kspalculator 0.10.1

Determine the best rocket propulsion designs for one stage of a rocket, given a set of constraints and preferences (Kerbal Space Program).

kspalculator is a tool which determines the best rocket propulsion designs for one stage of a rocket, given a set of constraints and preferences.

Constraints are properties of the spacecraft which have to be fulfilled. These are the possible payload and the Delta-v as well as the minimum acceleration which is reached in an environment with given air pressure. Preferences are further properties a propulsion design might fulfil in order to be preferred. Examples for preferences are the thrust vectoring angle, the radial size, whether the engine is able to generate electric power, etc.

Which is the best design depends heavily on the specific application. A design might be better than another one, if it is cheaper or has a lower mass, but it might also be considered better if it is buildable using less technology or if it better fulfills some of the given preferences. Obviously, it is impossible to sort all propulsion designs by their “goodness”, so there might be more than one which is the best at least by some criteria. This tool presents exactly all best designs.

There is an official web frontend for kspalculator at: https://kspalculator.appspot.com/.

Features

kspalculator evaluates all possible designs, checks whether they fulfil the user’s requirements, and then checks whether it is the best design using the relation “A is better than B iff A is better than B by any of the user’s criteria”. Only the best designs are then presented to the user. This way, the user has maximum flexibility to use the type of propulsion which serves best his needs, still without being spammed by non-optimal solutions.

The stage might have different requirements for minimum acceleration for different *flight phases* through different air pressures and different Delta-v requirements. For example you might require the vessel accelerating by 1000 m/s with an acceleration of 3 m/s², and later 500 m/s with an acceleration of 7 m/s².

Besides considering the classic liquid fuel engines as well as solid fuel boosters, kspalculator also considers using the LV-N Nerv Atomic Rocket Motor, the IX-6315 Dawn Electric Propulsion and the O-10 Puff MonoPropellant Engine.

Considered criteria to decide whether a design is better than another one are

• Mass,

• Cost,

• Whether it is buildable with easier available technology,

• Whether gimbal (thrust vectoring) is available, or Thrust Vectoring Range,

• Whether it uses MonoPropellant as fuel, which is also used by Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters,

• Whether its engine generates electric power,

• The length of the engine, as might be meaningful when building landers,

• Whether it meets user’s radial size preference.

Even though calculating this sounds highly sophisticated, the best designs are presented to the user usually within less than a second. The information shown about each design includes a detailed listing of the performance characteristics, i.e. the actually reachable Delta-v (which might be slightly more than required, because of rounding to tank sizes), the acceleration at full thrust as well as the mass at beginning and end of each flight phase.

(By the way, we are talking about Kerbal Space Program, version 1.2.1)

Usage

GUI

There is an official web frontend for kspalculator at: https://kspalculator.appspot.com/.

Here we explain how to use the kspalculator command line tool, but the basic concepts don’t vary.

Installation

Make sure you have Python, at least version 3.4 installed. Fetch the most recent version of kspalculator at https://github.com/aandergr/kspalculator/releases. Installation is then done by unzipping the archive and calling

python3 setup.py install

Basic Usage

kspalculator is invoked on the command line. Syntax is

kspalculator [--boosters] [--cost] [preferences] <payload> <Delta-v[:acceleration[:pressure]] [...]>

where payload is the payload in kg and Delta-v[:acceleration[:pressure]] are tuples of required Delta-v in m/s, acceleration in m/s² and environment pressure in ATM (0.0 = vacuum, 1.0 = kerbin sea level pressure) for each flight phase. You have to specify at least one of these tuples. Acceleration and pressure are optional and default to zero.

If you add --bosters, kspalculator will consider adding solid fuel boosters. This is very useful for launcher stages.

Options for preferences are:

• --preferred-radius {tiny,small,large,extralarge}: Preferred radius of the stage. Tiny = 0.625 m, Small = 1.25 m, Large = 2.5 m (Rockomax), ExtraLarge = 3.75 m (Kerbodyne),

• --electricity: Prefer engines generating electricity,

• --length or --lander: Prefer engines which are short or radially mounted,

• --gimbal: Prefer engines having gimbal. If you specify this option twice, a higher gimbal range is considered better.

• --rcs or --monopropellant: Prefer engines using RCS fuel (monopropellant), i.e. prefer the O-10 Puff engine.

