king of nowhere
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Posts posted by king of nowhere
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11 minutes ago, Fierce Wolf said:
It needs to be fast?
Or useful?
I made fast rovers, they tend to explode quite nicely
it needs to be fast, and to not explode too easily.
it's better, but not neccessary, if it's also useful
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don't confuse something you don't use with something that's genuinely useless
8 hours ago, TitiKSP said:I transfered to Eve without it's transfer window.
me too; but doing it during a transfer window costs 900 m/s starting from LKO or 500 m/s after refueling at minmus. doing it out of a transfer window costed me 3000 m/s.
anyway, transfer windows are not a feature of the game. they are just an emergent feature of any planetary system
8 hours ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:I have a whole series of self landing rovers that require the micro-node, but I don't think I have ever used the Kodiak engine, the flat octo-probe, or the Ant engine.
the kodiak is the best first stage engine of its size.
the ant is supremely useful for small probes. i rarely make them these days, but they can hugely increase deltaV available by reducing rocket mass.
5 hours ago, panzer1b said:Hard to say, but id say your pick of the following parts that i could easily do without:
*wheesley/whiplash jets (for anything that isnt a SSTO its almost exclusively jumo-004 engines since i build in chibi scale almost exclusively to match my capital ship sizes, and SSTOs have no use for them as a rapier works better).
*bacc, shrimp, mite (never launch anything that small to justify those, pathetic TWR for missiles, and the BACC is just one of those things thats overkill for weapons, and way too small to bother with for launch stages on anything ever since they released the long 1.25m booster and the larger 1.8/2.5m ones).
*spider engine (i can count the number of things ive used these on on 1 finger, and that ship could have easily used any other engine, it was purely asthetic consideration and ive never relied on these engines for pushing anything, if it truly is a feather a single ant will do or ion engine, and if it requires multiple engines i use a 48-7s).
*hubmax (with a few purely asthetic uses aside to finish out stations since it actually looks pretty with restock models, its never been balanced, is way too heavy, and the same result can be done with radial attach and offset tool use on a 1.25m fuselage)
*fuselages with integrated intakes (aside from rare purely asthetic use, these have less fuel then normal tanks and air intakes arent really very useful anymore ever since they got rid of air-hogging in 1.0 (a single cone intake can fuel 2 jet engines easily, and you usually want a intake in front of each engine/fuel tank stack anyways).
*large wheels (they arent useless, ive just never made anything big enough to justify wasting 1.25t per wheel, and they are really slow compared to the next smaller size).
*shuttle cockpit (except for a single STS replica i made ages ago, ive never used this as its just massive and i prefer to make cockpits out of the smaller ones clipped into the top of the fuselage or even near the back of the craft).
As for features:
*not huge on the dV display (it was never in my opinion essential when it takes me 10 seconds to calculate dV of simpler single staged craft on a calculator, and i tend to overbuild my launch stages anyways so i dont worry too much there). That and it adds memory useage (its a bit emleaky), and eats a noticeable amount of frames for excessively complex ships to warrant disabling calculations entirely (its not a gamebreaking amount of lag, but id rather have pretty visuals and part counts if given a choice between them and dV).
*Parachutes (again, they are fun and i did mess with them when released, but i just dont make anything that has actually benefited from them in my normal gameplay, and 90% of the time i crash a plane it is right into the ground where bailing out wouldnt even hellp anyone parachute or not). Really, i just wish we had a way to remove them from space anything since they break immersion, who the heck brings a parachute to the Mun in pure vaccum?).
Also, worth noting one that quite a few people would mention that i use quite a bit is the micronode. Its actually an ok low powered warhead for anti-fighter duty and i can stack a stupid amount of them in a very small physical space unlike ibeams which take up alot of space (and the most i ca fit per hardpoint is 4 in a janky mount that occasionally misfires or ends up roasting adjacent sepatrons with the exhaust from firing).
the wheesley is the first jet engine available in the tech tree. if you play sandbox it's useless, but in career you will need it for early recon contracts. the rapier is one of the last technologies to be unlocked
the mite is the only engine you have when you start a career. unlikely to ever need it again, but most people have used it once. same for the bacc.
