Colonel_Panic

hmm, this brings up another point, since again you can't use the oberth effect to boost your apoapsis when doing a hohmann transfer from kerbol orbit, what's the hidden delta-v cost of doing it that way vs timing your transfer to coincide with your ejection burn?

For this I generally try to warp from the launchpad, but if I forget a higher orbit can be useful... of course you can always just select another ship from the tracking station to warp faster. At higher orbits there's always a tradeoff, higher energy for little to no oberth effect, and I find that I waste far more fuel reaching and circularizing at a high orbit before ejecting, than I would just ejecting to begin with. Using minmus as a waypoint though I could establish an ultra-low, (relatively) high-speed orbit around minmus, and use minmus ejection to boost my kerbin ejection almost for free.

Hi, so I know it takes very little delta-v to achieve kerbin escape from minmus orbit, however, is it worth it given the fact that youhave such a high kerbin orbit and a second body to line up for ejection angles? I'm thinking about building a fuel depot there, but I'm concerned I'll lose too much deta-v by ejecting outside the ideal transfer window, due to waiting for minmis to reach the right point in kerbin orbit.

Power delivery! POWERUP. I didn't provide docking or landing capability for the power expansion delivery vehicle, so my kerbals had to EVA to OASIS. My largest dry weight single launch to date sitting on the pad. 91 tons dry. OASIS Stardock on ascent. detaching the lifter in orbit before making the final approach. rendezvous complete. OASIS is now fully operational. Although only 55% complete, it is unlikely to ever see full capacity... the stardock delivery crossed my massive lag threshold and any further additions will be slow, tedious, and plagued by lag. Interesting tidbit: the center power mast is possessed by the kraken. Every time I warp from the station, the center mast begins wobbling and thrashing after coming out of warp, and will continue to get more and more violent until I exit to the tracking station, despite no control input being active..

crazy! I love the cockpit.

Power delivery! POWERUP. I didn't provide docking or landing capability for the power expansion delivery vehicle, so my kerbals had to EVA to OASIS. My largest dry weight single launch to date sitting on the pad. 91 tons dry. OASIS Stardock on ascent. detaching the lifter in orbit before making the final approach. rendezvous complete. OASIS is now fully operational. Although only 55% complete, it is unlikely to ever see full capacity... the stardock delivery crossed my massive lag threshold and any further additions will be slow, tedious, and plagued by lag. Interesting tidbit: the center power mast is possessed by the kraken. Every time I warp from the station, the center mast begins wobbling and thrashing after coming out of warp, and will continue to get more and more violent until I exit to the tracking station, despite no control input being active..

haha. You know you -could- just design your lander as a 2-stage within the mission parameters Call it an excuse to make it small and light, leaving the landing stage behind on ascent (I've made one using only a toroidal fuel tank for ascent, leaving behind the main tank, engine and lander legs)

rendezvous 9 complete. station core stack en-route to rendezvous. rendezvous 10 complete. power mast on approach to rendezvous. rendezvous 11 complete. crew modules 1-4 en-route to rendezvous. For some reason this rocket liked to flip over, and the only prescription, was moar fins. crew module 3 retrieved from delivery vehicle. crew modules 3-4 installation successful. rendezvous 12 complete. crew module delivery vehicle preparing for deorbit burn.

That second one is crazy photogenic, and I'm still not entirely sure what all is on it... is that all stock?

Station building... progress! third rendezvous completed successfully. A separation failure took out one of the lifter's main stage engines. Thankfully the redundancy proved sufficient and I was able to complete the rendezvous without it, after disabling the opposing engine. rendezvous 4 complete. rendezvous 5 complete. rendezvous 6 complete. rendezvous 7 and 8 complete. rendezvous 9 complete. station core stack en-route to rendezvous. rendezvous 10 complete. power mast on approach to rendezvous. rendezvous 11 complete. crew modules 1-4 en-route to rendezvous. For some reason this rocket liked to flip over, and the only prescription, was moar fins. crew module 1 retrieved from delivery vehicle. crew module 1 installation complete. crew module 2 installation complete. crew module 3 retrieved from delivery vehicle. crew modules 3-4 installation successful. rendezvous 12 complete. crew module delivery vehicle preparing for deorbit burn.

The all new O.A.S.I.S. Heavy Service Lifter en-route to deliver a fuel tank Payload in orbit The Assemblotron MK II (now with bigger flashlight)heading toward the rendezvous.

The all new O.A.S.I.S. Heavy Service Lifter en-route to deliver a fuel tank Payload in orbit The Assemblotron MK II (now with bigger flashlight)heading toward the rendezvous. Moving into position to join with the station fuel core A. Rendezvous successful.

Awesome, totally concur this needs a sticky. Does it take into account orbital inclination as well? because that would just be a godsend for planning trips to moho and eelo.

It will have capability to dock between 12 and 24 small ships at standard docking ports, and 8-16 at jr docking ports (if they're small enough) when completed, however most of these spaces will be reserved for spare modules for the ships being serviced there. The station itself will be held together entirely by the large docking ports, since it adds extra strength and rigidity without requiring a lot of struts or bracers, keeping the part count down. (the core node has struts because it needs to offload spin torque to the rest of the station, and being more solid will keep it reliable and reduce wobble) Keep watching the thread in the coming days/weeks and I'll be uploading more pictures of the construction as the station takes shape.

