Brainlord Mesomorph

(not think, know) LFO or nuke, all engine exhaust is hot, if the ship is accelerating swiftly (i.e the ship is light, a high TWR) exhaust blows out of the engine cone swiftly and is nice and cool. But; if the ship is very heavy (low TWR) the same thrust STAYS in the engine cone pushing against the other (hot) exhaust that hasn't lefty the cone yet, heat builds up. KSP models this correctly. Look at the color of any engine cone after a long burn; if was a heavy load it will be white hot. I disagree with "pointless" And my recent experiments prove it

If four engines (any heat sources) are attached to any part it would be the same regardless of proximity, (in this sim, AFAIK) but if there are more parts between them THAT would help spread it out. its all a question of TWR and length of burn. Also if you're doing heat test in the atmosphere, that's not the same as heat tests done in vacuum.

OK I've been doing some of my own tests: I've been concerned that there is some bad advice in this thread, specifically that the fixed radiators "don't do anything" and that nukes "don't need cooling." Experiment 1: I build a test rig, a probe core, fuel, and 4 nukes pointing forward, and 4 more pointing opposite them. A TWR of zero. I lob this thing into orbit, turn on the engines, in 10 minutes it blows up from overheating. Specifically it was the quad adapters that went first, but the nukes, the fuel tanks, even the probe were all red lining on heat. If it hadn't been the adapters something would have gone. Experiment 2: same test rig, but I added 8 large radiator panels (4 at each end). This one ran for 23 minutes before it blew up. Again the quad adapters, but this time they were neck and neck with the nukes, I really thought the nukes were going to blow first. Observations: Nukes do need cooling (esp. at low TWR). Fixed radiators do indeeed do "something". Theories: It looks to me like the fixed radiators were designed (by the devs) to mitigate the minor heat issues that you will get using nukes at low TWR. (and IMHO if you're not using nukes at low TWR then you;re not taking full advantage of nukes) while the deploy-able TCS units are for the major heat issues you get w/ ISRU.

Your use of the words "enough anymore" give me pause, but IME: Yes nukes can overheat. It all depends on how many, how close they are to each other, the length of the burn, and the TWR of the ship. I had a 950 ton ship w/ 12 nukes a few radiators and three medium Thermal Control units, and before it finished a Munar transfer burn, its overheating. The Thermals and Radiators were all at 100% and I was getting temp warning gauges on the engines and nearby parts. Nothing blew up. But I rebuilt the ship w/ 6 medium thermals. I didn't want to try an interplanetary burn like that. OTOH: An 8 ton probe w/ one nuke doesn't even need a small radiator. While were on the topic: I need to do ISRU on Moho. Two large drills and one large Refinery. Think two large Thermal Control units is enough?

Yeah, lock to retrograde is a problem when you bounce.

1. drone cores (everything I make can fly manned or unmanned) 2. To me the fun part of SSTO planes is putting them back on the runway. With the sandwich I get two fun landings for each boring takeoff

Wow thanks for all the ideas guys. I just spent a pleasant hour in the VAB trying to do this by multistaging atomics. Working backwards from reentry through the mission I was able to design a 5 stage nuclear asparagus staged thing that could do the last 80% of the mission. But that was over 200 tons, and $200,000 and I still needed a first stage to carry that 4 km/s. AND then I need to put THAT in orbit! LOL! Fuel Bases on Gilly and/or Moho it is! I'm already planning a Gilly Fuel base mission, I have a window in 100 days. I just looked and there is a Eve>Moho window 150 days after they arrive. I could extend that mission to build a base on Moho, and once the tug is fueled in the orbit of Moho... I'll have to see wow how much does that cost? (I don't have xenon yet)

Don't believe everything that you're told. This is completely wrong. Well this was when ISRU was first released in stock, I mean within the first couple of days. And I think it was true then but I'm sure they fixed it in later builds.

I stupidly took a rescue contract with looking where it was. The guy is in solar orbit almost in the corona! Its going to take a 3500 m/s burn just to get my Pe to match, then a 6km/s burn to circularize, then rendezvous then a another 10km/s + to get to Kirbin and another km/s to LKO. My first attempts came out to 6 km/s and 10 km/s, I was wondering if adding SRBs to the mix might help. Any ideas?

Oh, you're burning fuel to compensate for the CoL being above the CoM. That would never occur to me. Now I understand. An alternative might be to put a second, perhaps disposable wing under the payload. My solution has been to strap two spaceplanes to a payload. CoM, CoL, and CoT line up by themselves with no need for directional tail thrusters. thanks.

"Everyone needs money, that's why they call it money" The more money you have in the bank the more fun you can have building your own ships for your own reasons instead of just chasing down contracts later in the game. My understanding of the game engine is that opportunities wait for you. We're not in a space race with other players (although that would be fun). And b/c suborbital flights are so fast, I'm not talking about a lot of time, just a day or two to bank a huge amount of money. I was just saying there are (good) reasons not to race to orbit on your first flight.

How about top front and side from the SPH with CoL and CoM? It looks to me (is that the bottom of the plane?) like the engine and payload are all hanging below the wing. That would put the CoL above the CoM. (unless the wings are angled or something) I've been doing large payload SSTOs and just want to see exactly what you did there.

But I put five or six of those contracts on one flight. (my rockets have so many windows they look like airplaines) So that's 30,000 for ONE 1000 flight in 5 minutes! (You make 20,000 in half an hour.) You really aren't getting this. And BTW there's is no such thing as "absolute profit" all profit is relative (to cost). In a thread where everyone was taking about how to make orbit on your first flight, I was saying there are reasons not to do that.

