r_rolo1

So , in resume , someone made a Dyson sphere around a black hole . Maybe the inner inhabitants throw stuff at the black hole and let the gravity smashdown to power them ? But anyway things do not compute even with a black hole. How do you explain the Mun ? Another black hole inside a box ? And as we are there, of what the hell is Minmus made? It looks like ice, but if it was ice it would had vaporized away a long time ago ( and it is there a long time ago since it is tidally locked to Kerbin ... ) .... the only thing I can think off is that it is made of some kind of glass, but that is even worse ( that is quite a chunk of it )

@djnekkid The idea you describe is the next logical step. You would probably need to strut stuff ( a thing that I studiously avoided here ) and would need some work to not collapse under it's own weight in KSP ( this one almost does that ), but I'm pretty sure that is doable. If you do that, be sure to post it @ simplemunrockets Thanks for the compliment , but I'm pretty sure that there is stuff around that is a lot more kerbal than this

After the ship I posted yesterday ( see here ), I decided to ditch the jet engines and try to weave a ship that would combine some concepts I've been working on: - Ships being pulled by the engines instead of being pushed ( with all the issues with the decoupler strength this is actually a good idea, but the main inspiration was a certain RL Mars mission ) - Not ditching engines out ( really, what a waste of tech heavy parts ) - Laterally mounted engines ( in RL this would be problematic combined with the first point, since the exhaust would most likely create heat issues in the lower stages ... but so far we don't have that issue in KSP, and when we do, this can be partly remedied by tilting the engines out a little to the outside ) - Fuel line work that allows you to burn the lower fuel tanks first ( as we don't have stock non-crossfuel capable decouplers ( RLY, Harvester ???? ), this needs some ingenious work ) In shorter words, I wanted a space crane Munar landing module with a lot of tanks attached below and linked by fuel lines in a way that the lower tanks would always dry first. And after a dozen of prototypes, I got to this awkward looking rocket : More awkward than the name is the behaviour it has both when the physics kick in and when you fire the rockets. It is not called Accordion by accident Anyway, some pics on the mission: Right after ditching the first lower tank. As you can see by the navball, the launch is somewhat problematic: the ship is pretty close of the maximum mass 3 aerospikes can get off the ground of KSP , and to add, the ship is not exactly structurally solid ( again , experimental and proof of concept ). A good human hand would most likely be able to control this, but , as a not stellar pilot ( well I can land on winglets in the mun on stock parts, but this is quite harder ), I prefer to leave that to mechjeb. Starting the gravity turn. I used the regular MechJeb flight plan, but I'm pretty sure this can be optimized. Circularizing. I had just ditched the last fuel tank below the lander proper. It had got to 100 km with a sliver of fuel. This was a major improvement on Accordion A ( pretty much the same rocket , but with 3 heavy landing legs and with lower mounted engines ( will explain that change later ) ) that was forced to start burning the final stage still in the atmosphere. Munar Injection Burn. Pretty good fuel stock. Those landing legs were really dragging out Orbit after entering Munar SoI. Picked this orbit for two reasons: first, it will get to the ground in a quite vertical direction, allowing a good suicide burn ( Gs be damned ) and it will drop us in a good place for a direct burn to Kerbin without circularization around the Mun. Suicide burn. I chickened out a little here, since I could had waited 1 to 2 more seconds before burning. I don't leave this exclusively to MechJeb because it has some kind of respect for the Kerbals and tries to avoid high Gs. This unfortunately will make the fuel bug raise it's ugly head in this ship ... Landed ship ( coordinates in mechjeb landing window ) and postcard. Only when taking this pic I noticed that I had left a now completely useless extendible stair in the lander *facepalm* Return orbit after final burn. Tried to do a as much as possible full throttle burn, but this needs some fine tuning since I have made a direct burn from the surface, so I made a part of it in in slow burn. The fuel budget ( as you will see in the next pic ) was more than enough to cope in a bug-less environment Activating parachutes for aerobraking in the highest possible altitude. As you can see, the remaining fuel was more than enough to cope with the fuel bug issues in the return burn As I mentioned before, the previous version of this ship had lower mounted engines in the Munar landing module. This made that the ship was too much top heavy for MechJeb SAS could avoid it to turn upside down in reentry, a solvable but annoying situation. I could had solved this by putting a extra parachute, but that would add unwanted and unneeded mass, so, putting the parachute anchoring higher was the chosen solution ( I also not want the parachutes anchoring in the capsule in here, since it makes that the capsule detaches itself from the rest of the lander sometimes when the parachutes open. Not a big issue for this, but it would be problematic I needed to fire up again ( as in a Kerbin return from another planet ) and it is better to not learn things wrong ). It did not solved the issue completely, but it mitigated the issue enough for MechJeb SAS to be able to cope with it. Firing for soft landing. I'm pretty sure the ship could most likely handle a parachute only touchdown ( atleast the capsule would for sure ), but as we don't have landing legs and have fuel enough for it, better to do it right. Landed ship and end flight stats. I'm not sure if the 7g are from the suicide burn in the Mun or due to the 6 km Pe in the return burn final orbit ( not good... too many g forces and would roast the ship if the reentry heat was on , even if the ship had a heat shield, because it meant a 15º reentry angle, far higher than the RL 6º . Both were consequences of trying to avoid the dreaded fuel bug ... Again, let me point out that this is a proof of concept ship. It was not made to be easy to pilot ( I'm not sure if I could do it without mechjeb ), and the fuel budget is quite tight, in spite of appearing otherwise. It was made to share some ideas I've been developing since .16 came out and hopefully someone will gain from them ( as I did when borrowed some many other designs from here ) Anyway, craft file here . Have fun and try to not crash this too much

