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Gordon Fecyk

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Everything posted by Gordon Fecyk

  1. Aside from modding parts, invoking the cheats menu or otherwise modifying the stock physics, all of these alternate solutions show the same ingenuity that saved Apollo 13 and probably countless other real-life land or sea-based missions where lives were at stake. OK, maybe getting out to push is cheaty because of the stock game's infinite EVA fuel, but if someone's going to do that they have a lot more time on their hands than most of us, and I'd love to see the footage. Seriously though, your entry reminded me that there isn't always a 'set' way to solve a problem. Like trying to measure the height of a building with a barometer by dropping it off the top floor, I'd consider your solution valid especially since it demonstrates efficiency and proficiency in orbital mechanics. At least these aren't as absurd as trying to get an orange tank to orbit using monopropellant. Sheesh. --
  2. I like the ingenuity exhibited, I have to admit. I already 'cheated' somewhat when I noticed some liquid fuel aboard the 4B but no oxidizer. Also, RCS proved rather handy during aerobraking so it doesn't seem right to disallow that. How about we see what other attempts come up? Don't let Ediahlil discourage you. Shenanigans aside, I'm impressed he survived re-entry from interplanetary speeds when I nearly melted just coming from the Mun. What if we factor in resource use, closeness to KSC, and duration together? Two years is a long time to be cramped in a Mk1 cockpit after all. I forgot to answer the first question, sorry. It seems the modified 4B in this scenario has slightly more than 89 units liquid fuel but no oxidizer, and just over 90 units monopropellant. Oddly, the RCS tank on that craft has no capacity defined, hence the 91 / 0 display we're seeing in the resources tab. All other tanks appear to be empty except for the bit of fuel in the Mk1 fuel fuselage toward the rear of the craft. Bowser 1 appears almost completely full. --
  3. ...I don't suppose Criske is related to Pierre Trudeau in your head-canon? /me ducks I'm also surprised you didn't explode aerobraking at 50 km up. Nice job! I figured we were in for a treat with that prologue. So we have Ediahlil on the board with a mere zero resource usage from Bowser 1. Anyone looking to improve on that should instead top up Bowser's liquid fuel tank... and I thought this would be a simpler challenge for us n00bs. --
  4. With the experience of a couple of gravity turn efficiency challenges, maybe this might be a reasonable one to submit. I haven't found it after a short search, however, if it's been done before please let me know and I'll ask a moderator to delete, lock or merge this one. Take the Stock Refuel at Minmus scenario, and get Criske Kerman and her modified Aeris 4B safely back to Kerbin, while leaving the most resources possible at the Bowser 1 tanker for other visitors to use. It's too easy to just take everything from Bowser 1, so how much do you really need to get home? Rules: Use the stock scenario "Refuel at Minmus" from KSP 1.1 or 1.2. This being my first attempt at hosting a challenge I'm not going to dispute any shenanigans. As long as you're not hacking the game physics or parts, or hacking the scenario, let's see what you can come up with. I'd say stick with the stock physics, but I'm also curious what Principia and Ferram Aerospace would change, so I'll allow those mods. I'll rate each attempt based on resources left at Minmus, mission duration, and landing or splashdown distance from KSC. Multiple submissions per participant are permitted and I'll put your favourite attempt on the table. Document your attempt here with numbers, and ideally with pictures or video. This one seems simple enough but presents some challenges for the thrifty. Here's a video example. Spoilers ahead, so don't look if you want to challenge yourself first. Participants table: Participant LF at Minmus OX at Minmus Distance from KSC Duration Eidahlil 354 (untouched!) 432 (untouched!) 150 km (? Guessed from map) 2y 58d 2h 54m Gordon Fecyk 360 (topped up tank) 338 0 (landed on runway) 25d 3h 27m --
  5. After launching the stock Kerbal 1-5 thrust-limited orbiter a few hundred times in another challenge, I've had a lot of practice. This one was neat too, in that you succeeded in doing orbital tourism this early in a career game.
