dire

Hey all, I started trying to figure out what a good way would be to bake all those fidgety, n-symmetry radial parts into the craft files to improve performance on large crafts and possibly reduce wobble and phantom forces. At a minimum, I think four FLT-100 engines in a stack should have similar structural properties to one FLT-400 and it should be possible to traverse the part tree and merge adjacent, identical tanks in the craft file in a baking process. The difficult part is how would you merge four child nodes of the same parent so that they retain the same game functionality of the separate four parts but are processed as a unit for the physics model? And I feel like radial barometers should do this but wings should not, or at least they should be processed in a way that you can still lose one wing of a pair and paired control surfaces still need to provide pitch, yaw and roll control. I've noticed that my computer, which is a modern laptop with a dedicated graphics card and a quad core CPU with turbo up to 3.4 ghz (or so it says) starts chugging if I get more than about 50 parts on-screen. In general for me, a yellow timer (gametime is slowed) is just a fact of life even at 1x acceleration, and for larger rockets with above 200 parts my game starts edging towards the slideshow zone. I try to avoid more than 250 parts on screen simply because I start worrying that my computer is starting to overheat and literally burn out chunks of hardware trying to process everything. Not bad for a game that is starting to show its age, but I'd rather not be burning my hardware on the altar of the Kraken in order to explore Duna. So I'm going to just throw an open-ended question out there: What sort of performance enhancements would you want to see in KSP so you can build bigger, better, faster rockets that don't get bogged down quite so much?

If your mission profile will allow it, you're going to want to cut down on your engines to just one wheezely, which should still be plenty of thrust for that much plane but reduces the burden on the landing gear. Also don't forget to throttle down on landing. You should be able to land on between 0 and 15% engine power. Protip: If your plane starts acting crazy and doesn't want to steer straight when you're taking off, your wheels are overburdened and are more likely to explode when you land. Less of an issue with spaceplanes because they tend to burn so much fuel that they are many tons lighter on touchdown, but your plane is mostly engine and payload and very little fuel, so your takeoff weight is almost the same as your landing weight. You'll also want to get in the habit of thinking about where your fuel is relative to center of mass, and try to keep your full and empty CoM at about the same spot. That's only important if your CoM slips behind your center of lift because your plane will then not want to fly straight, which again is more of a factor with spaceplanes whose CoM can potentially shift quite a bit thanks to all the fuel they burn. I made a little mark-1 plane for you so you can practice landing and have something to go fast, and if you do give up you should be able to make a powered parachute landing: https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Mark-1-Mach-1 The plane has a couple of more advanced spaceplane features that you can explore as well: the rear wheels are doubled up and you've got a small amount of oxidizer to let you hit some of the lower "altitude above" contracts -- probably can't get "suborbital tourist" in this one unless you want to start playing with SRB payloads, and there isn't really a small, thin SRB that would make a good spaceplane booster unless you want to tinker with the sounding rocket mod. If you don't have sparks yet, you should definitely consider them as they're very handy for early-career science missions and remain good later for return vessels and landers. I'll also say you're right and those lander legs DO seem to be made of explodium, but if you pack spares it's not too big an issue If you get frustrated, try again when you can use the small folding wheels.

