EndOfTheEarth
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Posts posted by EndOfTheEarth
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I have three satellites sitting in orbit around the Mun, and each of them has a pair of DTS-M1 antennas. Antennas on each sat are deployed, and all three are within line of sight of each other. DSN is fully upgraded. All 3 sats are fully powered and controllable. Despite this, while all three sats will communicate with Kerbin, none of them are talking with each other. Any guesses as to what I'm missing?
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She's judging you. The amount of time that you take to make a decision here may be indicative of the effort/lack thereof that you put into your missions.
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Just like the SLS parts, it would be fair to assume that mining equipment is endgame equipment. Yes, starting off with mining equpment will always be easier, just as starting off with SLS engines and tanks will always be easier orbit access than the Orange tank and Mainsail.
And if you're always in sandbox (like I usually am), then you're already "cheating" by giving yourself infinite resources and funds, so who cares?
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No, it's fine where it is.
The joy of KSP is puzzle-solving with the parts that you have. Balancing resources other than fuel and electricity is a game that can be played and lost on the ground, since the antagonist is not the skill of the user, just time.
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this isn't a traditional fuel station, but the method that I've been using is to design my spacecraft tugs to be able to dock to itself while remaining docked to another payload. This way, I know that my fuel will reach its destination, along with a fuel margin representing what the original payload was. Using this method, I have saved fuel-hungry ships orbiting Duna, Laythe, and Bop without ever having to waste time worrying about station construction.
That said, pre-positioning one of these tugs around a planet could also act as a fuel cache. It's all in how you interpret it.
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I like the mix that we currently have. On the one hand, I do like some of the analogs; Mun, Duna, and Jool being the obvious ones. I also like the places where it diverges. Eve and Minmus are both wonderful early-game targets that give you a sense of accomplishment without being too complicated.
I would still like to see at least one ringed gas planet before we're through though, for the screenshots if nothing else.
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I don't see it affecting my Kerbin-Mun-Minmus missions much, but I can easily see it opening up more complex ops at Duna (using Ike as the mine) and backup options around Jool (using Bop, Pol, or Vall as the mine).
Maybe if I did career mode more often, I could see it affecting my vehicles from Kerbin, but otherwise Kerbin is a bottomless fuel depot. the real value of in-situ resource gathering is that it means less complexity involved in refueling exploratory vessels around other planets.
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While I think that KSP has certainly helped with younger people, I think that the high-profile work being done with Commercial Crew has a stronger impact. When I talk to older people, I'm more likely to hear the word "SpaceX" than "Kerbal"
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I was looking back through a number of old books and TV shows about the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs and kept noticing how engineers and pilots got a close sense of connection to their ships, to the point of giving them personalities (apparently Shuttle Discovery was fond of messing with pad engineers, while Atlantis was more polite) or thinking back to where the components of them were now.
Have any of you connected to any spacecraft you built on a personal level? If so, I'd like to hear your stories.
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Wish I had this option. I know that there are a few that I tend to return to in my thoughts.
With construction, it's usually the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon" and the episode "Spider" (The whole series is superb. If you like KSP, you MUST get your hands on this series)
If it's launch, then it's probably Apollo 13
And if it's something really complicated, then it's probably the Jupiter aerobraking scene from the film of 2010...sadly I couldn't find a clip of it.
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No, I don't think that it's ready.
My primary reason is that the new update is going to feature a new aerodynamics model, which could mean that our entire intuition about what it means to build rockets in KSP may now be subject to drastic change. If either a) the aerodynamics wind up buggy or
the aerodynamics wind up contributing to a poor gameplay experience, then this would be a terrible note for Squad to officially release on, and would garner it criticism that could easily (though wrongly) link it to other games on the market that have been released without "being ready".My two cents? Make the next release Beta .99. Make the bugfix patch 1.0.
Beyond that, I'm also kind of surprised that KSP is being considered done without one ringed planet. I'm pretty sure that everyone was expecting at least one.
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My family has a bad history with manned spaceflight. Challenger blew up on my dad's birthday, Vladamir Kormarov had his chute fail about forty years before my brother was born, and Columbia broke up right before my younger sister's birthday. As a result, astronaut deaths come up as a discussion topic once every month and a half in my house.
Needless to say, I move heaven and earth to make sure that my Kerbals come home safely, even if that means losing half of a real-life day duplicating earlier feats to bring extra fuel to missions stranded out by Jool.
