MoreEpicThanYou
The most Epic.
No, it was just one mission each. I've never tried a dual Mun/Minmus mission, though I heard it's more fuel efficient to go to Minmus first.
Have you ever thought of just stacking SRB's right under the liquid boosters, maybe one or two deep?I can maintain a stable launch system pretty well with just a single mainsail and 2m tanks, and one ring of 1m tanks or SRBs. I can't get multiple layers to work right, though. Do you attach the second ring to the first exclusively, or to the 2m core rocket somehow?
No, it was just one mission each. I've never tried a dual Mun/Minmus mission, though I heard it's more fuel efficient to go to Minmus first.
Tell me about it. I got the end of this post the first time and got a blue screen of death from my crappy laptop.Okay, I just lost two posts due to expired tokens or some garbage like that. The short version:
Thanks for the info. Is the calculator you used a plugin or mod, or was it an online website? After reading your post, I found an online calculator that computes the angels for me.I waited until Duna was leading Kerbin and formed nearly a 45° angle with the sun based on this calculator I found online. I started burning out of pro-grade orbit just as I passed behind Kerbin towards Duna, but a chance encounter with the Mun messed up my approach. I ended up missing Duna, overshot, and then burned again to reach Duna on the other side of the solar system. I was at the edge of Duna's SoI (the periapsis was over 20 million meters away), so I had a couple big burns to get into the orbit there.
Well the three 1600L tanks get dropped before I take off, so that wasn't much of an issue.Landing was easy, especially with a long air-brake and burning the nukes at maximum (they are efficient in the thin atmosphere). I was able to "hop" a little during the final moments of landing, so I think I could take off again, but given I only have 2,280 L of fuel I don't think I could make it to orbit, correct the orbit, burn for Kerbin, and then land. The poodle has more thrust than my 3 nukes, so I think you are in better shape so long as you have enough fuel (and those extra tanks could kill your weight). I think the exterior 1,600 L tanks are going to kill you there.
That's quite an impressive launcher! I worked on a new asparagus-staging launcher yesterday. I got all the way to the end and was adding struts, then I misclicked and deattached the radially mounted stacks. When I reattached them, ALL of the staging and fuel lines were out of whack, to the point where I have to start over.The RCS is still on my lander because I didn't know how the refit launch system would work, but given that was much more stable I can probably move the RCS down to the middle/orbital stage. I can probably take a fuel tank out of there too--my bottom stages are so powerful my Kerbin AP was around 550,000 m, so with a stronger gravity turn I should be able to get close enough with that alone.
I've got 7 parachutes for the Duna landing, so I hope I don't need to fire my engines at all. For an Eve landing, I won't need as many.For Eve, my parachutes will work better, as will air-braking, but my nukes will be terribly inefficient. With the higher gravity I will probably be stranded after landing unless I beef up the return system. I've got some ideas, want to test them before posting.
Thanks for the info. Is the calculator you used a plugin or mod, or was it an online website? After reading your post, I found an online calculator that computes the angels for me.
Well the three 1600L tanks get dropped before I take off, so that wasn't much of an issue.
However, I decided to ditch that whole configuration as being too fuel-inefficient. Instead I attached 4 of the tiniest fuel tanks radially and then attached 4 NERVA's under those (the tanks are really only there to place the engines on).
This gives me an OK thrust but really good fuel efficiency. From what you said, it should be enough to get off Duna (I hope). Though it will probably not be enough to get off any bigger planets or moons or anything with a thicker atmosphere.
That's quite an impressive launcher! I worked on a new asparagus-staging launcher yesterday. I got all the way to the end and was adding struts, then I misclicked and deattached the radially mounted stacks. When I reattached them, ALL of the staging and fuel lines were out of whack, to the point where I have to start over.
I wish you could 'lock in' the current configuration so that when you go to add struts or fuel lines and stuff, you can't misclick and take the whole thing apart on accident.
I've got 7 parachutes for the Duna landing, so I hope I don't need to fire my engines at all. For an Eve landing, I won't need as many.
From what I can tell, getting to Eve and back is one of the hardest things to do in the game with stock parts and without mods or hacks. I've seen many posters say it's pretty much impossible in the stock game until we get new stuff in .18. Getting there is easy enough, but getting off again and back home is extremely difficult. Good luck!
I actually landed (sort of) on Eve. My friend lost control of his rocket and it got put in an orbit around the sun roughly in Eve's orbit. After tweaking the orbit a bit and letting it run on 10000x for about an hour, I finally got a collision vector. I managed to get within the atmosphere, but for some reason my parachute refused to deploy (no idea why).
So as I was hurtling toward the ground, I decided to eject my Kerbals because I had seen online that they can sometimes survive a reentry. I got the first one out, but the pod crashed before I could eject the other two. The one Kerbal actually did survive reentry and the fall and now he's stuck on Eve, just walking around.
Let me know if you manage to get your Duna lander off the ground!
I gave up on interplanetary landing missions, but wait until .18 comes out and I build my badass interplanetary MotthaShip.