  6. Another one. OK, let's do this one in the spirit of the original mission, which is tourism on the cheap. No SAS, no navigational tools, no advanced probes beyond the Stayputnik, and no adjusting any settings. 27.62 fuel left at low Kerbin orbit. 71.952 km apoapsis, and 71.090 km periapsis. Had 21.76 fuel after de-orbit, and landed within 100 km of the Space Centre. I could do better with more practice, but I like putting these short stories together too. --
  7. I'll see your three FPS and raise you about one frame every five seconds, or 0.2 FPS. That was the result I got when I finally managed to get the thing into space, but not into orbit. The craft was a stupid 2800+ parts and consisted of 8 x 9 x 12 O2 engine + small RCS tank + decoupler combos, and two orange tanks (one empty) for structure. Nine asparagus-like stages using tank priority. Managed to record and compress a video to 4x playback speed: I don't suppose the "Stress The Devs" contest is still open for entries? And that's enough. I'm not coming back to this until mlg-dank-meme-lord posts a successful attempt.
  8. And now I'm seeing the math come out. Why do I have a bad feeling the OP is nerd-sniping us? --
  9. I ran into this earlier this month and was able to work around it: The workaround was to do what you did, which was to make a separate action group to reset the instruments, but also to actually use it even after collecting all of the data into the data storage unit. It appears that the instruments need a separate reset from one action group to be triggered by another action group. --
  10. If you were to try explaining that before I saw the car jump assist it wouldn't have made sense. But now seeing that, I can understand why remaining in the moon's SOI longer would amplify the effect. At least in KSP's patched conics model anyway, as your ship gets dragged along in the SOI of said moon. Also good to know that there's an upper limit to the delta-v savings, approaching twice the orbital velocity of the moon. --
  11. [snip] I've strapped Kickbacks to the stock Kerbal X, and I've built something with a single S3-14400 and six orange tanks that I called the "Kerbal O" (for "Overkill"). That craft? That's the "Kerbal OMG!" That being said, one of my Kerbal X clones used six stacked FL-T800 pairs and the 'traditional' stack of three X-200 32s, and don't seem to have a problem with fuel flow. Here: The Iktomi build has a couple of launcher subassemblies you can inspect to see how the fuel flows; see if this helps any. It's the same idea as your rocket with stacked tanks, just using smaller parts. One thing I did though is made sure my fuel lines were attached to the bottom tanks only. It was originally designed for KSP 1.1.3, but still applies to KSP 1.2.1 because the decouplers have crossfeed disabled. Being an ex-n00b I didn't understand the Wiki article either, so I tried building my own tutorial. --
  12. That, in a sense, was the step I was missing. After collecting the data from the reusable instruments, 'resetting' them allows the original action group to work again. Thanks for the tip! --
  13. So I was watching this car jump from Minmus and noticed that a pass in front of the Mun tightened the resulting orbit considerably. Then I send my Iktomi explorer to Duna, and managed to pass in front of Ike, or rather, I crossed Ike's orbit just ahead of it. The insertion resulted in a wildly elliptical orbit, but it only cost me about 280 m/s. Then I take a look at what I can do out at the new apoapsis, and found that passing in front of Ike again would tighten the resulting orbit a lot, with the new apoapsis matching Ike's altitude, and only for a cost of 5 to 10 m/s. I imagine I could then tighten the orbit further for only a few m/s more at Duna periapsis, but didn't get a chance to investigate that yet. I want to understand what I'm seeing. I've read about and watched a lot of gravity assist examples on YouTube, but that car jump video had a very clear and beneficial example that I was then able to replicate. I remember that the assists are really directional changes at the body you're doing the assist at, but the new direction would instead represent some delta-v difference relevant to the parent body. But I'm wondering if a comparably simple rule would help me, something like, "pass ahead of a moon to slow down, pass behind it to speed up." At least in the two dimensions the typical orbital plane is in. --
  14. Is this even needed for Shadowplay-specific things anymore? NVidia replaced Shadowplay with their Share functionality in GeForce Experience, and this recognizes KSP in a window or 'full screen' window quite handily. While I did this for 1.1.3, I'm finding I missed being able to switch between windows to look up stuff. In 1.2.1 I'm not bothering with it.