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ENGINES
LVT30 - "Starter engine with no gimbal"
LVT45 - "Starter engine with gimbal"
LV909 - "Old mun lander engine"
LV-N - "Nuclear engine"
Rockomax "Poodle" Liquid Engine - "Poodle"
"Skipper" - "The Medium engine"
"Mainsail" - "The big engine"
KR-TL - "The huge engine"
KS-25x4 - "The SLS engine"
RT-10 - "Old SRBs"
BACC Solid Fuel Booser - "New SRBs"
S1 SRB - "SLS SRBs"
Other
Pegasus 1 - "Rungs"
Telus-LV Bay - "Ladder"
Gigantor XL Solar Array - "Station Panels"
OX-4W - "Square panels"
OX-4L - "Solar panels" (For whatever reason, these are the only proper basic solar panels in my book. probably because of how I'm used to seeing them on Soyuz/Dragon)
PB-NUK - "RTG"
Illuminator MK1 - "Landing Lights"
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Manned Landing and Return:
Mun
Minmus
Duna
Ike
Gilly
Dres
Laythe
Bop
Pol
Manned flyby (no landing, either because didn't bring the equipment or can't) and return:
Kerbol
Eve
Jool
Tylo
One way orbit insertions:
Moho
Eeloo
Vall
Those of you who know, where should I go next? Moho, Eeloo, or Vall? I don't have the spare time to conduct an Eve or Tylo mission.
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I used to use the exact same method you're describing, but after an exceptionally nasty rescue mission to Bop, I realized that waiting for the optimal transfer windows uses less fuel and gives me a greater safety margin for my return.
If you are doing one-way flights, or just starting out, then continue doing what you're doing. If you're doing a round-trip mission and don't want the headache of planning a rescue fuel tug, it helps to wait.
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Before going interplanetary, it is very helpful to master docking.
Docking is very similar to interplanetary travel on a small scale. You are trying to meet up with a target that is not necessarily on the same plane as you, or in the same position as you, and the maneuver node aspects work in a similar way. It's good because it teaches the following skills:
1) The maneuver node system. The maneuver nodes tell you how close your orbit will take you to whatever you are trying to meet up with. It costs no fuel to play with maneuver nodes, and they give you the level of accuracy that winds up being vital for travel to anywhere other than the Mun or Jool.
2) Plane changes. Most planets are on a slightly inclined plane (compare the Mun to Minmus) and so require you to know how to bend your orbit to account for these changes.
3) Patience. Sometimes, a few minutes of waiting during time warp for a better orbit can do more for you than a million units of fuel. Inpterplanetary travel means that you will have to wait for things to line up, and then even longer for the ship to get where you need it to go.
Many of these skills are introduced by KSP's tutorial missions, but practice makes perfect. The more you practice docking, the better you get at everything.
Once you have spent enough time working on these, try for Minmus again, treating it like something you're trying to 'dock' with. Once you enter its gravity, it becomes very similar to a mission to the Mun.
After you have gotten comfortable with travel to minmus, I would highly suggest that your first interplanetary trip be an unmanned parachute probe to Eve. The fact that it's close by, has a larger gravity range than Duna, and is insanely easy to land on makes this a good first target, and gives you a good chance of success. Remember, UNMANNED means "Don't send Kerbals"; returning Kerbals from Eve is one of the hardest things to do in the game. Use a probe core.
There are a few tricks to a successful interplanetary flight:
1) LV-N. The nuclear rocket motor. One LV-N attached to an x200-16, probe core, SAS, and a reliable power source can fly to anywhere in the solar system.
2) Know when to go. Based on the position of the planets, it is better to leave at some times than others. These are called "departure windows" or "transfer windows". Leaving during a departure window lets you go somewhere while using the least amount of fuel to get there. To learn the best departure windows for your flight, type "olex orbit calculator" into google and use the first link that appears, ksp.olex.biz
3) Start in a low orbit. The lower your orbit, the less fuel you need to use on your first burn. This is that "oberth effect" that you probably keep hearing about in KSP videos.
4) Maneuver nodes. Remember all that docking training you did? This is where it pays off. Never make a burn without simulating it with maneuver nodes first.
5) Pack light. The heavier your ship, the harder it will be to get it going where it needs to go.
Space is complicated, there is no easy set of rules for getting from one planet to another without mastering the fundamentals. Learn to dock, learn to fly to oddball targets like Minmus, and interplanetary travel will come to you on its own.
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Hi there! Just checking in to say that I made the burns using the direct transfer method with aerobreaking, and the d/V required was indeed around 1350m/s. I still have plenty of fuel to spare for docking, so it looks like my crew might finally get home from Laythe! Thanks again!
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Okay, ran the calculations. The results are below:
Bi-elliptic transfer, 3 burns, as described in my post
- Burn 1: Made at DN to Boost AP to 3,000 km altitude at AN, 759.9 m/s Prograde and radial
- Burn 2: Made at transfer AP for inclination change and target orbit, 599.1 m/s retrograde and normal
- Burn 3: Made at transfer PE for circularization at ~60 km for rendezvous, 585.4 m/s retrograde only
Total dV for bielliptic transfer: 1944.4 m/s
So... Go bi-elliptic transfer.
Addendum: I'm not sure how people are discussing using an aerobrake for this, but I think using the aerobrake for third burn of the bi-elliptic transfer could help.