@Angel-125I don't think the Trinity nuclear reactor is warming up to temp, I had an issue where it wouldn't go above around 7% load on this craft, which has tons of active cooling (it's basically 3 ships that each have their own nuclear reactor, their own cooling systems and so on, and the trinity is supposed to be the main engine). Added the following to MM_trinity.cfg and it seems to be working better now -- at 24% efficiency instead of 7%, at least. On the other hand I now get that annoying ISRU behavior where the radiators get hot during timewarp and it's turned them all pink. I need the electricity to make this ship work, though, the other half of my dV is plasma ion drives. MODULE { name = ModuleOverheatDisplay } MODULE { name = ModuleCoreHeat CoreTempGoal = 1000 //Internal temp goal - we don't transfer till we hit this point CoreToPartRatio = 0.1 //Scale back cooling if the part is this % of core temp CoreTempGoalAdjustment = 0 //Dynamic goal adjustment CoreEnergyMultiplier = 0.1 //What percentage of our core energy do we transfer to the part HeatRadiantMultiplier = 0.05 //If the core is hotter, how much heat radiates? CoolingRadiantMultiplier = 0 //If the core is colder, how much radiates? HeatTransferMultiplier = 0 //If the part is hotter, how much heat transfers in? CoolantTransferMultiplier = 0.01 //If the part is colder, how much of our energy can we transfer? radiatorCoolingFactor = 1 //How much energy we pull from core with an active radiator? >= 1 radiatorHeatingFactor = 0.01 //How much energy we push to the active radiator MaxCalculationWarp = 1000 //Based on how dramatic the changes are, this is the max rate of change CoreShutdownTemp = 4000 //At what core temperature do we shut down all generators on this part? MaxCoolant = 400 //Maximum amount of radiator capacity we can consume - 50 = 1 small }

Made a powerful little pizza delivery SSTO designed to deliver Snacks to my LKO station. Can probably fill other missions with a little work, but it's mostly intended to just get up, drop the food off and get down with a minimum of effort. This is a piloted craft; the payload has a probe core but the ship does not (easy to fix, and kinda dumb, but I like having a pilot in my craft because I play with plasma blackout and that makes drone reentry a little problematic sometimes). https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Pizza-Express

Spaceplanes just sort of take lots and lots of practice. Lots of failures, lots of flights where you spend 20 minutes getting up to altitude and speed and then still don't quite make it into orbit. And then lots of practice getting them back down after they do get into orbit. Sometimes I land my SSTO's on the runway, and that's awesome. And sometimes I land them 600 km away, and that's OK too. Now, if you want a SSTO rocket, that's a lot easier. Just pack on twice as much thrust and four times as much fuel as you would otherwise need, and don't forget to pack fuel for the return trip also. In both cases I'd say, the secret to getting back down successfully is airbrakes and drogue chutes. You don't absolutely need control surfaces that don't rely on EC, but it helps an awful lot. Airbrakes will get you from 2300 m/s to 600 m/s without exploding. On a rocket, drogue chutes will get you from 600 to 50, and you'll need some combination of fuel, regular chutes and landing gear to get you the rest of the way to 0. On a spaceplane, airbrakes will get you all the way down to landing speeds, and then landing gear will get you the rest of the way stopped, but I still like to pack some chutes (drogue chutes and regular chutes) for those landings where I just can't seem to get things lined up right to touch down. Then I can pull the parachutes out and instead of exploding on touchdown maybe I only lose a wing :p Also, if you are in career mode and you haven't got rapiers yet, drop tanks and solid rocket motors can make a big difference on ascent xD Lastly, I made this for a Duna rescue but it can also do apollo-style Minmus rescues https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Duna-Express That's probably more in the spirit of the challenge than my duna rover xD

Y2, D194. The Aries completed refueling, leaving the Artemis on Ike to top off her LFO reserves while the Aries went off adventuring. First to high Ike orbit to rescue Peggy Kerman and her station core, mysteriously abandoned and without any propulsion, life support or doors; she and her station core will wait at Ezekiel for the Artemis and catch a ride home to Kerbin with them. Although I also have a contract to save Tomly Kerman from orbit of Duna, the expedition team could only watch helplessly as his orbit ejected him into an eccentric solar orbit. Maybe someday one of the interplanetary ships will be able to save him, but the odds of them being able to recover more than his frozen corpse are low. Fortunately he has an estimated 24 years of life support available; unfortunately it's likely to be at least a decade before any effort is mounted, because the Duna effort is simply more critical. The Prospector received some upgrades including more tankage, an additional 8 comfy chairs, a pair of shiny new lithium-plasma engines and a couple capacitors to power them, and it's borrowing a pair of drills from SLV 4. It was able to make another run to Minmus and fill its tanks, and now it's on a return trajectory again taking an assist from the Mun. It may not bring home enough delta-V to push all of SLV-3 and SLV-4 into a Minmus orbit (we'll see) but it should at least be able to fill some fuel tanks in LKO. The Aries, meanwhile, traded Peggy's station hub for the Ezekiel's LFO Sparks, and handed its onboard science lab off to the Artemis with the science data and the scientist. It still has 16 seats, so habitability is not affected. My habitation score currently stands as follows: Made Duna fall on Y2 D07 with 8 Kerbals. Lifted off with 6 Kerbals on Y2 D173, leaving 2 Returned with 8 Kerbals on Y2 Day 194. So I spent 166 days with 8 kerbals, who score double because it's before Y5 D1, plus 21 days with 2 kerbals, who again score double (Refueling takes way too long). So that's 166*8*2 + 21*2*2 = 2656 + 84 = 2740 kerbal-days of Duna habitation up to Y2 D194, with 8 kerbals on the ground and 4 in the sky.

