Hotel26
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Posts posted by Hotel26
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On 4/3/2024 at 9:32 AM, Superfluous J said:
However, in my brain Kerbals are smarter than us and instead of breaking days, leeks, minths, and years up in weird ways they decided to keep it simple.
^ Precisely!
If I adopted this kalendar, I would make a royal dekree that the last day of your year (all of 32m24.6s) is an intergalactic public holiday. (I don't think the employers should mind!
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For the same reason, months ('
munksminks' ('meeks' & 'minks')) would be easy(er) to remember, or more systematic anyway:- unoker
- duoker
- tresker
- quaker
- quinker
- sexker
- sepker
- oktoker
And, naturally, like the rest of the whole universe (with the exception of a backwater known as Earth) zero-counting the days: 0..426 in the year and 0..55 within your 'minth'.
(Ah, and finally, for consistency, should those be 'Joolday' and "Eelooday'? (Actually, a day pronounced/spelled 'diah', after the imperial inventor of the kalendiah...) 'Eloodiah'. (But I'm OK with 'day'; I am not a stickler or anything!
)
UPDATE: I read the OP again and saw that months are based on Minmus, so the 'minth' makes sense, although I would now call them 'minks' (not 'munks'). In any case, all good work, all above.
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Quote
Helicopters work on
MarsDunaKerbin.I'll have some numbers for Duna shortly. (36-blade engines!)
You will receive all credit for this one, @TheFlyingKerman!! Thank you very much for leading the way.
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As an addendum to my earlier post about managing Duna landings, @Kimera Industries
To illustrate my earlier thinking, Batwing Mk3 was equipped with drag chutes to slow down (in a shallow zoom), would then pop main chutes for a vertical descent, but was equipped with 4x Cub Vernier engines to control and arrest the final touch-down. Pretty much a foolproof system.
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5 minutes ago, Spaceception said:
wouldn't be surprised if we hit roughly 1 launch/day
Shades of Gattaca...
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5 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:
My attempts resulted in a lot of bouncing.
A really good question and for a long time, I had believed that "on Duna, why wouldn't you just use chutes to land and then taxi".
So the first part of the answer is that a distinct advantage of using a turbofan is that reducing the blade pitch causes a lot of drag suddenly at speed and applies quite effective braking -- in the air! On the ground, you can easily go into reverse pitch and quickly halt (or reverse!) the aircraft. Of course, in the final moments, you are going to drop out of the air, but if you flare and fly low and time the arrest just over a higher point: well, you might get lucky! No, you should get lucky!
The second part of the answer is to build a Dunaport (see below), with or without a runway. Effectively, produce a giant flat spot on Duna. Without a runway, you can land in any direction (like the very old days of aviation). With a runway, you need a couple of aiming points ("navaids", a.k.a. flags) at least 10km from the runway ends so that you can line up on the runway well in advance. As we know, turns are very slow (and wide) to execute on Duna due to the thin atmosphere!
(How do you build a Dunaport? Kerbal Konstructs. I actually found it totally unusable for seven years until @Caerfinon wrote his wonderful guide for Getting Started With Kerbal Konstructs.)
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UPDATE: OK, with the 40-blade engines fitted, Elektra manages 193 m/s @ 5300m. It can fly on its 6 wing panels alone with sunlight, but it's probably worth dumping their mass/drag and doing without.
(This photo is before the wing incidence increase to 9 degrees and with 24 blades, before the upgrade to 40.)
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Wiring up propeller-propulsion engines is quite the pain in the sternum, is it not, and a major deterrent? Which is a pity because these things are so efficient (running on fuel cells/LFOX trickle-feed) and because there's a good argument for their use on Duna.
I have now what I think is a single assembly containing left & right forward 'propellers' and left & right rear "repellers'. The intention is that you connect this to a node (a temporary, dummy octa cube, if necessary), then clone each of the engines you need, multiple times if necessary, and position them on your vehicle.
