TheXRuler

All of you have brought together some amazing ideas here, I wholeheartedly support this. The current node editing is just about fine for kerbins SOI including mun and minmus, but going any farther is a gian pain in the ***. I almost never use the stock system anymore since it's just to much fiddling and wasting time for my taste. I get that squad doesen't want a huge wall of numbers, that would just make the game even harder for new players. However I find that after almost 1000h ingame the stock tool is just lacking in so many ways. Personally I like my numbers and decimals, as provided by precise node, but I also quite like and enjoy the usability and ease of access that the ccurrent system provides. It's just that it becomes almost useless for really far targets.

Thanks Norcal, no problem And also thanks Glaran Well the only way the reactor will increase the score is by it's own mass. I won't be using any of the KSP-I engines (they have really terrible TWR xD) to get anywhere. I won't even have any KSP-I engines on the station. I will of course be using the power generation capabilities to run all of the station and peripheral systems (including Life Support).

Thanks I hadn't anticipated that the downswept winglets would be such a problem I had expected that they would act similar to a vertical stabilizer on a regular tail. Roll control and yaw don't seem to be such a problem in regular flight. It turns really well and as really good pitch authority. I can pull around 4g in a hard turn at ~220m/s. The problem only really shows up when I try climbing. At about 10° pitch it climbs reasonably well but while the plane itself flies in a straight line the velocity vector starts drifting off to the left... I guess the real problem is that I don't yet really know a lot about wing design :/ I'll fly some more tests and update the thread if anything interesting happens

So guys I need help. First off let me clarify I am not new to building spaceplanes. I have built several in my time these being my two most successful. I know I know imgur album but I just couldn't make it work properly T.T I am currently designing this Laythe SSTO. Normally I would simply go for the dihedral wings that I used on the large SSTO. But I had this image in my head and wanted to build according to that, well it didn't quite work out but I still really love the design atm. There is just one huge problem, if you have a look at the sideslip derivatives you'll see that this thing starts slipping sideways at ~7° when climbing. It flies like a dream, really (if anyone wants to test it I'll upload the file) and I would not like to change the thing to drastically, however if it can't be avoided I will of course do so. My question to you guys, what am I doing wrong? I even tried sticking a massive (really massive, like twice the wing area) tailfin on it and that barely reduced the problem soo I'm all out of ideas. Thanks in advance for everything

Heyo Glaran K'erman, I was just wondering, since I don't think I ever got a definitive answer from norcalplanner, whether you could help me out here. I have been working on this challenge for some time and have almost finished my designwork for the station. However there remains the problem of power consumption. Now USI does have a nuclear reactor, which is huge, unwieldy, doesen't look the part and oversimplifies things, however the biggest problem is I CAN'T SEEM TO REFUEL IT. Since I am plannning on building a self sustaining station that refueling part remains very important. I could of course spam RTG's but that would bog down on my already rather high part count, and also feel like cheating. I was wondering whether it would be ok for me to use the KSP-Interstellar Nuclear reactors with their own ISRU options and still be put in the modded division since I don't actually plan on using any of the KSP-I engines, I just really like those generators, because heat gradient, thermal problems, different fuel types and other aplications outside of EC generation. TL;DR USI-Kolonizations Nuclear reactors suck, could I use KSP-Interstellar Reactors !NOT THE ENGINES! for power generation.

Yoou guys are amazing, please never stop being so awesome. Bac9, blowfish, people like you are the reason I keep coming back to KSP with over 800hrs already. Just wanted to (again) let you know that your work astounds me, the more I learn about it the more complex it all seems. I for one do not begrudge you guys the long update time, I just keep playing 0.90 since I don't can't imagine playing KSP without B9 It is after all one of the biggest and most complex mods out there. Love and respect from germany.

Mhh not exactly, though all the base modules have orbital capability they are mainly science facilities. They are dedicated in the sense that they will only work in cooperation with the station, however the ferrying of fuel/resources and crew would be done by dedicated craft. I was just wondering since I think in the OP you stated that "any dedicated craft" would count towards the score what exactly dedicated means since in a way they could be counted as infrastructure, however as you said they are not really part of the station.

Say norcal, would a couple hundred tons on the surface of the body of our choice count?