I feel like I'm falling behind :p I'm still getting my Wave 2 launches set up, and in the meantime I'm taking field trips to Minmus and Ike....I guess I should probably stop lollygagging and start using that time warp :p

I don't have a problem with that, and it wouldn't affect my score at all. Am surprised more people aren't fighting over the low mass / low cost bonuses for ranks 2 and 3. Too much paperwork I guess?

Sorry to hear about your troubles Hoioh.

This challenge was actually my first trip to Duna in KSP. For some reason I just never got around to really leaving the Kerbin SOI, mostly because I feel like playing without a life support mod for interplanetary trips is kind of cheating. Hence, my first craft were grossly over-engineered and still managed to almost not make it :p So if I can borrow someone else's interplanetary expertise for my efforts, I definitely should because that is how a newbie like me succeeds instead of winding up with a bunch of stranded (or dead) colonists.

Sounds like fun!

Yeah I'm recovering my launch system by hand, it's not too bad but my aim is awful. Missed the launchpad by 500 km in one direction on launch 2 and then 600 km in the other direction on launch 3. I'm getting better with it but I don't think it's worth practicing enough to get really good yet. Am thinking I will send wave 2 without deepfreeze installed just to prove I can do it, giant snack logi containers and all, and then wave 3 I'll probably install deepfreeze. I feel like adding more mods over time kind of simulates my kerbals innovating over time as they discover new problems, like "Gosh it takes a lot of snacks to keep a bunch of people fed," and then solving those problems "Ker-popsicles don't need to eat!"

Nope, it means you'll have to launch two missions to assemble your probe. Or more than two! You can make a 5-part solar array which docks to a 5-part engine/landing assembly which docks to a 5-part refinery/drill assembly which docks to a 5-part RCS tug, then land the whole thing. If you use KAS and don't leave any KAS parts in orbit you can actually assemble the whole thing without docking ports to make it a bit less laggy / reduce part count. Or start a Minmus surface base, if there isn't one already.