In contrast to the constraints, preferences aren’t hard requirements for a design suggestion to be shown up. Adding preferences only adds criteria under which designs may be considered better than others. This means, specifying more preferences, more designs will be suggested.

If you specify --cost, results will be sorted by their cost instead of their mass.

For a brief reference for options, call kspalculator --help. To display the version of the tool as well as the corresponding version of Kerbal Space Program, call kspalculator --version.

Note that kspalculator calculates optimal designs for one stage only (or two if you allow boosters, where the first is a stage only utilizing solid fuel boosters). It will never split up your design into multiple stages.

Example

Imagine we build a light Mun lander, having a payload of 1320 kg. That is a Mk1 Command Pod, four LT-05 Landing Struts, a Parachute, a Heat Shield, a Stack Decoupler and Solar Panels. We want to have two stages: the upper one flying from Low Kerbin Orbit to Mun, landing there, and then flying back to Kerbin; and the lower one launching the lander stage from Kerbin Space Center to Low Kerbin Orbit.

After having determined the payload of the stage, we need to figure out Delta-v requirements, acceleration requirements and air pressure at the different flight phases.

In this case air pressure is easy: As the Mun does not have any atmosphere and the stage starts its way already being in orbit, it is clear that the lander will be designed to fly through vacuum only.

Needed Delta-v can be easily read at Delta-v maps or calculated by calculation tools found in the internet (see links section later in this document). We find out, that we need 1170 m/s from Low Kerbin Orbit to Low Mun Orbit, then 580 m/s for landing at Mun, 580 m/s for starting at Mun and later 310 m/s for returning to Kerbin. Additionally, in this example we want to have 700 m/s Delta-v as a reserve.

Now let’s think about acceleration. As we land and start on Mun, we indeed have constraints regarding minimum acceleration, because we need to counteract Mun’s gravity. In this example, we want to have at least 2g = 3.3 m/s² acceleration when starting to land at Mun (i.e. when having reached Low Mun Orbit), and 3g = 5.0 m/s² to launch at Mun, g being Mun’s surface gravity, which is about 1.65 m/s² as can be found out in the in-game knowledge base.

Do we have any preferences? Yes we do. We’re building a lander utilizing LT-05 Micro Landing Struts, which are quite bad, so it would be nice to prefer engines which have a short length. Thus, we add --length flag to kspalculator invocation. Additionally, our Payload has radial size small, so it would be cool if the propulsion system also had this radius. We add -R small. Note that adding preferences does not prevent the listing of solutions which do not meet these preferences, i.e. adding preferences always leads to more output.

Doing so, we get:

$ kspalculator 1320 -R small --length 1170 580:3.3 580:5.0 310 700
48-7S Spark
    Total Mass: 6145 kg (including payload and full tanks)
    Cost: 1670
    Liquid fuel: 840 units (4725 kg full tank mass)
    Requires: PropulsionSystems
    Radial size: Tiny
    Gimbal: 3.0 °
    Engine is short enough to be used with LT-05 Micro Landing Struts
    Performance:
    [...]

LV-909 Terrier
    Total Mass: 6320 kg (including payload and full tanks)
    Cost: 1190
    Liquid fuel: 800 units (4500 kg full tank mass)
    Requires: AdvancedRocketry
    Radial size: Small
    Gimbal: 4.0 °
    Engine is short enough to be used with LT-05 Micro Landing Struts
    Performance:
      1:  1170 m/s @ vacuum     9.49 m/s² - 13.42 m/s²    6.3 t -   4.5 t
      2:   580 m/s @ vacuum    13.42 m/s² - 15.92 m/s²    4.5 t -   3.8 t
      3:   580 m/s @ vacuum    15.92 m/s² - 18.90 m/s²    3.8 t -   3.2 t
      4:   310 m/s @ vacuum    18.90 m/s² - 20.72 m/s²    3.2 t -   2.9 t
      5:   700 m/s @ vacuum    20.72 m/s² - 25.48 m/s²    2.9 t -   2.4 t
      6:    51 m/s @ vacuum    25.48 m/s² - 25.86 m/s²    2.4 t -   2.3 t

[...]

