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irongut

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Everything posted by irongut

  1. Extreme aerobraking! I finally warped time so my Discovery JL-1 mothership and probes would reach Jool. This is my first interplanetary mission and was launched several rl weeks ago. After 3 attempts I managed to work out a suitable periapsis so that I wouldn't either escape Jool's SOI or spiral into its crushing gravity well. Pretty fireworks ensued but the ship held together and I achieved a reasonably equatorial orbit from Jool's atmosphere out to past Laythe. A couple more passes have since brought my apoapsis down to inside Laythe's orbit and tomorrow I'll circularise properly.
  2. I'm getting an error message instead of the ribbon images: Erreur 403/Error 403 Accès interdite. Access denied.
  3. Nice design arise. I use those couplers a lot and have wondered if you could chain them before but didn't put the work in to figure it out. I may use your technique at some point.
  4. Keys look well documented to me: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Controls
  5. Where I live it would not be surprising to hear someone say that Neil Armstrong landed on the Mun due to local accents. So its The Mun for me.
  6. Wow! That is awesome. I have no idea how you managed to build that let alone fly it to Laythe.
  7. Drop the launch stage and do the transfer burn purely using your transfer stage. I'd also add more engines to the transfer stage to increase your TWR and reduce the burn time. Then time your burn so you do half of it before the node and half after - so a 10 minute burn starts 5 minutes before the node.
  8. Yesterday my Twin Ion Engine Probe finally reached its solar periapsis and I executed a 1.5 hour burn to circularise its orbit just outside Moho's orbit. It wasn't too bad with 4x warp. Then I redesigned my Trident general purpose lander. The Mk 1 met spec for delta v, science capabilities, etc but a test flight to the Mun had shown manoueverability issues when landing. A complete redesign led to the Mk 2, with slightly more delta v. Today I took the Trident Mk2 lander for a test flight. A launcher was constructed with enough delta v to put the lander into LKO and Bob (short for Kate) Kerman climbed aboard. This would be Bob's first mission to space, destination Minimus. The Trident Mk2 flew from LKO to Minimus and landed perfectly on the Slopes. Bob congratulated the engineers back at KSC on their design. A few experiments and a Min walk later the Trident returned to Kerbin. Aerobraking was successful and the lander splashed down just east of the Island Airfield. A resounding success and the first step to putting a Kerbal on another planet.
  9. I play mostly stock with only instrumentation mods like KER, Alarm Clock and protractor. Plus MechJeb for docking because I suck at it. I'm starting to consider stuff like the clouds and radio chatter mods.
  10. That's the cupola. First time I've used it and the hitchiker can, both look great on IVA.
  11. Yesterday I launched the crew habitat for Elysium Station comprised of cupola, crew quarters and a science lab. Piloted by Jeb with a crew of 4 more victims brave Kerbonaughts along for the ride, they reached orbit without a hitch and docking with the station core went smoothly. The next job was to send up a tanker to refuel the station. Elysium Station now contains liquid and mono-propellant fuel storage, electricity generation and storage, cupola, crew quarters, science lab and four docking arms. With the station complete for now Jeb admired the view of Kerbin from the cockpit.
  12. Last night I launched the core module for Elysium Station, my first LKO station, into a nice circular 150km orbit: The core module comprises liquid fuel storage, mono-propellant storage, electricity generation and storage and the docking arms for other modules and ships. It also has an engine and OKTO core that will be useful if I need to move the station to avoid debris or for decommissioning. Tonight I plan to launch the crew habitat module comprised of cupola, hitchhiker crew quarters and a science lab. Bill and Bob refused to man anything piloted by Jeb so I've recruited 5 new victims brave Kerbonaughts for the mission.
  13. You know you've got the back 3 cars docked backwards, right?
  14. Not so much what did I do today, more what have I done in the last week... My first Jool transfer window opened so my unmanned mission to Jool and all its moons is finally underway. The Discovery JL-1 mothership with 6 probes - one to orbit each moon and another to land on Laythe - burned its nuclear engines for 15 minutes to get out of Kerbin SOI. They should enter Jool SOI in 130 days. In the meantime I've been thinking about a manned mission to Duna so I designed a new lander. The Trident lander carries 1 Kerbal and is capable of landing on and returning from all planets and moons in the system except Eve, Kerbin, Tylo and Laythe. It can do 2x every experiment and the plan is to use it with a mothership that includes a science lab to reset the experiments. All this mucking about with ships that dock has made me think about assembling a station in LKO. I designed a crew habitat module and a station core module that I thought I would be able to launch as one piece. Turns out clamp-o-trons can't handle the force of a Kerbin launch and despite several redesigns I'm going nowhere as is. So now I'm redesigning them as completely separate modules that I can launch individually. I will eventually add more modules and leave at least 2 docking ports free for shuttles, fuel tankers, etc. Pics to come when I actually complete something rather than starting 3 things at once.
  15. Kerbal Engineer Redux was doing this just after the 0.23 update. It is fixed in the latest version.
  16. Why on Earth (or Kerbin) would you convert lovely m/s to horrible mph? The speed of sound at sea level on Earth is approx 330m/s so just divide your speed in m/s by 330 and that gives you the rough Mach value. Note: I know that Kerbin is not exactly like Earth and that the speed of sound (and even light!) depends on the density of the medium it is passing through but for a nice Kerbal-like, back of a fag packet calculation dividing by 330 should be good enough.
  17. In my career game I'm currently working on an unmanned mission to Jool and all of its moons. I have a mothership and 6 probes designed to do science in high and low orbits of each celestial and to land on Laythe. They were designed using a dV chart and Kerbal Engineer Redux to ensure they have more than enough dV for the mission. I haven't run a sandbox simulation of the whole mission but I have used it to prove I can dock all the probes, fly the mothership to Mun, undock the probes and run my science projects. Apart from this basic shakedown test I will be flying by the seat of my pants. My mothership and probes are currently sitting in LKO awaiting their launch window which opens in about 24h.
  18. You could swap the landing legs for the tiny radial rockets, add a few toroidal fuel tanks and land it without a sky crane like my Mun Bug: Note it was very difficult to land and is somewhat top heavy, making driving difficult. If I was to do it over I'd still try the no sky crane idea but would probably design the rover a bit differently.
  19. Kredits obviously. But I am also in favour of Koins.
  20. Based on some tests I did yesterday it calculates the air breathing & closed modes separately. By default you see stats for air breathing mode, switch your engines over and you'll see closed mode stats. (This can be done in VAB.)
  21. Thanks. My first successful challenge! I'm hoping the Stiletto range will become workhorses for a future LKO station, hence the docking clamp, lights and MechJeb (I suck at docking so much). If you need help finding KSC you could get a Kerbal to plant a flag next to the runway. That should show on the map and give you a distance in flight view. I had debris from a recent prototype personal VTOL craft nearby which helped me judge the distance as I approached.
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