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Slam_Jones

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    Senior Rocket Scientist

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  1. Thank you for the info! I actually found that page during my research. It is what lead me to my question. I guess I should be more specific: I understand that wing fences work in real life, but do they work in FAR? Is the airflow simulation accurate enough for wing fences to affect performance of swept-wing aircraft?
  2. Hello! Quick question here. Do wing fences help redirect airflow over a swept wing, such as with the Mig-17? Doing some Top Gun stuff and trying to get the best performance possible over a wide range of aircraft and wing styles. Thanks!
  3. Saw it on Steam back when it was version 0.22 or so (which was apparently 7-8 years ago). Thought it look pretty rad, so I picked it up without thinking much else of it. Since then it has become my single-most played game with approx 2,000 hours on Steam (plus a few hundred more in offline mode)
  4. Is that so? I haven't kept up with KSP development since... well before the DLCs at least lol. Currently playing on 1.8.1 since it has the mods I wanted. Would be great if what you said applies to that version! Would save me a lot of time lol
  5. Everyone that needs the XP plants a flag on my missions.
  6. I can't claim to "love" them, but I do get a bit sad when they die. Mostly because it means I failed the mission.
  7. I'm also very guilty of this. I often think "okay, just got home, I'll just do one or two missions..." Next thing I know it's 11pm and time for bed!
  8. Erm oops no that should have been regular tons! My bad.
  9. It's hard for me to start a new Career. I don't like have such limited funds, or building pieces, or having to do very basic and low-level contracts to make money. As such I usually give myself a bit of a funds/science boost for an "advanced" start, where I can go to orbit and build stations almost immediately. I'm also not very good at creative ships. All of mine look boring and functional, unlike the fantastic (yet still functional) creations I see often on the forum.
  10. Been running RSS lately, so I've been using the typical 2-stage to orbit rockets we are most familiar with. I tend to shy away from asparagus or onion staging in favor of a more streamlined rocket shape. As this is RSS, each stage needs approximately 4.7km/s of dv, so the stages are quite large. My current largest launcher can put 84t into Low Earth Orbit, and costs 2.5mil kerbucks (most of the cost is the massive engines). Working on recovery, I am able to recover about 50% of the cost of the first stage on most launches. Back in the day in the stock game I did some SSTO/spaceplane stuff, even built a station with only SSTO-supplied modules, but I was never really satisfied with the payload fraction, the time it took to get to orbit, or the busywork of returning the spaceplane to KSC. So generally I prefer a 2-stage to orbit, regular-looking rocket.
  11. Somewhere in 2013-2014 iirc. Currently have 1600 hours on Steam, plus another 400 or so offline.
  12. Continued my RSS Career, now up to year 1995 (RSS starts at 1955 or so). Moving past Earth's SOI, I sent probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Ceres, Vesta, Venus, and Mars. The Recon Probes, as I called them, were equipped with an Argon-fueled final stage that imparts 8km/s dv upon the Experiment Container, with a few tiny solar panels, a probe core, and a heat shield for re-entry. The first returning probe (returning from Mars) entered the atmosphere much too steeply, and crashed into the ocean at a speed between several hundred to several thousand m/s. Needless to say, we did not recover that one. Learning from this, I set the Periapsis for all future returning probes to 50km above Earths surface. This allowed the probes a long shallow angle to shed speed, and slow down enough to safely deploy the parachute, at which point the container returns to Earth at a comfortable 3.2m/s. We safely recovered probes with experiments from the orbits of Saturn, Jupiter, and Ceres so far. The rest either ran out of fuel too early, or smashed into the atmosphere at too high of a velocity. Moving on from that, I began an ambitious project: place a factory in orbit of Phobos (a tiny moon of Mars) and utilize ISRU and Extraplanetary Launchpads (mod) to build ships and components in orbit. I sent a flotilla of 6 modules to Mars, intending to rendezvous and connect them all in orbit of Phobos. It was mostly a success, save for 2 modules that missed their mark and became impromptu relay satellites in an eccentric solar orbit. I managed to link up the surviving modules, and attempted to move the station (CS