calculating altitude

[Biwinat0r]

Hello,

i played KSP since yesterday and i have one problem i cant find a solution at this forum...

Is there a useful way to calculate the future altitude? I mean how i know how much boosters i need to reach for example 70 000 km or the orbit or the mun. For me its not fine to use it via trial and error (i play carrer mode and i run quick out of money with trial and error and with reset the flight, its surreal).

I already installed the engeneer mode but i cant find a way to calculate my ships future altitude.

Thank you in advance for the answers

[Anquietas314]

What exactly do you mean by "future altitude"? As in, do you mean the highest point in your current orbit (this is your apoapsis), or the highest altitude your ship can potentially reach?

[Cerberus738]

I think the term you are looking for is DeltaV. To reach a 70 km by 70km orbit around Kerbin you need ~4500m/s of deltaV. The engineer mod tells you how much you have as you build your craft. To get to the mun you need another ~900m/s of deltaV. So add 4500m/s and 900m/s and you need to launch a ship from Kerbin with that much. A deltaV map will give you approximations for getting to each planet.

[Anquietas314]

To reach a 70 km by 70km orbit around Kerbin you need ~4500m/s of deltaV.

That's really only in the best case assuming a near-perfect ascent, which is a bit overly optimistic for a new player. I've been playing the game for 3 years and I still frequently screw up my ascent by a few hundred m/s of deltaV lol. A "safe" figure is around 4800-5000m/s.

[Biwinat0r]

thank you very much for the answers

@armagheddonsgw, yes the highest altitude my ship can potentially reach

I asked this question because of the contracts "test xx at altitute of xx". I have to experiment so much with different boosters until i rechead it with the given altitute and speed of the contract. I thought there should be a easy way to calculate the altitue i will reach after start before i start my rocket.

@cerberus, thank you..that was not was i was looking for right now but i guess i will need it soon..i also already found a useable map for the needed vmax outside of Kerbin. I focused on my question more about vmax at Kerbin. It seems i have to experiment, and be always below 4500 m/s.

[Biwinat0r]

thank you very much for the answers

@armagheddonsgw: Yes i mean the highest altitude my ship can potentially reach. I asked this question because of the contracts "test xx at xx altitude". I thought there should be a easy way to calculate how much boost i need to reach, for example 11 000 m.

@Cerberus738: Thank you, but i focused on my question more at altitude on Kerbin. But i guess soon i will need the deltav for the travels in space. I already found a useable map for this problem, but so far i cant find a calculation for altitude on Kerbin.

Thank you again. Seems i have to experiment and remind that i should stay always below 4500 m/s.

[Dr-Drunk]

I would highly recommend installing something like Kerbal Engineer to help with this. That mod shows you the ammount of Thrust-to-Weight ratio your craft is running on as well as the total Delta V per stage. It's a pretty good tool to have since it takes allot of geusswork out of the whole thing.

After that, it mostly just comes down to a bit of experience. Once you know how high 500 Dv gets you for instance you can start working off of that.

[ghpstage]

Best advice for parts tests in flight in Kerbin is to avoid them.

They frequently come with unreasonable conditions for rockets, are very difficult to pair with other contracts or missions, screw up the critical ascent stage of a rocket and have pitiful rewards for success.

Your money issues in career mode really won't be solved by improving your ability to do these things.

If you like parts tests go for orbital and suborbital ones instead, the lighter components such as tiny engines and landing gears pay out 20-35k and a heap of science per cotnract on hard mode, are easy to tag on to other missions, like other parts tests and orbital science, and have no speed requirements.

The only time you need to know how high your going to go is in the altitude record contracts when using RT-10 SRBs as you need to avoid completing the next contract by accident.

[sal_vager]

I find them to be pretty easy money, just get up to speed then hold your throttle till you reach the right altitude and run the test, it's trickier with SRB's but other than that it's a good way to earn some funds early on

[MajorThomas]

Yes, or pick the easy test flight missions. Such as test part X landed at Kerbin. Don't even need a full rocket to do this

[ghpstage]

I find them to be pretty easy money, just get up to speed then hold your throttle till you reach the right altitude and run the test, it's trickier with SRB's but other than that it's a good way to earn some funds early on

On occasion I will actually take one, sometimes a parachute test at the terminal velocity of its altitude for around 6k, which isn't bad when i'm doing the altitude runs but they are valuable enough that I don't miss it if I don't get it.

However, once you go into orbit, which is the most important skill to learn, and can be done with starter parts, and easily with decouplers, you open up a lot of orbital and suborbital tests, as well as orbital science which all have much, much larger returns than flying tests, can be doubled up on every time, and can be achieved at very low costs.

For example, on hard difficulty, this fully recoverable (minus the decouplers) SRB rocket is capable of reaching 98km while carrying the two radial decouplers currently mounted. It costs less than 3k to launch and succeeded in doing a sub-orbital test of a decoupler, worth nearly 12k, and space science for 22k in one launch. The only reason it isn't also doing a sub-orbital sepratron contract for another 10k is the 2 contract limit!

Afterwards I recovered 1200. So after spending less than 2k I got around 34k in return. You won't be getting returns on investment like that with flying test contracts.

Edited January 4, 2015 by ghpstage

[Biwinat0r]

Seems there is no accurate programm right now for KSP to determine that.

Thank you very much for the answers

Its true, the missions on Kerbin are mostly not worth the money =/