i've never used the shrimp, having the separatron available for removing some discarded pieces, but I know some people take on a self imposed challenge to do rockets with only solid boosters; for them, the shrimp is great for manuevers, as its small thrust and mass makes it suitable for slight course corrections. I agree its uses are limited, though. generally the reason for using solid boosters is the cheap thrust
the large wheels are actually the faster wheels in the game because of a glitch; if you move forward they cap at 15 m/s, but if you keep quickly steering on both sides alternately, you accelerate to over 100 m/s. that wasn't an intended use, i think, but it gives the wheels its niche utility. on the other hand, they are unsuited to their intended purpose, that of propelling very big rovers; i tried to make one for several hundreds tons just as an experiment, and they can't accelerate it decently.
i'm surprised anyone would consider the deltaV display useless; sure, you can do those calculations by hand, but why do calculations by hand when the game can do them for you? furthermore, this game is difficult enough to learn on its own; imagine if the tutorial instructed new players to bring out paper and pen and start solving equations
3 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:The administration building. The only function it has that's anywhere near useful is converting science to funds, and that's only necessary at the end of a career game. In my current career, all of the KSC buildings are upgraded to level 3, except the administration building, which is still at level 1.
the administration building is useless in most circumstances - too inefficient, you need to sacrifice a crapton of science to get little money, or viceversa - but there are some challenges with low money/low science, like the no contract career and the caveman challenge, that are made easier by it
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so, the kraken feasted on my propellers again. what's interesting is that it had started eating already a while ago, but it wasn't immediately visible because the blades were folded inside cargo bays. at first, they get scrambles around their position, but still they mostly stay in place. then, gradually, they tend to move more and more outward, until they get out of the cargo bay and i see them. by then, the attack already started several hours earlier.
I can buy @vv3k70r theory that it's caused by them being used in the vacuum, because while i was running around an atmosphere they were more stable. thoughit's not as clear-cut. perhaps it is connected by using rockets (which also spins the propeller blades, which then keep moving forever in vacuum) and then saving the game or changing vessel. though i had one instance of it happening inside an atmosphere, but it was an isolated accident.
I will try to activate the brakes when i am in space from now on, let's see if this stops the kraken.
anyway, i discovered how to edit the saved game file, copying the propeller parts from an old save where they were functional, to fix them. it takes some 10-15 minutes to find the parts, not as bad as i assumed.
On 11/25/2020 at 10:51 AM, vv3k70r said:We can blame the mighty Kraken, but it is summoned by our action.
Hey, now that's just victim-blaming. next thing, you'll be asking how the spaceplane was dressed
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i nominate the large remote guidance unit.
it weights 0.5 tons. it does nothing that is not accomplished already by the small remote guidance unit and a reaction wheel, for a fraction of the mass and cost. if there is a reason to ever use it, i must yet find it.
the whole business is made worse by there being a high tier technology devoted uniquely to unlocking it, making it a further trap option.
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you nailed the problem. robotic parts are not so sturdy that they can take a rocket pushing agains them and stand still.
there are two ways to counteract that:
1) use more resistant robotics
2) use more robotics
for 1), as far as i know, bigger is more resistant. and yes, it is awfully inefficient; you generally don't have much spare mass on an ssto, now i'm telling you to put several tons worth of hinges or servos. yep. vtol looks cool, but it's not terribly practical.
for 2), try using multiple servos and attaching one engine to each. perhaps they will be able to resist the push from one single engine.
I have a rover that does vtol from tylo, and i used 8 terriers attached to 8 hinges; this way, every hinge is not too stressed. i tried using more powerful engines, and the hinges broke apart.
there is also option 3, instead of angling your rockets, you may be better off adding different rockets. they may be cheaper than all those servos. I would suggest a vector, it has a high thrust for its mass and it doesn't take up too much space. you may be able to fit it decently inside a cargo bay.
or perhaps you could use a propeller; it may be lighter than a rocket, but it will screw up aerodinamics once you fly, unless you can put it inside a cargo bay. or you can try a mixed system.
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one counterintuitive thing i learned to land planes: you should not try to slow down as much as possible.
sure, you need to slow down, but not too much; you must still be fast enough to stay in the air. then, very carefully, you go down. your angle should be less than 5 degrees below the horizon.
in the beginning, i was trying to slow as much as possible while still in the air, that caused me to fall too fast because my plane could not fly anymore. and nobody explained it to me. i had to discover it by accident.
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5 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:
so... if i am retroengineering this right, you rely on 2 factors to keep you whole:
- the rover is very light and has strong sas, it stays upright with it
- the rover is small and the wheels are big, so that if it tumbles, it hits the ground with the wheels, which are very resistant
am i right?
