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falconek

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Posts posted by falconek

  1. - I've built drone helicopter with small "landing pad", connected by decoupler. Helicopter must be decoupled from "landing pad" to start

    - Helicopter flies perfectly  if launched on it's own (without "landing pad" part)

    - Both pieces have antenna, command module, batteries and connection to KSC

    - Immediately upon decoupling helicopter freezes and speed meter shows very high (for this type of craft) speed

    - I use following mods: Kerbal Engineer, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Final Frontier, Precise Maneuver.

     

    Below is the video showing the problem (1:29 minutes)

    Spoiler

     

     

    And craft file (with parachutes and stuff, so just stage it till you get to heli)

    Anyone has any idea? The problem is that one of those helicopters currently sits on Eve's surface so I can't fix it easily, without editing save file. So if you have any idea how can I fix it (by editing saves or any other way), I will be grateful for help.

     

  2. I spend two hours on testing and tweaking my at the moment standard 18 ton lifter for optimal ascent path. In process I managed to reliably achieve 3500 - 3600 dv (lowest was below 3450) and also I removed RCS and reaction wheels, because it turned out, that the rocket flies propely on those small basic winglets alone^^

  3. In vertical flight, terminal velocity is by definition achieved when rocket's TWR is equal to 2 plus enough surplus to acclerate to new terminal velocity (on higher altitude). Personally I try to keep my TWR between 2.1 - 2.5 during the atmospheric part of ascent.

    Of course, with lower drag, it is less important to keep your speed below terminal velocity, so you may just want to keep your TWR relatively high, to decrease losses from gravitational drag. Overall, like Taki117 said, as long as you don't see flames, you are probably fine.

  4. Yes, finally it's a proper engineering challenge. In 0.90 everything could be solved with a delta v calculator, and you could completely neglect other aspect of design. You had enough dv, and you could be sure, that your rocket will work. Now the game is more multidimensional, you need to take into account drag, center of weight shifting, steering authority, structural integrity and more. I like it.

  5. Generally I like this update. The more I play, the more I see, how well it's actually balanced (thrust, ISP, weight, tech tree etc. wise).

    My only concern is too low reentry heat, but there's a slider for that. And aerodynamic flights are a minor part of my gameplay anyway... I spend most of my time in space.

    BTW guys, your "realistic" rockets are flipping, because in KSP generally payloads are light, and engines and fuel are heavy. So the rockets are bottom heavy. You need to think about your rockets, like they were model rockets (engine on bottom, empty paper tube and parachute on top). Model rockets are bottom heavy, that's why they need fins, and KSP perfectly shows it.

  6. This is mine. I was focusing on control to get SAS and be able to build bigger rockets, then on electricity for unmanned, and small engines for landers. I've been able to land few unmanned probes on Mun. With sending Kerbals I'm waiting till I'll be able to build something more reliable, that can send three kerbals for the mission. Which means bigger command pod, bigger engines, and bigger fuel tanks.

    60DN1UJ.png

  7. I like the 1.0.2.

    In 1.0.0 atmosphere was too thin, rockets were flipping over only till 12000 meters, above 12000 you coud do anything, the same as in 0.90. Yes, dv to LKO is 100 m/s higher.. I had to add a small fuel tank on tank on top of some of my lifters, that's all.

    As for airplanes, IMO they behave better. Take off and landing speed is lower, which means it's easier to land in rough terrain, the maximum ceiling is bigger. I think it's change for the better.

  8. This has nothing to do with turbine engine lifters in KSP. You could recreate this proposal more realistically by using basic jets.

    Best,

    -Slashy

    By saying "turbine engines" I meant turbine engines. That means both basic jets and "advanced jets".

    - - - Updated - - -

    Anyway you guys go into too much details. What I wanted to show you is a space ship, that uses turbine engines for it's first stage (which is doable in KSP). I really don't care if this F-15 will despawn, or crash into the ground or explode or go straight to the orbit. The point is it's function as an air-breathing first stage.

  9. I don't do missions Apollo-style because they don't make sense in KSP.

    How can you say, they don't make sense in KSP? The heavier the body you want to land on, the more you gain by making a two-stage lander. Of course, if you land on Minmus, the gain is very low, or maybe even negative. But for Mun, Duna and up, Apollo-style lander allows you to build smaller, lighter and cheaper. And also, the two-stage lander is safer for landing in rough terrain (if it goes wrong, only descent engine gets destroyed), which is good for Ironman play.

    I only don't use apollo-style landers for Duna-Ike missions, where I use architecture in which a lander first lands on Duna, then discards parachutes, returns to CSM, gets partially refueled on CSM (or discards excess fuel tanks and gets fully refuelled) which effectively transforms it into Ike lander. Such a "two in one".

    In general, I don't copy visual look of real life missions, but I often use their architecture, because it works both IRL and in KSP, which is beautiful.

  10. I switched to it, everything that was not the UI went black, so I saved and quit and when I came back the probe was just gone.

    When that happens, do not save. Instead alt+tab and kill your game from the task explorer - so it won't manage to save anyhting. When you reload, there is a chance, that your ship will be ok. If not, try again untill it loads properly.

    BTW little update for my last post: actually I have one million, not ten millions... I was far away from my gaming PC and my memory served me wrong :P Also I spent about 150k on Eve mission (with Gilly crewed lander, eve robotic lander and SCANSat satellite) which failed at first time - wobbling on last lifter stage caused the ship to spin (the crew was recovered but unable to reach orbit). Second launch, with few additional struts went fine. Anyway if I didn't use "return to assembly building", this would cost me total 300k for two launches - 25k from recovering last of the lifter on second launch = 275k. Which is more than 25% of my funds and starts getting risky. Few more mistakes like this and I'm doomed.

    Definitely my next career save will be "ironman" - no quicksaves, no reverting flights. This is going to be fun^^

  11. 10 millions after some orbital stuff, one landing on Mun (one biome visited) and one landing on Minmus (3 biomes visited). Currently I'm preparing for an Eve/Gilly and Duna/Ike missions.

    This all wouldn't be possible without Kerbal Engineer and Optimal Rocket Calculator (http://garycourt.github.io/korc/) thanks to which my designs are always perfect and low cost. Also I'm using "return to launch pad" and "return to hangar" options for "testing" so my test and research costs equal zero. I predict, that my Duna ship will cost around $50000.

    However, back when I started playing KSP, my first Mun landing took me 20 or 30 attempts of "go to moon -> lithobrake -> repeat" (I didn't know that quick saves exist) so I understand reasoning behind current game ballance.

  12. So people complain, that they do not need to spend time on mundane task of creating insane CPU-eating, crazy looking heavy lifters any more? I for one prefer to focus on the mission itself, instead of spending hours on designing a crazy 300 parts lifter only to get my payload to the orbit.

  13. Carreer mode can be quite hard if you didn't trial-and-error everything before, you don't know which parts and when are unlocked and you don't use following:

    -launch window calculators

    -deltaV maps

    -engineer redux

    -mechjeb

    Just imagine, you're not someone, who played since 0.15 and can land on Mun with eyes closed. Imagine, this is future, year 2030 and you just bought a 1.0 version of KSP. This is your first ever contact with the game ever and you by default start career mode, knowing nothing (also mod-free and whithout help from outside sources). Now career will be a lot of trial and error.

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