Y2 D173 - The day has finally come. Aries, after extensive re-engineering in situ on Duna, finally takes once again to the skies for a brief tryst with his sister Artemis on the cold, grey surface of Ike. Left on the ground were two brave kerbonauts with an ample* supply of snacks in the longboat (the two have become one, but the snacks are unaffected). On Ike, Aries and Artemis exchange crewmembers: Valentina retains command of the Artemis, but loses both of her crewmembers and gains a small greyish-white blob, the culmination of the team's entire efforts to-date; and Bob elects to safeguard the sample case on its trip home. In it is the results of over 40 experiments; most all of which have already had preliminary results transmitted to Kerbin. The real data, however, will also be invaluable, and includes three surface samples from Duna and one from Ike. Valentina also gains an engineer by the name of Arhat, who has been studying with Bill and must return to Kerbin to be awarded a replacement screwdriver for the one he lost on Minmus. As one of only two engineers to ever step foot on Duna, Arhat will also have valuable extraction and refinery expertise to share with future colonist operators. Lifting the Aries to orbit was a lot easier when I remembered I was supposed to throttle my ion drives to about 20% and then engage them alongside the LFO engines. Once I got to about 30km altitude and 750 meters per second I could largely shut off my LFO engines and let the Aries get carried to orbit on the pink contrails of high-energy unicorn farts (No unicorns were harmed in the production of the Aries lithium-plasma drives). I was also really surprised by how much the tiny buffalo-class canards contributed to the stability of the rover going at speed on and near the surface of Duna. Comparatively, I was able to go much faster, better able to control pitch and yaw and (important) did not spin out the way this craft usually has a tendency to do. The last thing I want to do before the two ships part for what could be the last time is power down both nuclear plants, allow them to cool while refueling is powered by the giant solar array on the Artemis, and then transfer fuel from the Artemis to the Aries. The Aries only launched with a half-load of fuel for its power plant, because its mass was low. If it doesn't do a lot of flying it shouldn't need a full tank as I expect that for most of its mission it can operate with its plant throttled to 10%, but I think the Artemis will have an easier time refueling as it is headed back to Kerbin regularly. and it can also probably handle running out of fuel more easily as it has a lot of battery tonnage, massive capacitors and a huge solar array (and can still only fire its ion thrusters at full blast for a few hundred meters per second before throttling back down). That said, while the Artemis can probably get home without its nuclear plant, it will do so at 20% power and probably 5% maximum thrust, which will take a painfully long time and I don't plan to run any missions with it in that situation. In fact, it might be wise for me to upgrade its power plant (and bring a whole bevy of medium radiators for it) because its future payloads will potentially be much heavier than the Aries. I could also stand to upgrade its fuel tanks, actually; it's got plenty of delta-V for a solo return trip but if it's going to be pulling a 100+ ton cargo payload its delta-V is going to be cut to a small fraction of its rated value and it might actually not have enough to pull a full mission from Kerbin to Duna. Something for me to think about probably going into Wave 3, which is not for a while. First I have to get the Artemis home and send the Aries back to Duna. Every day they spend on Ike is a day where I'm only getting 4 kerbal-days of points instead of 16 kerbal-days of points. Speaking of which, I'm satisfied that the Aries has proven its chops as a Duna Transport Ship going from the surface of Duna to the surface of Ike in one go. But I scavenged some rockets off my Backup Plan to do it, and that means my backup plan of using the lifeboats for ascent is in question. It doesn't strike me as real "backup plan"-y if I have to rely on my primary craft's engines for my lifeboats' ascent, even if I'm not relying on the rest of the craft. The problem will become redundant when Wave 2 arrives, as Wave 2 has a number of different qualified ascent vehicles, but I'm not sure they'll arrive before my Wave 1 kerbals start being homesick. If the Aries Expedition becomes homesick that will invalidate dozens of kerbal-years of points! Am thinking the Aries should pay Ezekiel a visit on the way back to the lifeboats. Ezekiel has about four engines more than it really needs to just sit in orbit and relay communications. The four orbital satellites also, at this point, each have one engine more than they're really ever going to use again. I bet if I strap four engines onto the lifeboat to replace the one I borrowed, it's not going to have any problems at all getting to orbit and docking with the Ezekiel (where, of course, any refugees would wait for the next bus home). Come to think of it, the lifeboat is solar, not nuclear-powered, and it does -not- have a massive solar array, just a couple of panels duct-taped to the roof. So it couldn't use the plasma engines on Ezekiel even if I brought them down. Ezekiel does have a pair of auxiliary LFO thrusters, though, and I can just borrow those.

I like my 31 ton NPM because a) a lot of math that I enjoy less was already done for me by other 31-ton NPM folks (thanks!) and b) it allows me to make mistakes and allow my strategy to evolve as I learn, which I think is important and is a big reason I just jumped in feet-first rather than trying to plan everything out. I know my Wave 2 is going to be much, much more efficient than my first wave was, and my third wave is likely to be more efficient still.

That is a very nice graph. Have you considered doing it out past 40 tons? I've seen some people argue that a very large payload (eg 150, 1500) is potentially more efficient than a small or medium payload. As an extreme example, two payloads of 600 tons each will get almost twice as much mass to Duna as 20 payloads of 35 tons each. In other words, the efficiency graph becomes spikier over time, and eventually with sufficiently large payloads becomes a linear increasing progression. Also launch one starts on day 40, so your launch2 should be on day 265. That probably affects your numbers a bit.