Phobos) into it's final orbit. Due to some game bugs, this was basically impossible. So instead, I moved it into an orbit very close to Phobos, but outside its SOI. This means that a trip to Phobos would cost my ExoMiner approx 500m/s of its available 2km/s of dv. The ExoMiner is a small Nuclear Reactor (so it can run in darkness) attached to an ISRU unit, with a large Ore tank (for making fuel), a large Metal Ore tank (for making Rocket Parts), several drills, radiators, docking port for modularity and resource transfer, and a big old battery. Loaded with Ore and Metal Ore, the ExoMiner is reduced to about 700m/s of dv, which is just enough to return to the Construction Station to offload its cargo. The Ore is processed into Lf/Ox, about half of which goes back to the ExoMiner. The remainder is stored on the station and used in the Metal Ore smelting process. Lf/Ox is heated to bring the smelter up to temperature, then the Metal Ore is added which becomes Metal, which is then processed by the Construction Drone section of the station, and becomes Rocket Parts. Rocket Parts are then easily turned into new modules for the station. So far, I have built a larger Metal Ore container for the station, an additional Rocket Parts container (so I can build bigger components), and a better Ore container for the ExoMiner. This means that the ISRU project is successful and should be able to greatly assist operation in Mars SOI. I will continue building larger containers and modules for the station, and ejecting the deprecated modules into the surface of Mars (to save on part count for my poor tired i3). Plans from here are to send a few Kerbals out to the station for some cleanup, such as removing RCS ports and excess Solar Panels (again to save on part count). Doing so will reduce part count of the station from 220 down to 150 or so. After this, I plan to build a few landers to drop onto Mars, which will hopefully survive and send back that precious, precious science. One of several modules leaving Earth Initial version of ExoMiner arriving at Phobos After the first two trips, an Ore Modules was built and added. Another one was built later, as this one had major thermal issues with the ISRU unit (mostly the fact that I forgot radiators). Due to remarkably low surface gravity (and the fact that it take 12m/s of dv to reach orbit), the ExoMiner can be very tall and remain stable. CS Phobos (Construction Station, unmanned, first iteration) CS Phobos after building some new modules, and re-arranging old ones. You can spot the new Ore Module attached to the ExoMiner.
  13. I realized, joyously, that Steam and CKAN now keep copies of old versions. Installed 1.6 (was hoping for 0.90 -- but hey I'll take what I can get!), installed Real Solar System, TAC Life Support, and several other mods, and started a new No-Revert Career game. Made a series of launchers to take stuff to Low Earth Orbit, did some contracts, and built a space station for that sweet tourism money. The launchers at this time were only capable of taking 7kt to LEO, so the station was made up of small-ish modules. As different modules were added, I would send up a maintenance shuttle with an Engineer to remove (via KAS) RCS ports, solar panels, and anything else redundant/no longer needed to help lower part count. After that, it was time to set our sights even higher. Using the new tech gained from the space stations science center, we built a much much bigger launcher that could take 20kt to Low Lunar Orbit, and built a Lunar Lander, which I called Lunalith (translates, roughly, to moon dirt). It would work sorta Apollo-style: two stages to LEO, then a transfer stage that would be decoupled in Low Lunar Orbit (140km x 140km). The lander would go down to the surface, do science, come back up, ditch the landing stage and rendezvous with the transfer stage, which would then power the crew pod back to LEO where it would be dropped again, and the crew pod would proceed to a safe landing. Lunalith 1 reached lunar orbit, but didn't have enough fuel to make the Moon landing. It returned to Earth without attempting a landing. Lunalith 2 reached lunar orbit, and again did not have enough fuel for a landing. It, too, returned to Earth. Lunalith 3 reached lunar orbit, and managed to land on the Moon successfully! It returned to Earth to much fanfare. Lunalith 4 reached lunar orbit, landed, but tragically hit a mountain on take-off. This one broke my heart. Lunalith 5 reached lunar orbit, landed, returned safely. We now have the Lunar Space Station in construction and almost ready to receive visitors. We also have a Mars probe nearly ready for launch. To the stars!
  14. Either this weird little plane: Or this mobile science lab:
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