In all my experience MechJeb frequently decides he needs to do a backflip. just because. I never trust him for handling landers. :x

Thanks! I'll rework these and post my results once I get back to the lander. I was really hoping to avoid the extra weight of decouplers to solve the fuel flow problem, as a heavy lander like this is crunched for weight as it is. I might see if there's anything else I can do to slim it down. Well the thing is the cot -shouldn't- be above the com in this ship, unless every fuel tank except for the bottom 3 are empty (and it's well below it when fully fueled). I really don't understand how this gets flipped around when the lower tanks are (mostly) draining first... so I don't know why the gimballing would be broken on those engines. I can try disabling it, but I really don't think that lander can has anywhere near enough torque to keep the lander under control without some form of thrust vectoring.

It's also heavier so you may want to take that into consideration as well. More weight, less torque. I've never had a problem with one, but I never have used -just- a cupola for a command pod... if I want to go light, it's hardly efficient, so I only really use them as station parts or observation decks on really massive ships.

My new O.A.S.I.S. service lifter performing a de-orbit burn after delivering the Kerbin O.A.S.I.S. Station Core. The new Rock-o-max Assemblatron tug delivering the first fuel core to O.A.S.I.S. Rendezvous 1 Complete. 26 to go. (To be continued...)

My new O.A.S.I.S. service lifter performing a de-orbit burn after delivering the Kerbin O.A.S.I.S. Station Core. The new Rock-o-max Assemblatron tug delivering the first fuel core to O.A.S.I.S. Rendezvous 1 Complete. 26 to go. (To be continued...)

see my above post: if I disable crossfeed, the upper stage drains before the lower. This should not happen. The LV-Ns are the only engines with gimballing, so without them I have no control.

Download a mod called "EdTools" (editor tools) which increases the size of the VAB and SPH (does not add any parts)

Hi, check that your navball isn't inverting after staging, and that you're controlling from the cupola, and not a probe core. also check for flex in the middle. If the cupola is wobbling, the navball will wobble, which can cause resonant oversteer problems with ASAS. Consider swapping out your engine cluster at the bottom for a mainsail, and also check that when staging, the detaching radial tanks aren't knocking one of your engines off, since I think I see a lip sticking out past the bottom of the main tank. All 3 of your cluster should be LV-T45s if you do keep the cluster, or thrust will be uneven. The radial engines should all be LV-T30s.

Okay, well, THREE kerbals will be hard to pull off, but it's doable. Ditch the idea of taking them all up at once in a command pod though. It's far too much weight. You need about 9000 delta v with over 2.0 Kerbin TWR to reach orbit from eve, assuming a high landing location. From sea level, expect a whopping 11,000! (Kerbin by comparison is closer to 4300 at 1.7TWR ). This will strain the law of diminishing returns, since anything below your fifth or sixth stage will only add on a tiny amount of delta v more. Your lifter of choice will need to be asparagus staging with toroidal aerospikes, with a very light, high-delta-v final stage to get circularized. You'll want to have an LV-45 for your core stage engine to provide thrust vectoring on the ascent, and a 909 for the final stage. You will want to have an okto-2 probe core for your command part, and a piece of ladder for your kerbals to grab on to. Since they increased the weight of kerbals on EVA in the last update, I don't know how well this will work with all 3 at once. You may STILL need to take them one at a time. Good luck. You're going to need it.

hmmm... where are you trying to dock? are you basically trying to guide the side ports onto something? more info or a picture of it in orbit during the procedure might help too. also, turn on center of mass indicator using the button in the lower left, and make sure it's directly between where you have your RCS mounted. If the craft rotates or pitches at all when you use translative thrusters, you're out of balance. and need to fix this The 4-way RCS are overkill for this. Put linear ports there instead, and a single set of 4-way ports in 2 symmetry around the center, OR 2 more linear ports in 2 symmetry on the ends. do not use RCS for rotation if you can avoid it. Every time you use them to turn, you will inadvertently cause your craft's velocity to change, too. For more info see my tutorial here:

so this is a strange issue... I have fuel lines set up (in symmetry) basically like this: radial tanks below the clamp-o-tron -> main tank below the clamp-o-tron -> radial tanks with engines below the clamp-o-tron -> clamp-o-tron -> upper stage main tank -> upper stage radial tanks with engines. However, when I actually test this, the following happens: radial tanks below the clamp-o-tron and ONE of the two radial tanks with engines below the clamp-o-tron begin draining immediately, the first ones at a faster rate (this should not ever happen. why is this happening?). after the first tanks empty, both of the radial tanks with engines below the clamp-o-tron, and the main tank below the clamp-o-tron AND the upper stage main tank begin draining all at the same time, but one of the tanks with an engine drains faster. after the tank with an engine runs out, the other tank with an engine, the main tank below the clamp-o-tron, AND the main tank above the clamp-o-tron drain, but the empty tank engine keeps firing, and the upper stage main tank empties faster than the rest with the upper stage main tank empty, the upper stage radial tanks with engines begin draining too If I disable fuel crossfeed in the clamp-o-tron, the lower stage weirdness mostly goes away, but the upper stage drains before the lower. The way I need it to behave: I need all of the lower stage tanks to drain before the upper stage ones begin draining. I need the lower stage engines to fire until the lower stage tanks are all empty, and then stop firing. I need the upper stage engines to always fire until everything is empty. other requirement: there can be NO direct fuel linkages between the upper and lower stage (aka, must be able to assemble it in orbit, so nothing that needs to be added after the docking procedure to make it work. other other requirements: why the bloody hell does this thing want to flip over so badly? it seems to try and turn the wrong way whenever I make course corrections while hovering. MJ can't handle it either. Could be related to the above problem with the upper tanks emptying first, putting the COM below the COL, but still, I don't think the engines are THAT high up.... .craft attached (stock). http://herpnderp.info/Omni-Lander%20I%20s.craft