MrOsterman

Okay I had a break here to get in and try and yes, same vessel interaction did the trick. I had to enable "advance tweekables" first and that gave me the option to turn that on and that then lead to me being able to get the ports to dock inside a single vessel. And THAT Should make the whole "build a space ring" a little more do-able in space rather than relying on it just looking "good enough". Of course the trick will be in pushing and pulling to get the ports to line up and touch at the right time/ angle, but do-able.

Does this include using docking ports though? I've seen a few people show examples of circles by locking together multiple docking ports but I think the trick is that I have to successfully "lock" two ports at the same time and that may be beyond my patience.... KAS is looking better and better every day.

Oh?!? Okay so that feels like I can use that. I didn't know that was a thing.

I'm, foolishly I think, trying to make a circular station. I've been able to get one into orbit that was fully built on the ground and then launched in a fairing with a massive engine under it. I also tried to build on in the VAB, had it aligned right (I think) and sent it up in parts. After some assembly I'm finding that the Over-sized Docking Ports aren't grabbing, they're just clipping through each other I think because the other ports are lining up first. For this one, I did the the station in 4 parts so that each section is 1/4 of the ring and has docking ports on the end of the second, plus one that grabs onto the axle (for a total of 3 ports to align). When I dock it, I seem to only get the axle one to line up, the others are "just there". It looks good-ish, but I'm not sure. I also wanted to try something where I used robotic parts to just "unfold" the station. But here's my question: Do docking ports grab each other when they're both attached to the same vessel? So if I swing the rings out on the end of a robotic arm, will they actually grab on? Or do I just have to "lock" the servos with them "Close"? I'm trying to avoid using mods though maybe I should just break down at get KAS so that I can get the parts in "position" and then let my kerbals lock things down.

So one of my hopes was to eventually push this to be able to do more interesting things than just be a single plane to go up, do some orbital stuff and come back. I've been loading more and more fuel onto it with the hopes that I can eventually get to space with enough gas to do a round trip of Mun. I'm getting the impression that with just two Whiplashes I'm not going to do that because they just can't push the fuel needed for all that space travel. So if I want to do the Whiplash/ Spike combo I'm going to need to replan how to build the engines and wingspace into the design to double my engines and have the UMPF to push it out into orbit with enough reserves to do the round trip of Mun, etc.

Here's a pic of it with the overlays turned on. The drop tanks were under the wings out beyond the tailfins so that they didn't hit the fins when they dropped and fell back. This changed when I moved them up under the fuselage and moved them down to MK0's. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gzGgyEYaveUR9mJjxYOIJWVz2XhANp_R/view?usp=sharing

I'm running the current version as far as I know. I just installed it on my laptop about 6 weeks ago. No mods either except MechJeb because I don't want to do ANOTHER manual docking, or hand calculate ideal launch windows. I did miss the cross feed with the couplers and I've been building asparagus rockets for a while now. Need to start doing that. As for my space plane, the only changes that took me from "able to get to space" to "not able" was the addition of the drop tanks and the addition of two radial parachutes on the back of the body to help with landing. I know they're not strictly needed but I tend to really suck at landing and need to be able to stop NOW to keep from running off the back of the runway. I could use the MechJeb to land but I find my planes don't have the maneuverability to let autopilot land them without crashing on the way in. The other problem is that I seem to keep getting stuck at the sound barrier with the 'new' design. I can't shake that the problem is my thrust dropping off as my acceleration goes down. In theory, as long as I'm going faster I should be seeing my thrust keep going up unless the problem is with altitude and I'm just getting into air that's too thin to fast.

