Well, after much prior experimentation, today I built a massive cruiser for exploration of other planets.
Imgur album:
https://imgur.com/a/vpkTq
Today, I got around to finishing fueling the above craft. I then accelerated it 2km/s dv, out of kerbin orbit, and down towards Moho. It held together beautifully, accelerating at around .5G to 1G at half throttle, without so much as a wobble. Seems I did a really good job balancing it's beautiful asymmetry. This burn took up approximately 50% of its fuel, dropping it from 120k to 60k. So I was a bit worried about that; but if necessary, I could individually dump some of the engines to drop weight.
Well, after the inclination change to match Moho, it became painfully obvious I wouldn't make it back, and would be lucky just to get a stable Moho orbit. And so, some emergency Rocket Surgery was in order. All but 2 of the engines were dumped, with the remaining 2 re-docked onto the place where the 1-to-4 connection unit for the engines had been. The end result is a sleeker craft which actually had the delta v to put itself into a Moho orbit.
Got a circular Moho orbit, with around 3500 fuel remaining. I'll need to do some calculations... but I suspect they won't be coming back. Moral of this story: dump more fuel tanks quicker, use less rockets if you never throttle to full anyway. Also that you apparently need around 6500 DV to get a circular Moho orbit from an 800km kerbin orbit. And that nuclear reactors are heavy, and if you don't have a really good reason to cart them all the way to Moho, don't do it.
Imgur album of the final crew + fuel vessel up to post-Rocket Surgery.
https://imgur.com/a/GELSMFinal shot of the post-surgery rocket in orbit of Moho
(the main reason I'm willing to screw up like this is because I'll probably be tossing this save when .24 comes out anyway, as it's heavily modded, and already barely working as is)
Author
Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1501240 times)