0.24 - Asparagus too pricey?

[ShunterAlhena]

Hi guys,

I had a game fairly well progressed - I've landed rovers on Mun, visited Minmus and have an orbiting fuel depot around Kerbin. I've been planning my Duna mission when KSP 0.24 hit.

I've been shocked by the prices.

My standard Asparagus Mun craft costs about 150.000 to launch (and my untested Duna craft would be about 500.000). However the "visit the Mun" contract pays only about 75.000 when completed. Am I this horribly inefficient? What are your typical launch prices?

Thanks

Edited July 19, 2014 by ShunterAlhena

[KerikBalm]

Yes, they are pricey, I think its mainly the cost of decouplers.

As many predicted, SRBs are more attrative due to their low cost now.

[TrooperCooper]

I'm flying to Duna for 300k right now, without Asparagus.

[SRV Ron]

This Mun lander should be quite affordable. If you are good, you can still do the mission without the extra set of SRBs

You will likely need an asparagus design if you want to do a Duna return mission without having to resort to a monstrous size ship. You will have to take advantage of a direct intercept window as well as use aerobraking for capture and landing.

Edited July 19, 2014 by SRV Ron

[Frank327]

Well yeah, you can't just use the biggest mothership in your catalog for every single mission. I think the best thing is to keep updating a number of spacecraft as you get more tech to make them as cost efficient as possible.

The rewards for visiting Mun and Minmus are good enough. My Mun lander (low tech, no fuel lines, no struts) cost me 28k and did the job just fine. I'm not a master at this game either. Just make sure to use those SRB's and build your spacecraft to fit the mission. If you've got lots of fuel left over after the mission you probably wasted a lot of money.

[Pecan]

LV-6-S + Long Tom (Chapter 5 of my tutorial) come in at just over 30k in the old prices. Haven't looked to see how things have changed yet.

[Vector]

I'm planning on setting up a 2-stage staging system so that both stages make it to orbit (SSTO essentially) and then the first stage has its own parachutes and control system so it can be recovered.

But yeah asparagus is going to have a lot of non-recoverable parts and going to be very expensive.

[Xavven]

Liquid fuel tanks and engines are very expensive now. Use them for upper stages where minimizing weight and restarting engines is important.

With Funds, I've started to use far more solid boosters getting into LKO. My Mun lander costs about 73,000 including the 3-kerbal CSM and 2-kerbal LEM. It uses the Munar Orbital Rendezvous mission mode, and I bet I could get it even cheaper if I used a direct ascent mode, and even cheaper if I didn't send 3 kerbals. It uses 8 of the largest Kerbodyne solid boosters and a Skipper (for thrust vectoring) to get to LKO.

[LethalDose]

You will likely need an asparagus design if you want to do a Duna return mission without having to resort to a monstrous size ship.

Or you could, y'know, dock things in oribit...

[Wanderfound]

Orbital refuelling infrastructure and fuel delivery by cheap SSTOs that get most of their lift from air-breathing engines are probably the way to go. Jets cost more than SRBs, but you get all of it back if you can land it at KSC.

Precision landing matters; spaceplanes make that easier, but they're not the only way to do it. I've been having fun with rocket powered parasailing...

[Starwhip]

I'm flying to Duna for 300k right now, without Asparagus.

*Image Snipped*

My god, sir, what the heck are you planning? Blowing up Duna? That ship has 3-4 times as much Delta-V as your typical Duna mission requires.

[Streetwind]

There was the Duna For Less challenge back in February.

Obviously the prices, especially fuel tanks, weren't the same back then as they are now. But still, back then people went to Duna not for 300k, not for 30k... but for 6k. Manned return mission.

It might be fun to dig up the crafts that the people used in that contest, and see how much they cost today.

[LordCorwin]

My unmaned probe cost me 24820 (just going to Mun: orbit, science data, land safely and more science data) .

For the "Plant flag on Mun" contract: my manned mission to Mun (return to Kerbin included) cost me 59766 and I was able to recover 12208. It included as Payload 3 SC-9001 Science Jr and 3 Mistery Goos and 4 parachutes.

I almost cannot come back to Kerbin. I finished out of gas trying to escape from Mun's orbit, I had to squeeze every drop of the monopropellant remaining in the RCS system to come back to Kerbin!

Edited July 19, 2014 by LordCorwin

[Frank327]

Of course it's also important how good your flying is. If you can fly with great efficiency you can use some really small rockets for your moonlanding missions. And when you need more dV the size of your spacecraft increases exponentially.

[ShunterAlhena]

Thanks for all the posts!

So to sum up, the answer to my question ("Am I this inefficient?") is a resounding "Yes!", and the main suggestion is to go easy on the liquid fuel engines and use SRBs instead. Also one needs to forget about using one standard ship design for everything and use purpose-built vessels for each mission.

I must say, this is a great change. Having to watch spending is not only much more realistic, it is more fun as well - just slapping my 32-engine "Elijah" launch system on everything from fuel modules to Munar landers made the game a bit stale. This will bring back a lot of the challenge!

[Halaberiel]

It's not too expensive, you just need to add a probe core to your launch vehicle. For example here is my standard craft & launch vehicle for early game (only manned mission is Duna, all others are probe launches because manned missions with landing costs a lot more d/v that I'd don't have). This craft can reach anywhere but not return. As you can see on top of the launch vehicle is a probe core, and the entire bottom stage is detached around 300 d/v short of creating an orbit. This leaves the bottom craft with around 600 d/v to slow down and land safely. Then I just spend the remaining 200-300 d/v to circularize my orbit.

http://imgur.com/4T1hyjc

As you can see in the image, the vast majority of the cost of launchers is in the units themselves not the fuel. So as long as you save the ship you lose very little on launches doing it this way. Here is my Duna launcher: Note the much much larger launch vehicle requirements....

http://imgur.com/OaUOgID

Edited July 19, 2014 by Halaberiel

[TrooperCooper]

My god, sir, what the heck are you planning? Blowing up Duna? That ship has 3-4 times as much Delta-V as your typical Duna mission requires.

