General grab bag of questions.

[painking]

1: Regarding Alexmoon's interplanetary launch planner, is the date of departure the time to leave the launch pad, or the time to begin the ejection burn?

2: Are fairings worth it? They just seem to ruin the aerodynamics of my rockets.

3: The one bit I trouble with in terms of landing is usually those final few meters. I can't throttle my ship low enough to lightly touchdown, so I usually bump into the surface at about 5-10 m/s and bounce a bit but with any luck I'll still safely land. What can I do to fix this?

4: How does one actually get started with a base? With .21 eventually happening I shouldn't start now, but if I were, how would one start?

Edited July 17, 2013 by painking

[Mr Shifty]

1: Regarding Alexmoon's interplanetary launch planner, is the date of departure the time to leave the launch pad, or the time to begin the ejection burn?

Time to begin ejection burn from orbit. You should already be in a circular orbit at the altitude you selected when you start your burn.

[Johnno]

1: Regarding Alexmoon's interplanetary launch planner, is the date of departure the time to leave the launch pad, or the time to begin the ejection burn?

Leaving the launchpad wouldn't matter since you could in theory timewarp indefinitely in kerbin orbit and never get anywhere. So clearly, burn.

2: Are fairings worth it? They just seem to ruin the aerodynamics of my rockets.

Depends on the mod, alternatively if you're doing it stock then no since extra parts add extra drag and the aerodynamics model isn't complete enough for fairings to be helpful.

3: The one bit I trouble with in terms of landing is usually those final few meters. I can't throttle my ship low enough to lightly touchdown, so I usually bump into the surface at about 5-10 m/s and bounce a bit but with any luck I'll still safely land. What can I do to fix this?

Use a lower thrust engine or thrust with RCS.

4: How does one actually get started with a base? With .21 eventually happening I shouldn't start now, but if I were, how would one start?

Anything with a docking port that will allow you to attach modules/things to it. Most stations I've seen start with a module that has a multi-point connector hub with docking ports. But you pretty much need at least one docking port to build onto the existing part. KAS mod can probably work around that but I'm not sure as I don't use it. Same thing goes for ground bases.

[Kimberly]

1: Regarding Alexmoon's interplanetary launch planner, is the date of departure the time to leave the launch pad, or the time to begin the ejection burn?

2: Are fairings worth it? They just seem to ruin the aerodynamics of my rockets.

3: The one bit I trouble with in terms of landing is usually those final few meters. I can't throttle my ship low enough to lightly touchdown, so I usually bump into the surface at about 5-10 m/s and bounce a bit but with any luck I'll still safely land. What can I do to fix this?

4: How does one actually get started with a base? With .21 eventually happening I shouldn't start now, but if I were, how would one start?

1) I'm not familiar with the launch planner, sorry.

2) Aerodynamics are very poorly simulated. You don't really need fairings at all. It seems as though your aerodynamics get worse because your payload is wobbling inside the fairing; it's better (but uglier) to not use fairings and to keep the payload stable with lots of struts.

3) If even the lowest throttle setting will fully counter the force of gravity, your thrust-to-weight ratio would appear to be too high. Add more weight to your craft, or make use of less powerful/fewer engines. Ideally, you want it to be possible to have a throttle level where you will precisely counter gravity, keeping your vertical speed equal, but in practice you'll usually have to toggle between slightly increasing speed and slightly decreasing speed.

4) They don't do anything, so it's mostly up to your imagination. But most people like to include habitation modules, communications sections, administrative areas, and laboratories. Reserve fuel tanks are also popular. For roleplaying purposes, you wouldn't actually bring kerbals to the base until it's reasonably finished.

[painking]

To clarify more on #1, I ask because I had assumed that it meant ejection burn. I had used it to plan a trip to Duna (optimal settings), but within 1 minute to go till launch, I noticed that I was facing Kerbin retrograde, rather than the 159 degrees prograde I was supposed to be, so obviously I wouldn't reach Duna at all unless i was supposed to make a mid course burn. I was in fact at the height I specified in the launch planner, so I'm not sure what went wrong.

[Sirrobert]

Alternativly for your lander, if you use multiple engines you could (if it doens't botch up the symetry) turn of a few.

For example a lander with 4 engines on each side could turn off 2 and still be in ballance. You'd have to turn them off before you start landing ofcourse, or have 2 set to an action group

[alexmun]

To clarify more on #1, I ask because I had assumed that it meant ejection burn. I had used it to plan a trip to Duna (optimal settings), but within 1 minute to go till launch, I noticed that I was facing Kerbin retrograde, rather than the 159 degrees prograde I was supposed to be, so obviously I wouldn't reach Duna at all unless i was supposed to make a mid course burn. I was in fact at the height I specified in the launch planner, so I'm not sure what went wrong.

The launch window planner doesn't know exactly where you are in your orbit around Kerbin because it doesn't have all of your orbital elements, just the altitude. So the figure you want to use to time your ejection burn is the ejection angle which is measured relative to the direction Kerbin is moving in its orbit around the sun. That's probably a little confusing, but you can get some good illustrations at Olex's Illustrated Interplanetary Guide or have a look at the tutorial Mr Shifty made.

[Mr Shifty]

or have a look at the tutorial Mr Shifty made.

Just be aware that my tutorial doesn't work very well for transfers to eccentric orbits because I assumed that the ejection velocity vector was always tangent to the direction of travel of the origin body. It's not, and especially not for eccentric transfers. I'm in the process of taking screenshots for an updated version, with the bonus that it shows how to transfer to Moho.