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Your Unusual Tricks of the Trade


kBob

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37 minutes ago, ClamBoy said:

Here's a new-to-me thing that I like. I used to hate messing around with inclination changes on the way to minimus. This career I've put up a little satellite ~100K above Kerbin matching Minimus inclination. I put my Minimus launch on the pad, set the satellite as target and set an alarm on KAC for when the ascending or descending node is intercepted. After launch, I can tweak path so that I have little or no inclination to correct for. Makes Minimus travel much more straightforward for me.

Not sure if this method will work with bodies that orbit around Kerbol. I'll be firing up a satellite to see if I can do the same for Duna.

 

Is there a reason you can't accomplish the same thing without the little satellite by simply targeting Minmus itself?

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45 minutes ago, AbacusWizard said:

Is there a reason you can't accomplish the same thing without the little satellite by simply targeting Minmus itself?

Having an existing orbit overlaying my launch is an easy visual reference. I haven't found a way to get that by directly targeting Minimus or at least somethign that doesn't involve a lot of zooming out. As for setting an alam where AN or DN intercepts with Minimus as a target, haven't tried that.

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Mk3 cargo ramps are good for putting tiny escape pods in.

Also, don't bother with hanger bay doors. They're annoying, if your right click is broken they don't work, they make it so you have less space to fit stuff through, and if your ship has AI onboard, they usually refuse to let you in at least once during the mission. Bring a garage door opener with you.

Edited by max_creative
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I decided I needed check lists so I used this sticky notes program (I've only tried this in Windows 8.1 but a review indicates it works in Windows 10 just fine too--also there are no limitations in the free version that I could find--the cnet review seems out of date).  Everything was going fine for a few days, but it stopped appearing in KSP suddenly one day (I was playing around with settings so who knows why). 

A little trial and error and I found that by specifiying the -popupwindow command line argument in my KSP shortcut (you can do this with a steam shortcut too) and you get a nice boarderless window and by hitting alt-enter you can switch between having your checklists displayed or not but know annoying title bar like you get without -popupwindow.  So the target line in my KSP shortcut looks like this: "C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\KSP_x64.exe" -popupwindow

One quirk: when adding titles to your notes with KSP active, KSP gets the key strokes, easy workaround is to type the title in the note's body select and cut it and paste it into the title.

I know there is a mod for having notes inside KSP, but I like using an external program and it's a useful program in general and has a lot of nice features though it might not be quite as well integrated as the mod, which has nice features specific to KSP, so either way there's no excuse for those "oops, forgot to check the staging," moments :) .

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On 24.6.2016 at 9:32 PM, AbacusWizard said:

Is there a reason you can't accomplish the same thing without the little satellite by simply targeting Minmus itself?

One more advanced tricks I have done is sending stuff going to Moho, Eeloo or Jool out to Minmus orbit to top up the tanks then back to high kerbin orbit and drop Pe down at the time for the burn,
In this case setting up the burn on an target satellite to see the burn time and angle is very useful. 

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I usually use structural girders or cubic octagonal struts as landing legs. Much more sturdy, but the lack of suspension makes things more bouncy. Could even make cages for lithobraking, but I've not experimented with it yet.

Ablator on heat shields is often unnecessary and can be drained completely. Fairings can also be used as heatshields, potentially with an aerodynamic shape if desired.

Edited by Guest
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Not that unusual I suppose, but I picked up a little tip to help with aerodynamic design, I think it was in a Vaos Human video on YouTube. He was using the CoL indicator in the SPH and showing that you can check your craft's CoL at certain AoA by using the rotate tool on the cockpit/root part. You can also check how most of your control surfaces will affect lift by using the rotate tool directly on them. Selecting "Deploy" from the right-click menu does not show changes in CoL.

Jimbo

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 Procedural fairings (the mod) can be made to hold ablator and used as heat shields. The interstage fairing base from the same mod can also be used to make sleek and aerodynamic custom service modules.

Modular girder segments are just about the only thing I don't feel guilty about clipping parts into - they're hollow and just the right size for small radial tanks rotated 180 degrees to face inward.

 

 

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On 6/24/2016 at 8:54 PM, ClamBoy said:

Here's a new-to-me thing that I like. I used to hate messing around with inclination changes on the way to minimus. This career I've put up a little satellite ~100K above Kerbin matching Minimus inclination. I put my Minimus launch on the pad, set the satellite as target and set an alarm on KAC for when the ascending or descending node is intercepted. After launch, I can tweak path so that I have little or no inclination to correct for. Makes Minimus travel much more straightforward for me.

Not sure if this method will work with bodies that orbit around Kerbol. I'll be firing up a satellite to see if I can do the same for Duna.

 

Thats good, but whatever you do: Don't burn to match inclination while in LKO, it's expensive.

Burn prograde at Asc or Desc node, that will encounter Minmus if you have patience(this might delay the transfer launch with up to 15days)

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3 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

Thats good, but whatever you do: Don't burn to match inclination while in LKO, it's expensive.