How did you get something that asymmetric to fly straight Oo Gratz BTW Edit: Also, what can immensely help with flipping is sticking some very long, very thin [thread=104966]Procedural Wings[/thread] along the side of your rocket, adjust the shape as seen fit. Also, use the Center of Lift (should be "center of aerodynamic pressure" in the VAB) and Center of Mass markes while building. If for any stage your CoL is infront of your CoM while you are still in the atmosphere (up until say 30km) you are likely to flip. You can check for seperate stages by just temporarily detaching the lower stage at the decoupler, also check the shift of your CoM as you burn fuel, since we have tweakable fuel leves in the editor in stock since I dunno, 0.90 at the latest.

What about part mods, suh as B9, Procedural Wings, KW rocketry? Also what about FAR? Also what about older KSP versions? Not all my mods are updated yet and I don't want to make a new copy just for this challenge.

If I am not very mistaken (please correct me if I am norcal) you have to count the entire weight of everything you launch. Howeever, any mass you return to KSC intact will then be subtracted from the launch mass before subtracting the points from your store. - - - Updated - - - From the OP (abbreviated): "Provide a brief description of your station, noting any mods used, along with screenshots documenting all significant steps in the launch, assembly, transit, and operation of your station. Try to take screenshots when the station is on the daytime side of the celestial body, unless you’re showing off the cool lighting or emissives on your station. *snip* Please provide data in the screen shots on a regular basis using MJ, KER, or by keeping the resource panel open. Be kind to everyone’s bandwidth and use an imgur album or other similar method for posting photos. Please tally up your points as part of your entry." Scoring: +100 per ton in orbit around the chosen celestial body, including any dedicated craft docked to the station (tugs, landers, miners, shuttles, etc.) -2 per ton on the launch pad or runway for all launches combined (Exception - Altered Universe Division entries score -1 per ton) +100 per Kerbal on the station +200 per comfortable seat of station capacity (Hitchhikers, Cupolas, OKS Habitation, Mk2 or Mk3 passenger cabins, or similar are considered comfortable; pods, cans, cockpits, and external command seats are not considered comfortable) +500 if a manned science lab is included +500 if Snacks are provided +1,000 if TAC-LS or other more complex life support mod is used +1,000 if the station has dedicated lander(s) or shuttle(s) that can take at least two Kerbals down to the surface simultaneously, and then return to the station +1,000 if all Kerbals on board can make it back safely to the surface of Kerbin without a dedicated rescue craft being dispatched from Kerbin (dedicated lander(s) or shuttle(s), escape pods, or the capability for the entire station to make it back to the surface of Kerbin and have all Kerbals survive the landing) +2,000 if the station and dedicated craft have the ability to mine/harvest/generate new fuel +3,000 if the station and dedicated craft are fully self-sufficient for both fuel and life support, and don’t need resupply from Kerbin for 50+ years All points listed above are additive. For example, a station with a dedicated shuttle that can ferry crew to the surface and back, and can also evacuate all station personnel back to Kerbin, would get (1,000 + 1,000) 2,000 points. Scoring Multiplier: After points are tallied, a multiplier is applied based on the difficulty of getting the station to its chosen orbit. Factors taken into account include delta V requirements, transit time, inclination, and ability to aerobrake upon arrival. Kerbin - x0.25 Minmus - x0.5 Mun - x0.75 Duna or Ike - x1 (no modifier) Eve - x1.5 Gilly - x2 Jool and its moons - x3 Dres - x4 Eeloo - x5 Moho - x6

Oh damn, I hadn't even thought about the problem of sending around 10 TWR<0.5 crafts with more than 1.5h burns each through the same transfer window T.T For everyone here trying to do low TWR interplanetary burns, you might want to check out red iron crown's precomputed low TWR burns. I think I "slightly" underestimated the amount of work I have put upon myself oO hope this challenge will still be active in a year or two haha

