What did you do in KSP1 today?

[SBKerman]

Had this guy help me play the game today. He claimed to be a pro but all he did was blow the rockets up while grinning maniacally.

[eddiew]

Continued with my obsession to make an almost-stock, useful SSTO in JNSQ.

Hotwings 3 is a very different bird to the OPT-engined ones I've been favouring so far; where their goal was to stay low and hit 3000m/s on the shcramjets, Hotwings 3 will struggle to pass 1500m/s on turbojets - and this leads to aiming for that speed at around 12-14km altitude. Fortunately, the 2.5m rapiers deliver quite the kick and once off the runway, ascent to 8km is very fast and easy. From there, levels off to around 5 degrees and hammers it. Kick in the (stock) nervas past 10-11km where they'll have over 700isp, nearly full thrust and will burn for several minutes, so no good reasons not to add 200kN right now. (Other than the potentially radioactive exhaust, obviously, but we don't worry about that kind of thing here.)

If all goes well, by 15km she'll be passing 1600m/s and it's time for the aerospike; in this case, Tweakscaled up to 2.5m and given a new plume and gimbal by Thor Tech (side note, I do not believe TT makes the aerospike any thrustier or more efficient, but I'm not honestly sure. If it is improved, I think it relates to the altitude it gets to it's best efficiency at - which means very little in JNSQ. Maybe @JadeOfMaarcould confirm this? ). TWR is tight, starting around 0.99 when the rapiers fizzle, but it's just enough if you're careful. Hold the angle of ascent all the way; the oxidiser will burn out with about 2km/s left on the nervas, but the TWR will drop from 1-1.3, down to just 0.28. This is fine if your AP is already above 60km when the aerospike fizzles; failure to do this will result in rapid unplanned deorbiting. Assuming you made the altitude, the nervas are just enough to push you into orbit.

Even with Tweakscale, I think the big red tank test is going to be a major challenge in JNSQ without modded parts, so instead I've opted to do proofs of concept with a simple relay satellite; this one carried enough for 2km/s, which would take it to Mun, or possibly even Minus orbit. This isn't useless, but it probably does come quite late in the day if you're launching MK3s with rapiers and aerospikes. Still, it would certainly meet a whole bunch of career satellite contracts and make some roots.

A bit tempted to try replacing the engines with clusters of stock ones... I'd be interested to find out how many are needed and if the end result still flies. There would be a lot of surface-attaching, which would require a lot of nodes to be closed off with tails or nosecones, but hopefully it's not beyond the wit of kerman.

With regards to stock-a-like fuel lifters for JNSQ, I'm thinking the best option might be a drone ship - possibly one that doesn't have a cargo bay but simply is the orbital fuel tank until it's time to come down. Or it might be viable to launch largely-empty orange tanks which would be assembled in orbit by a tug.  Won't be surprised if it's more efficient to mine Minmus and come back to LKO however. This isn't really a planet pack where you're supposed to SSTO anyway, I'm surprised I got this far with only Tweakscale and reduced re-entry heating 

Edit: deorbiting note - while the Hotwings 3 does not get seriously hot at 42% heating, the airbrakes will blow up if deployed fully. A reduced 40 degree angle is recommended, and still provides some drag. Also, there is a risk of tail strike on the lower nervas; an extra set of landing gear at the back of the wings would prevent this. The engineering team has promised to look into it in about 40 years when the radiation clears enough to return to KSC.

Edited November 16, 2021 by eddiew

[JadeOfMaar]

36 minutes ago, eddiew said:

the OPT-engined ones I've been favouring so far

I don't believe I have seen these. Are you hiding them? Because I'm intrigued. 

43 minutes ago, eddiew said:

I do not believe TT makes the aerospike any thrustier or more efficient

Actually that is the case. Thor Tech has an Isp buff for it. I would undo that if I were you, I guess, since:

1. I personally no longer care for the tweaks I did to the stock engines (except the stock spike's gimbal). These tweaks were also beginner modder things but I'm a seasoned modder now and I would make dedicated parts with improved performance if I really wanted them.
2. JNSQ now provides an optional 1.25m aerospike that directly supercedes the stock one. It naturally has gimbal, more thrust, and better performance in thicker atmospheres so I highly recommend using that.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Launched a crew of 3 out to the Moon to cycle the crew of my Moon base back home. Engine failure of the first stage core, but fortunately I caught it before the clamps were released and proceeded as normal.

Launched a simple weather sat to a sun-synchronous orbit. Engine failure on the second stage for the circularisation burn, but it has several ignitions to spare so no harm done.

Launched a communications sat to a tundra orbit. Engine failure on the second stage immediately after MECO and stage separation, but again the engine had restarts to spare.

Conclusion: My RP-1 game knows I’ve been away for a while and is unhappy with me about it.

[Axelord FTW]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

Continued with my obsession to make an almost-stock, useful SSTO in JNSQ.

