Laie

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About Laie

  1. Oh boy, has it been three years already? There was no scoring scheme on the Eve Rocks Challenge, hence no way of "winning" it. Some kind of competition evolved anyway: all entries had their mass & part count listed and there were shoutouts for noteworthy achievements. So people tried to outdo each other in some way or another just for the fun (or honor) of it: the mostest people, fewest parts, or being especially savvy about some aspect of the mission. However, to repeat: this was no formal competition. Making it to Eve and back was all that counted. Any reboot should follow that example. The badge was Ziv's (he who was also doing the Ultimate Jool-5 challenge for years). I don't think he would object. The OP basically got fed up -- looking at and verifing other people's rockets was fun at first, but after a few months it became work and eventually a tedious chore. The release of KSP 1.0 was a welcome opportunity to call it quits.

  2. [RO] Preventing boiloff with radiators

    Laie replied to Physics Student's question in Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    I haven't (couldn't) play RO for months now. Last time I did, boiloff was a moving target (too much, too little, somehow odd, changing with every release of RealHeat). It didn't properly work at warp, or (especially) when coming out of warp. Which isn't the mods fault, btw, but a side effect from how heat ceases to exist at higher warp, only to come back with vengeance when you return to real time. However... exposed surface was very much taken into account since, like, forever. Pointing your Centaur into or away from the sun mattered. Earth itself also radiates heat, though. The best way to store your hydrogen would be a long stick, far from earth (at least GEO, preferably translunar), showing the smallest possible profile to the sun. Radiators were ill-configured for the purpose. My understanding is that @stratochief66 has been working on it in the meantime, so I won't get into details. As to tank types, plain "Cryo" used to be the better option throughout, sometimes only slightly better, sometimes by a lot. "ServiceModule" was better still but not supposed to be used on a cubic meter scale. At one time it was good to use separate tanks for LH and LOX and point it LOX-first towards the sun; at other times such a setup would ferociously boil off your hydrogen until all the LOX was cooled to 20K (repeat every time you drop out of warp). For what you want to do, probably the best way of doing it would be to turn off boiloff entirely (configure yourself a magic tank or uninstall RealHeat) and to just roleplay it by sticking on however many radiators you think is the right amount.
  3. While we're providing unsolicited advice... make demands regarding the altitude. You only need half as much rocket if you start on a mountaintop. Near sea level, give or take 200m already makes a quite noticable difference. Eve Rocks used to ask for "500m or less", in order to leave a sufficiently wide strip around the seas to land on. And pray tell, what is an "op mod"?
  4. Shouldn't ISRU be quite worthwhile on that scale?
  5. Adventures in launch vehicle design: The first one was way over the top. Granted, there's an LES but considering that I only need to take 6t to orbit... Four Aerospikes should suffice for that task. However, cargo bay already comes to 3t and is a bit tight for my pieces. Finally, verniers and legs cause insane drag: they way to launch aerospikes is to go very flat despite the low initial TWR and soon pull 4g at 25km -- much like you do with a spaceplane, but a whole lot faster. You can learn a lot about drag that way. (not shown: simple stack with a fairing on top would work, but be entirely too boring) The last one is promising, though it still has issues and a tight dV budget. The fairing makes up the core of the vessel, and all of the draggy bits are hidden in there. It's surprisingly sleek despite it's looks. In oder to have enough fuel left for a powered landing one needs to get the ascent just right, though. I only manage once every five attempts and neither MJ nor Gravity Turn can really handle it. Besides, zero cross-range makes the return a lot more exciting than it needs to be.
  6. What for? Just to claim reusability? Seriously though, it's to prevent racking up a modifier in excess of 100%.