Perhaps you misunderstand. Suborbital tourism is dirt cheap and has a much higher profit margin than orbital or lunar. One Reliant and a fuel tank can lob 6 or 8 tourist at once up out of the atmosphere and back in 2 minutes. Suborbital tours are fast easy money that goes on and on .. UNTIL you hit orbit. (then tourists insist on orbit and your costs (and the amount of effort it takes) go way up!) Where's the flaw in that logic?

That seems to be the consensus of the more experienced players. I love to see some other angles on that. I just can't see it. 1. pardon my hyperbole (will never happen... to most players without several repeated attempts) 2. still, bit of an over reaction.

If you want advice on how to make money in early career: DO NOT GO ORBITAL! Get up to suborbit and wait. Do some science. You'll start getting a lot of very profitable suborbital tourism contracts. Worm your way through the tech tree to the size 1 crew cabin. And then you can just spam suborbital tourism. My "Zed5 Passenger Missile", is a cash cow! I do so much suborbital tourism I want to set up a concession stand! Then when you get bored with that, THEN go orbital, and start spamming orbital tourism for a good long time before you do lunar orbit, etc, etc, etc, (eventually tourism dries up) (Brainlord Aerospace actually starts out as an amusement park company)

Where is (was) your CoL on that? CoM looks right, but have you already jettisoned a second wing or something?

When I did the math I was down to about $600 a ton. But I was fooling myself about the savings b/c I was comparing recovering SSTO rockets to throwing away SSTO rockets. But when you compare it to stripped down multistage disposables you get like $800 a ton. Advice to the OP, if you want money grind contracts.

Way back when (in the old aero model) I was fully committed to SSTO rockets, and I got very good at "throwing rocks at the KSC" - I never tried to control them after the deorbit burn, just left Isaac Newton in the drivers seat and I could get very close, once almost this close - on the other side of the runway. With new areo I can't land in the same place twice - With planes of course, but with ballistic payloads, I'm landing in the mountains, or out at sea, depending on weight drag and how much it tumbles on the way down. But then again I'm not really trying that anymore.

how embarrassing, yes, I'm off by a factor of 10. There's a decimal in the dimensions in the Engineer's Report I didn't notice. (I just looked) The assembled mockup is bigger that either the VAB or the SPH. (I guess that makes the size of the Mk1 cockpit and crew pod ridiculously small) You could have just asked, I would have double checked.

I suggested that a couple of years ago and someone told me that ore is actually more expensive than refined fuel. So if you want to go that route, just mine huge quantities of ore and then recover it for cash, then buy fuel.

1. I was talking about parachuting rockets in from orbit. (and I stand by my statement) 2. bit of an overreaction

my 0.02 : If you're honest about how you play the game, and own you occasional crashes, then reusable launch systems aren't really worth the effort. Let's start with SSTO rockets: To make an SSTO rocket it has to have enough fuel to take itself all the way to orbit, it'll need a probe core, parachutes, batteries, landing gear etc. all that adds about 20,000 to the cost of the rocket and significantly reduces it's payload capacity. You never get 100% return b/c you'll never land on the runway, so let's assume a 75% recovery rate. Now, if you crash one 1 out of 5 of these rockets (comes down in the mountains, probe core overheats on reentry, renetry is too steep and the chutes rip off, or reentry isn't steep enough and its stuck in orbit.) losing 1 rocket will cost you all the profits you made from recovering the other 4. (and you've screwed up your budget) OTOH, if you strip that same rocket down to just engine, fuel and fins, and throw it away 20 m/s short of orbit, its way cheaper and it'll carry 30% more payload. You can lift that 5 SSTO rockets worth of payload on 4 disposables and it costs basically the same, and you know what your budget is going to be. (and you've saved yourself the game-play boredom of recovering 5 rockets.) Spaceplanes are both better and worse: With an SSTO spaceplane you can get to orbit for the cost of fuel (reliable 100% recovery on the runway) using a Spaceplane Sandwich, you can lift truely large payloads to orbit on planes. But as a launch system, a spaceplane is a much more complex and expensive machine than a rocket. My "C1000 ExoLifter" costs nearly a quarter million. With a sandwich I'm putting a half million spacebucks worth of planes on the runway. If I crash one of those on the way back... So just trying to build the cheapest disposable rockets is where my research is going. ( the twinboar you say... hmmm)

I have this plane (we can call it a plane) it has the ruggedized wheels. It won't fly all of a sudden. It did before. I look at areo forces, only the wheels on the right side are creating drag?! I go the SPH and do tests. Slap 2 rugged wheels (mirror symmetry) on anything that drives fast down the runway and look at the drag. Only one has drag.

Hi L, I was already well past my desired Ap and the NavBall was telling me to keep going in the wrong direction. That's not "smartness." It might be miscalculation due to massively overloading the system, or it might be a result of underestimating Oberth effect. It all boils down to a couple of "Nature-Of-The-(KSP)-Universe" questions like: "What IS a maneuver node, anyway?" ' Is it (a) an amount of thrust in a direction at a time? or is it (b) a desired orbit at a time? (and the thrust and direction are calculated). "How DOES the game update the navball during the burn?" Is it (a) a question of the amount of thrust exerted so far (and its direction) ? or is it (b) a question of your current location and speed vs where you want be? In both cases "b" would be more accurate, (indeed totally self correcting) but "a" would be less work on the computer (and easily fooled by underestimating Oberth effect). It might be method "b" while you plot the burn, but "a" as soon you take you finger off the mouse. Heck, it could be "a" in orbital view, but "b" in map view. Experiments are needed.