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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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1 hour ago, eddiew said:

What do you mean it's cooling down and nothing blew up yet?

:o

Ok, so it does get very, very close to the quad couplers' thermal limits; I guess they're a bit blunt and they stick out into the airstream under the vessel, so they're taking a beating - but they just barely held together. I might patch them just a bit more mass+tolerance, because that wouldn't feel deeply cheaty to me. You can't tell me those are solid blocks of steel and couldn't be made a bit sturdier.

Do a powered reentry! :)

When things get too hot for your comfort, hit the thrusters and pitch up - and go back to near space a bit. Do not go above 70K height unless you screwed up and are almost fried and need to cool before going down again.

The trick is to use the thrusters to gain back some vertical speed without gaining too much horizontal speed.

Rinse, repeat.

You will need some fuel, but you will keep your thermals under control. Even MK1 parts can survive reentry this way!

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1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Do a powered reentry! :)

It's an interesting idea, but I don't really want to have to calibrate for every descent possibly bouncing and needing to loop back. That's more fuel than I want to try to carry with JNSQ. Margins are already kind of tight... (Although I'm pretty sure my mk3 design could climb to orbit, land, and go to space again on stock Kerbin.)

For my own purposes, I have made a little patch that raises the mk1 cockpit's maxTemp to match the mk3, and the skinMaxTemp to a bit less than the mk3, and add 10% mass by way of paying for it. It is 'enough', but doesn't particularly let you take any liberties.

Spoiler
// the pointy mk1 cockpit
@PART[Mark1Cockpit]
{
	%maxTemp = 1500 // up from 1100, same as mk3
	%skinMaxTemp = 2400 // up from 2000, less than mk3
	%mass = 1.375 // up from 1.25 (why is this so much heavier than the inline?)
}

// the inline mk1 cockpit - don't you just love the naming convention in these config files
@PART[Mark2Cockpit]
{
	%maxTemp = 1500 // up from 1100, same as mk3
	%skinMaxTemp = 2400 // up from 2000, less than mk3
	%mass = 1.1 // up from 1
}

Realising that the inline cockpit is lighter than the pointy one, I swapped it in on my mk1 design and gave it a shot. It is... a bit of an unnerving descent, some thermals get within a hundred degrees of failure, but it does survive the drop. Again, a very high 30-40 degree AoA seems to do the trick with spreading out the heat and preventing the shock intakes from melting. Unfortunately this one does need some jockeying at higher altitudes, since it doesn't have any reaction wheels and doesn't like holding that inclination without manual input. Somewhere around 2400m/s it settles out and can be allowed to drop to a more sedate 25-30 degrees, which it will hold on its own.

Egm9OqH.png

The mk1 seems a lot draggier for it's weight than the mk3, and this descent fell short of target and needed a bit of flight time to get back to KSC. Fortunately it can be nudged with the rapier at 17-20km up and get a lot of mileage out of the 10% (160 units) of fuel that remained.

This is of course, not a useful spaceplane. It doesn't carry any cargo, doesn't have a docking port, and doesn't have enough spare fuel to pipe into anything else. But it is a proof of concept, working spaceplane (not actually an SSTO) for JNSQ with only a very slight thermal tweak, and I'm basically ok with it if the little ones don't work so well at this planetary scale. That my mk3 design flies to space and back (shown a few posts ago) is a massive surprise to me, and I'm happy with that :)

Edited by eddiew
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28 minutes ago, eddiew said:

<snip >

Something else to try to keep the heat under control: Put a Veernor or a couple big monopropellant thrusters under the nose, fairly far forward and facing down. That will allow you to maintain the belly flop position for as long as possible, killing a bunch of velocity before the heat starts to pile up.

I don't use JSNQ, so it might not work as well for you, but in stock it has allowed me to survive some truly silly reentry profiles.

