The True Meaning of Efficiency

[peachoftree]

Just started a new career game after a long career hiatus, did a mun flyby tourist contract with only 6m/s of delta-v to spare. Not a drop of fuel was wasted

[Evanitis]

May I join?

That's the only succesful launch of the lone SSTO I made in 1.0.2. Periapsis got 27 meters above atmosphere, with 1 dV left. Ok, there's a full monoprop tank left, but that was kinda' needed for deorbiting and descent stabilization.

[Nich]

Or an example of someone who used up all their safety margin Was 6 dV enough to bring your PE into the atmosphere?

[Evanitis]

Was 6 dV enough to bring your PE into the atmosphere?

If all else fails, you can always get out and push it home.

[peachoftree]

Or an example of someone who used up all their safety margin Was 6 dV enough to bring your PE into the atmosphere?

It was, If you look carefully in the photo you can see the red trajectories line, I only had to do minimal corrections to get a 40 km reentry, which was fantastic. After sinking down to around 35 km, I bounced back to 50 and then landed, kerbal flight indicators never even gave me a heat warning.

If all else fails, you can always get out and push it home.

Nope. the tourist was the only one onboard, I did drain the monoprop from the capsule to gain an extra 10 m/s

[KrazyKrl]

Nice job with the free-return trajectory. 6 m/sec dV is cutting it sorta close. That is well within the boundaries of trying to get a more efficient orbital insertion. Nice job nonetheless.

May I join?

That's the only succesful launch of the lone SSTO I made in 1.0.2. Periapsis got 27 meters above atmosphere, with 1 dV left. Ok, there's a full monoprop tank left, but that was kinda' needed for deorbiting and descent stabilization.

That's a LOT of monoprop. You could dock probably 20 times with that much. Dumping all that monoprop would probably give you 500 dV or more.

[peachoftree]

Nice job with the free-return trajectory. 6 m/sec dV is cutting it sorta close. That is well within the boundaries of trying to get a more efficient orbital insertion. Nice job nonetheless.

I was about to revert to launch when I realised I only had 830 m/s, but then I decided I could probably get a decent free return trajectory.

[SAI Peregrinus]

Nice job with the free-return trajectory. 6 m/sec dV is cutting it sorta close. That is well within the boundaries of trying to get a more efficient orbital insertion. Nice job nonetheless.

That's a LOT of monoprop. You could dock probably 20 times with that much. Dumping all that monoprop would probably give you 500 dV or more.

Not to mention all the excess oxidizer. At least the monoprop is useful, the oxidizer is just weight!

[SkyRender]

I recently did a docking that had 0.01 L of fuel left (about 0.3m/s dV with the ship in question). Though that wasn't the most dramatic by a long shot, as I also had one that had to be finished by having the Kerbal push the ship to the docking port on EVA. Most of the return flights on that mission had 0.05 to 0.5 L of fuel left by the time I got back to orbit (usually around 1 to 10m/s). I really cut it close repeatedly!

Why did I use engines to dock, you ask? Because I'm just that good. Also, I didn't have RCS unlocked at the time on that save.

Edited June 25, 2015 by SkyRender

[Aragosnat]

Not sure on this one. But this was my closest out of fuel and in trouble. Had to glide in to make sure I had enough space just in case I needed to turn engines on to generate power since I had no chutes or way to save the tourist:

[mattssheep4]

If all else fails, you can always get out and push it home.

Jeb ran out of Monoprop once, and I tried (and failed) to get Valentina to push him close enough to a capsule to get him home.

[Kaos]

I once came back in an orbit with periapsis of short over 70km. I used some EVA trips to push the periapsis to about 60km, then I used the atmosphere of many orbits to land.

So, yes: I pushed it home.