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[1.2] Real Solar System v12.0 Dec 8


NathanKell

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Hi All!

Gameplay question: How do i get to Pluto's orbit in human-possible times? I managed to orbit pluto with a "test" mission, that took nearly 60 years, not possible for humans.

I tried to reduce the travel time to 15-25 years (it is still not possible, for humans, to return from a trip like that but, anyway, is better than 60 years) choosing a more expansive transfer window, but then the Dv required to transform the fly-by into an actual orbit is HUGE and I'm not able to bring there enough fuel (even cause the very long trip deny the possibility to use lqd fuels, and the dwarf-planet don't have an atmosphere as I understood, so no aerobrake).

So I'm asking to more experienced people, what do I have to do?^^ How do you accomplish a mission like that? anticipated thanks for your tips!

ps. excuse me for my english, I'm still studying ^^

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Hi All!

Gameplay question: How do i get to Pluto's orbit in human-possible times? I managed to orbit pluto with a "test" mission, that took nearly 60 years, not possible for humans.

I tried to reduce the travel time to 15-25 years (it is still not possible, for humans, to return from a trip like that but, anyway, is better than 60 years) choosing a more expansive transfer window, but then the Dv required to transform the fly-by into an actual orbit is HUGE and I'm not able to bring there enough fuel (even cause the very long trip deny the possibility to use lqd fuels, and the dwarf-planet don't have an atmosphere as I understood, so no aerobrake).

So I'm asking to more experienced people, what do I have to do?^^ How do you accomplish a mission like that? anticipated thanks for your tips!

ps. excuse me for my english, I'm still studying ^^

Gravity assists from other planets to pick up speed. It'll take really careful planning.

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yes, that's a part of the problem, I have to get there quite fast (to be possible for a human being to get there and come back during his lifetime) but if i get there too fast i cannot orbit there, cause it requires too much Dv ^^ is a big problem

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This is just the sort of problem I wrote Flyby Finder for. I might post some charts and screengrabs of this in the FFRSS thread tomorrow, in the meantime here are what I've found so far...

Problem: Get from Earth to Pluto as quickly as possible using as little dV as possible. We need to brake into orbit at Pluto.

I checked the direct flight first. Standard porkchops show it's best to arrive at Pluto around October 2018 (when it crosses the ecliptic plane), since then you can use as much of Earth's orbital motion as possible. Lowest dV I found was Depart Earth Dec 30 1988 arrive at Pluto June 27 2018. Total dV expended (assuming you start in a 200km circular orbit around Earth) is 8183 (leave Earth)+3610m/s (brake at Pluto) =11793m/s, trip time 10771 days. The Earth-Pluto synodic period is about 366 days, so there is a window every 366 days before and after this departure date.

Next I searched Earth-Jupiter-Pluto. The Pluto-Jupiter synodic period is 4554 days, Earth-Jupiter is 398 days. It turns out that every 4554 days (~12.5 years) there are 4 or five windows (spaced about 400 days apart) for going E-J-P. I feel the best one before 1990 is to leave Earth Jul 16, 1976-Jupiter flyby Aug 26, 1978-Pluto arrival Aug 13, 1996. This is 7333 days for 6495+4803=11299m/s. This saves 9.5 years over direct!

Next I searched Earth-Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto. This got really complicated. You can get to Pluto really fast this way, less than 10 years for no greater start thrust than in the cases above, but you will arrive at Pluto at more than 14000m/s. Ouch! It gets to be a judgement call, is adding (for example) 200m/s to your total dV budget worth it to save 200 days on your trip? How about 400? In any case my favorite is: leave Earth Aug 30, 1977-flyby Jupiter Sep 16, 1979-Flyby Saturn Feb 13, 1982-Arrive Pluto Jun 12, 1996. This is 6860 days for 6833+5197=12030m/s. Still almost 19 years in transit. I found only 4 E-J-S-P windows, all in the 1970's, and no others before 1990. I think there might be more starting around 2020 but I haven't checked yet.

There are more complications, like the inclination of the optimal Earth starting orbit being less than the latitude of your launch site, but I'll put that aside for now.

Lord, I hope I didn't make a typo up there.

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NathanKell, I bow in your general direction. And to all those who helped pull the mod together.

Today I installed RSS. I don't think I can revert to stock now - sweet poison this is.

I expect this will become a slippery path leading to further mod installation, but for the first time in months I can say that my general (albeit slow) spiral of boredom with KSP has now been abated.

Thank you.

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This is just the sort of problem I wrote Flyby Finder for. I might post some charts and screengrabs of this in the FFRSS thread tomorrow, in the meantime here are what I've found so far...

Man! I feel that your tool is amazing, and could be resolutive for my problem! But even reading the instruction I'm not able to use it LOL (yes i feel very dumb for this)

PS. it seems that the neptune patch do not work neither (no new planets, and event he textures for old ones get busted)

Edited by Carlo
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Something odd going on that Im not quite grasping here. One of the launch sites (west africa) seems to be below ground, launch goes fine and then I hit the ground from below at a couple of kilometers altitude.

Searching this thread and various FAQ would suggest that I havent correctly installed textures, but im pretty sure I have. Got RSS (along with rp-o and associated dependencies) through CKAN, was prompted to choose (and did choose) a texture pack. When starting the game I can see the system being remapped at the menu. Once in the game textures appear to be correct, im on a large earth, not a small kerbin. Yet i still have a ground level issue in west africa. (the other sites i've tried are all behaving themselves)

Install was ksp 0.90, manually added kac/ker/pnode/StageRecovery then used ckan to pull rss, rp-0 and everything it declared as dependency.