 

KoS

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Today I didn't really do a lot. I made two flights with the shuttle, one to test Thud engines and a docking port instead of a Terrier without a docking compartment and another one to test a cargo version, carrying a small sat. Then I decided to try and make myself an old styled Kerbal X (I have realised I didn't make screenshots of it). After that, I made a new rocket, named after my "Crew lifter" from my old save. Its just called "Crew lifter 2". The use of this rocket is to carry kerbals to a station and back. It was to rescue Jeb, who was launched with the first module on purpose. But then I realized... I forgot to send 2, and not 3 kerbals. It was too late. I was in orbit, encounter was good, so I said to myself "Screw it, Ill send another mission". They docked and now they're all on the station. Will launch another spacecraft so the four original kerbals can go back home. That's all for today.

Pictures will be in the thread by tomorrow.

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I got a new badge for the first 2 shuttle challenge missions. BTW I suggest everyone put links in badges so others can easily find those challenges. 

Did some bug reporting on SpaceY. Otherwise felt like garbage but my covid test was negative - just a cold I guess. 

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Testing, testing, testing... in more ways than one :P

 

I have had IRL tests to do, and have final exams coming up, so I haven't done as much work on this as I'd like to, but over the course of a number of flight tests, I've managed to get my shuttle reentry code to semi-reliably bring the vehicle down to 1 km/s and ~28 km in a mostly intact state, however I'd like it to be completely intact and be quite a bit closer to the space center.

(The control surfaces dancing to the music was not planned, but rather a happy accident.  Control surface dancing will probably be removed at some point).

One problem with the repeated testing is that each entry takes something like 30+ minutes IRL due to combinations of the size of things in RO, my lack of confidence in using physics warp on these tests, and the limitations of my computer (surface book go brrr).  I don't really have the time to watch these things many times a day, so I made kOS log a bunch of data and plotted it using MATLAB.  The results were very useful.

O5g6ooH.png

The most obvious issue from the footage and plots is that the commanded roll jumps around in magnitude a lot, going from near zero, to 60+ degrees, and back to near zero again every 40 seconds or so.  This is not good for conserving RCS propellant, and I doubt it's any good for maximizing cross-range abilities either.  Also it just looks dumb lol.   I believe this is resulting from the (currently) on/off nature of the energy management part of the roll control.  Eg: Either it decides "Our energy is high, we might overshoot.  Bank x amount so we go deeper in the atmosphere and slow down," or it decides "our energy is low, only bank by the minimum amount needed to make sure we don't miss the target."  I need to adjust this behavior so it transitions smoothly between the two.  

I also apparently need to do some work on the roll energy control itself, because it was commanded those large roll values in spite of the pitch control (correctly for the circumstances) trying its best to maximize the glide distance of the shuttle, thus resulting in the shuttle coming down well short of the target.  

 

I suspect these issues stem from the fact that my code is (very loosely) based on a paper I read once called "Dynamic Guidance of Gliders in Planetary Atmospheres" as I was hoping to make my algorithm produce control outputs  from the *current* state of the shuttle instead of brute force predicting the trajectory for different control inputs and iterating until something works.  The algorithm in the paper was primarily intended for medium-to-low altitude guidance during the later portions of reentry,* and thus some of its equations rely on classic physics simplifications such as constant gravity (aka flat earth).

In a twist that absolutely nobody could have seen coming, those equations don't really work that well when whizzing through the upper atmosphere at near-orbital speeds.  :0.0:  I have had some success in making (dramatic) modifications to the algorithm, but clearly have work to do.  By the end of this all I expect the code will have gone from being "very loosely based on this paper" to "having some of the same goals as this paper." :sticktongue:

Edited by EpicSpaceTroll139
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New geostationary contract sat launcher is finally finalised (must. not. tweak…) but the second stage engine is a new one with poor reliability. To make up for this I turned it into a science probe and sent a couple of them at the Moon, with extra telemetry on the second stage engines to maximise the data gained (and thus the reliability improvements); sure enough, first ignition was a failure but a) it gained about a thousand data units right away and b) the engine has another 10 ignitions left. After lobbing those probes at the Moon I repeatedly restarted the second stage’s engines to try and induce more failures, which actually worked and will improve reliability even more on the GEO sat rockets.