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3 hours ago, Magzimum said:
- At least in older versions of KSP, loading saves would become slower and slower as you get more save files. I try to not have an endless number of save files.
i delete mine periodically. i keep a few at key points (and i give them real names), otherwise i produce hundreds upon hundreds of saves
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just tried the bay, it works fine, and i can do it with less than 1 ton. thanks to all
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3 hours ago, Klapaucius said:
I have not tried stock props underwater, so that might be a better solution.
i have heard they don't work
i have a lot of experience with propellers, but seeing how difficult it is to submerge anything, i never made dedicated experiments.
still, i would prefer to use weight. more convenient.
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I was on laythe with a boat for a jool 5 science run (i'm writing about it in mission reports), so i decided, since i was there, i may as well get an elcano too
here is my boat
what? you're saying that's not a boat but a plane?
let's see: it is a floating vehicle, it moves on water... so it's a boat. according to the dictionary, a boat is a small vessel for travel on water, this thing is for travel on water, so it is a boat.
but it can fly too. so what? it's a flying boat!
Jokes aside, i like my vehicles to be adaptable to multiple functions. this is a space seaplane, i flew around the planet to get all the biomes, now i will sail it to get an elcano. propulsion is by propellers, nuclear-powered by 7 rtg, so i don't have to worry about refueling. I can keep a cruise speed a bit above 50 m/s, so hopefully this won't take too long
this is my start, 1 N 158 E. "ammarato" means "landed on water" in italian and it confirms that the plane is, indeed, being used as boat.since there are no obstacles over the ocean, i basically kept the game open in background while i was doing something else.
Spoiler
here i just realized that my "boat" is swerving southward. from then on, i kept checking and making course corrections every few minutes. when i forgot about it, i deviated from the equator significantly
obligatory cockpit scenery porn
Now I encounter land. luckily, my plane-spaceship-boat can also be used as rover
though driving like that does require my constant attention
here i took a bump and went soaring. but i choose my speed so as to not fly accidentally.
spotting tylo in the night sky
and this is vall
back on land again
and here i am, where i started, 18 hours later.
even though i spent most of the time not paying attention to the game, it was still quite exhausting. i have a rover that completed half a circuit of vall for the biomes, and i don't think i'm going to complete that. too long.
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18 hours ago, The Aziz said:
I for one like the fact that there isn't any. That feels like cheating (I know I know, singleplayer game, do what you want, whatever, you got cheater rank in gta San Andreas if you were using cheat codes).
But how the heck are you supposed to know the alien environment if you've never been there? Send something there, if it fails, it fails, you send improved one.
actually, there are all kind of remote analysis that you can do from afar. when we send a spacecraft around a new planet, you already have a pretty good idea of what to expect. and we have all manners of facilities to simulate space conditions in testings; from gax mix simulating mars atmosphere, to vacuum testing chambers, to running your rovers in the desert.
plus you can do a whole host of mathematical simulations that you cannot do in ksp. when they sent cassini around saturn moons, they planned in advance something like 30 orbits, that were constantly changing with gravity assists at every flyby. i know no way to simulate that far in ksp without the game collapsing in some way.
what's unthinkable is to send a space mission, with all its huge costs, withOUT already having a very good idea of what to expect. and in every mission you get a few things you didn't anticipate that may compromise it, but you must keep those to a minimum. space is difficult enough already without going in unprepared.
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Part 3: settling around jool
there are two ways to reach a stable orbit around Jool: the first involves burning a lot of fuel, the second involves complex gravitational dances amid the moons. while the second is obviously the best choice, there is the risk of overthinking it and spending more in correction manuevers than you're saving in gravity assist. anyway, the beginning is simple: use a laythe assist to get a free capture around Jool
You normally don't want a low periapsis, as it will result in a greater intercept speed with the moons, but in this case i wanted to dip inside jool's atmosphere once before stopping around vall
Laythe flyby
Around Laythe, I detach Not albatross. I will send them on slightly different trajectories, which will be magnified by a Tylo gravity assist; the plane will start an aerobraking manuever inside Jool, while the spaceship will take a slight dip in the atmosphere and then go for Vall
Not albatross trajectory, sending it passing inside Jool.
while christmas tree will stick with a 198 km periapsis, entering atmosphere just enoigh for an analysis (here it shows 195, i made a slight correction at apoapsis).