I honestly don't know how you can beat yourself over doing SSTO planes, especially with added difficulty.

If it doesn't have a TWR greater than 2, at least 500m/s of delta-v greater than what is needed for orbit, and a payload that can at least circularize by itself if it wants to, I want none of it. All my planes are usually low altitude bushwackers, or U2 analogs. Anything greater than that is getting the ol' rocket engine treatment.

Though now that I have some experience with contra-rotor lift, maybe I could try for a octo-fan VTOL next. The Joolian system is gonna be visited soon by an antimatter detecting probe, and Laythe could be getting some attention.

[eddiew]

57 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I don't believe I have seen these. Are you hiding them? Because I'm intrigued. 

Page or two back are a few using the schramjets and scoop rockets. They were a whole new ascent profile, since the schrams will happily get you to mach 10 - if you can stay between 20 and 35km and not explode   But as noted, I have scaled back the heating in my game, because honestly, I like challenges but not hard limits. Gravity is a challenge; exploding on re-entry is unavoidable. 

59 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Thor Tech has an Isp buff for it.

Ohh... I'll see if I can find that. I saw the atmosphere curve change, I didn't actually check against what the defaults are. I thought it was pretty efficient already, but maybe I've underestimated the changes made.

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

JNSQ now provides an optional 1.25m aerospike that directly supercedes the stock one

But I haven't noticed this at all   I found the Deep Sky aerospike, but didn't notice a third. I'll go looking later! 

15 minutes ago, Axelord FTW said:

I honestly don't know how you can beat yourself over doing SSTO planes, especially with added difficulty.

It's not really beating myself so much as wondering what is actually possible with new universal constants   So far I have established that stock parts don't really cut the mustard any more - but modded parts are very adequate. They are late in the tech tree, but they are eventually accessible, and that's good to know.

And to be fair, the Hotwings 3 develops about 2.6 TWR for a brief shining moment around 10km and 1000m/s - then starts decaying by 15km and fizzles at 18   

[OrdinaryKerman]

As is semi-regular for me, this isn't in KSP but related to KSP

Retextures for CNAR

V2:

       A4 Generic Test Pattern                         V2 Camouflage                               V2 Late-War Green                                     Bumper                        (ahistorical) BDB Etoh inspired

         mounted, thermo                            baro                          standalone, geiger/goo

[Delay]

Had some fun with TUFX.

I've overdone the "black and white has terrible exposure/dynamic range" thing. Ironically, I enabled HDR.

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

On 11/14/2021 at 10:49 PM, Kapitalizing Every Word said:

I did put drogue chutes in the bottom of the lander so it would flip on landing which is not a good thing to say the least. So now I have to send another ship with an engineer to  fix the lander. 

remember this? 
Today I had some spare time to play so I decided to do this and get it out of the way.
Things didn't go as expected. why?
at 20 mts from my lander I accidentaly pressed space and yeeted the fuel tank and engine into oblivion so I ended up with a capsule with bill inside that couldn't get back down.
So I used the good'ol get out  and push.
 

[jimmymcgoochie]

I was supposed to be putting the various constituent parts of my Mars ship onto suitably monstrous launch rockets (the lightest module is 350 tons, heaviest is 650!) but then I got distracted and spent a mildly terrifying amount of time trying to shave every last second off the (already very rapid) build time for my contract sat rockets- because building a rocket in 38 hours wasn't fast enough! Downgrading some parts to make them cheaper and trimming away some excess fuel knocked several hours off that already short build time and also reduced the cost per rocket a little bit, which should help churn them out faster than ever and complete as many contracts as possible to pay for the Mars ship launches in future.

[eddiew]

I think I lost the game.

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

14 minutes ago, eddiew said:

roads wings? where we go we don't need roads wings

[MythicalHeFF]

2 hours ago, eddiew said:

I think I lost the game.

My dude’s plane just forgot its wings like I forget my water bottle before going to the gym

[Clamp-o-Tron]

3 hours ago, eddiew said:

I think I lost the game.

Dang it I…

[Pipcard]

(Hatsunese Space Program/HASDA - Phase 3 - 16)

1985-11-18 - Mokume Io flyby

[SBKerman]

7 hours ago, eddiew said:

I think I lost the game.

'Tis but a scratch.

[Axelord FTW]

Well, I've been thinking about RCS and normal engines. Namely, how to rotate (yaw and pitch) the sort of massive craft that can do interstellar trips in a timely manner. I remember there being a mod called something like 'Engine Balancer' back in the day that could 'toggle' any engines into RCS mode, but nowadays Throttle Controlled Avionics has got that torch in hand. While that mod might come in handy, I'd rather not install something so expansive if I only need one of its 'backwater' function among three dozen others. Instead I've been trying my hand at more KAL1000 jank. I knew Stratz had been doing it (though last time I saw him do that he was using two mammoths per axis which is just insane) so I went for it.