Weeeeeeeell it all started out as a small fun project, then I realized I have MKS and OKS and Karbonite/Kethane and all the other goodness. Since I often get "a little" carried away with this kind of project, before I knew what was going on I had a huge station well over a thousand tons. That is without all the peripheral infrastructure. Also, since I am doing the whole thing in my career savegame, because it's going rather far out and because I want a good score, I am trying to do everything as efficiently as possible, with all but the bulkiest payloads launched in my SSTO. Which means many many many "small" modules and additionally all the bigger parts. So the only way to reduce the number of launches would be to send it up with a few truly gargantuan rockets, which would utterly ruin my score, and also some of the fun for me, since getting stuff into space is relatively easy, doing so as efficiently as possible is a lot harder. Before I send the thing on it's way I have a few more questions though. First off, this is my career savegame, so I have KSP-Interstellar installed, I am however not as of now using any parts from that particular mod. Does this mean my entry automatically goes in the advanced tech? Also, and if the answer to the first question is yes then ignore this, would I be permitted to use the KSP-I nuclear reactors purely as a source of electrical power without being put in AdvTech? One of my problems while designing this station has been that I have not yet used MKS/OKS and have no idea how much power the different modules need and I have enough practice with KSP-I to know how I can get very large amounts of EC at the cost of the immense weight of the aforementioned nuclear reactors. If I understood you correctly in your other posts your main goal for modded was to not have people using engine ISP's above 800s, save for the PB-Ion of course. So I was just wondering...

Harrr, I finally managed to make myself start, not really looking forward to flying 60+ launches but I guess I don't have much choice ^^

I once had a similar problem when I was aerobraking at Duna after an extremely aggressive ~85 day transfer (life support on my duna mission was running out so I spent I think around 14km/s to get there ASAP). I was arriving hitting Duna's atmosphere at ~8km/s and either not slowing down enough or burning up. The problem was I did not have enough dV to slow down after a small aerobraking manouvre, so what I ended up doing was a massive braking burn, like 85% of my remaining fuel, timed so that I hit the atmosphere at the end of the burn. By doing that I managed to slow down enough so that I could aerobrake properly. Also, due to the oberth effect, and me going very fast at the time of the burn, I managed to loose a substantial amount of speed before reentering. Of course this technique is not very viable if you only have a small amount of fuel left. A gravity assist with the Mun to slow you down relative to kerbin might be possible, although it will only have a rather small effect, due to your high relative velocity and the low gravity of the Mun. It might however be worth it to get a gravity assist from the Mun to put you on the correct reentry orbit, and thereby maybe saving some fuel for the initial braking. Also, if you didn't do that anyway you might try aerocapturing into an eccentric Kerbin orbit, then slowly lowering yourself ever farther instead of trying to loose 4km/s at once. Kerbins escape velocity is about 3.4km/s so you really don't have to be very aggressive for your first approach.

I don't currently have KSP installed on this pc but so I can't verify it but if I am not mistaken going here: KSP-Directory under GameData/Squad/Contracts/Contracts.cfg should yield the knowledge you wish for.

Well, the most efficient way to rendevousz that I find is still practical is to raise your Apoapsis to the target orbit, then rais your Periapsis just outside the atmoshpere. Next, set your target as target (duh ^^) and create a manouvre node at apoapsis, note that it is important that you actually intersect the target orbit at ap. Now comes the interesting part, if you left click on your manouvre node you can manipulate it as usual, but if you right click after you left click the markers dissapear and you are left with two little circles at the bottom left and right and the x at the top left (assuming this has not changed in 1.0.x). The little circles enable you to look one (or more) orbits ahead (right button) or go back (left button [note that you can't look back in time ]). Cycle through the orbits until you get the closest encounter within a few orbits. then adjust the pro/retrograde components of your manouvre and watch the magic happen as your encounter distance changes. Then simply kill your relative velocity at closest approach. By using this method you should be able to get an encounter within a couple of hundred meters at the first try. If you do it right (and time your rel. velocity negation burn just right) you can get within 50m without faffing around. From then on it is all just RCS work. Also one of the big advantages is that launch timing is not as essential as it is when doing it differently. Let me know if this was any help or if you want some more detailed explanations.

