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"High G" contract?


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I have a contract available which wants me to make 2 civilians "pass out" due to high G's. I've flown a couple of contracts with "tourists", into sub-orbital flight, without me seeing a bit of movement on their G meters. I'm wondering if I messed up a custom setting when creating this Career, which may override the Kerbal's resistance to high G's? Is there a way to check, and possibly change, this...without starting my career all over?

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@Victor3:

I understand it that you cannot get G-force contracts unless you have G-forces enabled.  Without a screenshot, I'd have to guess that your real problem is that you're flying too well:  go for a straight-up suborbital flight and hope you don't blow up on the way back down.

EDIT:  I just tried this myself with Jeb and the bare minimum of a Mk1 Command Pod, Kickback booster, one Mk16 parachute, two radial drogues, 1.25m heat shield, 1.25m decoupler, and four AV-T1 winglets.  I'm sure that any winglet will do; the rest is essential.  You cannot decelerate in time if you don't take drogues; don't neglect them!  Remove monopropellant from the pod, set the drogues to deploy at about .45, and set the main at .55.  Launch straight up, decouple and activate the chutes as soon as you leave atmosphere, and enjoy the ride.

I pretty reliably knocked Jeb out on re-entry, but it took a spike of about 19 Gs to make it happen.  I didn't even see the meter flash until I got to 8 Gs.  I only tried solid fuel boosters, and only the Kickback got any activity at all.  There was activity on the way up, as well, but I never went over 15% of the meter until I came back down.  I could make that happen if I used engine clusters instead, but I'm afraid of overheating on ascent if I do that without a heat shield on the front of the pod--I suppose I could do that, though.  The whole essence of these contracts is 'Moar boosters!'

EDIT Again:  @bewing has the truth of it, which serves me right for jumping into it without doing better research.  I have to say that I'm glad to see that the Flea has found a use after the very first flight.  Also, if you hover over the experience display at the bottoms of the crew portraits, it will tell you the base G-tolerance, the multiplier for experience, and the maximum tolerance.  Go over that value and you can very reliably knock out your tourists.

Edited by Zhetaan
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Gotta disagree with Zhetaan.

First, different kerbals have different tolerances. Veteran pilots have very high tolerances -- Val slightly higher than Jeb. So a tourist isn't nearly as hard. Suborbital is easier than orbital because if you do it cleverly, the reentry is much easier.

It's easier to get them to pass out under thrust than under aero deceleration. SRBs have much higher TWR than liquid engines -- and the smaller SRBs are better than the bigger ones. So, launch an upper stage straight up. Get above 70km going 300 to 600 m/s, Point straight down and light the SRB. A very effective upper stage is 1 MK1 crew cabin, 1 flea, a few fins, and a parachute or 3 or 5.

 

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22 hours ago, bewing said:

Gotta disagree with Zhetaan.

First, different kerbals have different tolerances. Veteran pilots have very high tolerances -- Val slightly higher than Jeb. So a tourist isn't nearly as hard. Suborbital is easier than orbital because if you do it cleverly, the reentry is much easier.

It's easier to get them to pass out under thrust than under aero deceleration. SRBs have much higher TWR than liquid engines -- and the smaller SRBs are better than the bigger ones. So, launch an upper stage straight up. Get above 70km going 300 to 600 m/s, Point straight down and light the SRB. A very effective upper stage is 1 MK1 crew cabin, 1 flea, a few fins, and a parachute or 3 or 5.

 

OK...wait...( ;-) ). Your saying I have an upper stage with a small SRB, I get that into a straight up flight with a lower stage. At 70km, I point the craft straight down and then light off the SRB? I won't pretend to understand why that would give me the G's I want...but I refuse to argue with you, Bewing.

Oh...wait...I get it. My craft is travelling UP at high ms and then I reverse that and fire away...high G's.

See...this is why I don't argue with you...LOL!

Thanks buddy!

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Nope, I tried this going 1,000 ms up and reverting to straight down and firing various size SRB's...not a noticeable nudge on the civilian G meters. I still think I have a "Career" setting which may be hampering this? Either way, I've cancelled the contract and I am on to bigger fish. I do appreciate the input, as always.

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It depends on how much other stuff you have on that upper stage. You have to keep the mass down as low as possible. I was suggesting a single MK1 crew pod in addition to that flea. That should get you over 15Gs for several seconds. The more stuff you add, the less Gs you're going to get. It's much more difficult to do high Gs for more than two Kerbals at once -- especially since that's in the G range where wings start to come off and fuselages start to come apart. A mostly empty Kickback or Thumper (set to 10% fuel before launch) produces large thrust and has low mass -- so you might be able to use something like that to do high Gs for a multi-Kerbal ship. But then you'd probably need to decouple that booster in order to land it.

 

Edited by bewing
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23 hours ago, bewing said:

Gotta disagree with Zhetaan.

First, different kerbals have different tolerances. Veteran pilots have very high tolerances -- Val slightly higher than Jeb. So a tourist isn't nearly as hard. Suborbital is easier than orbital because if you do it cleverly, the reentry is much easier.

It's easier to get them to pass out under thrust than under aero deceleration. SRBs have much higher TWR than liquid engines -- and the smaller SRBs are better than the bigger ones. So, launch an upper stage straight up. Get above 70km going 300 to 600 m/s, Point straight down and light the SRB. A very effective upper stage is 1 MK1 crew cabin, 1 flea, a few fins, and a parachute or 3 or 5.