It works surprisingly well. Since whatever ship I build will have lots of LH2 on it already, using nuclear engines should do nicely. Insane ISP, and enough power to rival stacks and stacks of normal RCS blocks. Testing on the runway was conclusive and straightforward, and yielded some interesting data. For one, SAS (and Mechjeb for that matter) will not throttle up the engines for attitude control. Only manual input works through action group (thus through the KAL1000). Trim also doesn't do anything. Since I'm not looking for rotation around the main axis (i.e. roll), 8 engines (in two blocks of four (↑↓→→ and ↑↓←←), so two engines per direction) should do the trick quite well and good. Nominally, that's 10 extra parts, plus whatever structure to hold them. 

https://i.imgur.com/Cm5P6P6.mp4 And here's what it looks like in action. I was getting some major Mechwarrior 2 vibes when I went IVA.

EDIT: And of course there's an easy-to-find guide on this already... You know I really should look things up before I start trying stuff. It would save me the trouble, though I guess that would make the reward less sweet? Took me a few minutes to remember to set the action to Absolute Control to get the 'play' back to 2.5 automatically. I was wondering why the throttles were sticking.

Edited November 18, 2021 by Axelord FTW

[ColdJ]

Not in KSP but if you like creativity you should check this out. Wasn't sure where else to put it.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Me: Designs massive launch rockets months ago to lift very heavy payloads (600-700 tons) to LEO.

Me: Comes back to the same save to actually use massive launch rockets.

Game: Haha nope those engines have really short rated burn times now, they’ll all fail before you get half way to space.

Probably for the best though, Pentaborane is basically nerve gas so sticking a few kilotons of it into a rocket is probably not the best idea… 

[Scarecrow71]

14 hours ago, eddiew said:

I think I lost the game.

[panarchist]

5 hours ago, Axelord FTW said:

Well, I've been thinking about RCS and normal engines. Namely, how to rotate (yaw and pitch) the sort of massive craft that can do interstellar trips in a timely manner. I remember there being a mod called something like 'Engine Balancer' back in the day that could 'toggle' any engines into RCS mode, but nowadays Throttle Controlled Avionics has got that torch in hand. While that mod might come in handy, I'd rather not install something so expansive if I only need one of its 'backwater' function among three dozen others. Instead I've been trying my hand at more KAL1000 jank. I knew Stratz had been doing it (though last time I saw him do that he was using two mammoths per axis which is just insane) so I went for it.

It works surprisingly well. Since whatever ship I build will have lots of LH2 on it already, using nuclear engines should do nicely. Insane ISP, and enough power to rival stacks and stacks of normal RCS blocks. Testing on the runway was conclusive and straightforward, and yielded some interesting data. For one, SAS (and Mechjeb for that matter) will not throttle up the engines for attitude control. Only manual input works through action group (thus through the KAL1000). Trim also doesn't do anything. Since I'm not looking for rotation around the main axis (i.e. roll), 8 engines (in two blocks of four (↑↓→→ and ↑↓←←), so two engines per direction) should do the trick quite well and good. Nominally, that's 10 extra parts, plus whatever structure to hold them. 

https://i.imgur.com/Cm5P6P6.mp4 And here's what it looks like in action. I was getting some major Mechwarrior 2 vibes when I went IVA.

EDIT: And of course there's an easy-to-find guide on this already... You know I really should look things up before I start trying stuff. It would save me the trouble, though I guess that would make the reward less sweet? Took me a few minutes to remember to set the action to Absolute Control to get the 'play' back to 2.5 automatically. I was wondering why the throttles were sticking.

Those IVA shots definitely give off a strong Locust or Mad Cat vibe. Nice - I am totally stealing that idea for my next interstellar mission.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

38 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Me: Designs massive launch rockets months ago to lift very heavy payloads (600-700 tons) to LEO.

Me: Comes back to the same save to actually use massive launch rockets.

Game: Haha nope those engines have really short rated burn times now, they’ll all fail before you get half way to space.

Probably for the best though, Pentaborane is basically nerve gas so sticking a few kilotons of it into a rocket is probably not the best idea… 

What i always do to help with the pesky long burn times is add a few more engines 

[Admiral Fluffy]

40 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

What i always do to help with the pesky long burn times is add a few more engines 

Ah yes.

MOAR BOOSTERS

[ColdJ]

Early Prototype Speeder Bike. It functions well, Has a ceiling of 400 metres, top speed has been set to around 160m/s to keep it stable. Only bits you add on are the elevon flaps to control pitch. Still got to properly texture and add little touches here and there.

[DunaManiac]

Mainly did some testing lately, I hyperedited rehearsed the deployment of a small base on Minmus using a spaceplane, (with the entire fuselage hollowed out)

Also, I did a shakedown cruise of the spaceplane above, taking it on a simple mission to VENTURE station around Minmus and back. It's naturally stable, so I didn't have to touch the controls once it took off.

Came home right in the golden hours of dawn. Overall the mission went surprisingly smoothly.