The two slightly different trajectories taken by the two vessels
Not albatross starts aerobraking. It is supposed to do this manuever pointing prograde, but at 8000 m/s the heat is way more than even the reinforced nose can take. So, at least for the beginning, I must do it with the thermal shield in the front. This configuration is aerodinamically unstable, but for those small dips the reaction wheels can compensate, and it lets me shed some speed. about 20 m/s for each pass inside the atmosphere.
Which, coupled with an orbit of 3 days.... yes, you can guess. Not albatross spent several months aerobraking.
As you can see, I put Val in the cockpit.
I have no communication back to kerbin (christmas tree has antennas, but I didn't want to use them. I wanted this mission to be self-sufficient), and I want a pilot to plot manuevers once I have to leave Jool. Which is also the reason I needed to make a pass in the atmosphere with the full ship and couldn't just take all the measurements with Not albatross, I can't refresh the science jr and goo.
the first choice for a pilot to drive an experimental plane into a crazy dive inside jool would be jeb. But then, I considered the issue of sexism.
So, instead of having a man be the first to reach the inside of a gas giant and perform extraveicular activity there, I will send a woman in a crazy dangerous stunt getting near killed by heat and pressure, conscious that the slightest mistake would eliminate that "near" from the equation, and I will even make her leave the relative safety of her vehicle in one of the deadliest environments ever reached by a kerbal. And before that, I will force her to spend several months locked up in a space narrower than any prison. I'm a monster!
at least the view is good.
meanwhile, on christmas tree, jeb is starting the rendez-vous manuever with vall
At this point, I realize a dire planning mistake. Christmas tree originally had 4000 m/s available. that was more than enough to do anything, with ISRU.
Isn't it a bit low for nuclear engines, though? Yes, it is. because, to keep a decent twr to land on vall, I had to use 24 of them. i didn't realize at first, but that makes 72 tons of dry weight. one third of my ship is made up of the engines alone! I realized using 4 wolfhounds would have actually been more efficient. it also would have eliminated the need for several hundreds of small liquid fuel tanks making my game lag. but what the hell, the ship certainly looks better as it is.
no, anyway it's not this the mistake. So I made 2 mistakes, actually
the mistake was not accounting for how ferrying a 50-ton rover and a 170-ton plane would impact range. The 1300 m/s I needed to get from Minmus to Jool exhausted most of my fuel supplies. Now that I dumped the big plane the problem is less dire, but I have few enough fuel left that I can't land on Vall; the 1067 m/s are for capture and circularization, then I'd need 900 additional m/s and I don't even come close. And sure, I could take a larger gravity assist on laythe and try to go to Pol. It would work, but I wanted to go to Vall.
But it's fine, I have plan B! christmas tree has many tons of oxidizer it does not need, to supply the landers. as far as the nerv engines are concerned, that oxidizer is dead weight, so I can dump it and extend my range. I installed fuel drain valves just in case I was in such a situation.
Now I only need to select them... huh, where did i put... crap!
turnes out I have no fuel valves. Or, rather, I did, but they were installed on the lateral modules and were not part of the symmetry; so they got deleted the last time I detached and reattached the part in the VAB. I can't dump fuel
But it's fine, I have plan C! that fuel does not account for dancing porcupine. I can transfer fuel from dancing porcupine, while using the rover to store the excess oxydizer in orbit
Ok, i'm doing just that... and now christmas tree has.... crap! 700 m/s. Not enough to land on Vall.
But it's fine, I have plan D! Dancing porcupice has isru capability; I can land it on Vall, and use it to ferry fuel to christmas tree.
Yep, this one works. barely. 4 less tons of fuel (after starting with over 100) and I wouldn't have been able to pull it off.
But it would have been fine, I had plan E! Not albatross is still full of fuel, I could have sent it to resupply christmas tree. With 170 tons, most of them fuel, it certainly had enough to allow it to land. But doing that would have been dishonorable, after all the trouble i went through to set it on its course.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, there's no such thing as too many backup plans.
En route to Vall
Capture burn
dancing porcupine released and ready to land. Bob and Leiga crewing it, scientist and engineer for the two main tasks. Having only one pilot, I decided to leave Jeb on board. Plus, the external seat for the third passenger doesn't look very comfortable
I always like how this rover lands. it reminds me of back to the future.
