrong side of a motorway that is)

Ahh ok, I see, but surely the times when an "in-between" body is in the right position to help must be a rarity? But I'll have a play and see how it looks from now on, thank you.

I have wondered about all this using other bodies to slow you down, does anyone have a link to anything that might explain how this is done? I think it might just be witch craft.... {:-/

Ok, I managed to pull off a visit yesterday. I got my lander down, took the science back to the inter planetary ship to transfer the data and got back to Kirbin with Dv to spare. I took a lot of fuel though...Before Leaving I was in Kirbin orbit with around 13kDv with the Lander attached (that would be about 16k-17Dv without the lander). I used Macollo's technique posted earlier, although I missed the ideal time and couldn't get the full inclination change, I had to make a 0.3 correction on the next node in mid sun orbit, but this was fairly small in Dv. Getting the main inclination burn done with the Kirbin escape burn helped a lot. I have taken to looking at my encounters way out and seeing what time my entering and leaving time is, for Moho it was really short, something like an hour or less, I can't exactly remember, but I tried fiddling with my mid orbit burn to get it as long as possible, either way, it was going to be a long burn - again, I can't remember but I'm pretty sure it was something around the 3.5kDv (with a heavy lander). The orbit/landing/take off/rendezvous and science data exchange all went well, I dumped the lander and then headed home. I made the burn for Kirbin from a similar position to the leaving Kirbin setup, with the Moho Apoapsis lining up with Kirbin on the far side and got an encounter straight off. Again I managed to take off most of the inclination on the initial burn and had only to make a 300 Dv or so burn mid way. Of course the final kirbin burn was long, but I had plenty of fuel left. Thank you for your advice. I'm learning slowly...very slowly : | (just over 900 science) You can right click and copy the links from the broken images below if you wish to see my ship setup Hmm, maybe you can't copy and past from the broken images.. so here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/101998334@N02/11961768213/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/101998334@N02/11962309846/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/101998334@N02/11962310606/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/101998334@N02/11961768433/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/101998334@N02/11961914464/

Thank you, I have used ksp.olex before, but "upgraded" to Protractor although I feel like I've lost a bit of connection to what's happening a bit now. I will still use Protractor for now but double check the data before leaving.. I didn't realise that you could hit your main burn straight from orbit. The way the vectors with the encounter vectors look, it seems like you should wait...I have always cleared the SOI and then made my main orbit burn. Clearly I've been making some mistakes there! I'm not sure how I completely managed to ignore all the talk about using the Oberth effect, live and learn though : )

Thank you very much for the comments, Maccollo's writings are very helpful too! I think protractor is indeed a bit iffy at times, I have had a couple of odd readings I think. Sorry that I didn't take more time to search for the previous thread also!

Well, 4 brave souls were lost today. I have no idea what mistakes were made, but it seems that Moho is not to be taken lightly... I wonder what I could do better, perhaps someone can tell me where I failed? I waited in orbit over Kerbin for Protractor to get to around 1 hour to zero hour for Moho with around 13kDv in the tank and hooked up to a lander with all intentions to grab some science. I left heading in Kerbin retrograde direction to try and decrease my Kerbol orbit speed as much as possible. I waited until I left Kerbin's gravity well and then fired up retrograde until my Kerbol orbit was brushing with Mohos. After this I waited until I was at the Moho descending node and made my anti normal burn to 0.0 out the planes. This was the start of my woes, it took something like 3kDv to level off with Moho, maybe more... I then did another correction to intercept with Moho, but it was really odd, Moho was way off, I had to make another 4kDv correction or so to get an intercept.. After this, as I was approaching the planet, I could see that my velocity was going to be VERY fast, as I hit the gravity well I did a quick node and saw I needed 6K to make orbit! Obviously it wasn't going to happen, I wasn't going to make orbit, land the lander and make it back to Kerbin, so I decided to head straight back to Kerbin - which I screwed up badly also, it ended with me sending a rescue ship, and with that and the original ship being humanley terminated. So I would really like to know...why didn't my intercepts match up correctly after the plane change, did I do something wrong (as written above) on leaving Kerbin do you think, and how much Dv do you need for a return trip to Moho?!