Since I first had the thought “hmm, nothing much to build right now, maybe I can do some geostationary contracts for the money?” I’ve essentially spent four days worth of KSP time working on it…

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OK, so its details time!

(this is for the stuff I did yesterday)

I tested a new version with Thud engines for more power, just so that I had room for a docking port and it turned out really good! Only problem was I did the de-orbit burn too early and I had to point 0 degrees during re-entry for a while... and the landing, well... I was going too fast and... 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20 After that I made a cargo version and launched a cute satellite Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

The landing was successful, but I had to use the "deploy" function for pitch, because a bug occurred againKerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

And now here are some pics from the station while Jeb was alone...

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20And then I thought "Hmmmm, Jeb is up there, but he is necessary for the space program!" So, I sent a spacecraft to get him back home, but I realized, that I had 3 and not 2 kerbals on the spacecraft, but it was too late: There was already a good encounter set up. "Screw it, ill send another spacecraft later" I said to myself. So, here it is docked 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Then I made a pic of Bob and Val sitting in the crew cabin

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

I think thats my longest post on the forum yet! Now I'm gonna go and play again, details later.

Note: Thats the first time I've docked without using the "Matt Lowne lazy method". Weeee!

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Contracts are lining up nicely, and many of them could end up being completed in a single mission. Multiple MInmus-related contracts meant it was time to push for a landing there. Thanks to fund advances, I was able to upgrade VAB and Launchpad to L3, meaning I am now only limited by funds and tech unlocks.
Unlike the usual, I decided to go for a LH2/Ox ascent and transfer stages. Didn't even know LH2 engine plumes were blue! I overbuilt the lifter and transfer stages to get me as much operational dV once on Minmus, meaning I was able to hop around quite a lot before having to return, only missing two of the biomes (Great and Greater flats). Obviously also left some surface science equipment. I had a grand total of 69 science reports (nice!) upon my return to Kerbin (68 in the crew capsule, one extra in the magnetometer).

NOtbFd8.jpg
Bit of a tease toward the Mun. Not this time, bud. 


KAshXMa.jpg
Hohmann transfer in the dark.  Night vision is also purdy.


aTww971.jpg
I was able to ease into the atmosphere slowly enough not to have to eject the engine and let the ablator do its thing. Money is money.

Edited by Axelord FTW
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On 12/9/2021 at 6:42 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

I've been in need of a new project. After receiving a stroke of inspiration, I present:

QVIRUHT.png

'Kerbin Station Mockup' yes very exciting. 10 modules at the very least, it'll keep me occupied for a while.


Also a random thing I call 'Thumper', inspired by Little Joe II.

FwSFJRz.png

 

For something to do try and land a kerbal on Kerbol and have a station orbit around kerbol that will take awhile. And I design more stuff and thinking what to do in KSP today

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The new career is in full swing.

Val has been flying the wings off of her Arkangel, putting up a whole swarm of survey SCAN sats in between giving tourists joyrides, sometimes even hot-pitting in front of the hanger before taking right back off again:

8BVruHh.png

(Loading the satellites on the runway was initially a way around the 30 part limit, now that I've upgraded the hanger I don't have to, but it's still fun on occasion...)

Spoiler

Z1rwa56.png

XeGx2Hg.png

1cB1ONS.png

g9BCNJN.png

 

wOrXoC0.png

 

 

Meanwhile, Jeb is in orbit trying to manage 16 tourists on a Space Camp recruitment gig. I finally made room on the station for them all by launching my Minmus cycler ship, the Nyame, and docking it to the station for extra hab space and life support:

H9g9rCt.png

Val did her best not to laugh on the radio when she brought up more tourists, but the comments about "Jeb's Orbital Junkyard" are already making the rounds at KSC...