In one variation, the 'small' size rotor, blades and shroud can be connected to an NCS adapter with a trailing tiny air intake, which looks quite spiffy. So I will add an NCS adapter into the auxiliary control stack (with the Mk0 LF tank), for cloning: all of the tanks are modified for LFOX (rather than standard LF only).
Cloning should implicitly carry across all the control "wiring" for Brakes, RCS, Main Throttle and Custom01 (Keypad '*' and '/') for fan blade pitch. Huzzah!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: the base engine has 40 blades and I am not currently sure how this was engineered (even with the multi-symmetry trick) by the inventor: @_Rade KerbalX/Rade.
See his Red Arrow machine.
Note that rpm is limited to 420 due to the momentum of 40 blades, but I may reduce this to an even 36 if that gets the max rpm up to the putative max of 460 rpm.
So, how did he do it? I don't know[1]. But if I had a gun pointed at my head (and I do), I'd rev-eng the craft file and invoke the mythical Mathematical Python to digitally place N blades.
Reader poll: is it a "Garrett turbofan" or will it be a "Raddett turbofan"? We will see...
[1] I assume, therefore, he is a genius.
UPDATE: OK, so the symmetry hack works for this. I've just made a 36-blade rotor using 6x6 symmetry. To get 40, you would make 8x6 (48) and then use Sh-X (8 times) to decrement the number down to 40.
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9 hours ago, MechBFP said:
Lowest bidder contractor
"Green-field programmers" always think they can do a better job just rewriting other people's code, pronto too!, saving themselves the pain of understanding the original.
On top of that, they think their code will be oh-so-much-more-maintainable by others, after they move on -- to greener pastures.
The above is pretty much the psychological basis for "the Six Phases of a Project":
- Enthusiasm
- Disillusionment
- Panic
- Search for the guilty
- Punishment of the innocent
- Praise and honors for the non-participant
Not pointing at any particular people in this instance, but I never could understand the motivation to "rewrite" KSP to, what?, "make it snazzier", or more "bug-free"... come on.
The only justifiable reason I can see for a full rewrite would have been to get the heck off Unity and into some potentially multi-threaded environment.
"Just my ugly opinion", as usual, and first to advertize it.
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STS again. Snore... A dirty secret inside NASA (ignored by management) that it had a 1-in-100 probability of catastrophic failure. For thirty years...
We on the moon yet?
You know the saying: "if you can't lead and you can't follow, get out of the way"
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I highly value this thread: it recently alerted me to the opportunity to watch the fascinating IFT3 launch live. (Thank you, tater.)
Comparatively speaking...
"Apollo was just engineers showing off." Life was excruciatingly slow in the aerospace lane back then. (I say this as someone who watched the original Moon landing, live, as a very excited/amazed 14 year-old.)
After 1969, the next time I got excited about anything in space was the 2016 arrival/capture of Juno at Jupiter. I didn't even know it had been sent (in 2011). Effectively no one cares about the details of mickey-mouse "science" experiments at the other end of the solar system, anyway. "Scientists amusing themselves at everyone else's expense" . Photographers, too.
Now, with SpaceX, exciting and ambitious rocketry experiments are being performed just about as fast as can be humanly imagined. I can't get enough. Yes, I wish SpaceX would hurry up: I relish the stimulation!
Truthfully, I do not care whether any SpaceX launch appears to succeed or fail. Perfection is just an idol when you understand the true opportunity costs -- and it's a paymaster that pays only every five years, at a very minimum.
"I lived in the 1960s. It was OK, I suppose, but I absolutely do not wish to return there!!" (Like watching snails painting their nails.) I'm betting most normal people agree with me on this.
(And in case it hasn't come across, everything SpaceX' current competitors are doing is thoroughly boring[truth]. I don't follow those zombie programs. There are other threads for those, in any case (hint).)