LV-T30 Reliant
    Total Mass: 11008 kg (including payload and full tanks)
    Cost: 2825
    Liquid fuel: 1500 units (8438 kg full tank mass)
    Requires: GeneralRocketry
    Radial size: Small
    Engine generates electricity
    Engine is short enough to be used with LT-2 Landing Struts
    Performance:
    [...]

[...]

(Output was shortened)

Of the suggested designs, all are the best by some criteria. The first one, using Spark engine, is the one having the lowest total mass, but in this example we do not want to use it, for example because we did not research “Propulsion Systems” yet. We choose the Terrier design as we think it serves best our needs. Note that the tool also suggests the Reliant because of lower technology requirements, as well as some other nice designs which we skipped in this document to save space.

Now build the stage adding the 800 Unit Fuel Tank and the Terrier engine under your payload. Then add a stack decoupler (which weights 50 kg) as we’re building the launcher stage.

The payload for the launcher stage is 6370 kg (i.e. the lander stage plus 50 kg stack decoupler). Safe Delta-v and acceleration requirements for a launch to Low Kerbin Orbit have been found out to be 905 m/s with 13 m/s² at 1 ATM and then 3650 m/s with 13 m/s² at 0.18 ATM.

We want to use solid fuel boosters for the launch, so we add --boosters. Additionally, we prefer engines with thrust vectoring as it may be helpful to counteract turbulences during launch, so we add --gimbal. Small is still our preferred radial size. Now we determine best launcher designs:

$ kspalculator 6370 --boosters --gimbal -R small 905:13:1 3650:13:0.18
RE-I5 Skipper
    Total Mass: 89320 kg (including payload and full tanks)
    Cost: 18258
    Liquid fuel: 5600 units (31500 kg full tank mass)
    Requires: HeavyRocketry
    Radial size: Large
    Gimbal: 2.0 °
    Engine generates electricity
    Radially attached 2 * S1 Kickback SFB
    SFBs mounted on TT-70 Radial Decoupler, Advanced Nose Cone, 2 * EAS-4 Strut Connector each
    Performance:
     *1:   905 m/s @ 1.00 atm  13.30 m/s² - 21.35 m/s²   89.3 t -  55.6 t
     *2:   213 m/s @ 0.18 atm  23.59 m/s² - 26.08 m/s²   55.6 t -  50.3 t
      3:  3437 m/s @ 0.18 atm  15.55 m/s² - 47.68 m/s²   40.9 t -  13.3 t
      4:   107 m/s @ 0.18 atm  47.68 m/s² - 49.37 m/s²   13.3 t -  12.9 t

4 * Mk-55 Thud, radially mounted
    Total Mass: 108520 kg (including payload and full tanks)
    Cost: 19467
    Liquid fuel: 4600 units (25875 kg full tank mass)
    Requires: HeavyRocketry
    Radial size: Small
    Gimbal: 8.0 °
    Engine is short enough to be used with LT-05 Micro Landing Struts
    Radially attached 3 * S1 Kickback SFB
    SFBs mounted on TT-70 Radial Decoupler, Advanced Nose Cone, 2 * EAS-4 Strut Connector each
    You might limit SFB thrust to 79.5 %
    Performance:
     *1:   905 m/s @ 1.00 atm  16.42 m/s² - 26.35 m/s²  108.5 t -  67.6 t
     *2:   637 m/s @ 0.18 atm  29.12 m/s² - 39.36 m/s²   67.6 t -  50.0 t
      3:  3013 m/s @ 0.18 atm  13.15 m/s² - 36.68 m/s²   35.8 t -  12.9 t
      4:     2 m/s @ 0.18 atm  36.68 m/s² - 36.71 m/s²   12.9 t -  12.8 t

[...]

(Output was shortened)

The asterisks in the performance tables indicate that the phase of flight is done by solid fuel boosters. The SFB thrust limit suggestion is the minimum thrust required to fulfil your acceleration constraints.

Now build one of the launchers being suggested by kspalculator and we’re ready to do a giant leap for kerbinkind.

Helpful Links

Official web frontend for kspalculator: https://kspalculator.appspot.com/.

Nice cheat sheet, especially containing maps with required Delta-v: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_sheet

There is a thread in the Kerbal Space Program forums about kspalculator.

In case you find any problems or have suggestions, please help us improving this tool by reporting them at: https://github.com/aandergr/kspalculator/issues