colonel0sanders, that concept is quite interesting ... and most likely it would hold a land touchdown with the legs open with the parachutes putting the speed at 8.1 m/s. Must try it myself. On my contribution ... well , I'm a simple man and I normally use a variation of this lander: This one was in fact a very fun run where I was made a Mun rocket almost by accident when testing jet engines ... see here. That explains the lack of parachutes in the capsule and the lack of decoupler separating the capsule of the rest of the ship ... it was never meant to leave the atmosphere at all

Added the mediafire link.

Oh, I forgot to warn ... the real download button is the "request download ticket" in the bottom. The others are just very deceiving advertising. I can up them to mediafire OFC ... just give me a minute or so. I know that the jet engines will be toned down, but to be honest I was not expecting them to be so OP. As I said, this was just to test them for assisting flight in the first stage, not to do the whole heavy lifting up to 10 km. Anyway, the main point of the testing was not even the jet engines , but the decoupler behaviour with the engines on top ( went well ) and the fuel line system. But as it proved a good Mun rocket, why not share it ?

Ok, I was experimenting with jet engines ( for a hybrid 1st stage for when we have other planets to come ) and I tumbled with this design by acident ( was trying to cope with the weak big decoupler by putting the engines in top of it and trying some ways to minimize fuel lines ( obviously that part still needs refinement ... ) ) And, to my surprise, this quite minimal ship was enough to go to the moon and back ... so I decided to redo the mission and take some pics: As you could notice in the previous spoiler , the first stage activated only the jet engines. They took a while to gain enough power to push the ship up and that is where Mechjeb was most needed in the mission ( otherwise it is hard to avoid the ship to start dancing in the launch pad until it crashes unless you have a good control over it ( I don't ) ). Anyway. I started turning the ship at 10 km ( standart mechjeb fight program ) and I activated the aerospikes there. I let the fuel in the lateral tanks to end to detach them + the jet engines. By that time ( around 15 km ), they were already almost not working anyway Here is the ship when preparing to circularize at 100 km. The flight plan was good enough for leaving lest than 300ish m/s for that manouver. Notice the 1/6 of tank still in the deposit stage ... that will be enough for the circularization and for the first part of the munar injection Ship burning the last stage for munar injection. Even then there is plenty of fuel left. Orbit after entering Munar SoI. I chose this orbit to be able to do a "suicide burn" to minimize the fuel bug ... unfortunately this will generete quite a bunch of g ... A little after starting the full throttle burn. In retrospective I could had started it even a little later, but better safe than sorry Position of the landing plus obligatory postcard from far away. Getting in spot for return burn. Will burn here until the orbit gets to 22-30 km inside kerbin atmosphere ( that gives the magic IRL 6º reentry angle good enough for a Mun return trajectory ) Ship trajectory after final burn. In here unfortunately had to run not on full throttle, since even a little thrust diference can mean the diference between failing the atmosphere, doing a decent aerobrake or crashing hard in the floor because the parachutes malfunctioned due to the high reentry speed. As this originally wasn't even supposed to leave the atmosphere, I have not putted a decoupler between the capsule and the rest of the ship ( it has 3 small parachutes, but that was legacy of the previous design I was testing before trying this and that I forgot to take out... they aren't even attached to the capsule, but to the lateral tanks ). Anyway, we have enough of fuel to do do a powered descent if we do some parachute assisted aerobraking To be honest I was not expecting that the parachutes would hold, but they did. Unfortunately, as the ship is quite top heavy at this point, the torque overwhelmed