Spoiler

It started so innocently, just add one extra ship to make room for 16 tourists:

ld0UoRC.png

Then send up a Koyuz full of supplies since Bill and Bob were having to run the life support in full open-cycle to keep everyone alive:

LefDQWP.png

4CbpThn.png

t6QqZoO.png

Soon though, even Jeb had to admit things had gotten out of hand:

H9g9rCt.png

After finally getting most of the tourists off station, Val was able to meet up with a couple VIP scientists and a small group of intrepid explorers from the "MinTmus" activist group who wanted to prove first hand that Minmus was in fact edible:

h0kL1oi.png

The Nyame (named after an African sky god) is the programs first nuclear powered deep-space ship, though the tiny little 0.625m prototype engines leave MUCH to be desired, with the TWR hovering around 0.1. Still, its capable of hauling 10 Kerbals anywhere in Kerbin space, and even acting as a tug for other craft, like this custom built heavy lander for the scientific expedition to the Midlands.

 

KoS

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Long stuff to explain. These happened in the past 2 times I've played. So:

I wanted to make a Soyuz (Koyuz in kerbinese) to get Jeb and the crew of 4 back home (Jeb was going to board it). The test flight went unexpectedly well, so I managed to make an encounter. Bad thing was that I was coming at too fast of a speed, meaning I slowed down very   s   l    o    w.  I went closer to it, but one of the rcs thrusters didn't work and I crashed into a solar panel. Then another thing happened: I FORGOT SOLAR PANELS!!!11!1 Electricity ran out and the ship went in a spin I couldn't recover from. I had to move the kerbals with EVA. Bad thing is, the last kerbal CRASHED INTO A SOLAR PANEL. Lost 2 panels for a day... Jeb entered the ship, unlike the first Soyuz flight, the parachutes worked and then Val, Bill and Bob landed as well. Here are Koyuz pics.

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Good, now I wanted to give the station a GRAVITY RING. I designed it. I just had to build a rocket to lift it up. OHHOHOHOHO, DID I MAKE IT BIG

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

OK, now the new station: 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

But the next day, I wanted to de-orbit it, because L A G. First, I had to sent a habitation module, because there were kerbals in the ring. But then AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I would post a vid on YT later, but here is the explanation: I went too aggressive and I CRASHED into the station. PANIC!!! I LOST THE TRANSFER STAGE, luckily the module and the station looked pretty intact. Then I successfully docked. What happened was that the fuel tank along with the engines saved me and the decoupler worked as a shield. Impact with 75m/s? That was hard... 

Then: the de-orbiting. Jeb, Bill and Bob were brave enough to get on a ship to de-orbit it. Here is the ship and the ring docked 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

The situation went kinda... Pirs style. Here is boom and fire and boom:

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

And the station with lag lowered to minimum:

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

I wanted to do one last thing: Solar arrays, sent there with my shuttle. It was to successfully prove that the shuttle can bring a payload to at least 350Km and land from there.

Sadly, out of all of the pictures of the solar arrays, none had them visible well enough. Whatever, landing.

First attempt didn't work because of bad trajectory. I pointed 90 degrees, but I still overshot it. However, the second attempt was more than successful. HOWEVER, the up is up, down is up bug occurred again. This time, I used the deploy fins function with the stage action group. Landing was Ryanair style, but whatever, I made it. 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

And if you really REALLY can't survive without seeing the panels, 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

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Mars Sample Return entering its final phase- returning the samples. This would be so much easier if I had enough fuel to do it, but I don’t so I had to improvise a bit: first I used up every last drop of fuel from the Mars sample lifter that has brought up some samples from the surface, then I dumped that, did a 180 and kept burning with the return craft’s own engines until it reached the right mass so I could decouple the main avionics on the nose to shed over 200kg, which was just enough to get the remaining pieces on course back to Earth.