@Death Engineering I realize I'm probably already pushing the envelope as far as mods go, but how do you feel about using cryogenics to freeze colonists en route? I am fixing to have in excess of 100 crew capacity for my Wave 2 ships, which would meaning sending at least 50 colonists and in excess of 50,000 snacks (which to be fair is only 10.5 tons of tankage empty, so it's manageable I suppose). How much in excess, I am still working out. Launch 3 had a science lab with 20 bunks attached (22 seats) plus a rover that has 7 seats - 29 total seats for the launch. Launch 4 also has a science lab and a total of 52 seats, for a total between the two of 81 seats. Launch 5 could be a clone of Launch 4 (I don't need a third science lab, but I could swap it out for a big ISRU and keep everything else the same), and then Launch 6 would be engines, fuel and tankage to get everything over to Duna. Depending on how I design the freighter, that would be 29 + 52 + 52 + 3? = 134 seats, a total of 67 colonists and a food cargo of 67,000 snacks. I could try to handle the food problem Elon Kerman style, and substitute more delta-V for a faster trip instead of more tonnage for snacks. On the other hand, every 4 kerbals I freeze would mean one less 3.75 meter snack tank I have to bring along. Sorry if I'm rambling. It's late and I'm still chewing on my options.

The real question is, can you make Duna in a day?

@Clifton G Welcome to the forum! You did an awesome job on that.

Year 2 Day 172 - Successfully launched SLV-4 with payload Rover Hotel-52, massing exactly 31.000 tons. This massive habitation block boasts comfortable habitation space for 26 kerbals, estimated to be enough for four to five families to live and work on the Duna surface. Also sent up was tankage for the voyage of an additional 9000 snacks, but even the most optimistic projections (which include a conservative margin for error) suggest this is only enough for about 18 of the 26 kolonists, and the mission standard of 1000 snacks per kerbal mean we are going to be sending up quite a few of the family-sized Snack-4500 containers; additional tankage will be sent on future missions. Was trying to figure out why my Aries Mk-V was having so much trouble getting into orbit to meet with Deep Space Vessel "Artemis" and eventually realized that with a full ore tank, my 31-ton rover weighs 52 tons and thus has a TWR of less than 1.0 on Duna (and only 900 LFO dV, problematic when my sustained ion thrust is only about 0.2 TWR). However, the "main" ore hold was a repurposed fuel tank to begin with, and by converting that tank back to a LFO tank and possibly re-purposing a few probe engines Bill swears were just "lying around not being used", it turns out the Aries can in fact get (and stay) airborne. However, we are once again pushing back rendezvous with the Artemis to another day.

If you look at your ship resources while you are flying an astronaut, you can see they have 5 EVA fuel. 80% of that is 4 fuel and 20% is 1 fuel.

Tis true, I left a lot of science on the table. If I'd been more careful I could have roughly doubled the amount of science I documented, just from what I actually got. My rover visited Ike, Minmus, and the Mun, but it only hit one or two biomes for each of those, so I could have gotten many, many more science points if I'd been a little more adventurous. Protip for anyone who actually downloads my Aries rover: When you're roving, put your legs down and your wheels down. Then if you start spinning, "g" will retract the wheels and plop you onto your legs, lowering your center of mass and generally preventing a rollover (if this craft rolls over, it's done). Best done while velocity is less than 45 meters per second. Then once you've slowed down to a sane speed you can pop your wheels out again with 'g' and keep roving.

Hey, grats on getting into orbit! The reason you have less delta-V when you are in an atmosphere is because your engines are actually less efficient in an atmosphere! Their specific impulse (Isp) is lower because the air pressure makes it harder for exhaust to leave your rocket. An option Snark has not mentioned, probably because it is more painful than leaving your astronaut stranded in space for a year or two: Align your craft to a kerbin return node, then have your astronaut get out and push the capsule prograde until he's spent 80% of his jetpack fuel. Pop him back into the capsule for a fresh tank, then rinse and repeat. Be careful not to send your capsule spinning!