  15. I'm playing with the Iktomi build I did earlier this month, assigning an action group to all of the science instruments. Figured it would be handy for very brief passes through a planet's upper atmosphere. I'm finding that, with the exception of the Materials Bay and Goo, I can only trigger an instrument once using an action group. With the Goo and Materials Bay I can trigger a cleanup with a mobile processing lab, and then I can use the action group to trigger those experiments again. Not so with the remaining instruments; even after collecting the data from those instruments to the MPL or a data storage capsule, I can't re-trigger them using the action group. Have I missed some step to fully reset an instrument so I can use the action group again? Using KSP 1.2.1, visual mods only, hence the reference to the data storage capsule. --
  16. I'd like to know how one manages this. Just making the attempt, I stopped after building a 1300 part 250 tonne asparagus-staged monstrosity that only made an apoapsis of 41 km. I've never experienced slideshow-like performance on my Core i7 PC before today. With tank priorities in 1.2.1, it's possible to asparagus-stage monopropellant rockets. The same rocket not asparagus-staged made it to 22 km barely.
  17. There are other reasons for wanting to avoid an automatic switch between navball modes: For instance, launching rockets that I want to keep on a ballistic trajectory for atmosphere pressure tests. --
  18. Sheldon Jones of GameSpresso described the Iktomi, the ship featured in Tharsis, as, "something that was pieced together in ‘Kerbal Space Program’ by someone that wanted a lot of personnel but only enough fuel for a one-way trip to the Mun." I begged to differ. That might have looked like something pieced together in KSP, but this was pieced together in KSP, and aside from the stupid center of balance turned out quite practical: This wasn't the first attempt, as Redditor aradyr was the first. But I'd like to think this was the first real stock attempt.This was a reload from an earlier save showing off the LV-N engines in their glory. The original run had the benefit of that fully fueled Kerbal X main stage, where I just dumped excess fuel from the other five launches. But that was enough to do a Duna flyby and an intercept of a 2000 t rock threatening Kerbin. Here's the thing being built in KSP 1.2.1. --
  19. I got silly and built this: While I have seen someone on Reddit build one of these, I'm not sure of how functional it was. This thing managed, barely, to push a 2000 t rock out of a collision course with Kerbin. And some jaded critic thought she was slapped together in Kerbal Space Program...
  20. You braved considerable shock heating in this one. I was worried the 85% Terrier would have had trouble at that lower altitude, but apparently it doesn't. Seems legit to me. Nicely done! (/me returns to launch pad) I want to know who designed this [censored] craft to have such a low TWR. Must be for the old timers who can't handle a couple of gees anymore.
  21. A series of attempts (skip to five minute mark for submission) in KSP 1.2.1 with the stock and properly thrust-limited Kerbal 1-5. And sorry for all of the other apparently invalid attempts. Final attempt has an apoapsis of 80.347 km, periapsis of 80.105 km, and liquid fuel remaining of 40.58 units. This would give a score of 37.04% but the base variables may have changed for KSP 1.2.1. Please, if I missed something or invalidated the entry somehow, let me know and I'll try again. This is my first KSP challenge attempt ever and I don't want to get a bad rep by breaking rules. --
  22. I've had the same named kerbal show up in two contracts as well, in 1.2.0. In my case this was two tourist contracts, where finishing one contract deleted the kerbal from the save file, making the other contract unfinishable. I provided the save file in this bug tracker entry: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/13052 --
  23. I was doing some atmospheric pressure tests from the launch pad, and I wanted to keep my test craft pointing prograde so it stayed on a ballistic trajectory. At certain altitudes and speeds the game switches the nav ball from Surface to Orbit modes and thus 'prograde' changes direction. Yes I could switch it back, but how quickly I switch it back introduces an extra variable in my tests. Is there a UI setting I missed that could turn this feature off? Or maybe there's an add-on for that? --
  24. He's tackled this before: I suspect not.
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