  7. Why I hate challenge rules: because it makes us put Lander Cans as the cockpit of a plane (and then complain all the way about how hard to control it is), or clad a lander in aerobrakes so we can claim to not have used parachutes. Or how I now try to somehow make a rocket landing on Kerbin where really, chutes or a glider would be the sane thing to do. I like this challenge because it makes me dabble in the small stuff, something I haven't done in a long time ( and never as seriously as now). These past few days I tried to put together a neat, reusable LV that is on the proper scale for the Duna mission I'm planning. Mk2 spaceplanes can't hold the bulk, M3 becomes entirely too large and heavy for the task. I don't think it's reasonable to scale this with # of Kerbals shipped. IMO, the task should still be to build something reasonably small and, well, credible -- not a huge mothership kind of thing. So maybe allow for another size class or two (like, 8 or 15 people) but not open-ended. Edit to add: while I'm complaining about rules, two gripes: a) I'd like if the "no fuel transfer" rule were separated from a specific mission plan. b) there should be enlarged crew capacity not only on the voyage, but also during the surface stay (which can last about as long as both trips taken together). Sadly, the supposedly non-landable 2.5m part also is the heaviest container -- maybe make it a requirement that there should be both a surface and a space habitat? I'd like to encourage leaving pieces behind.
  8. I'm a bit torn on that one. LES gave things a nice touch, but yeah... as soon as sepratrons are no longer sufficient, it becomes a problem. Standard SRBs are heavy. Some "solutions" I came up with were outright ridiculous. About ladders, on my lander I had trouble during entry because they cause a lot of drag. I guess it needs to be a small ship with off-center ladders to feel it, though.
  9. I wasn't even aware such a thing exists. Alas, that's not an option but a difficulty setting you may check on the start of a new (Career|Sandbox|Science) game. In order to change it at a later time one has to edit the savegame. This is not the answer I was looking for (I expect it's due to some arcane side effects of rerooting when two vessels are merged). But at least it's a workaround that allows me to keep going. Thank you very much.
  10. Of course. First thing I tried.
  11. Laie started following no crossfeeed after docking
  12. Oh boy. On my most recent vessel, there is no fuel crossfeed after docking. I suspect there is some arcane feature involved that might be of interest to other participants.
  13. Hello, here's a picture of my latest Vessel, both as an assembly kit and finished in Orbit. Problem is, on the assembled vessel there is no fuel crossfeed from the outriggers. I can only access the stuff from the core. I built a very similar vessel just the other day (picture) which worked just fine. What's wrong with this one? To double-check, I assembled the vessel in VAB and rolled it out. Works nicely. As soon as I undock and reconnect a part, however, the fuel in the reattached part becomes inaccessible. (in case you're wondering why I'm building such a thing... it's a challenge)
  14. That, after telling us just how hard fuel transfer is IRL... back then they assumed a much thicker atmosphere, that it barely exists was the first flyby's big surprise. For all that, the pictures I find (there's lots on Wired) clearly show retrorockets in action.
  15. Sadly I don't -- brute force forbids fuel transfers in orbit. You have to unpack, assemble and use all the pieces just like they come up from the surface. I guess this is to prevent a simpleton's approach where you launch an empty vessel and follow up with nothing but refueling missions. In other words, Brute Force is not quite as easy as it seems. Just look at some the already posted attempts where some parts just were too bulky and required special solutions. There's also a role-playing element to it, I guess -- the LV should be adequate through all five launches, not grossly oversized most of the time. The host has already made it clear that you may bring up the pieces however you like, even hyperedit. I for one wouldn't award consistency if you basically opt out of the launch problem by using Mammoth boosters on 5t payloads. @sevenperforce: if you update the rules again, don't be afraid to make it a judgement call. It's hard to define what's a good-faith attempt, but I'm sure you know it when you see it.
  16. Sorry for not mentioning these points right away and leaving you to figure it out; also, sorry for not providing a single picture of the LV -- while I didn't actually play through all launches, I did two just to prove that it works. The rest was hyperedit. I could easily have used one LV (but didn't). LES was present but nothing to write home about (really just a half-asssed attempt to score cheap points). And most important, I didn't notice that Brute Force forbids fuel transfers in orbit. (thinks a little) I'll have to slice things up in another way (yay! for the lifesaver) and will report back within a day or two. Then I will also be consistent and not only claim that I could have been. Quick question: you may have noticed that the probe core and RCS tank didn't go to Duna (see upper left). Is it still the case that these would not count as "payload" for the purpose of this challenge?