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Edax

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Everything posted by Edax

  1. I achieved the K-Prize 2 years ago with a crazy 12 engine flying wing, but I haven't played since then, so I decided to resurrect one of the last projects I was working on, a Thunderbolt II configured circumnavigator, capable of landing anywhere on Kerban and returning to KSP. The high mounted engines and wings allowed for safe waterlandings. For kicks, I replaced all the LF tanks with LF+O tanks and made it an SSTO with the idea that it could possible work as a more effective spaceplane on Laythe then what I currently have, which isn't optimized for water landings at all. Discovered that it actually works, despite not being ideal for spaceflight at all. The reason I'm posting in here again is because the Thunderbolt II configuration is somewhat unusual for an SSTO, and this is my first K-Prize video. So what's I've learned from my Thunderbolt II Pros: Looks very distinct from nearly every angle. Excellent aerobreaking capabilities, was able to glide all the way back to the runway. Docking Port aligned with centerline. Water Landing Capable Heat Resistant Cons: Engines not aligned with the ship's centerline. Limited thrust in space. Inefficient aerodynamics. Inefficient fuel efficiency. Limited Delta-V, 2k when fully refueled.
  2. If you can read the ribbons in my Sig, then it says it all.
  3. I haven't made an SSTO in a long while, mostly because the landing gears all explode, meaning all the planes I have an orbit can't land, and all the designs I spend weeks designing and testing can't take off. I've never really bothered finding out why the landing gear has suddenly becoming a big problem, I used that as an excuse to take a break from KSP...but what is the problem with landing gear now? I know it had to do with the big overhaul patch and I haven't built a plane since that could successfully take off and land without damage.
  4. Challenged myself by building a single engine rocket that could achieve orbit and return with the engine to be reused. The result was a impractical, sandbox only rocket for getting to orbit. The rocket had to be made backwards with the capsule on the bottom, so that the fuel tanks would detach from the top. I needed the vector engine in order to get enough thrust, which makes it impractical for career mode.
  5. Sticking a blunt object at the front of the craft will create a detached shockwave which will keep the heat off the craft. If said blunt object has high heat tolerance (like the shielded docking port), your craft can survive very high speeds in low atmosphere. Of course the trade off is that you have a poor aerodynamic form, which means you will have to fight a lot of drag and lose out on a lot of SSTO efficiency, but the upside is that you can reach faster speeds with exploding. Good for designs have a lot of engine power and no critical need for efficiency.
  6. Actually, this started happening since the new reinstall when I tried to get the thing to the launch pad. I don't even know what to think...Anyone see this before?
  7. Just finished reinstalling KSP. Looks like I will indeed have to rebuild this thing from scratch, I can't even get this thing on the pad anymore:
  8. The fuel lines that run parallel in the XL girders aren't functional, they are aesthetic, to provide a logical reason as to why craft docked to the port can be refueled. The strut attached the comms tower I removed because it was a connection between a nosecone and girder, which I thought was the original problem, but that didn't fix anything. The giant LFO boosters decouple when in orbit, so there is no risk of hitting the nosecone during staging. The payload is launched mostly empty, it's designed to carry on a minimal amount of fuel, and drain leftover fuel from the boosters once in orbit. True, it's really difficult to center things like that in the VAB, for once, when I'm attaching the boosters, I can't see the alignment. I've tried launching it opened or closed, doesn't help with exploding. Gimballed thrust hasn't been a problem before. Here's a video of the launch of the earlier "lighter" variant so you can see that the launch isn't all that complicated, it's merely the payload that complex. Basically there's 2 stages. Ignition, then decouple solid rocket boosters. The rest will go all the way to orbit. It's just with the heavier variant, I've added a few extra solid rocket boosters.
  9. I managed to get this up in February, it seemed to go fine. All I did now was remove the top 3 docking ports, and stick a science unit and 3 xl girders. Although, I am aware that something happened during the patch, the bottom solid rocket boosters before would only lightly wobble around, but now they violently wobbled and ripped the landing apparatus off along with the bottom part of the payload. I fixed that by tying a strut to the body of the payload, and that's when the flight lasted long enough that I encountered the explosion problem. As for mods, I have Mechjeb, Planetshine, EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements, Distant Objects, and Stage Recovery (that doesn't work.) I hesitate to rebuild it from scratch since it's been slowly modified of the course of 8 months and tested to perfection. This is not the easiest thing to rebuild...
