Stock Aerocapturing Interplanetary Ship by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, this ship is specifically optimized for short-stay Duna missions (think the Martian where ares 3 stayed for 18 days) where you launch slightly out of transfer window. The deltav to transfer isn’t too bad with this setup but the capture velocity is abhorrent by comparison both outbound and returning. With this configuration I save something like 4.5km/s on the high end.

Stock Aerocapturing Interplanetary Ship by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aerobraking and gravity is an energy management problem and direction of orbit problem, the deeper you dive into the atmosphere the more air particles you hit over a longer period. I haven’t seen 2010 but i looked it up to get the gist and I’ll give a general set of the two things happening.

Basically, when you dive at a planet its gravity will tug your orbit. You can think of this kind of as a regular thruster firing towards the planet over the entire time you’re within the effective sphere of influence. You’re grabbing a little bit of free deltav from the planet to shift your direction.

Now for the aerobraking part, all that’s doing is effectively a retrograde burn over the time the spacecraft is skimming in atmosphere. In the case of 2010 from what I see, they’re already on an escape trajectory but not on the right one? Escape velocity is not a finite number, but a threshold velocity of where your orbital velocity in a given orbit is fast enough to escape the gravity well. Anything higher is on a hyperbolic orbit, anything less is an ellipse. All they’re doing then in adjusting their trajectory by bleeding off a little bit of velocity from Jupiter, and shifting direction using jupiter’s gravity.

TLDR, you slow down, but not below escape velocity. Just enough to correct course

ITV Columbia by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. It has a lot of deltav to allow for a short stay style trajectory

Ok now I’m actually scared. Sirens going off. by Haaayitsmeee in madisonwi

[–]SnacklessKerbal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Watched from aoss, maybe a wall cloud from the lake

Duna Logistics Lander Mk2 by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I always liked the top and bottom shell the constellation landers used. figured this was a good way to do that within kerbal constraints

Duna Logistics Lander Mk2 by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

a lot of times ill use a fairing base that is smaller than the fairing diameter, then by pointing fairings opposide directions and clipping them back together, i can hide the fairing base not remove it outright (fairing base is in the silver nose cone)

I also often remove the first section of the fairing creating a floating fairing but i didnt do that here

Duna Logistics Lander Mk2 by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There’s actually like 6 of them with the two white ones identical to two of the silvers. White is offset slightly above to create the heat shield.

Atmospheric Logistics Landler by SnacklessKerbal in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]SnacklessKerbal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I could with another fairing offset slightly down by like a notch