Landed! Before refueling, I will take a small tour around for science and ground features
I saddled my rover with a heavy and totally unnecessary cupola for those views. In a long trip like the one I'm going to take, hopefully the variety will keep me from getting bored
and now I finally settle for refilling the tanks.
unfortunately, with 2 small drills and a small convert-o-tron, the process is very slow.it takes around 50 days to fill the rover's tank to its capacity of 2880 units. of those, i need around 1200 to reach orbit, and i must save 1000 for safe landing. i can only transfer a few tons of fuel on each trip. this is going to be long. perhaps even longer than the jool aerobrake...
meanwhile, lower in jool orbit...
after a few dozen aerobraking passage, val is finally able to reorient not albatross forward. this makes the whole process faster.
not because aerobraking is more efficient. but now that the plane is stable, i can run the whole atmospheric pass at 4x speed. it does not speed things up in the slightest for poor val, still stuck in her cockpit.
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i also have this. robotic parts in general are delicious to krakens
1 hour ago, vv3k70r said:Think about it - in phy engine there is no internal motor friction implemented. You are outside atmosphere. Nothing gonna stop Your motor to get max rpm and torque in none time. We can blame the mighty Kraken, but it is summoned by our action.
oh. i thought you were asking about data from the game.
anyway, i don't think the game can load with a throttle on.
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I recently discovered, visiting laythe, that there are some science measurements you can't take from the surface of the ocean, but you can take from the ocean floor. So, in order to collect everything, i need to reach the ocean floor.
As far as I know, the densest parts are ore tanks, so those should sink me. So I experimented a quick sinking platform, made of one ore tank, the 2 science instruments i want to sink, a crew seat, a docking port, small reaction wheels and a single battery. the idea is that the contraption should be dropped by a mothership, and after touching bottom and taking measures, it should dump its ore content to resurface, and dock with the mothership again. this works fairly well on kerbin and laythe.
eve has denser oceans. I tried that, and i found out I needed 30 tons of ore to try and make the apparatus sink. at 0.1 m/s, no more. and if i speed up time, it stops moving. can't be worked. I also tried clipping, but clipped parts don't sink any better; apparently the extra volume still counts.
any suggestion on how to make stuff sink on eve? possibly without adding too much mass? (ore tanks are not a problem because i can send them empty and mine the ore on the spot. unless i need many tons of tanks, that is)
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I have done docking among rovers for a while in my career before moving away from it.
short answer, there is no solution that I know. The only thing I can recommend is to save the game before attempting the docking, and reload if the bug engages. it doesn't always happen, so you can get away with it.
dampening the suspension on the wheels should also help, as the rover "jumping" is caused by wheels appearing underground for a moment and giving jolt to the suspensions.
I have found anothe rbug, engaging whenever i dock ships with robotic parts close with the docking ports, and resulting in the robotic parts getting scrambled, and it's the main reason I stopped doing that kind of docking. but other players apparently don't have it
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1 hour ago, vv3k70r said:
What counterforce to torque You expect in this specific atmospheric condition and how fast rpm gonna grow aginst this friction? What Gees proppeler gona take?
no specific idea, but i also noticed that strong stress against the propellers is often associated with kraken. many times, it happened after i accidentally sped time up with the blades moving. though sometimes i did sped up and no kraken appeared, and sometimes it happened in other circumstances. I haven't seen kraken in a while, though. maybe my being extra careful helped, or maybe it got sated after heating a handful of planes already
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i have an electric plane that for unknown reasons was the kraken's favourite snack. look what it did to the propellers. a few other times it made them, and the rotors, disappear entirely. and it would retroactively affect saved games too; the kraken can eat you back in time.
i counteracted this attack by making a new plane, using the alt-f12 menu to move the new plane on rendez-vous with the old one, transfer the pilot, and editing the ship log in the save to trick the game into thinking the new plane is the old one.
And lo, though I shall walk in the valley of darkness, I shall fear no kraken, for the f12 menu shelters me
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24 minutes ago, vv3k70r said:
I'm using cheapest winglets - they burn exactly on the edge of thermosphere when I decoplue boosters with them. They do the job.
See? using something creatively for a purpose for which it wasn't originally designed! that's the spirit! that's progress!
after all, humankind would have gotten nowhere if it had stuck with what it was supposed to do. silicon, for example, is supposed to be a rock. it reacts with oxygen, with which it has a really high affinity, then it is a rock. sometimes it gets fluorinated, because it's got a high affinity for fluorine too. That's what silicon is supposed to do. And we're supposed to walk on it. Sometimes pick it up and use it to hit stuff, but only if we feel particularly fancyful.
and we went and turned it into the core of a pseudo-thinking machine.
that we're using to build and fly unlikely contraptions. I don't think anyone would have ever sensibly considered such a thing before it happened
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16 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:
I can understand the claim about the forum being single-minded, but the idea of using your airplane wheels as airbrakes (while very novel and interesting) is simply something that no one would reasonably or sensibly consider.