the Mechjeb SAS. This could be really bad news if the parachute opening would tear the connection between the fuel tank and the capsule, since there are no chutes in the capsule itself With some heavy balancing of the ship using the capsule SAS and the force of the opening parachutes I managed to rotate the ship to the right direction. And, in spite of knowing that his ship could hold a impact to the ground above 10m/s ( previous tests ... for science and Kerbalkind sake ), there was no harm in doing a proper soft landing. Too bad we touched down in water ... Ship floating , using Mechjeb to avoid tumbling to the side, while waiting for the Kerbal Navy to rescue them Final stats of the flight. Those 6 g are from the suicide burn. If kerbals had human resistance to g forces, there was a quite high chance they would had passed out there ... and crashed into the ground. I only did that to avoid the cursed fuel bug ... In short, turbojet engines are completely OP :/ I was just trying them for assisting the first stage of a Murs-faring ship for 0.17 ( as most rocket engines now are less efficient in at 1 atm ... ) and I end making a minimalistic Mun rocket Anyway, for fun, here his the .craft file: http://filecloud.io/boe17k9q or http://www./?xz1b1w3yhwc6gc4

May I call you a moron ? Since you actually called me ( and yourself ) one in this video Sometimes in EVA we can forget that we can't throttle up ... Anyway, and back to seriousness, waiting to see your Mars ( or Murs ? ) related creations. Fly safe

Well, just to sign in ... Been seeing your videos ( and commenting on them ) since your stock Mun lander with winglets as landing legs mock ups ... somewhere 70 videos ago .You can really learn a lot of tidbits about good orbital practices in there ( well, atleast until the budget cuts arc ). Now just a question/comment ... I've been reviewing your post .16 videos today and I do feel that your first Mun rocket for the 3-person capsule seems ... excessive, with all those solid boosters ( I know, they are better now, but I'm still not convinced of their usability ) and the 8 side engines Given that your capsules orbiting Mun in the later videos seem to be far more spent in terms of fuel, I assume you are using a more streamlined version for your budget cuts videos ( it would only fit, right ? ). Could you share it with us in a later video , if you are really using a different version ?

Well, my comp would go supernova if I tried to do something of that size, but couldn't you improve the height quite a lot by adding empty fuselages, engine nacelles or radial engine bodies ? The last two are the length of a FL-T400 tank and weight just a little bit more than a empty one ...

So, I decided to give the ol'times sake a chance, left mechJeb and the landing gear at home and tried a minmus landing on top of winglets like in before .13 ... ... just to discover that the winglets still somehow sink on the ground like hell :/ Anyway it was enough to not damage the aerospikes

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12368.0\' This is one of the 3 or 4 threads that popped about it yesterday ( I also happened to discover one before seeing it posted ). So far there were two discovered, both: Both are in the Mun side that faces Kerbin between the equator and 15ºN and both are in the ridges of craters. Also both are oriented W-E ( meaning that any orbit will have to come from north or south to pass through them ) and both are pretty visible from orbits up to 100 km if you are really looking Anyway, I\'ve tried and it ended in tears The only good thing is that their basis is pretty high terrain so in theory it should be possible for someone with a steadier hand than mine ( or a joystick )

Well, anyway, what ever you do DON\'T land directly below it and then change to other ship. I\'ve tried it and my ships decided to crash on the arch top as soon as I refocused in on them BTW I\'ve done a small sweep orbit on a equatorial mun 20 km orbit and I\'m pretty sure that there aren\'t any other arch like those below 20º of latitude N or S ( they are quite big , so you can see them from that orbit easily if you are looking for them ). Must do some polar sweeps, I guess