And when I say pieces, I of course mean that literally- I crashed back into the decoupled avionics and the magnetometer boom on the avionics broke a solar panel on the return bit. There should be just enough fuel left for the final course correction, then an attitude adjustment for re-entry at Earth and a bit of spin stabilisation; the re-entry capsule has RCS thrusters, but I forgot to put any fuel in it.

 

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Quote

This week

Container outpost

c4YuZte.png

IPtygSn.png
Sadly you can't actually enter (because I don't plan on making an interior for it)

lmQ0LD9.png
Lights turn on at night (or at least they're supposed to. Doesn't work sometimes for whatever reason)

Not sure how many statics I've made this week. These containers took "only" 3 days of intermittent work to put in game because I'm slow as [expletive].

Single placeable beacon light
gWX3IFY.png
Comes in 3 colors (white not pictured)

4-storey building for whatever

YLXOdOr.png
Lights up at sunset

vnTgYXH.png
I somehow forgot to take pictures of the building in daytime, so here's a blender viewport screenshot at near completion

 

Edited by OrdinaryKerman
Container and beacon shots are at Mako Sica Airstrip from Kerbinside Remastered GAP Extras by @Caerfinon
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8 hours ago, Aerodynamic Kerbal said:

Long stuff to explain. These happened in the past 2 times I've played. So:

I wanted to make a Soyuz (Koyuz in kerbinese) to get Jeb and the crew of 4 back home (Jeb was going to board it). The test flight went unexpectedly well, so I managed to make an encounter. Bad thing was that I was coming at too fast of a speed, meaning I slowed down very   s   l    o    w.  I went closer to it, but one of the rcs thrusters didn't work and I crashed into a solar panel. Then another thing happened: I FORGOT SOLAR PANELS!!!11!1 Electricity ran out and the ship went in a spin I couldn't recover from. I had to move the kerbals with EVA. Bad thing is, the last kerbal CRASHED INTO A SOLAR PANEL. Lost 2 panels for a day... Jeb entered the ship, unlike the first Soyuz flight, the parachutes worked and then Val, Bill and Bob landed as well. Here are Koyuz pics.

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Good, now I wanted to give the station a GRAVITY RING. I designed it. I just had to build a rocket to lift it up. OHHOHOHOHO, DID I MAKE IT BIG

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

OK, now the new station: 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

But the next day, I wanted to de-orbit it, because L A G. First, I had to sent a habitation module, because there were kerbals in the ring. But then AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I would post a vid on YT later, but here is the explanation: I went too aggressive and I CRASHED into the station. PANIC!!! I LOST THE TRANSFER STAGE, luckily the module and the station looked pretty intact. Then I successfully docked. What happened was that the fuel tank along with the engines saved me and the decoupler worked as a shield. Impact with 75m/s? That was hard... 

Then: the de-orbiting. Jeb, Bill and Bob were brave enough to get on a ship to de-orbit it. Here is the ship and the ring docked 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

The situation went kinda... Pirs style. Here is boom and fire and boom:

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

And the station with lag lowered to minimum:

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

I wanted to do one last thing: Solar arrays, sent there with my shuttle. It was to successfully prove that the shuttle can bring a payload to at least 350Km and land from there.

Sadly, out of all of the pictures of the solar arrays, none had them visible well enough. Whatever, landing.

First attempt didn't work because of bad trajectory. I pointed 90 degrees, but I still overshot it. However, the second attempt was more than successful. HOWEVER, the up is up, down is up bug occurred again. This time, I used the deploy fins function with the stage action group. Landing was Ryanair style, but whatever, I made it. 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

And if you really REALLY can't survive without seeing the panels, 

Kerbal-Space-Program-Enhanced-Edition-20

Here is the disaster vid, I edited it in the morning:

 

Edited by Aerodynamic Kerbal
oh hey llok new page
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