Also maybe a thing to think about. Most planes (I think all of them but I will not state that here since someone will make a point of proving me wrong ) barely use the rudder. You do not turn a plane using the rudder. If you want to turn left you roll the plane a little (or a lot, depending on how hard you inted to turn) to the left and then pull up gently. This is where the rudder is used, to prevent the plane from sideslipping toward the left too far since rolling to the left will make your nose slide to the lower left side. You can test how much your plane sideslips by switching off ASAS and rolling to one side, then watch what happens. With the amount of vertical stabilizers you have sideslip should be very managable via control input. Trying to steer with your rudder is generally a very bad idea (exceptions are eg. final approach to the landing strip at low velocities or IRL countering crosswinds). I would recommend taking a finished craft file (doesen't matter whether it's one of the example crafts or from the spacecraft exchange here on the forum) of something that looks similar to a jet fighter craft and getting some practice with that. You will quickly notice that on most craft the rudder has very little authority when trying to steer, however depending on how well they are built you might be able to pull six or seven Gs when rolling ~75° and then pulling "up" hard. Also angling your tail fins should not be a problem as long as you do not rotate them relative to your airflow. What I'm trying to say is tipping them forward our backward, left or right should not be a problem. However rotating them left or right will dramatically increase drag and might do funky things with your flight profile. A video would definetly help, as that would maybe let us see whether it is your input or something about the way the plane is built that is making it flatspin.

Place some random part (e.g. FL-T400 Tank) on the node that you want to attach to the rocket. Use the Root tool to set that tank as the root part (click on any part, then the desired root part) and grab the entrie plane without the root part. Save it to subassemblies. Go to the VAB and load your rocket, grab the subassembly and attach. - - - Updated - - - Ninja'd

New Tech Tree = New save. I had this problem when I installed KSP Interstellar. What I did was add up all the science I had earned (unlocked nodes + whatever you have left) and write down my funds and reputation. Started a new savegame and transferred everything through a mix of savefile editing and hyperedit. Worked quite well, although it was a hell of a lot of work Edit: Oh, and to answer your question, the tech tree loads once, when you create a savefile. At least it used to, someone correct me if I am wrong.

What do you mean by "stages to get to Duna"? You should, if possible not include more than one transfer stage as each stage has another engine etc which is basically dead weight. If neccesary use drop tanks. I would definetly recommend building stuff once in orbit, depending on the size/shape of your ship. When I went to Duna I had a huge mothership style craft with a manned lander (staged though to cut down on mass similar to apollo), an unmanned lander for Ike an MPL and a crapload of equipment. The entire thing was ~100 m long and though it weighed only maybe 150-200 tons it's shape would have made it impossible to launch.

I would also recommend going directly for Laythe. Jools extremely hot and dense atmosphere (I remember dropping a probe into jool sometime back and the pressure and temperature readouts were imporessive to say the least), the high velocity at Pe due to the strong gravity, and the fact that in KSP atmosphere just start, instead of there being a huge gas cloud around the planet, might really make it nearly impossible to aerocapture at Jool. You might be able to slow yourself enough to easily aerocapture at laythe though. If I understand it correctly the only place where aerocapture is realistic is Duna, as a realworld counterpart to Mars.

well KIS, KAS, ATM, Texture Replacer, TAC-LS, MechJeb shouldn't influence carreer behaviour. I wouldn't think Dang It would do anything. I don't know what entropy is but I think maybe the USI sounding rockets could mess with your career..... Otherwise, do you have Zero contracts or do you only have the starting contracts like "launch a vessel" "exceed altitude of x" because I read somewhere that you only get proper contracts after you have achieved orbit.

The KR2L is no longer very good at sea level. Use it as a heavy upper stage engine. Also what viktor said, SST-anywhere is almost dead, at least for vertical liftoff things. A spaceplane without a payload might still make ike and back but I'm not sure.

Though what marvin is saying might be part of the reason, it is indeed uneccesarily harsh. A more realistic gravity turn might save you a ton of dV, also, not going quite so fast early on will reduce drag losses quite a bit. What real rockets do is burn straight up for a very short amount of time, then more or less immediatley tilt over by ~3°-5°, depending on the TWR. Higher TWR=bigger angle. Then, as you gain speed you tilt over ever further, so that you are going at ~60° relative to launch, 30° relative to the horizon, when you reach 40km at a speed of ~1500 m/s. From then on you slowly tip further until you are going completely horizontal when your AP leaves the atmophere). Now this is still just a rough approximation, In the absolute best case you tilt at launch and the n follow the prograde marker until you have circularized, however this is very hard to do in KSP ^^ If my explanation did not help much I recommend getting Mechjeb, and watching the autopilot do an ascent, if you follow that profile it will be close enough.