I thank you all for the input, I'm now trying to get to grips with the linked items... One thing is for sure, my original beliefs are not at all correct, my rockets of the future will be more efficient. I didn't think about mechjeb for testing different builds, I have not installed it due to it's ability to take away some personal "fun" in the testing stakes, but more and more I'm questioning each build I make to try and eek out the best builds. I can't help but think that in the end, this way of working will lead to mechjeb. Can anyone tell me, does this 8 array use stock items http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28248-Is-asparagus-the-best-staging-system-%28might-contain-science%29?p=346702&viewfull=1#post346702 ? I havent seen this available in my game, maybe I don't know how to build it or don't know what it uses...

Thank you for the answers. So I ask, what do people here do to choose their ideal TWR/Dv setups? I'm looking at the numbers and am really boggled trying to make sense of the trade offs with TWR, time and Dv...I just made a judgement about a skipper driven basic rocket and a mainsail and my guess was way off...I'm thinking that my builds are horribly inefficient at the moment.

ok, fair enough, Ive been doing some tests and they have surprised me. Of course, added to the TWR and Dv ratio is also the burn time... My head hurts trying to get to grips with it all : ) So it seems the only way to get the best return is to test all the different setups?..No wonder NASA spends so much money : ) Edit: Also, if you have a good Dv with a horrible TWR of say 1.1 and an average Dv with great TWR, say 1.8..what should I choose? the Excellent Dv by default?

I've been playing with Kerbal engineer and started trying to optimize a main stage rocket, but have noticed that I get better Dv on some builds (atmospheric) and worse TWR, now obviously if the TWR is less than 1 it's not better, so how do I know what is the best setup. I can sometimes get some results like 1.4kDv and 1.8 TWR and another setup will give 1.7kDv and 1.6 TWR for example.

@ Analog, maybe that's a second goo experiment, they deplete in value. @ Tokay, I just played around with my taking and storing data, it works great, thank you very much, it has made everything much clearer. I notice you can't re set the experiments though, so obviously this is the science lab's job...

Thank you for the description of process! KSP keeps surprising, I never expected it to have this level of involvement. This explains why I returned with nothing after my last trip! Thank you

@gilflo I too had the same experience as you, I did "a lot of science" from a lander docking with an orbiter of Mun that also had an operational science lab, I did 2 trips to Mun and took 2 complete sets of data/experiments, I then went to orbiter/lab, saved the data (not sure where it was saved) then returned to Kerbin with the command pod and the science lab. Everything landed perfectly and I got 2 science notes from what should have been around 10 or 12 I'm guessing... i'm really confused about this. Maybe the science data got saved to the Lander?

ok thanks, so, if I want to re use the experiments, you have have to transmit the data of the previous experiments ? In which case you need to do a lot of re using to make it worth while as , like you say, the % increase isn't that great.. I was hoping that it could store the data from previous experiments... it seems that's not the case, ie from multiple re uses of the experiments...

I'm confused, does the lab store data and you can use the science instruments, goo and what not, again and then re store the data and land with it in the lab? Or must you analyse it and then transmit the data from the lab to be able to add a second use of the instruments to the science total? I know that sounds all messed up, but if you know, I think you'll know what I mean : ) thanks o/

Oh my goodness...yes, maybe I should add a link {:-| this was the intended one..sorry about that : ) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25598051

OK thank you

Oh dear...I think I'm a bit useless... I will practice today after all the tales of success. Can someone tell me, when I set up rcs thrusters, how do I account for fuel use COG changes?

Interesting little article on triple star system , 2 white dwarfs and pulsar.

I'd love to know how you got all your first/second stage into orbit, and it looks like you have struts to everything, surely you can't get all that up in one go can you? You ditch your mobile processing lab, does that mean you lose all your science you got from it? (i don't know how they work at all ) It was a great report and look forward to your next adventure : )