Anything else I should be aware of related to this? I forget which pack i chose, the middle of the three non-dds options (iirc). Do my ingame graphical rendering settings play any part? On a related note, the biomes are all still 'Kerbin' biomes, referred to as kerbin in dialogues, there were also a couple of moments where the biome reported by instruments was clearly not the texture i was actually passing over.

Good work otherwise (as I have come to expect from this author). Spent 9 hours last night happily unlearning KSP rocket design and footling with sounding probes. When I finally put my bowling ball into orbit this morning I was sooo pleased... Its world-changing to suddenly have to bend over backwards to get 100kg into low orbit.

Edited by celem
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Hello Carlo, I put a primer on how I searched for the Pluto flights in the FFRSS thread, I'll pick it up there if you could use more advice on it.

StoryMusgrave, I think all flights to anywhere past Jupiter have flown past Jupiter first, and after doing the Pluto search I can see why- Jupiter makes it quicker and cheaper to get anywhere out there, and the windows are pretty frequent.

Edit-oops, rereading your post I realize you only meant that none of those deep space probes have stopped at their destinations past Saturn, which is true. It looks like one could stop at Pluto for only 4km/s or so though, but only if the flight takes more than 20 years to get there. Now I wonder what the minimum total dV would be for an Earth-Jupiter-Uranus orbiter. Can't use those dinky little moons to slow down like Cassini did with Titan though...

Edited by PLAD
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Love RSS, thank you so much for it. I'm having a persistent issue though that seems to be inherent to RSS (fresh, bare-bone install did not resolve). I'm not savvy enough to know exactly what is happening, so here are screenshots.

http://imgur.com/a/95qlC

I saw a very similar glitch was posted by Pingopete last year, but I couldn't find a resolution. Is there a fix for this?

screenshot5.png

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That's bizarre.... I kind of have an idea or two of what's happening but not why. My first guess would be that the PQS fade values got munged but I don't think that explains the clouds being affected too.

Post your output_log.txt file (or player.log if Linux) after recreating the problem and then exiting the game ASAP. (start game, create problem, exit)

If you're not sure how to find that log

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92229

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I'm installing RSS for the first time, and I'm having a lot of issues getting the game to launch. It all seems to come up just fine, and starts going to through the RSS process of adjusting the planets, with the various PQS status messages on the screen. However, it will never, ever finish this process. It always gets stuck and just hangs. I know the documentation says it may be slow, and then after it is finished it will be fast. However, it usually hangs on either Duna at #6, or Ike at #13, or once in a while something else. I've left it running overnight to finish, and it never does.

Any ideas or suggestions?

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Any ideas or suggestions?
This is almost certainly an out-of-memory situation. Try using smaller planet textures. Posting the log (see Starwaster's post above yours) is a great way to confirm what the issue is, though.
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That's bizarre.... I kind of have an idea or two of what's happening but not why. My first guess would be that the PQS fade values got munged but I don't think that explains the clouds being affected too.

Post your output_log.txt file (or player.log if Linux) after recreating the problem and then exiting the game ASAP. (start game, create problem, exit)

If you're not sure how to find that log

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92229

Starwaster,

Here's the output log. Thanks in advance.

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This is almost certainly an out-of-memory situation. Try using smaller planet textures. Posting the log (see Starwaster's post above yours) is a great way to confirm what the issue is, though.

Thank you, that was the exact issue. Doing the 4k textures instead of the 8k seems to have corrected the problem. Thanks, regex!

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hi there! I just installed RSS and found out that Eve's atmosphere ends at aprox. 140km - is this right? I was expecting something more like 300-400km - any ideas? :D

Max atmospheric altitudes are typically cut off before their real life counter parts. That is intentional, yes. The cut off used was the point at which pressure = 1 pa. I think...

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I had a dream where I landed a rocket at my house, and while I don't think it's even really possible, I still feel like asking. Could you have Google maps overlay onto Kerbin? If even a small chance of this, I would still expect that it would need a complete rewrite of PQS. And probably a stable internet. Just an idea to ponder. don't hit me pls

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Max atmospheric altitudes are typically cut off before their real life counter parts. That is intentional, yes. The cut off used was the point at which pressure = 1 pa. I think...

thanks a million Starwaster! however, if I'm not mistaken, I recall watching some Realism Overhaul let's play series in youtube and aerobraking at Eve was done at an altitude of circa 350km - maybe this has changed...

thanks for the reply! :D

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Coming up blank on this. 99% of any errors are towards the end and are typical of the 'OnDestroy()' errors you see if someone exits the game (esp. alt+F4)

Could be a camera clipping plane issue. Will look at it more later :(

I usually do quit the game by alt+F4, and I did do it in this instance. I think you're onto something with the camera clipping idea. Sometimes when I hit map mode, the camera is embedded inside the planet (or on the blank surface of where Kerbin's surface would be), looking outwards through the atmosphere into space. I just don't understand why it only happens when I leave the pod and come back. Even if I quit the game while everything is fine and come back in, the issue still rears its head.

Also, it only happens perpendicular to the pod's location at a set radius. The affected areas go back to normal after I get past this radius. :confused:

Someone else posted this on r/realsolarsystem, and it looks like it's the same issue, but his screenshots show the circular nature more clearly than mine: http://imgur.com/a/hd7SZ#3

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