....
are we playing the same game?
I don't know, perhaps you play solely by making realistic replicas of real vehicles and flying them realistically. But that's not the case for most here.
Can't you hear the cries for moar boosters and moar struts? Have you seen the huge asparagus stack, the kerbalized vehicles, the early landers made with inadequate parts and kept together with tape? the kerbonauts heroically sent flying from kerbin to jool in an external seat, those parachuting out of their vehicles during a reentry, those doing orbital manuevers on their jetpacks alone; the rovers with roll bars, the engine cones used as landing legs, the thermal shields used as wings? Not to mention the kraken drives and the magic wings (i.e. kraken aerodynamics)
If we made a ranking of all the inane and outlandish ideas people have tried in this game and have made to successfully work, "using your wheels as airbrakes" wouldn't even break the top100.
furthermore, using airbrakes is not an outlandish idea, but the only parts that the game provides that are supposed to be used as airbrakes have low temperature tolerance and so are useless in a reentry. can you really blame people for using other parts to achieve the same effect? And if it was parts that they had to put on their plane already, causing no extra weight, that's just a plus
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On 11/22/2020 at 5:00 PM, maddog59 said:
I'm sure I'm missing something in my construction or maybe re-entry technique:
My spaceplanes have a nasty habit of getting to about 40-45km from the surface, then suddenly they start to tumble, usually ending up facing backward (maybe they're wanting to get back into space?
).
8 minutes ago, vv3k70r said:I suspect the problem is with getting out, not in the atmosphere.
The bolded part strongly implies they are getting back from space
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when it comes to spaceplanes, this forum tend to be quite single-minded with center of mass and lift and drag. sure, it is solid advice, but sometimes you do have important reasons to not shift them around, and there are other solutions.
i am surprised nobody is mentioning extending the landing gear. i don't see it in the image, but I assume you do have retractable wheels for landing. it greatly increases the drag, acting as airbrakes, and they have excellent thermal resistance. now you can afford to enter atmosphere without any angle, and still you will brake enough. even better, if you follow a standard setup with two wheels in the back and one in the front, it will increase drag in the back and help stabilize your plane. I have a plane where my center of mass is in the back and needs to be in the back (it's a seaplane, it takes off from water, and it needs a CoM in the back to be able to point the tip upwards while floating), and that's what i do. keep prograde during reenetry, with landing gear extended and cargo bay opened for drag.
I see all Mk2 parts, they are sub-par for most performances but the one good thing they have is thermal resistance. there should be no way you burn in atmosphere. i tried to make a mk2 plane only once, and i lost control of it during reentry, but even though i spent the whole reentry flapping around without control, i still slowed down without burning, and i was able to recover control in the low atmosphere. there should be no way you get incinerated. my space plane is not Mk2, but it can reenter prograde just fine.
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Part 2: before Jool
2A: launch and assembly
First on the ramp was christmas tree with its launcher. Perhaps influenced by the ship's gaudy appearence, I made an equally gaudy-looking launcher.
The thing is, I was really worried on what those four lateral modules could do to aerodinamics, so I wanted some really big wings on the end to stabilize the thing; I used the biggest available. Turned out it wasn't relly needed, this thing flew straight and true, but I could afford the extra mass and wanted to make a safe and comfortable launch for once. I also used a cluster of 16 boosters to improve twr at start. It would certainly be more efficient to use a lesser number of bigger boosters, but for some reason I can't quite remember I didn't want to do it.
Anyway, it looks good.
Jeb looks out on the space center
I was facing a grave conundrum when building the flying christmas tree. I could use the command module in the rover variant, which would have some more windows on the sides. It would made the IVA view even better. But then, the cubic module would have looked worse on top of the circular rocket. I struggled a bit with this decision, ultimately I decided to not break the perfect cylindrical shilouette of the rocket. Especially after what I'd already done to preserve it from the dreaded Mk3 fuel tanks
I loaded a crew of 6: the 4 main kerbonauts, plus an extra scientist and engineer, for the plan entailed separating the various subunits and sending Not Albatross on Laythe while Dancing Porcupine explored Vall.
