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How do I land a rocket booster?


TurboBilder

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So I have been wondering, how do people like stratenblitz75 land their boosters while still getting the main core in to orbit? What mods does he use and how would I doo that. I can get as manny mods as I need to and I would prefer not to use a mod like FMRS and do something along the lines of a Falcon Heavy recovery 

 

Thanks!

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5 minutes ago, TurboBilder said:

So I have been wondering, how do people like stratenblitz75 land their boosters while still getting the main core in to orbit? What mods does he use and how would I doo that. I can get as manny mods as I need to and I would prefer not to use a mod like FMRS and do something along the lines of a Falcon Heavy recovery 

 

Thanks!

Since this can only be done with mods, we've moved your question to the modding support forum, where someone will be along presently, I trust, to give you some recommendations. 

Good luck. :)

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If you want to fly both stages, you need to use FMRS.  StageRecovery just acts as if you've landed the booster, and recovered it.

Why don't you want to use FMRS?  How else could it possibly be done?

Edited by Geonovast
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I think he's confusing FMRS with StageRecovery - StageRecovery is a bit magical, although the magic is reasonable.  But if you're dropping stages in atmosphere you need FMRS to be able to do the 'two flights at once' needed to do the recovery.

If you're dropping stages outside the atmosphere, in theory this could be done without mods.  (Drop booster as you leave the atmosphere, circularize payload, switch to booster before it re-enters, fly it back down.)  But you'll have to manage your flight profile carefully.

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6 hours ago, Geonovast said:

If you want to fly both stages, you need to use FMRS.  StageRecovery just acts as if you've landed the booster, and recovered it.

Why don't you want to use FMRS?  How else could it possibly be done?

I just don’t like how FMRS dose recovery with the whole back in time thing I just want to land a booster on my own while using say mechjeb to fly the core to orbit

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13 hours ago, TurboBilder said:

I just don’t like how FMRS dose recovery with the whole back in time thing I just want to land a booster on my own while using say mechjeb to fly the core to orbit

You're running into a limitation of the KSP game engine: There is only a 2km bubble of the world actually in existence at any point in time.  Anything outside that bubble doesn't actually exist - it's just recorded and it's trajectory computed.  Mechjeb or KOS can't operate on them as they'll drop out of the simulation.  (And as an addition - anything 'in flight', that is in an atmosphere, will just be deleted once it drops outside that bubble, as the trajectory for an unpowered debris is the ground.  Note that you can't switch to another craft if your current craft is under power, which it would need to be for sustained flight.)

Your options are to either keep both within 2km of each other for the necessary burns for the core to orbit and the start of the recovery, or to use FMRS to work around the issue by doing it's timeskip trick allowing you to control each piece.

If you want to go with the 'keep both within 2km' option, it's doable - basically you need the booster to have enough fuel for the entire gravity burn to orbital altitude, plus it's landing.  Don't detach the booster until just before the circularization burn.  You can likely do the burn manually and then immediately switch vessels back to the booster for re-entry and landing - depending on the length and amount of the burn.  No mods needed for this, it's just timing dependent - and you can't do it with boosters discarded at other points in the launch, due to the KSP's game engine's limitations.

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DStaal is right. I've pulled this off a few times without FMRS or any other stage recovery mod. In my experience, it's all about lofting enough that you can either finish the circ burn before the part now classed as either debris or a probe hits the ground, or get back to the ground mighty quick with the booster before the payload hits or gets too far past the apoapsis. A carefully planned launch will let you keep burning to at least a stable orbit with the payload within just a few moments of staging, then just quickly go into map view and switch back. Before hitting atmo is best, because being on rails, there's no/very little slow down as it passes through the atmosphere.

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1 hour ago, Espatie said:

Related to this: Is it still the case that the Uncontrolled stages vanishing in atmosphere happens as a result of the atmospheric pressure being greater than 0.01 (Kerbin, sea-level) atmospheres?

Yep.

(Also, welcome to the forums!) :)

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