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Is there a way to land stages in Real-time without the other one reentering and burning up?


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There is a way to do it. Here's a list of things you want to do (in case of a Falcon 9) :

 

1. In order to save fuel, try to avoid turning more than 45 degrees when intiating turn programme.

2. Get into a sub-orbital trjectory.

3. Jettison the First stage and leave it, there's plenty of time.

4. Switch to second stage and make the apogee very high.

5. When you think that the voyage for the second stage is long enough, switch to the first stage and perform a boostback burn.

6. Extend Grid fins and prepare for Re-entry (don't forget the RCS to stabilize)

7. Don't panic if you think that your velocity is too high, peak heating will slow you down a lot.

8. When you think you're ready, perform a hoverslam or suicide-burn. You can train doing that in one of the Scenarios called "Powered Landing"

9. When landed, turn of all the systems, quickly switch to the second stage and burn for a orbital trajectory around.

10. Done!

 

In your case I would quicksave just before the stage separation to be safe. Because this method might not work sometimes.

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To my knowledge there’s no way of flying more than one craft at the same time especially in the atmosphere and outside of physics range (2.5km), so unless you’re going to loft your payload into a very high suborbital trajectory then land the booster before the payload starts falling back into the atmosphere you’re going to need mods for this.

You might want to look at FMRS, which allows you to fly the payload into orbit then rewind time and fly the booster down as well while the upper stage goes on its merry way; alternatively there’s Stage Recovery which can simulate a powered landing (or more commonly, landing with parachutes) for all your boosters and is very configurable to make it more or less rewarding depending on your personal preference e.g. putting a maximum percentage limit on how much you can get refunded for each part.

If you want to routinely fly reusable boosters then I suggest you use KSTS to just fly the launch once with a dummy payload (ore is good as it’s heavy and dense), record it with KSTS and then re-use that recorded profile for future ‘launches’- it’ll calculate the costs of parts and fuel to make the booster rocket, subtracting anything that was recovered (working with both SR and FMRS as well as SSTOs) and can transport crew and resources to existing craft or even build a new vessel in orbit by carrying the equivalent mass into space and having a space station with engineers on board act as an orbital shipyard- very handy for those monstrous motherships that would collapse under their own weight on the launchpad.

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5 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

To my knowledge there’s no way of flying more than one craft at the same time especially in the atmosphere and outside of physics range (2.5km), so unless you’re going to loft your payload into a very high suborbital trajectory then land the booster before the payload starts falling back into the atmosphere you’re going to need mods for this.

You might want to look at FMRS, which allows you to fly the payload into orbit then rewind time and fly the booster down as well while the upper stage goes on its merry way; alternatively there’s Stage Recovery which can simulate a powered landing (or more commonly, landing with parachutes) for all your boosters and is very configurable to make it more or less rewarding depending on your personal preference e.g. putting a maximum percentage limit on how much you can get refunded for each part.

If you want to routinely fly reusable boosters then I suggest you use KSTS to just fly the launch once with a dummy payload (ore is good as it’s heavy and dense), record it with KSTS and then re-use that recorded profile for future ‘launches’- it’ll calculate the costs of parts and fuel to make the booster rocket, subtracting anything that was recovered (working with both SR and FMRS as well as SSTOs) and can transport crew and resources to existing craft or even build a new vessel in orbit by carrying the equivalent mass into space and having a space station with engineers on board act as an orbital shipyard- very handy for those monstrous motherships that would collapse under their own weight on the launchpad.

I said Real time, Not to be rude.

5 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

 

Real time, I am not trying to be rude, I know that this is a rewind and come back mod.

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@The Everyday Kerbonaut try the way @ShuttlePilot described. Works a treat. It's a bit stressfull at first and you might need some trial and error to get your numbers dialed, but once you get it you can get very consistent and precise too. I land all my boosters on the peninsula now, or Booster Island if I launch on my "Minmus heading".

If you want a visual guide or a video of the technique, you can look up an old stream of EJ_SA on twitch, he does it with his Condor9 all the time, even managed drone ship landings before. MatoroIgnika also comes to mind, he uses the Trajectories and the NavHud mod tho (even tho he can do it stock too, I once teased him and he showed it off pronto)

It's a ton of fun and I launch almost exclusively like that, all manual, all stock, the realest real time there is in KSP.

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  • 7 months later...
On 4/13/2021 at 7:35 AM, The Everyday Kerbonaut said:

I said Real time, Not to be rude.

Real time, I am not trying to be rude, I know that this is a rewind and come back mod.

I don't think any rudeness was coming across--but just a different interpretation of what "real time" means --- in reality, as soon as craft separate they become distinct vessels, and go on with the rest of their flight: either to orbit or landing/crashing.

The specific game/engine limitation is that we only control one active vessel at a time. The vessel unloading distance is also a potential factor.  You can trick/fudge that a bit like what's described above, but a more realistic simulation *is* using something like FMRS so that you can perform the landing in the same slice of time that the upper part of the craft would continue to orbit without having to artificially lob it inefficiently high.

Part of me wonders what aspects a multi-player server could accommodate for this scenario... Literally running a KSP instance for each active craft. :D

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On 4/13/2021 at 3:36 AM, The Everyday Kerbonaut said:

I like real time recoveries, Because it feels boring rewinding time and coming back to the mission.

To get around the "controlling 2 craft" problem, i have been doing such launches from the Desert runway launch site.
- Start there with a falcon 9 type of rocket, launch east (maybe slightly to the north, heading about 85 degrees)
- Thrust until the trajectory hits a little past the KSC, with an AP around 100km
- By the time you exit the atmosphere, you can decouple the payload an get that into orbit for about +400m/s dv.
  - At this point you have lots of time before having to worry about the booster (but an Ion engine will obviously be too slow)
- The booster can make a few course corrections before/after the payload is already in orbit
- The booster will get hot during reentry, but it's not going at orbital speeds yet
  - Im using 120% reentry heating, so on normal it shouldn't be a worry
- As long as the booster lands on the KSC continent, you get like 90% or more recovery funds

On the downside, this put the payload into a 10° inclination orbit (maybe even more?). So it is fine if you are going to higher orbits anyway, or Mun/Minmus. For LKO refueling, this would need launch windows

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