I had Jeb piloting the ship, with Bill at his side to assist isru later. Bob and Mandocia (scientist) were in the research lab, though I was not using it. Val and Leiga (engineer) were in the crew pod, as I had no need for them at the moment. I used a crew pod with 4 places when one with 2 would have sufficed to give my kerbonauts more space, as they would be spending a long time traveling.
booster separation
As soon as I got high enough to get a decent efficiency, I started the nervs. This thing has low twr (at least, it will have after the first stage detaches), it needs to maximize the push when it can.
Flying Christmas Tree is powered by 24 nerv engines disposed radially around the lateral modules. I was worried about their stability, but the structural girdles are doing a really good job. They are heavy, but worth their mass.
The launcher is using a mammoth and 4 vectors. All together, they put on quite the light show.
First stage separation.
I'm glad I put all those lights on the vessel, it makes for a much better launch scene.
Atmosphere cleared, ejecting the nose cones. I once had to repeat the launch because I was hit back by them as I accelerated; then I realized, no matter how much I seem in a time crunch to circularize, I must angle the ship away from prograde before ejecting debris from the front.
Now it's Not Albatross turn. I had experimented, the whole thing with the Jool ascent stage could be launched as ssto from Kerbin all right.
take a bit of speed with propellers, it's all fuel saved
After the propellers can't make it anymore, use the rockets
Sadly, I did not think to take more screenshots of this thing launching. Probably I was too busy trying to keep it pointing the right direction, because burning fuel was shifting the center of mass.
That was all accounted for; I have the vectors with their crazy gimbaling for control, and I don't plan to use it for long enough to have issues.
All my kerbonauts were already safe on the Christmas Tree, this launch was controlled remotely.
And finally Dancing Porcupine, in a really big aerodinamic envelope.
This is quite an... irregular launch vehicle.
The fuel tank is small, because I'll be using the rover's supply - I won't need all its 3200 m/s, so I may as well send it half empty. And instead of sending a big tank to send up an emtpy tank, I may as well use the tank I already have. I only must be careful to not exhaust all the fuel (hint: the full stage is too heavy to get to orbit with its fuel. If I forget to detach the launcher at some point, I end up suborbital)
I did choose a rhino for main engine mostly because it had the right thrust and it fit well on the fairing. It also has gimbaling, which is necessary when dealing with an asymmetric payload. But the rhino has a low sea level isp. To compensate that, I added some boosters to lift it up to the point where its isp - and thrust - was good again. So, after I went to the trouble to get an engine with gimbaling, I started on a first stage without it. Why? No reason. Mostly I grew fond of the design at this point. I used a cluster of small boosters because they burned fast, and I wanted them to do just that.
The first time I tried to launch this thing, it capsized and exploded. The second and third, too. But eventually, by trial and error, I was able to find a boosters to set at precisely 90.5% thrust (and 90% fuel, so it would run out with the others) to compensate for the irregularity in mass distribution.
Yep, I'm not particularly proud of this rocket. But it looks cool.
At this point, I stepped away from the control center to receive the Kerbel prize for peace. You see, aggressive nations were on the brink of nuclear war on Kerbin. But then I launched Flying Christmas Tree, with 16 RTG and 24 NERV. Plus Not Albatross, sporting 7 RTG and 1 NERV. And finally Dancing Porcupine, with "only" 4 RTG.
I launched so much fissile material in orbit to empower my nuclear rockets, there was none left to make bombs! The warring nations wanted to unleash atomic warfare, but they couldn't because a space agency had bought and used all the available uranium already.
Now, with the pieces in orbit, it was time to assemble them together
This is the part where I dock with Dancing Porcupine.
After that, I test the engines to see if I distanced them enough that they can work without hitting some wheels.
Then I grumble, scrap Christmas Tree, make it again with longer girdles, and launch again.
Make a new docking, a new test firing, and find it lacking. And again I go making a new version with even longer girdles. Which is this one shown. Perhaps I should have kept some of the old screenshots I took for the older version, some of them looked better than what I ended up with
And here is the whole ship. I'm already breaking the record of the Marco Polonium as strangest shape I've ever flown.
I genuinely can't tell if this thing look awesome or silly. Probably a bit of both.
The docking port on Not albatross is balanced to be in the center of mass of the ship, so it won't cause problems with the thrust. But that goes with full tanks. With tanks mostly empty, and no way to visualize the center of mass exactly (I'm told there are mods, but I loathe installing mods to solve every small nuance), I again resorted to shutting down some engines to keep thrust even. I also put a good dozen large reaction wheels on the Christmas Tree, specifically because I knew I'd be dealing with those kind of problems.
