New player question about weight

[zero81]

Hi folks,

I'm new to the game and am loving it so far. After killing a lot of poor kerbals in the process I finally managed to land on the moon.

My question is about weight (in particular how it affects take off). Is there a way to see the total weight of the rockets when under construction in the VAB, or is it a case of having to add it up manually as we build. At them moment I've mostly been doing it via trial and error.

Cheers

[capi3101]

The Mechjeb mod will do it for you; if you're wanting to play vanilla, you'll have to do it manually. That's actually how I prefer to do it, but I'm a bit of a masochist...

Weight affects takeoff in as much as you've got to make sure you have sufficient thrust to get off the ground (the thrust-to-weight ratio or TWR). Total up your stage thrust, divide it by (Kerbin's surface gravity (9.81) multiplied by the total wet mass of your rocket). If the result is less than one, you ain't goin' nowhere. Optimally you want it somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 but you can usually get away with a TWR as low as 1.3 without overheating/detonating an engine or six.

Most of the game is trial and error, btw.

Edited April 26, 2013 by capi3101

[EndlessWaves]

Yeah, grab a mod like Kerbal Engineer Redux for the much needed technical details until squad gets round to adding them to the game.

[zero81]

Brilliant - thanks for the responses