Jump to content

MrMoog

Members
  • Posts

    159
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by MrMoog

  1. Allow me an analogy here.

    Remember in elementary school, when you used to do all the long divisions by hand. The feeling of accomplishment was pretty high after an especially hard one.

    Now, once in college, did you have that same feeling when doing a long division, or did you not even bother with it and did it on a calculator?

    Some could say it was "cheating" or not "pure", or you could say that since you know the mechanics of division, you can do it on the calculator and using your time to do more advanced and intellectually challenging things with your time.

    Sure, getting to the moon and planets stock is a nice challenge, but when you've done it a couple time, I think you're limiting yourself (voluntarily or not) if you don't use mods/plugins, you're missing a lot of what the game has to offer simply because of ideology. I lifted off manually dozens of time, but now I'm at the point of trying to optimize the fuel and the staging, and the ascent autopilot is a nice tool to do it by isolating variables and having flight data to analyze. It's not "cheating", is pushing the limits of the game and extending the gameplay. It seems to me that the mod haters are trying to justify their lack of openness to a game that even the devs said many times was designed to used with mods.

    I'm not talking about infinite fuel mods, but legitimate and balanced mods or mods that add features (I count MechJeb in this category). For example, NovaPunch part are as balanced as the stock part, yet offer much more options to design original and unique crafts.

    Also, one could argue that the stock aerospike engine is less balanced than many mod engines (NP, KW)... so I tend to take the purists and their higher moral ground with a grain of salt. You paid for the game, so you have the right to play it the way you want. :)

  2. The Saturn V rocket had more than double that projected radius for injuries, should the first stage suffered a catastrophic explosion or loss of control authority and crashed. I guess we shouldn't have launched any of them, by your argument.

    The difference is that the Saturn V wouldn't have left the pad full of radioactive debris after an explosion.

  3. The last tanks placed should drain first, as KSP assumes that you are building from the top down, and the first tank you place is often on the lander or return stage.

    The RCS fuel logic can get messed up at times.

    This logic works in most cases, but not always. Sometimes when creating complex ships with escape pods, and modifying them a lot in the VAB, you can get to a point where nothing you do will fix the problem. I have a craft design that is broken for good, whatever I do, I can never get the RCS to drain in the order I want, even when removing them all and reattaching them in every possible order and/or stage.

    A simple, unbreakable rule would be very useful, and would remove the need to do a full up RCS test on the launchpad every time I test a new design.

  4. Some of my wish list items / predictions. Mostly long awaited stuff:

    - Docking.

    - Multi-capsule ships (Apollo-style).

    - VAB/SPH assemblies (saving/loading assembled parts).

    - Complete IVA (kerbals walking around in the ships).

    - Stock crew modules / empty capsules (for space stations).

    - More information readouts (think MechJeb's info panels).

    - Consumables (electricity, oxygen & food/water).

  5. How bad will that high ISP of the NTR be offset by the low TWR for interplanetary transfers? It does have a bit worried. I certainly wouldn't use those engines for landing though, especially not in an atmosphere.

    I'm not sure if your question makes sense. The TWR is not dependent on the ISP.

    We already know the thrust and the ISP of the NTR, and the TWR will be directly dependent on the weight of your ship. The lighter the ship, the higher the TWR.

    But you're right, the low atmospheric ISP makes it unsuitable for atmospheric use. However, if you're landing a small ship on a moon without air, it might still be a viable option, given you have enough thrust.

  6. Very nice work, I was waiting for someone to mod this sweet spacecraft, and you did it wonderfully! :)

    I may have noticed a visual bug though. When the fuel is exhausted while thrusting, 3 of the thrusters flames are still visible, like if at full thrust. The engines aren't thrusting anymore, but the animations are still present.

    I'm using MechJeb 1.9.0 (for decoupler reasons!) if that could be of any help, or even the cause.

  7. I don't remember, did I ever release the probodobodyne drogue chute? It works nicely.

    I tried it and it works nicely indeed. I modified some parameters, like deployAltitude and minAirPressureToOpen, and it's a perfect drogue chute.

    Scott attached many of his chutes around the center of mass of his lander, plus the stock chutes have way to much drag so it tears the ship apart.

  8. If you don't change the default settings, it computes that escape velocity from an impossible 100km orbit of Jool (Impossible because the "surface" of Jool will be defined as the 1-atmosphere isobar, or maybe even a higher pressure: 100 km higher will still be deep in the atmosphere).

    It's 100km above the surface, like mentioned on the tool. Even if you enter 0km, it's still only on the surface.

  9. I did the other way around. I started all manual to get a hold of the game mechanics, and then installed MechJeb to simplify some repetitive and basic functions, allowing me to build more complex ships with more complex flight plans.

