What did you do in KSP1 today?

[NISSKEPCSIM]

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

I can't help but wonder if a mod could be written to calculate a good launch window for orbital rendezvous, say giving you +/-30 seconds around the optimal, based on the TWR of your vessel...

I suggest using either Mechjeb or Astrogator.

[eddiew]

6 minutes ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

I suggest using either Mechjeb or Astrogator.

Unless they do ground-orbit, I don't think either does what we're after. This would be launching from KSC rocket pad and arriving at LKO just as your space station is passing by, thus turning rendezvous and circularisation into a single manoeuvre   It's not so hard on low-g vacuum worlds, but it can be trickier on larger or atmospheric bodies.

[Kertech]

16 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Unless they do ground-orbit, I don't think either does what we're after. This would be launching from KSC rocket pad and arriving at LKO just as your space station is passing by, thus turning rendezvous and circularisation into a single manoeuvre   It's not so hard on low-g vacuum worlds, but it can be trickier on larger or atmospheric bodies.

Mechjeb does have a launch to rendezvous feature, never been able to make it work though.

[Tyko]

SkyLab 1 completed 6 months of scientific research over Iota with 3 crew changes. SkyLab 2 is destined for Ceti orbit and incorporates many improvements based on new science and learnings from SL1. Improvements in solar panels and battery tech dramatically reduced the number of systems necessary to power the station. Experimental hydroponics bays being used to extend life support resources.

SkyLab1 w/Gemini crew transfer vehicle and 1 crew lunar lander

SkyLab2 w/ 2 crew lunar lander and auxiliary fuel tanks

Edited February 24, 2017 by Tyko

[NISSKEPCSIM]

For my ground-to-orbit rendezvous, I just wait until my station is about a couple of minutes from coming over the launch site, then eyeball the ascent, editing my trajectory with small maneuvers for an encounter. I learned it from watching Bob Fitch's rendezvous videos. :-)

[Hotaru]

Went to the Mun in style.

[NISSKEPCSIM]

55 minutes ago, Hotaru said:

Went to the Mun in style.

Do I sense some inspiration from Von Braun's moon rocket from the "Man in Space" film by Disney?

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Kertech said:

Mechjeb does have a launch to rendezvous feature, never been able to make it work though.

You usually have to revert to launch after the first attempt, then it works better. Something about MJ learning the thrust curve or something. And yes, it still works much better on small, airless bodies than Kerbin/Gael. 

[capi3101]

(1.1.3) Didn't get a whole lot accomplished on Wednesday. Strange Cargo departed Mün for Minmus and both she and her sister ship Next Objective made their final correction burns to take them to the minty moon. Despite Next Objective's earlier departure, Strange Cargo will get there six days sooner owing to a much better launch window for the transfer. Only other thing that happened was two runs of the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler down to the Piper Alpha refinery to finish resupplying the Munport space station after all the recent excursions down to the surface. Had to wait until daybreak at Piper Alpha for the second run, but I had three days to burn...

Yesterday? Was moving all day. After all that heavy lifting, I'm right sore today. Hoping to get back to the game over the weekend.

[joacobanfield]

I built a rocket to go to Minmus. Also, started preparing the Kerbollo 2 mission to the Mun and back.

[Tyko]

22 hours ago, dboi88 said:

Finished another new part, Space Aquarium for all your tourists to visit. 

Is your space aquarium made of transparent aluminum?

 

18 hours ago, McFarnsworth said:

I spent days trying to make a spider, but it either looked like crap, lacked dV or carried too much dead weight.

That explains why spiders have such a hard time getting into orbit... 

 

Edited February 24, 2017 by Tyko

[cantab]

@Hotaru love that retro sci-fi look! How's she handle in atmosphere, any good at gliding?

[AntherJebediah]

Added modules to my mun station. Needed the crew for a DUna mission so I killed them on the mun, and I made Jebediah reenter from a space station at 2238m/s. He burned.

 

 

this is in a new game I created, since I made the last game corrupt(or something similar) by installing, testing and then removing mods

[astroheiko]

19 hours ago, eddiew said:

Heh, I wouldn't say it's particularly ugly

 

Just do not worry, I just wanted to make a joke. I have to practice a little, jokes and vehicles.

It is difficult to judge whether the meaning is translated correctly if one does not speak language as a natural language. Google Translator helps with simple words but sometimes ..... Lander, for example, is always translated with "countries", since "countries" translated into German means "Länder".

Oh. And thanks for the tip with the surface attached nodes. I have to try it. This was my first attempt at a ring.

Well, now I want to show something else:

The ships have not yet arrived at Gratian and Otho, but something else.
So, here I am now to meet the last part of the Tellumo 6 expedition. I have been to Iota, Ceti, Niven and Eta. Now comes Lilli and then Tellumo.
First I will land on Lilli and refuel the ship. The small lander at the top is then to land on Tellumo. The probe itself is said to return to Gael by 2 fly by contracts.
(Lastly have your vessel in suborbital spaceflight above Gael)

The little thing on the right is Lilli.

 

Here a picture during the landing process at one of the poles.

 

Here I landed on Lilli. Now you can also see the mini-probe which should land on Tellumo. At the top, with the parachute and the 4 little feet. Weighs barely 680 kg. But first I have to refuel.

When I'm at it. Can it be that there are problems with ISRU when there is no engineer on board? I have enormous heat problems, the units turn off again and again although the cooling should be enough. I think there was something in this direction?

