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Nukes are a mixed blessing. Yes, they have the best isp but it comes at the cost of low thrust and high mass. So they are great up to a certain vessel mass and then the burn times can become very long and may even make things like circulising an orbit very difficult.
You could consider using a Poodle(s) or Wolfhounds(s) as they will tend to give better TWR, at the cost of more fuel.
The other thing, if you don't already know, is that alt> speeds up the game so that your burns take less time in RL.
To get to Eve you need just slightly over 1000m/s. Which is kind of ridiculous. Not sure whether you are using Nukes for transfer in both directions or slow down with engines for some reason, but that's still much too low for Nukes to really pay off. Nukes are designed for up to 8000..12000m/s in most optimal case. A lot more is possible, but that's not the basic design story we have here. Except you are using tiny fuel amounts with heavy (in proportion) payload. In that case critical delta v threshold can indeed be much lower than 4500m/s mentioned above. Still rather not 1000m/s if they are used for one way trip with aerobraking.
And then building 1000m/s stage would be bad design anyway. Expensive engines wasted. Except that's SRB stage at the very start of your launch for which 1000..1500m/s performances are most common due to low Isp. All other launch stages (Lf+Ox) "should" have at least 2000..2500m/s and all vacuum stages >3000m/s. Or you could consider them a bad design with very rare excemptions.
Nukes start making sense flying to Dres both ways on balanced designs. Don't fly them to Duna or Eve. Except that's a Duna SSTO.
but yeah looks like what I might do is redesign the rocket with better engines then re launch
It was more of a warning to not jump straight to nukes on low delta v trips. If you do a lot of engine acceleration and deceleration forth and back adjusting orbits, nukes could be used.
Check heatshield aerobraking option for capture to start with. It should be much cheaper and lighter. Infalatable one or regular heatshields with very limited (~none) ablator to reduce unneeded mass. Fairings can help too. Highly elliptical orbits like Gilly might be problematic to use for return targeting a while later.
I wouldn't leave fuel reserves in Gilly orbit. SOI is tiny and thus harder to intercept and on top of that Gilly orbit is both highly eccentric and inclined. Not the most common orbit you will get arriving or launching there. It's better to leave fuel where ships will need it - low-medium Eve orbit. Chances, that any ship in that system will run out of fuel landing or launching from Gilly or close to it at that altitude and inclination are like 0.001. So why would you keep fuel reserves there? Mining - probably. But why fuel reserve? Also the best option around Eve is to move an asteroid to low Eve orbit. It's cheap and convenient where you need it. Gilly has fun gravity, but not great for anything else in this game.
but even so I think your right going to try it with two poodels and see if that works
Anyway one thing was 100% correct with your initial design - the less engines you have for transfer stage, the better your delta v. Every engine is dead weight. Real world orbital burns aren't quick either - for the same reason. Just start on higher orbit or do split burns as otherwise you will lose a lot of fuel burning in all the wrong directions. And then warp the time with Alt+> to 4x during those slow burns.
You can use more engines for comfort, but strictly speaking that's not how space works. So while moving from 2 to 4 nukes would be sort of acceptable in KSP, it's not exactly the best thing to do for design as a whole except you need them for landing on Gilly later on due to TWR.
whats a spilt burn
also I thought low orbit burns where better then high orbit ones ?
And the only reason to use nukes is if you do have high DV burns like that, and that is the only time you would actually need to do a split burn, so it really isn’t worth it. You are better off going to a really high Kerbin orbit and just doing the whole burn at once from there. You don’t get as much of the Oberth effect, but you don’t lose as much DV from a long inefficient burn either, so it balances out.
Though the general remark is true. Most common usage scenario for split burns is going with single Nuke or Terrier to high delta v targets with 1000..2000m/s. With predicted node burn times around 8..10min.
So your first burn will be 60..90sec before and after node reaching ~2600m/s.
Second burn will reach ~2900m/s. Still comfortable 2..4h orbit. Rather don't go beyond that. Not worth. Don't waste 2 days missing the target to have mere 50..100m/s more here.
Third and final burn will reach escape.
And add all the rest!
Even though it is not strictly split burn at this point and your flight angle won't be at 0°, the thing is your orbital curvature won't change as much anymore as it is already quite straight escape. So you don't have to worry much about ruined targeting. It will go pretty much in the same direction as intended and fuel losses won't be huge either. Every m/s you gain here is still worth more than one on solar orbit. After all you are probably pushing delta v to limits already. With like 20ooom/s Nuke or 10ooom/s Terrier. For split burns always use prograde btw. Maneuver targeting would be messed up as it can't predict future moves.
Higher orbits are nice too. Though they also suck strictly speaking. Just in a different way. Like when I did my low solar rescues I realized 300km helps shet. They are still much too short. Even 500km isn't enough to do some 3000m/s burns with heavy (fuel), slow nuke considering the time needed for that burn. The problem here, high orbits (600..800km?) aren't exactly cheap and will waste few hundreds m/s on their own the higher you go even worse with engines as slow. And it takes quite some time to establish them. Comparable to split burns. Higher orbits are simpler for perfect targeting though.
So one way or another, extreme high delta v or slow burns are nowhere near 100% efficiency. Neither with split burn nor high starting orbit. Still there is no other way to get reasonably priced high delta v otherwise. Even though you waste a bit, you win a lot more in the end. Necessary evil. So High orbits or Split burns or Conventional engines if you are easily bored.
In case of split burns be careful with Mun. Your total maneuver time can take up to 1 day. And you only see trajectory for the first one when you start. One day is 1/6 of Mun orbit. You don't want to hit Mun dead center on your way to Moho :)
Edit: oops, somehow there are windows with very little normal component, so it turns out you're right
Starting with perfect Transfer window planer setup and using Precision node you sure can improve that a bit with like 10 different fancy numbers and angles and hit it once in 10 years. But frankly none of that shet is really needed. This game is well designed as a game. If you use some brains, there aren't unsolvable mysteries requiring highschool education. Some extra delta v is quite easy to find in KSP universe. I won't even start on Eve slingshots which are so convenient there and can be used for both dive and inclination.
As for Dres, Jool can do gravity stuff really nicely even though starting slightly higher. Or Kerbin itself. Because Dres doesn't have its Ap close to solar equator iirc as conveniently as Moho its Pe. And Eeloo is just annoying to target whatever you use due to very slow orbit up there at Ap and small SOI. But I still wouldn't bother about mods.
When you make coffee and it goes all over your arm. Sorry I had to.