SpoilerSo, how did we do? Given that this IS the SpaceX thread, I'd say "All coments nominal, Boca Chica: we are ON topic...!".
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On the drawing board, destined for Duna, but (though it does fly there) maybe not enough wing area... It's a pity because it flies really well/economically on Kerbin. (M0.86 on 0.02/s LFOX.)
Still tinkering...
SpoilerThis passes.
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On 3/24/2024 at 3:32 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:
Launching straight up from the
MoonMun to return toEarthKerbin is possibleEvery now and again in this forum: paydirt! Thanks for the above insight. (SFC Rad Out)
137.4E on the Mun. And I happen to already have an 8 drill-rig combine ("Snowflake") right at 139E on a pad with high-grade ore.
It's a small site now, but the next thing that happens is a swarm of bulldozers will be landed followed by everything else required to build a major spaceport.
SpoilerFor vehicles already in LMO, I already have a landmark/base called "Express" at 18W to mark the accleration point (+230 m/s dV) for return to Kerbin.
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Getting into swing with Eeloo now. About to land my first (booststrap) mining rig:
I have a medium-scale miner called Goblin arriving in just 62 days, but it will not have sufficient ergs for capture.
Plenty of time to prepare a waiting Mule tug to perform the old "catcher's mitt" trick, though!
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8 hours ago, Flush Foot said:
Kerbal International Space Station
Yes. https://kerbalx.com/Hotel26/KISS (from 2020)
Although it stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid" in my case. And it didn't start from the 'KSS Module', so-called.
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On Mod-L and when not to rely on it (not ever):
Currently at Mission Control commanding the Mission Director's chair, preparing to aerobrake and eventually deorbit and land Outpost Jr, a deep-space vehicle returning home from a long sojourn just outside the Kerbin SOI from where it aids in plotting the timing/planning of interplanetary transfers. (One at Kerbin's leading edge for outward transfer maneuver plotting and another at the trailing edge for inward transfers.)
The observant reader will note its propulsion section, which is retained for the whole mission until near the very end, deep in the atmosphere, when slowing to chute speed.
When I turned to Lt Cmdr. Pembrook Kerman and sweetly enquired why the connecting Papa dock is not listed in the staging queue, he responded (just as sweetly, with a hint of cheerful triumph):
"Your orders, Sir!! You might recall that, at design time, you specifically stated:
'to heck with Mod-L Stage Lock, Lt Cmdr! You know as well as I do that it has to be re-applied at the start of every command upload sequence... and we have now lost count of the number of tragic, premature ejections that have ruined missions in deep space! Let's just manually stage this one when we are good and ready, hey!!?'"
Danged if the Lt Cmdr didn't quote me word for word, too[1], from over a year back, but my irrefutable wisdom still made sense to me so I settled for a mild "Thank you, Lt Cmdr; that will be all" accompanied by a laconic salute for (coffee break) dismissal (with my usual two-finger indication for strong black with extra sugar).
"MAKE IT SO!!", I bellowed unnecessarily to nobody and everybody in particular. (Again sweetly, with a lilt) "Stage away!".
[1] a day later, I had the security team search everybody coming on to my shift (for hidden voice recorders) just to keep everybody on their toes. I run a tight ship and brook no insolence.
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5 hours ago, Nazalassa said:
Just wanted to point out the "compatable" in the little download popup
Thank you for pointing this out. For those wondering, the correct spelling is "compatible".
A "complete" pass searching for spelling and grammatical errors was made through all of KerbalX a couple of years ago. Katateochi graciously fixed everything reported and it was a real improvement to the site.
It's evident to me now that pop-up dialogs were missed in the conduct of that search. This was my oversight and I apologize for it.
The likelihood (in my estimation) is that errors of this stature are unlikely to be rectified in the near/medium term, but please do feel welcome to report them. "I feel your pain." (Regulatory terminatory quip.)