 

Interesting... I just got one of those contracts, but I wasn't sure how to go about making my tourist pass out.

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On ‎12‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 6:27 PM, bewing said:

It depends on how much other stuff you have on that upper stage. You have to keep the mass down as low as possible. I was suggesting a single MK1 crew pod in addition to that flea. That should get you over 15Gs for several seconds. The more stuff you add, the less Gs you're going to get. It's much more difficult to do high Gs for more than two Kerbals at once -- especially since that's in the G range where wings start to come off and fuselages start to come apart. A mostly empty Kickback or Thumper (set to 10% fuel before launch) produces large thrust and has low mass -- so you might be able to use something like that to do high Gs for a multi-Kerbal ship. But then you'd probably need to decouple that booster in order to land it.

 

I may try this again at a later date...if those contracts show up again. The problem I ran into is that I need a Pilot at this stage of my career, so that means I need an extra part to carry the civilians. That may be what's causing the low G numbers?

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  • 2 weeks later...

High-G contracts are probably the most idiotic of them all early on, just like those requiring speeds around 100 m/s at dozens of km of altitude.

None of the available SRBs are strong enough to produce sufficient acceleration alone, and when you run them almost empty for maximum TWR, atmospheric heating cooks your craft before the passenger passes out, if the remaining fuel even lasts that long. This makes space hops (no stupid air to brake you) inevitable, but together with impractical part count and weight limitations that's a grind for none but the most patient and masochistic.

Decline until this nonsense stops appearing.

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Have you tried to simply pull a few high-G turns? make a craft whit lots of thrust, many controll surfaces, go fast and low, pull your nose up. (have some parachutes in case the wings break off). you can also generate a centrifuge: place a engine or two to spin your craft(or deactivate SAS and do it with a reactionwheel).

Edited by hms_warrior
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The plane idea is nice, but prioritising the acquisition of the necessary plane parts from the Tech Tree seems unreasonable over what potential can be unlocked with the rocket parts instead.

I do like the centrifuge idea. That way the whole contraption could A, be recovered easily, would B, have to go neither very far nor very fast (in fact, it could even perform while already dangling from a chute), and C, would be throttle-able to avoid structural destruction.

Thank you for these creative suggestions, I shall investigate!

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KSP does not (and never did) model centripetal accelerations (because it's basically impossible in a general case). So a centrifuge will not work at all for creating Gs. Doing super high Gs in a plane is likely to break your wings off -- maybe even before your Kerbals black out. So I still prefer SRBs for these contracts (with probe cores, and MK1 crew pods).

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You can make a tourist centrifuge - however it has to be a complicated arrangement of multiple ships (for instance)

 One ship - with multiple tourist pods rotating around a central axis - would in real life experience a whole variety of forces across the ship.  KSP seems to take the force only at the root part and apply it across the whole ship.

If you make a central rotor, and have physically separate tourist pods attached by intersecting colliders (aka Krakentech), the pods will each experience correct centrifugal forces.  It's certainly not beginner level building though.  The KSP streamer linked above, with 6000+ hours in KSP, took many days to get it to work reliably and I recall there are still sometimes explosions.

Just wanted to point out that it is sort of possible, though by no means practical.

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  • 4 years later...

I'm not sure if this is still relevant given that now the contract seems to require atmospheric flight when he blacks out so have to do it all while under 70 km altitude. I found that using the solo capsule for the tourists and a small drone to pilot (I'm still early in a new career mode) can work. I put a hammer under the capsule with four flea's attached radially. Use any larger booster to get up into the upper atmosphere and release with enough room to turn away before firing the hammer and fleas together. The fleas help give you the pickup while the hammer still has a full load of fuel and you can dump the fleas as soon as they are empty. By then you should already be in the red on the G-force meter and the hammer will only help carry you while the tourist builds up in his personal blackout meter.

All this was done above the point where the speed indicator switches from surface to orbital.

I want to note that I tried a centrifugal device using rotors both top and bottom of the spinning part and attached the top and bottom frames with the launch brackets (structure that connects with the ground). With four pods equally balanced and filled with Kerbals (tourist and 3 pilots sans parachutes) I spun it up and noted no G-force activity. It seems centrifugal G-forces are not calculated, even on the individual pods. It was during this attempt that I realized the kerbals had to be in flight. Then a successful blackout in space failing to meet mission requirements confirmed they had to be in atmosphere.

This test current as of the last patch before they shutdown for work on KSP2. There is still a bug with trying to attach pods radially (you can't man each of them) so you'll have to attach them one at a time.

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I just pack a bunch of SRBs under a capsule, then parachute down. You only need to go a few hundred meters up. Adjusting the fuel in the SRBs can reduce weight without sacrificing acceleration, and the test subjects only need to be out for an instant. 

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On 8/8/2021 at 2:31 PM, jclovis3 said:

I'm not sure if this is still relevant given that now the contract seems to require atmospheric flight when he blacks out so have to do it all while under 70 km altitude.

Or just build a low tech plane with enough pitch authority to pull out of a steep dive.

 

Vw2N2Zg.png

 

 

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/LT-HiG

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