Who says I am only doing one landing?

[ixolate industries]

If you are worried about high costs perhaps try looking into some space-X style launches whereby each stage can be controlled individually and brought down to land safely on their own for recovery.

[Sky_walker]

Obviously the prices, especially fuel tanks, weren't the same back then as they are now. But still, back then people went to Duna not for 300k, not for 30k... but for 6k. Manned return mission.

6k? OMG.... and I thought I'm good in building small and cheap crafts.

For the "Plant flag on Mun" contract: my manned mission to Mun (return to Kerbin included) cost me 59766

44k here, excluding science equipment (my last trip was 80k with all the equipment loaded).

Only my ship can do 2 Mun landings without a problem - seeing how much fuel I have left I suppose a third landing would be possible too, but I prefer to be safe with my return back home.

Who says I am only doing one landing?

Mr. Stock says that Duna got just one biome, so there is no point.

(I hoped for new biomes in 0.24, but... no positive surprises, sadly)

[Halaberiel]

6k? OMG.... and I thought I'm good in building small and cheap crafts.

44k here, excluding science equipment (my last trip was 80k with all the equipment loaded).

Only my ship can do 2 Mun landings without a problem - seeing how much fuel I have left I suppose a third landing would be possible too, but I prefer to be safe with my return back home.

Mr. Stock says that Duna got just one biome, so there is no point.

(I hoped for new biomes in 0.24, but... no positive surprises, sadly)

Get Custom Biomes?

[Bobnova]

It's for FAR so you'll need to add another 1.1km/s of boosters to make orbit, but this was my first manned Mun lander in 0.24:

Costs could be cut obviously, swap the pod out of a cheap weak pod, take the fins off and fly carefully, etc.

Just swapping the mainsail (I had a test contract) for a skipper would probably do it.

[KerikBalm]

Also one needs to forget about using one standard ship design for everything and use purpose-built vessels for each mission.

I must say, this is a great change. Having to watch spending is not only much more realistic, it is more fun as well - just slapping my 32-engine "Elijah" launch system on everything from fuel modules to Munar landers made the game a bit stale. This will bring back a lot of the challenge!

Well... not so fast.

Once you get out of Kerbin's SOI, orbital rendevous starts to become very attractive (although I am impressed by that small duna design that did without it).

This means having a tug or mothership with docking ports... these can be reused.

I think that now you've still got to use a standard design - well a set of standard designs - modular craft. Once you unlock docking ports, you want to start designing ships that can perform multiple tasks.

Using LV-Ns? design a transfer stage so it can work as a re-usable tug. If you can get it to orbit, try and think of a way to re-use it.

Think "what do I already have up there that I could use on this mission", and "if I leave this up there, can I use it for anything else, or is it just going to be junk?"

I had previously made a SSTO that could haul 100 tons to orbit... I could just use that, one size fits all (I can't imagine needing more than 100 tons for a payload in LKO, that can't be launched in two peices) - but I didn't like using it because it took so much of my time to get something to orbit - the SLS nasa parts were much quicker and simpler ways of getting my stuff to orbit.

I'm currently using small SSTOs to launch small probes, using a 1 size fits all appraoch there.

So, the way I see it, its a combination of customizing your ship so you don't go "overkill" ever time with thousands of m/s of spare dV - and modular design so you can get re-use out of stuff that you've already got in orbit (sure you could deorbit it near the KSC and get a near 100% refund, but to use it again, you've got to pay to hoist it back into orbit - mainly the sort of thing I re-use are LV-N modules with a small fuel tank, probe core, and docking port, which can rendevous and connect with a payload that has the needed fuel. No more payng to lift nearly 5 tons of LV-Ns into orbit anymore (for a pair of them).

[Streetwind]

It's for FAR so you'll need to add another 1.1km/s of boosters to make orbit, but this was my first manned Mun lander in 0.24:

Erm... last time I checked you needed less dV with FAR to get into orbit, not more...

[Halaberiel]

So, the way I see it, its a combination of customizing your ship so you don't go "overkill" ever time with thousands of m/s of spare dV - and modular design so you can get re-use out of stuff that you've already got in orbit (sure you could deorbit it near the KSC and get a near 100% refund, but to use it again, you've got to pay to hoist it back into orbit - mainly the sort of thing I re-use are LV-N modules with a small fuel tank, probe core, and docking port, which can rendevous and connect with a payload that has the needed fuel. No more payng to lift nearly 5 tons of LV-Ns into orbit anymore (for a pair of them).

Fuel is obscenely cheap compared to the price of the parts. As long as you save the fuel containers you're saving 85-90% of the cost of the launch.

Erm... last time I checked you needed less dV with FAR to get into orbit, not more...

That was his point I think.

[Decent Weasel]

I know this is a little late, but this occurred to me last night. Feel free to throw empty fuel tanks at me if I'm wrong here.

If the decouplers are the expensive part, why not build an asparagus that uses decouplers differently? Rather than a main fuel tank with two side tanks held on by radial decouplers, why not build a main tank with two truss-arms extending from it and holding downward-facing stack decouplers? You could hang the side stages from the decouplers, but if they're stack decouplers at the correct orientation, you'd still have them on your main ship after dropping the side tanks / motors.