Docking several strange landers on a ship that's supposed to actually move is more complicated than it seems.
Solar panels are there to help with isru, not needed otherwise. I think the ship looks better with them retracted?
I spent most of my fuel getting to orbit. That's all right, as before setting for Jool, I'll be stopping to refuel at Minmus.
2B: refueling at Minmus
Minmus is the ideal place to refuel. Very low gravity to make landing easier, and very large patches of perfectly flat ground, clearly recognizable from space. On the equator, no less! Its main drawback is that it has low Ooberth effect, so to get a decent efficiency you must fall back on Kerbin to make your main burn close to it. And the slow pace of Minmus orbit means you can't choose very well the time of your departure; for this reason I normally choose Mun as a refueling ground. But Jool launch windows are very large, it's not a problem.
And I needed all that, because I'm tasking Jeb with landing Christmas Tree with Not Albatross on top.
The thing is, Not Albatross, with its Jool ascent stage, holds some 120 tons of fuel.
Flying Christmas Tree only has nuclear engines; but planning for it to act as mothership to smaller vehicles, I included some generous rocket fuel tanks. They can hold 36 tons.
This is more than enough for all my purposes. Dancing Porcupine keeps 32 tons of fuel. Not Albatross, without the Jool ascent stage, has room for 12 tons - and it's supposed to only need its rockets refueled twice. 36 tons of fuel to service those vehicles is even too much. I would have used smaller tanks, if I had them available of the right size.
Unfortunately, If I want to refuel the Jool ascent stage, I'd have to make 4 trips.
In a real world, where safety is a concern - especially on a super expensive space vehicle carrying many astronauts and several tons of nuclear material - they would do exactly that.
I tried it. I took on a challenge where I could not reload games, that would force me to play safe all the time. And man, it was the most BOOOORING thing I'd ever did in this game. Real life is boooring. There must be a reason we play games instead, after all. Don't get me wrong, real life has a lot of cool stuff you can do with it, but the fact that everything takes so much preparatory work is so damn annoying. I don't want a game to simulate that.
I know Jeb is with me on this issue. So, after transferring all the rocket fuel left in dancing porcupine and leaving it in orbit, and after transferring all the liquid fuel in the bottom tanks to lower the baricenter as much as possible, I asked Jeb to land the christmas tree. With 50 tons of plane sitting asymmetrically on top of it.
And by night. I would not have put landing lights if I was not planning to use them
Almost perfect landing, but the ship is bouncing around... please stay up, please stay up, ple #######
I fell on one side. Thanks to Minmus gravity, I didn't break anything. The reaction wheels can turn me around, but not pull me up. Time to reload the game? Jeb wants to use Not Albatross engines to push ourselves straight first. I still have a smidgen of rocket fuel I was keeping for the vernor rcs engines. Just enough for a few seconds of push with the vectors.
Success! After tilting around dangerously for a while, the rocket stabilizes
Time to refuel everything, then rejoin Dancing Porcupine in orbit (I had left Val to guard it). And then a big time skip until the Jool launch window
Pretty standard manuever.
Onward, to jool!
P.S. rule 4 of the challenge says
QuoteThere's funding for one main ship only so all the crew, lander(s) and other stuff has to go to Jool as one big ship. The ship can separate once in Jool's SOI.
There can be a slight argument that what I did, separating Dancing Porcupine while I was refueling on Minmus, violates the second part of the rule. But the main body and intent of the rule, that everything goes to Jool in one big ship, was respected completely. Also the stuff about funding for one main ship. I do belive I'm fully respecting the rule.
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1 hour ago, paul_c said:
I did think about this yesterday and its definitely something I want to try. I will need to do a little research and find out the angles and other numeric details; then find a good excuse to do it (for example, I think I have an M700 scanner which has done its work at Minmus, but need to check how much fuel is left in it).
it's not particularly complicated. from mun, you want to move prograde compared to mun orbit. so, just manually find the position of your burn to exit mun's SoI parallel to its orbit.
and it needs very little fuel. if you do things right, most of the cost is some 200 m/s to get out of mun orbit. if i recall correctly, with 220 you can get a minmus intercept, and if you timed it right, you can spend 10 m/s on the capture burn. similarly from minmus to mun, you should be able to do the transfer with 300 m/s total
that we're using to build and fly unlikely contraptions. I don't think anyone would have ever sensibly considered such a thing before it happened
Coordinates.
in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Posted
also, when you are on the ground, map view will show your coordinates.