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Another option is any variation on:
Period Shown as 4y 23d 5h 12m 17.5s 4y 23.9d 23d 5h 12m 17.5s 23d 5.2h 5h 12m 17.5s 5h 12.3m 12m 17.5s 12m 17.5s 17.5s 17.5s A simpler variation would be 4.06y for the first row, for example. (Just use (e.g. 3 significant figures) decimal with the most significant unit present.)
Another variation drops the decimal: e.g. 23d 5h or 4y 24d (rounding)
(I think this is likely what @Skorj had in mind.)
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2 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:
It is capable of vertical landing and takeoff.
Btw, I love your concept.
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2 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:
it can survive entry in to Eve's atmosphere.
Yep.
I use Harpoon for my Electroglide (now Elektra)...
So size is no object [fine print: as long as it fits in the largest size fairing]...
I have found also that using a "reverse booster" of whatever size is required is an adequate and uncomplicated way to take any moderate payload mass down to the surface.
(I have recycled dozens of boosters to Eve for this purpose over the years.
)
My notes on the Eve Descent Profile:
- decelerate to 2 km/sec in order to deorbit
- reaching 70-75km, decelerate to 1.2 km/s (extend airbrakes if available)
- reaching 50 km, decelerate to 800 m/s by 40km
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After starting the Orbit program in January, 2018, I finally begin development of Eve.
Since I happened to notice that Elektra's initial landing site was close to Milkrun, which landed on Feb 3, I decided to run over and rescue Cergel Kerman.
(Elektra "kneels" for embarcation!)
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OK. This is Elektra.
168.5 m/s at 6.6km (without any attempt to fly higher yet, since my destination is Mauve Mountain, 167E).
The nice thing, too, with counter-rotating props, is that it is stable with SAS and/or Atmospheric Autopilot. Yay. That makes long trips so much shorter.
Only concern is the contrails from the props. They are so short, I didn't punch them in as directed since they would have almost disappeared. That may mean that the tips have gone transsonic and are causing drag...?
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9 hours ago, Lt_Duckweed said:
A few tips
Excellent and very helpful information from all. Thank you! All others welcome to describe their own experience/insights...
I will report back to this topic when I have a satisfactory result (or more specific questions).
Cheers!
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11 hours ago, KSK said:
More prosaically, I'd prefer bread today than jam at some unspecified Elon Time tomorrow.
May 1961, JFK set a decade-long goal to do something never before done by mankind; only ever dreamed about. It was achieved but not in his own lifetime. The vision and the result inspired and energized the whole world.
Today we live in a collective hive-mind world. Visionaries, especially billionaires who have the wherewithal to drive their own ideas forward, are hated and reviled by little thinkers.
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Not sure where to ask this -- but: I would like to find out what is possible, speed-wise, on Eve.
I have finally landed my first propeller airplane on Eve, Electroglide. It carries 6 and currently I am seeing 76 m/s @ 5.2 km.
It's just a bit slow for exploration of a big, old, nboring, purple planet like Eve.
So, I'd like to know what the state of art is. What is the fastest anyone has traveled through the atmosphere on Eve in a conventional electric prop airplane? (I do prefer e.g. 6 seats rather than the usual 1-seat solution, but I suppose the latter has its place.)
UPDATE: I've found one that is claimed to fly at 128 m/s. Might be able to adapt its propulsion scheme...
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/197265-solar-electric-eve-plane/
Kerbal Calendar
in The Lounge
Posted · Edited by Hotel26
It's just a phobia of mine, but I play games precisely to get away from the 'real' world. (I don't even like to use the term 'game' because I so much prefer 'pedagogical pursuit'.)
I thought about 'sekker' but the Latin word for six is sextus; nothing dirty... I am, in fact, a sexagenarian ('look it up'), so I deeply resemble your remark.
Incidentally, there have been some very credible attempts at a Kerbal Calendar in the past, so I'll see if I can make a webography of them to post here:
playpursue KSP now...