Burn prograde at Asc or Desc node, that will encounter Minmus if you have patience(this might delay the transfer launch with up to 15days)

Returning from Minmus I found it useful to use Mun at target to get inclination. 
Play around with it, its often cheaper to get an larger inclination out at Minmus to move the inclination point outward. Say Asc is close to Pe and cost 200 m/s, you do an 5 m/s burn to increase inclination and this moves it out towards Mun orbit where the plane change cost 20 m/s. 

 

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On 6/14/2016 at 2:22 PM, Ippo said:

Somebody on this forum taught a neat little orbital mechanics trick. Let's say you want to go to the Mun, but your tracking station is too low-level to use manouvre nodes (or even patched conics). You just need to launch to an equatorial orbit (standard 100x100 will do nicely) and wait until you see the Mun rise above the horizon. At Munrise, start burning prograde until your apoapsis reaches the Mun's orbit and voilà, you have an encounter! The same principle applies when you are plotting your transfer burn: place the node near the place in your orbit where there will be the Munrise, and you'll find the encounter immediately.

Yep, this is how I always get to the Mun, even today. It's how I learned, and it works like a charm, so why change?

Quote

The cool thing was that whoever posted this also included a mathematical proof that showed that this works for *any* moon of a planet. Unfortunately I've forgotten how the proof worked, if anyone were so kind to re-explain it to me it would be fantastic.

Now that I did not know. Does it work with Minmus? Because my method for Minmus is to wait until it's about 10 degrees above the edge of the planet before burning. That's also how I learned... now I'll have to try it the other way.

OK, a couple of things, they may have been mentioned, I haven't read the whole thread yet. If you see an "edit" note here, it's because I found out they had. :)

1. If you Shift-click on any part of your rocket in the VAB or SPH, it selects the entire rocket.

2. When you make maneuver nodes, you can make them in series, and they will calculate correctly. That is, if you first make one to, say, intercept a planet, then make another one on the new trajectory line created by the node you just made, it will calculate the results correctly. I use this when coming in to Jool to get accurate intercepts with planets. Of course, you have to actually burn the nodes accurately to get accurate results from others further down the line.

Edited by RocketBlam
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1 hour ago, RocketBlam said:

1. If you Shift-click on any part of your rocket in the VAB or SPH, it selects the entire rocket.

Actually it's left-shift click right shift doesn't work for that.

Edited by kBob
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On 6/27/2016 at 10:42 AM, magnemoe said:

Returning from Minmus I found it useful to use Mun at target to get inclination. 
Play around with it, its often cheaper to get an larger inclination out at Minmus to move the inclination point outward. Say Asc is close to Pe and cost 200 m/s, you do an 5 m/s burn to increase inclination and this moves it out towards Mun orbit where the plane change cost 20 m/s. 

 

If you are on the way to Minmus using a slingshot from Mun(it gets easy after the 3rd attempt), you can reach Minmus at worst inclination point(halfway between Asc/Dec nodes) if you adjust the slingshot to be slightly above/below the Mun's equatorial plane.
I found that inclination changes are cheap when they are a secondary objective of the burn...when burning 840m/s for transMunar injektion(:D) you can add 50m/s in normal/anti-normal directions and the total burn increases to like 845m/s (numbers approximated for argument's sake :blush:)

But yes, the best place to do inc changes are at a very high Apoapsis
*note: a 90' turn(inc change) needs to happen in ONE maneuver, since you will need to burn retrograde as well...choose about a 45' point between those and keep burning in that direction(or Man. Node.). I wasted sooo much fuel not doing that in my first 100hours

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On 6/18/2016 at 2:21 PM, magnemoe said:

Kerbal in external seat can store unlimited experiments. 

I'll have to check this.  Several editions ago it didn't seem to work (kerbals can only carry one of each type of experiment, so unlimited as long as they have unlimited different experiments.  Of course with five biomes or less, kerbals + seat weigh less than a capsule.

Other tricks:

Having trouble keeping your capsule falling protected side down?  1.25m structural fairings are cheap, light, and easy to stack raising your center of pressure without raising your center of mass.

"Leadership Initiative" emphases "boldly going where no kerbal has gone before" over contracts *and* gives up to a 50% bonus to "field science".  Two gotchas: it completely nerfs contracts and requires a huge reputation to be allowed to start it (especially for 100%, something like 700 reputation).

Plenty of ways to pile on the milestones (especially if you took the leadership initiative above).  Take a spacewalk in a new SOI, that's a big milestone.  Transfer crew?  Another milestone.  Dock two vessels, another milestone (you could just pop a multi-part vessel apart).  Have crew modules on each vessel?  Bigger (building a space station) milestone (this can be done on planetary surfaces as well).

1.1 Appears to be more favorable to igniting SRBs above KSC.  Still expect this to work only if total weight>srb weight (for upper stage SRBs).

