r/KerbalAcademy

1: The mountain, as seen from KSC.

2: Altitude of 5581 m, and nearly exact on the equator! KSC marked with arrow.

3: ALT+F12 menu, Cheats, Set Position. Input these coordinates. Altitude is from ground, depends on your vessel size. Pitch is important!! If you have a rocket, set to 90 for it to point in the correct direction. Highly recommend using the Ease to ground -functionality unless you want Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD). Also, the plateau isn't completely flat, so make sure your rocket's Center of Mass (CoM) isn't too high up, so it won't tip over. Alternatively strong reaction wheels can hold you upright if SAS is set to Surface Radial-Out.

if you find an even better location let me know

Should the top of my fairing be a pointy dart, or a round nub?

I always used to do the former, but when I read this Kerbin ascent guide which suggested to make the fairing a rounded nub, I got confused.

I thought that the first shape would minimize my drag by cutting through the air by being pointy (I wouldn't dare assume that works IRL, but, AFAIK, KSP has a simplified aerodynamics model, right?). I understand, though, that the first design has more fairing, so, not only does it cost more, but it weighs more (my rocket increases from 98.1t weight to 98.3t weight), which, while bad for TWR and deltaV, might actually help just the tiniest bit to keep the rocket more stable on ascent and less prone to flipping, if I understand it correctly.

So, which is more important? Minimizing drag, or minimizing weight?
Or, if I'm asking the wrong question, then, at least - which is better? The first fairing, or the second?

So, I just graduated college with my degree in Aerospace Engineering focusing in Astronautics, and I haven't played too much with Lambert's Problem for generating transfer orbits. This was my first foray into that level of rigor and my god did I underestimate its difficulty.

For those unaware, this is called an Aldrin Cycler. It's a solar orbiting station that uses Kerbin and Duna's gravity to twist this orbit around so that you cycle between Kerbin and Duna intercepting them every pass.

This is a Kerbin to Duna cycler, and I'm working on a Duna to Kerbin Cycler as well.

Each time it passes, it needs to adjust its orbit a bit using Kerbin's gravity in order to adjust for Duna's eccentricity.

This has taken me a few days to code up lolol. It's nested Lambert's Problem iterative solvers using a one revolution + TOF approach. We leave Kerbin prior to the cycler's periapsis, and then meet Kerbin after the periapsis. My code also iterates using the previous orbit's solution in order to adjust for Duna's eccentricity.

It was a pain, but I got it to work which I'm proud of! Here's 7 loops of the cycler with in-game time at the top.

Credits to the KSP Wiki for Dynamic elements for each planet as well as this Google Docs:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HwrFq6r2Wfzvghq8VYMNx0F2rG6nYMAEl_cyLj2EXjA/edit?gid=0#gid=0

that I can't find the OP for to credit :/ that gave me Mean Anomaly as well as some other stats for orbital determination.

I also used the bisection approach for Lambert's Problem, and then brute-forced the solutions iteratively by honing in on a converged solution to hit Kerbin with 1% of the Duna-Kerbin phase angle for the next orbit.

This solution does neglect Duna's perturbation on the orbit, but playing around in game it doesn't seem to do that much, so with minimal correction burns you can pretty easily correct. I'm looking at how to figure Duna's effect into the calculation, it's tough though given TOF from Duna to Kerbin will change, but the point of departure stays the same and the arrival point also stays the same. So, the solution is no perturbation at all.

I'm still reasoning with how to adjust the initial transfer to account for that.

What's cool too is that v_inf (Hyperbolic excess velocity) requires a delta of less than 1 m/s for each Kerbin pass. So, minimal correction required to continue on to Duna after passing Kerbin!

Anyway, this was a lot of orbital mechanics jargon, and I apologize if y'all are newer to orbital mechanics. It's tough! There's a reason why the phrase is "It isn't rocket science" lolol

Once I get the transfer windows and times out of my script (they're stored in data structures and need cleaned up) I'll get them posted in an edit to provide y'all with the orbital characteristics for each orbit and the transfer time to exit Kerbin. I'm currently only simulating up to Year 16 and some change in-game.

Not sure if this is the place to post this but

I've just started building and launching a space station, and was in the process of attaching multiple different modules to it (like the science one in the back)

But for some reason, I found out that all the crews are straight up TRAPPED in this. For some reason, the crew hatches just CANNOT open

This hatch OPENS FINE ON THE SURFACE. IM NOT SURE WHY IT DOESNT WORK IN SPACE.

Do I have to like, destroy the solar panel to get out???

Heck, is there a way to cheat to save this??? I spent hours tryna do this mission and its genuinely pmo

My first two were planes too btw :3

The first plane was a jet and the second one is a fully electric RTG-powered mach 0.65... prop plane. Yeah.

This thing almost goes supersonic (it used to, before I added the ladders, but they're pretty so it's worth it) and I'm thinking of what it'd be if I had to make lore for it, probably a private jet air taxi thingy? It's pretty maneurable and can fly at 60m/s minimum

Also, as shown in the screenshots, it goes almost mach one and has almost 54km/s of ∆v (I think? If that's the right gauge? I'm sorry I'm super new and watched like three Matt Lowne videos on this game)

Anyways please tell me what you think of it, and please give me naming suggestions? Just don't say anything like Andrew or Kamala...

I know it is a little bit laggy im sorry.

Hello. I’m new to the game and maybe I’m just being dumb but why is does my mun encounter now look like this ? The trajectory looks completely weird to me.
I did a mun orbit the other day(Artemis 2 style) and everything worked well, the trajectory looked normal and had no issues.
Now it has started looking like this. I haven’t changed my take off. Any ideas what I’ve done wrong ?
I’ve uninstalled all my mods and even deleted the game and reinstalled and it still looks like this

It only gets to about 280 at sea level after boosters, with just panther engines. The booster doesn't realy do anything

Somehow whenever this purple arrow appears my controls start getting funky. Like right now, down and up on the thumb stick both immediately go to the purple arrow. If I turn SAS off I start pitching until I turn SAS back on. Makes doing a powered descent pretty challenging.

Any help would be appreciated. I’m on console and it happens on multiple controllers.

Is there a key i can click to get back to a pre existing maneuver node while I’m in focus view? I have no clue how they expect people to click on it

I usually see people using other types of Antenna but this is the biggest ones I have so far. would this still work?

I'm making a rocket that brings that little guy on the left to Duna to land and return to Kerbin, but after I got it into orbit (with Mammoth engines) this keeps happening. I genuinely have no idea and have been trying to fix it for about 2 hours.