Nice! I'll give this a shot next time I'm on. Thanks for all the number crunching!
- Burn 1: Made at DN to Boost AP to 3,000 km altitude at AN, 759.9 m/s Prograde and radial
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@OP If you can give us the 5 parameters listed below, we could get some best and worst case scenarios.
- Target PE & AP
- Vessel PE & AP
- Inclination change
If you can give us the argument of the ascending node and and argument of the PE, we could do it exactly. If you can't get these numbers, then the approximate altitude at the AN or DN will do in a pinch.
I'd actually like to crunch the numbers.
Okay then! More numbers:
Lander (Circular-ish orbit):
-Apogee: 62,917
-Perigee: 58,649
Fuel Tug (eliptical orbit)
-Apogee: 789,610
-Perigee: 62,728
Other Data:
Inclination difference: 41.7 degrees
DN Altitude: 279km
AN Altitude: 288km
AN/DN Altitudes are approximations based on the staging view altitude indicator while passing though each, as the ship is gaining/losing altitude at a rate of about 1km/s by that point in the orbit.
Thanks to everyone for their help so far! I haven't touched it yet, because I'm curious about what you folks come up with.
- Target PE & AP
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Okay, physics people, this one's for you.
Background: I've got a fuel tug that just entered orbit around Laythe. The orbit, for the moment, is fairly epiptical, and at about a 45 degree inclination to the equator. The objective is to dock with a lander that has just come back from a surface sortie, and is now sitting in a low, circular, equatorial orbit.
Picture for clarity:
Naturally, the idea here is to save fuel instead of spending it, so my question is: When modifying the orbital inclination of my tug to match the lander, would I be using less fuel at the ascending node, descending node, or would the resultant burn time for either node look about the same?
Bonus: If I want to lower my apogee at the same time, does this change the answer?
Additional stuff, if it helps:
Stock game, no mods, most recent version, I think.
Thrust on the tug is provided by four LV-Ns, and a handful of RCS thrusters for close-in docking.
The ship is currently holding 3014LF/3683Ox and 596 Monoprop, arranged in four T800s, one S3-7200, and four radial-mounted Cylinder monopropellant tanks.
My rough math says that this plus extras like the docking ports, ASAS, RTGs, and so on all translates to a wet weight of 49.87 tons, if the wiki is accurate.
EDIT More numbers:
Lander (Circular-ish orbit):
-Apogee: 62,917
-Perigee: 58,649
Fuel Tug (eliptical orbit)
-Apogee: 789,610
-Perigee: 62,728
Other Data:
Inclination difference: 41.7 degrees
DN Altitude: 279km
AN Altitude: 288km
AN/DN Altitudes are approximations based on the staging view altitude indicator while passing though each, as the ship is gaining/losing altitude at a rate of about 1km/s by that point in the orbit.
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After what feels like roughly two years of playing KSP, I finally hit my big personal goal as an intermediate KSP player and landed safely on Laythe!
Now it's just a question of getting Bill and Jeb home! My lander almost made orbit when tested on Kerbin, but I've never performed a Laythe liftoff before, so I have no idea if this will work, or if I have the fuel to pull it off!
EDIT: Wow, that wasn't as bad as I expected it would be!
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Well, if you're in it for the kick and to heck with efficiency, my past few interplanetary missions have allowed me to bring a huge upper stage consisting of a KR-2L and S3-14400 into space along with my interplanetary tug (the part that usually does all the hauling with the LV-Ns and a big fuel tank). This way, when I dock my lander to the tug, I can transfer any remaining fuel from the lander launcher to the S3-14400, then I deorbit the lander launcher with any backup RCS, leaving me in orbit with the lander, the tug, and the upper stage.
Then, I get lined up for my burn, and boy is it a burn.
Usually, the upper stage conks out and gets dumped before I finish the actual burn, but the end total of this is that I can get the tug and lander to Jool still 90-some% full of fuel...and the tug itself is a S3-7200 surrounded by four Fl-T800s, mind you, so by the time I start needing to burn again to target a moon, I still have oodles of fuel to play around with.
Of course, the rockets to put these things into space in the first place are obscene, but hey! No budget, no efficiency control, no problem!
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I don't see asteroids in that list. Time to build a third moon in LKO!
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In the event that you were thinking of this because of the Rosetta mission, the comet is less than 4km across and has an escape velocity of 1 m/s. If it were implemented into the game, Jeb could enter or escape orbit of the comet at a brisk walking pace.
The asteroids you visit in KSP are substantially smaller than 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, so the actual gravity exerted by them is technically already simulated by the game: almost zero.
the aerodynamics wind up contributing to a poor gameplay experience, then this would be a terrible note for Squad to officially release on, and would garner it criticism that could easily (though wrongly) link it to other games on the market that have been released without "being ready".
Antenna Question
in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
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Ah, that's why. Thanks!