 

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I pioneered stackable, landable tugs, changing the way KSP (and NASA!) will be played for generations: the bottom tug provides the first ~1200 m/s from LKO and then can disconnect and the second tug takes over. The first tug can then await an encounter with the mun, land and refuel. Large docking ports at the sides, rear and front allow changing configurations to include a heat shield at the front for aerobraking back to LKO and a Poodle engine at the back for more thrust taking off the Mun with full tanks.

Ouj5aVf.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Something just discovered when I crashlanded an airplane on a mountainside and it was slowly sliding down:

Even if the engines are the only thing holding something stationary, that's stationary enough to "recover".

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Two tricks I use once I have solar panels:

1. If you have three panels radially around your vessel, in orbit when you're not maneuvering, point normal or anti normal.

2. If you have four panels in tetrahedral configuration, you'll get insolation no matter where you point as long as it's day. Place three panels radially around your spacecraft and tilt them 30 degrees to face forwards, and one facing straight backwards. Other tetrahedral configurations work, but this one gives landers lots of electric power on the surface.

And a trick on small landers or unwieldy returning craft: radiator panels are just 10 kg, but have high heat resistance. You can use them as heat shields! Even better: turn them on and they suck heat away from the melty bits.

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Making an assymetrical rocket VTOL but dont want to install TCA? Get the COM and COT roughly lined up, then stick clusters of vernor thrusters on the bottom. They use the same fuel as your main engines, and SAS uses them just like TCA does.

Need a really weird shaped heatshield? use the black and white wings to make one. They're designed to survive reentry.

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The brakes are different from every other action group -- they are momentary.  This is still true when you use them for anything else.  This can be very useful for bang-bang control of lander engines:  Hold B to fire engines, let go to shut down.  No more need for finicky shift/lctrl fiddling when doing a finicky landing, just hit B to provide a brief pulse of thrust.

Of course, if your craft includes actual brakes anywhere...  Beware.

Edited by Corona688
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13 hours ago, Corona688 said:

The brakes are different from every other action group -- they are momentary.  This is still true when you use them for anything else.  This can be very useful for bang-bang control of lander engines:  Hold B to fire engines, let go to shut down.  No more need for finicky shift/lctrl fiddling when doing a finicky landing, just hit B to provide a brief pulse of thrust.

Of course, if your craft includes actual brakes anywhere...  Beware.

I never thought of that. :0

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On 6/28/2016 at 8:05 AM, Blaarkies said:

But yes, the best place to do inc changes are at a very high Apoapsis
*note: a 90' turn(inc change) needs to happen in ONE maneuver, since you will need to burn retrograde as well...choose about a 45' point between those and keep burning in that direction(or Man. Node.). I wasted sooo much fuel not doing that in my first 100hours

Actually, that's a really inefficient way to do it. What you should do is turn your ship so that it's pointing towards the moving AN/DN throughout the whole burn. That way it doesn't move your orbit prograde/retrograde/radial/antiradial, and you don't waste fuel on stuff other than the plane change itself.

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8 hours ago, cubinator said:

Actually, that's a really inefficient way to do it. What you should do is turn your ship so that it's pointing towards the moving AN/DN throughout the whole burn. That way it doesn't move your orbit prograde/retrograde/radial/antiradial, and you don't waste fuel on stuff other than the plane change itself.

No don't do that, now you have essentially two halves of a burn pointing in different directions :0.0:!

The naive way to do Inc. change by 90' is to firstly cancel out your orbital velocity(burn 2240m/s retrograde at LKO)...now you are standing still in space while gravity is rapidly getting you closer to the atmos. To stop that, you have to burn North for 2240m/s. Now you are in a polar orbit for a total of 4480m/s.

What I propose is to burn only 3167.8m/s at heading 315'(North-west). Pythagoras FTW! :D

I understand your Maneuver is different, by continual aiming at the Normal-vector, as it drifts to the final position. Doing this gives you a lot of burn time towards 0' and some more at 270'...those burns don't line up, using only slightly less fuel than the 2 burns method.

It is like walking across a rectangular field:
2 burns method -> walking along the fence until you get to the other corner
Aim at normal -> walk along a smooth curved path over the field
Static aim maneuver node -> Walk a dead straight line to the other corner of the field

*If a craft has poor TWR, then your aim at vector method is much much safer(you always have orbital velocity at any point in the burn...no falling out of the sky/space). The static aim burn has a moment halfway into the burn, where orbital velocity isn't achieved yet.

P.S. These LKO values are just for argument's sake, never do Inc. change at LKO

Edited by Blaarkies
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11 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

Snip

Later today I'll try my method and see how much delta-V it takes. You're talking about going from an equatorial orbit to a polar one, right?

Edited by cubinator
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1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Later today I'll try my method and see how much delta-V it takes. You're talKing about going from an equatorial orbit to a polar one, right?

Yes exactly:D. Like being in orbit heading east...and deciding to change direction to north, ending in the same Ap/Pe.
I actually want to try it myself, I am curios how much the difference would be, since the math doesn't seem quite that obvious(integrate a sinus function and find the seconds of thrust for 90 degrees turn? I am unsure though:blush:)

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