 

Greetings

 

[Hotaru]

@NISSKEPCSIM Not that specifically, but that era of design in general. George Pal movies, Chesley Bonestell paintings, that sort of thing. And of course the Tintin Moon Rocket.

@cantab It's actually not built to operate in atmo at all; it's really just a slightly fancy way to move 17 kerbals between planetary orbits and surfaces of airless bodies (although with parachutes it could probably handle Duna as well). Functionally speaking, the "wings" and side pods are there purely to give it a wider and stiffer base to stand on than stock landing legs.

[eddiew]

11 minutes ago, astroheiko said:

When I'm at it. Can it be that there are problems with ISRU when there is no engineer on board? I have enormous heat problems, the units turn off again and again although the cooling should be enough. I think there was something in this direction?

 

Shouldn't be... Engineers make drilling faster, but there's nothing listed about heat production.

[Red Shirt]

And this is why I seldom attempt Laythe:

 

Laythe HATES me. First landing attempt missed solid ground. Second attempt went well until the ship started sliding down the slope. Tried to launch. Ship began to spin out of control and slammed into the ground.

You spaceplane folks can have this moon.  

[joacobanfield]

I put a satellite in a polar orbit of Minmus. Now I have to land there.

By the way, I discovered that attaching moar boosters to the bottom of a Munsplorer can make it go to 70 km without any liquid fuel usage. Especially Kickbacks.

[astroheiko]

@eddiew

Then it is probably because of my design. Just looked up again ... Yes - it is so. Convert-O-Tron 125 need 100kw Cooling and 2 big drills to 100kW each, totaled 300kW. I have only 4 Small Thermal Contol systems. They can carry only 200kW. So a drill turned off and .... worked. Strange is only that the utilization of the radiators barely reaches 30%. So I assumed that they were not the problem.

By the way: Red Shirt makes everything broken. First Bill ... now the probe ...
He's just a real Kerbal ... possibly related to Jeb?

Greeting

[HalcyonSon]

     I'm working on an ion powered unmanned Moho Mothership now.  The working name is "MIRV" for Moho Inspection Research Vessel.  A preliminary version is in mission simulations and has reached orbit with approximately 13 km/s dV.  It has 28 Dawn ion thrusters and 8 Gigantor solar panels and roughly 14,000 EC (shared between the Mothership and her payload of Micro Science Probes and Relay Commsats).  The first stage Booster carries the mothership all the way to orbit, is 100 % recoverable, and consists of 1 Mainsail and 4 Skippers, plus 5 Orange Tanks.

     I still have some fine tuning to do, because my solar panel placement renders about a quarter of them useless at some angles to the sun.  28 Dawns burn through 14,000 EC MUCH faster than they can complete a 15 minute burn.  I'm trying to determine what effect removing around 6 of the Dawns will have, as it looks like proper placement of the 8 Gigantors will run 22 Dawns non-stop.  I think I'll come out ahead removing the thrusters because I'll be pushing less dead weight at steady state, even if my peak thrust drops somewhat.  Dropping a few thrusters and their Cubic Struts will also help part count.  The beast is around 430 at launch.

[Red Shirt]

45 minutes ago, AntherJebediah said:

Needed the crew for a DUna mission so I killed them on the mun, and I made Jebediah reenter from a space station at 2238m/s. He burned.

Dude, that's harsh.  Try building a shuttle to move crew as needed. Oh wait, that's how I killed Bill.... but it was an accident.

17 minutes ago, astroheiko said:

By the way: Red Shirt makes everything broken. First Bill ... now the probe ...
He's just a real Kerbal ... possibly related to Jeb?

Thank you, thank you very much. I do have some great successes, like my recent probe tour of OPM. The broken stuff just makes better press. By the way, Jeb was on the Laythe Lander. I guess Bob is next? Bwahahaha!

[Numerlor]

Didn't notice my station while burning retrograde (and lost 2 hours from that)

[astroheiko]

Update:

The Tellumo probe is fully fueled and I have just separated the small probe.

 

Here you can see it during the braking maneuver

 

hot hotter hottest

 

Two legs had to bite into the dust.

 

But everything else went smoothly. I just have to wait until I reach the surface. Sink rate 2m / s at 900m height.

 

Landed. The contract was not fulfilled. I have allowed myself to help with F12.

 

Greetings

 

 

Edited February 24, 2017 by astroheiko

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, astroheiko said:

Then it is probably because of my design. Just looked up again ... Yes - it is so. Convert-O-Tron 125 need 100kw Cooling and 2 big drills to 100kW each, totaled 300kW. I have only 4 Small Thermal Contol systems. They can carry only 200kW. So a drill turned off and .... worked. Strange is only that the utilization of the radiators barely reaches 30%. So I assumed that they were not the problem.

Core heat (from reactors, drills and converters) are a separate thing from general heat as from the atomic engine or aerobraking. Once your radiators are near enough to the part that generates core heat and their total cooling power in kW meets or exceeds the total amount of core heat, that's it. There's no more math. Do know that static radiators can only be attached as far away as the immediate parent part of the drill or converter but folding radiators can be attached anywhere at all.

General heat as from aerobraking or atomic engines thrusting is what is handled and considered by the cooling rate in %. The hotter your ship is, the harder the radiators work, the faster they become the hottest part on the ship and the higher that cooling % goes up.

[Dobelong]

Made this really tiny jet; not very useful, but really compact.