Caveat: It takes about 1500-ish delta-V to reach Duna orbit. If your craft has less than 1000 delta-V this will result in your poor kerbal failing to circularize and falling dramatically to his fiery death. You will want to reserve about 20% of the jetpack for the actual docking maneuver. You might not need 100 dV to figure out how to reach the airlock, but that will give you a good reserve, and if you aren't experienced with EVA's you may need all of that. Do you have any mods installed? I recommend at least Kerbal Engineer Redux which will give you a number for how much dV you have on craft that have its widget. Not helpful for the stranded pilot but very useful for the rescue craft. @Finchy_McFinch Threw this together for you https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Duna-Express Engineering your own craft is half the fun, but if you don't know what your delta-V is, trying to guess your way off Duna can be a bit frustrating. Pro tip: Don't decouple your lander's fuel tanks until they are out of fuel I can also recommend one of Matt Lowne's Duna rescues:

Y2, D082. Cubesat 1 "Nehemiah" makes Duna orbit, completing "Positive Uplink" for the DOMA challenge. I think that also will conclude my efforts in the Insight challenge @sturmhauke. Obviously there's a lot of things I still plan to do - I need to return a few thousand science, and at the end of the DOMA challenge I'll be cleaning things up and returning everything to Kerbin, but I think this is a good place to stop and tally my score so you can close out the contest and put me on the leaderboard. DSV "Artemis": https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Deep-Space-Vessel-Artemis includes cubesats, lifeboats, DRO, and space crawler. Mass: 340 (31 ton payload), cost 410k. 11 mods. Aries Mk5: https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Aries-Mk5-Duna-Rover includes rover. Mass 338 (31 ton payload), cost 275k. 8 mods. Not sure why the mass is different on these two craft, probably just fairings (which don't count towards NPM). The Artemis also has a couple of nose cones that I knocked off in LKO, if I recall correctly. Total mass for Insight: 678 tons over 2 launches. Total cost: 685k. Score: Rank 1: +10 Build an unmanned lander capable of reaching Duna's surface. The lander must include a thermometer, seismic accelerometer, and negative gravioli detector. It must also include sufficient solar panels and antennas to transmit its data back to Kerbin. The lander must be launched into LKO with a rocket, and then use a transfer stage to get to Duna. * Definitely got this far. Craft launches with solar panels on its probes but primary power is supplied by a 1.25 meter nuclear plant. Rank 2: +20 As above, with the following changes. The lander only needs enough antenna power to reach Duna orbit. Build two identical mini-satellites, with sufficient relay antennas and solar power to extend the comm network to the landing site. These mini-sats must be launched together with the lander, as a single payload. Once reaching LKO, the lander and mini-sats must all travel independently to Duna. The mini-sats' trajectories should be arranged such that they perform a flyby of Duna at the correct time and place for the lander to transmit its initial data to one or both satellites. * Probably got this one? Due to food issues had to make a mid-course correction with the lander that threw the timing off a bit, but it just waited on Ike until the first cubesat was in place. Rank 3: +30 Ahead of the main mission, launch a Duna Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite. It must be launched via rocket and reach Duna orbit ahead of the lander, and have sufficient solar power and relay antennas to extend the comm network to the landing site. It must also carry one or more experiments suitable for unmanned orbital science (your choice).  Extend the mission of the two mini-sats. Put experiments on them and collect more science, and/or flyby additional bodies. * Probably got this one? Again, due to issues with Snacks, the rover wound up arriving on Ike before the rest of the fleet, but the DRO was scheduled to arrive first. The mission of the mini-sats has been expanded to provide relay capabilities to the Duna colony. They have experiments on them, and have enough fuel to do additional science at a later date. Rank 4: +40 Something crazy. * Colony on Duna. Involves Jeb, Val and the whole crew. Subtotal: 100 pts +80: Lowest mass colony rover to Duna (62t from LKO, 678 tons on the launchpad) +80: Lowest cost colony rover to Duna. (685k credits on the pad) +268.4 5368 science collected. Total: 528.4 points.