  10. But is that a strut that's failing? I removed all struts attached to the nose cones, but I still get a "linkage" failure between two parts that aren't even near each other, with nothing connecting the two. There is no wobble leading up to the explosion (if parts were wobbling off, I know to add more struts).
  11. I do have some mods installed, the only part mod is Mechjeb. I'm not exaggerating when I saying the destruction is instantaneous. If I scroll down the whole damage report, they all happen at the exact same second, and you only hear one explosion soundeffect. Some of the side boosters will survive, but it appears the entire rocket instantly collides with itself to delete itself from existence. Although, sometimes the top half of the rocket will survive, so I suppose the problem part is in the body. But again, I have no girders segments anywhere near the nose cones... Maybe reinstalling the game will help...
  12. Yeah. It's always the first thing to fail. I'm not even sure where the failure is happening because the whole rocket is instantly destroyed.
  13. I'm not sure what the linkage is, I have no girders connected to any nosecones, and I've removed all struts from nosecones, but that is the first linkage to fail.
  14. I've added a modification to my ore freighter by adding some girders on top to look like a comms relay, but apart from that, I've gotten 2 versions of this ship to Minmus already (before the patch that is), so I can't understand why it keep exploding. There's no pogo, just 90% of the rocket is instantly destroyed randomly about a minute from take off (there is no chain-reaction of failure), and according to the damage report, the comms relay is where the trouble starts, but I don't know how this can cause such a powerful insta-explosion. Is it a bug of the new patch? Is there an old part from the previous patch that is not reacting well to the update? And sometimes when I revert back to the pad, parts are missing, along with my astronaut.
  15. After getting hooked on Fire Emblem, I finally complete the Conquest campaign, I finally got back to the Jool mission I was on weeks ago and managed the first travel stop and landed on Pol for the first time. Since I was being super cautious, I let the mission run for an extra 300 days just to save a bit of fuel by reversing my orbit so it would be counter-clockwise since the gravity brake put me in a clockwise orbit. I should probably hit up Laythe next.
  16. Yeah, after the latest version change, I've given up pure-LF SSTO launches, I instead use disposable oxidizer tanks and raipers which I dump when I'm in orbit, so that the remained spaceplane is pure LF-goodness.
  17. I had to unwarp for a 250 delta v braking burn, but then got stuck in acceleration mode afterward.
  18. So I've just entered Jool's SOI for the first time ever, and as I was attempting a gravity assisted brake maneuver, I ended up stuck in "acceleration mode" where I could no longer time warp or return to KSC for several long minutes. What causes me to remain in acceleration mode while my engines were off? Is this normal? It was only after I left the room to do some chores and returned did I finally regain time warp, but even then, the acceleration mode flickered as I did so.
  19. Dipped one of my spaceplane prototypes in Eve's atmosphere for some easy Eve high atmosphere EVA reports and science. Also mined Minmus some more. Still trying to perfect the look of a mobile refinery.
  20. I have no idea what the official determination on what a "moon" is. When Sputnik was launched, it was consider Earth's second moon. Early stories in the 60's referred to orbital spacecraft as moons. Under that definition, then sure, a captured asteroid can certainly be consider a moon. Indeed, Pluto has many moons, and their so small and have strange tumbling roations .
  21. You can kinda cram a drill-o-matic in a mk-2 cargo bay if you put in at an angle, or you try and use the mini drills and put them in a mk1 cargo to shield them from the heat, but the drills have to be able to deploy out of the cargohold and hit the ground, so that could be tricky to design around.
  22. Kerbin is pretty great. It's got a hanger and VAB so you can build ships on it, and it's got a nifty runway and launchpad. Plus, fuel can be easily acquired on that planet and it's got oxygen that can effectively power jets! Tricky to aerobrake though.
  23. Even if the solution is simple, it hasn't been implemented yet, and I believe it should be addressed before start thinking about improving the graphics.
  24. I'd only want this after they solve the framerate issue on all 200+ part spacecraft. Otherwise, this game would devolve into a power point presentation.
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