    Also, the auto-ascent is a must for rockets that get my CPU down to <1 fps on lift off. And I could not live without the information panels anymore.

    Some people see MechJeb as an easy button for beginners, I see it as an advanced tool for more complex missions. :)

  10. Where does it say that? Even from Moho to Jool it only says ~13,500m/s ejection velocity. I don't see what you're talking about.

    If you're going from Jool to Kerbin it says you need 50,000 m/s ejection velocity, which you can probably obtain using gravity slingshots off of the moons and Jool, which would greatly reduce the amount of dv necessary for the ejection velocity. I'm still not sure how to calculate dv, but I don't really care either, because I can usually eye it out, and I usually add more fuel than necessary and reach my destination with leftovers.

    Wow, my bad. I was looking at Jool -> Kerbin, and not Kerbin -> Jool, which is makes more sense at ~3700m/s. The travel back from Jool will be quite a challenge though! :)

    By the way, it's a very nifty tool you've made there. It will be very useful to optimize our travels, and to get from Gilly to Laythe in one burn!

    EDIT: It's a good idea to have some fuel left, because you still need to circularize the orbit when you reach the planet, except if you plan a direct landing, which might be very risk... I mean very kerbal!

  11. Guessing the orbital altitude of Moho to be ~1Gm from Kerbol, my calculator (link in signature) puts the ejection velocity required for the Hohmann transfer to Moho at ~6600m/s from a 100km parking orbit around Kerbin. So not quite >12km/s, but still three times as fast as you would normally be going around Kerbin... that will require a really capable rocket.

    I still think there may be something off with the delta-v calculation in your calculator. It says that you need > 50 000m/s delta-v to get to Jool.

    I don't know what distance you used but I did some inter-planetary testing of my own and from a 100km Kerbin orbit, I was able to reach a "planet" that is 3 times further than Kerbin, 40.5Gm away, with something like 3-4000 m/s delta-v. 50 000 seems too much, considering that your speed stays between 2000 around Kerbin, to 9 500 m/s around Kerbol.

  12. Still hoping for an inclusion of the orbit-debug thing in the debug menu in-game. Seeing as my main method of transport will be getting into a solar orbit with a chance to intersect any planet and waiting, it'd be nice to just teleport, say, a lander prototype into a 100KM orbit around the planet and test it from there.

    The closest to this right now is using the infinite fuel tool with MechJeb's auto-ascent function. Once in orbit, deactivate the infinite fuel, and you're ready to go. That's how I test upper stages and powered landers before building the launch vehicle.

  13. Docking was left because it's more than just attaching things together, you have to really make 2+ ships into one ship, in orbit, outside the VAB or SPH. This requires a ton of new code.

    But back on topic though, the two ships concept can be done with a crewtank, no? Then you can send fully crewed ships to other planets and bring them back without leaving anyone behind. Just load the extra guys into the crewtank on the orbital module. This way, you can have your different landers for each planet, but use the same crew-retrieval vessel, given that it has enough fuel to reach these other targets.

    I know docking requires a lot of new code and testing, but the devs still took the decision to prioritize planets before it, I was only guessing one possible reason for their reasoning.

    As for the 2 ships, the plan is to get everyone back. But the lander is designed to allow some to stay behind and start a permanent colony, if wanted. The ascent vehicle detaches from the lander before lift off to save weight. Something akin to the Apollo mission profile, except that the LM and the CM are sent on two separate ships, and the lower part of the LM can be be used as habitat. Crewtanks are omnipresent in my designs, it really is a useful part. :)

  14. I'd have to agree, minmus is much easier than the mun, even when you factor in the plane change to get there, simply because the orbital maneuvers around minmus are much less fuel-intensive under the lower gravity and lower relative velocity. Landing is also very easy under this low gravity.

    I would agree that, yes, interplanetary travel will be hard without docking, the ships that reach the extra-kerbin-SOI targets will be small, and coming back will be of an even greater challenge. I agree with the 2 ships approach as long as you are not adverse to leaving your lander at the destination.

    I think they left docking exactly for that reason. It would be too easy to reach other planets: assemble an insane generic ship in orbit and reach any planet without problem. Without docking, we'll have a real challenge to get there, and even more to get back to Kerbin. We may have to design ship tailored to each planet, because getting to Eve will be a different challenge than reaching the third moon of Jool.

    My two ships approach is really coming along nicely. I've reach the point where the same launcher vehicle is used for the two ships, that are practically the same weight and size. The plan is to leave part of the lander as a permanent base that can hold 10 kerbals in 2 crewtanks.

    I'm planning a third ship based on the same design, only replacing the lander/base with a rover/MoLab and a skycrane.

×
×
  • Create New...