So here's what I've got: I finally decided to try out a space plane. I'm in Sandbox mode but I don't like the concept of the Rapier (one engine for both L+O and airbreathing) so I committed to not using it. I designed a plane using the MK2 body, a pair of Whiplash Jet engines and a pair of Spike Rocket engines. My main lift is provided by the Big Delta wings because for some reason when I try to build a wing by hand, I get a lot of flopping up and down so I'm trying to find something that will give enough lift on its own. I was able to consistently limp this up into orbit with about 350 m/s to spare for things like rendezvous with my space station, and deorbiting. Sadly I rarely had the fuel to deorbit after a rendezvous unless I refueled at the station. I had a mission I wanted to fly that I knew I needed some extra Detla V to use once I got up there so I had the idea to add drop tanks with liquid fuel. I used Decouplers to stick two Mk1 tanks with nose cones under the wings and then fuel lines to connect them to the engines. This was supposed to get me enough extra fuel to get up and start my acceleration run without using any of my onboard fuel. The plan was to take off, get up to 4km in altitude, drop the tanks and then ramp into space. What happened was this: I got up to about 270 m/s and then the plane stopped accelerating. I dropped my tanks and was able to get up to 310 m/s or so and then I hit an acceleration wall. If I dove, I could maybe push it up to 350 m/s and again, a wall. Now I sort of fixed this by moving the drop tanks to under the main body and changing to Mk0 tanks (plus I'm tight on space down there on the run way). This seemed to half cure the problem because now I could get up to around 320 m/s around 4km of altitude and my acceleration drops off. I drop the tanks, dive a bit and eventually ramp back put to an AoA of 7 degrees or so and make my run at space. But it also doesn't seem to work well because I'm not getting to space with that much spare dV either. The tanks don't seem to be helping me. Question 1: Do the radial decouplers create extra drag even once you've detached the tanks? From there I'm still figuring out my whole profile to space. Before I started to play with the tanks I could set AoA to around 5 degrees and just fly up, changing from Whiplashes to Spikes around 18km in altitude when the acceleration started to drop off and the plane slowed. Now that I'm using the tanks it's harder. It feels like once I start to slow my acceleration (not my speed, that caps or constantly increases even slowly), I lose my ability to punch into the 400 m/s range. Is the extra drag from the tanks at speeds under 300 m/s making it too hard to get past the sound barrier? Question 2: Is constant acceleration crucial for the Whiplash engines? I'm thinking but frankly don't have the energy to experiment that I need to drop the tanks before I hit 300 m/s and the drag really becomes, well, a drag. So my profile would be to take off, position my flight to my desired orbital inclination, point up, and hit the gas. Once I see the thrust on the engines start to go down, ditch the tanks and minimize my drag profile. This whole thing came too because rather than design a new space plane (which I'm trying to use more and more rather than rockets because they're re-usable), I just kept tweeking an imperfect design. Moving wings, adding drop tanks, etc. On the one hand, my frustration came because I'd been using this plane to go up to the station consistently, and then swapping out the extra passenger cabin for more cargo space, or fuel. Question 3: Am I the only person who refuses to give up on a design just because it fails and instead keep trying to tweek it better?

What about landing with a claw on the bottom of your craft? Or maybe a set of them? Touch down and then retract the landing gear so as to lower the claws into the "landing pad"?

I've been currently trying to do the figure eight plan when sending crafts up to the Mun or to Minmus. Flying "ahead" of the body, then either slowing into an orbit while on the far side, or accelerating slightly to set up a return flight. However on a recent "rescue from orbit" mission I had to do a major correction enroute because the kerbals floating where orbiting the mun the "other way". I used to do the "Bicycle chain" which was to pass the body from behind, and then when I hit the AP of my transfer orbit turn around and decelerate into an orbit of the mun that way. I can see that taking off after a munar landing I would have a SLIGHT advantage on speed doing the Bike Chain approach since I'll be orbiting the way that the mun is turning, though such a benefit feels negligible. Do I see any other benefits doing one approach over the other? I ~feel~ like the return trajectory is easier when I'm pushing off of the moon coming around it's far side from the figure 8 and accelerating back into a Kerbin orbit. Doing the bike chain, if I recall correctly, I had to set up a launch that had me flying out while between the mun and Kerbin and then pushing off back into a kerbin orbit that way.

WHY dear Kerbal of the Sky WHY did you have to post that there's a summer sale on Steam? Curse you!

Yeah.. but they're Perty.... watching them fire to push those other stages away....

Okay now THAT makes a little more sense to what I'm seeing. I was starting to wonder what was up but it makes sense that they sleekified the MK1 parts which would make them slow less and thus create a tighter re-entry window. Of course that also means I need to rethink some of my planned science missions until I get bigger command pods or to be a little less optimisitic in what I plan to take with me.

I'll look again with another effort (and some tweaks because having a pilot die on re-entry is starting to just burn me out too much. What I do know without testing again and looking for it is that my parachute burns up while it's stowed so part of me is wondering if the ship I'm bring in is just too tall for re-entry as it is and I'm seeing the effects of ~wrap around~ heat and fire. I'm also coming in butt first the entire way. But it does seem really really sensitive to the slightest twitch and boom. I don't ever remember re-entry being this ~tense~. I know it's supposed to be and all but.....

So I've been away for about 6 months. With summer break I came back to restart a career mode on Normal Difficulty. I'm really struggling with reentry now for some reason. Here's what I sent on a trip around the mun: going from top to bottom: MK1 Parachute 2 round batteries MK1 Command Capsule Science Jr. Inline Reaction Wheel (the MK1 sized one) Bay with additional Science Heat Shield. I've tried two different reentry profiles: 1) Straight return from the mun set to a Per of 22k - Burned up on reentry. 2) Return from mun setting a decelerating orbit so that my AP for the orbit was 100k, Per was 36 - Burned up on Re-entry I had a feeling that the direct "figure 8" of out to the moon and back was going to be problematic for speed (that's a long fall back to Kerbin to hit the atmosphere). I even tried burning as much "spare fuel" as I could at about 70k of altitude just to break. My last effort on reentry I was only going 2k m/s when I hit the atmosphere and sure enough, burned up and exploded. And this isn't even counting the multiple times I made some small misstep on the re-entry pathway, leaned the ship too much to one side or the other, and BOOM that was that. Did they radically change things or something because I don't remember getting back to Kerbin being THIS difficult. I'm not even sure i can stomach more complicated missions if at the end of it I can't get anyone home....