Claw

You raise a lot of good points, and I'm not necessarily arguing one side or the other. I have an engineering background and and I understand the efficiency thing. Although I think your analogy of the bridge might be a little oversimplifying the problem. Also consider if every bridge, building, car, ship, and anything else was simply looked at as "eh, good enough" and double engineered, there would be half as much steel and other resources available. If you have to spend the time to engineer the bridge, you might as well design to the needs. However, I still see your point. I agree that it would be nice if we could pump out cheap rockets. It's not really so much about enginering efficiency, is that people in general cannot stomach the thought of failure (I guess I can only speak to this from an American perspective). If someone were to propose to congress (and ask for money for) a rocket that will fail 1 out of 3 times, I think they would be unimpressed even if it was incredibly cheap. And the American public would probably feel like their space program was in shambles, even if it was sending up 100s of successful launches each year. Unfortunately perceptions and impressions are a real motivator. I think one of the fallicies here is to first believe that the launches would cost exactly what is predicted. I know of very few government projects of this scale of undertaking that comes in on budget. Just a side note. The other thing to consider is that 100 launches per year means the space station would be receiving a ship every three days. I would argue you would probably need a person on board whose sole purpose would be to track incoming and outgoing ships, manage docking operations, and do all of the logistics movement. Not to mention that the station's docking system would have to be pretty heavy duty to absorb that much use. That's compared to something like the Falcon example you used, at 13t per launch. So now it's at 7 or 8 launches per year. Once every six weeks and less than one-tenth the wear on the station for docking. I'm sure we could do a back-and-forth about how much work the crew does moving supplies, but also consider you're exposing them to one-tenth the docking risks. Also, if the system relies on using the launch pad every three days, what happens if one of those failures wipes out the pad? Sure, that's always a risk with any launch platform. So you'd need a backup. But now we also have to consider the frequency of the launches as well as the failure rates. That's more risk to the pad, not to mention the resulting cleanup and rebuild. Extra launch pads and infrastructure aren't free. I suppose that all sounds like I'm arguing against cheap vehicles. I don't mean to sound overly negative about them because personally I think we should be willing to back down from "top of the line, state of the art" from time to time. That philosophy itself becomes crippling. Hopefully I was just bringing forward some other things to think about. Efficiency isn't always about "the cheapest thing," but also about the stuff that surrounds it. The bits I mention above are just a few of those things.

Sidenote: Drag and drop them onto the main imgur.com page. When the upload popup appears, there is a small selection bar near the center to select "Make it an album" with radio buttons to select the type. Select that and press upload. After the upload, it'll take you to an album page where you can do all the usual things (arrainge, add notes, etc). The five letter embedding works the same. /Sidenote On topic: I love to see all the little tweaks people do. (Makes me miss my computer. Hopefully soon!)

Depending on how you are mounting the engines, you might be able to use a modular girder as a core connector. For the part that the engines are mounting on, leave the central node free and surface mount the engines to the free face like you are talking. If there is enough space between the engines for a modular girder to fit, then you can attach a decoupler and some modular girders to the node. You might have to remove the engines to get the decoupler/girder to snap on. Replace the engines, then you can build down from girder node. After building the next layer, you'll almost certainly need to strut from the below the engines to the layer above the engines. If you strut that direction, then the strut mount points will go away from your ITV after decoupling (and won't add to part count). It might work best if you are able to separate lower section with the modular girder attached so that it pulls cleanly out. But that'll depend a bit on your design. (Sorry, I would have simply posted a picture but I'm not at a proper computer atm.) Added: Here are pictures of the general idea. Maybe you can imagine doing this with engine pods instead of lab modules (and pointed the correct direction). You can add a small decoupler to ditch the modular girder or keep it. I use this technique in a variety of ways and it is pretty versatile.

This is a nice station start. Unless the theme of the thread changed, the OP was discussing building a Dyson ring. I don't think a Dyson ring around any bodies in the Kerbal system is practical because of part count and physics limitations. A Dyson ring around an asteroid isn't really possible either because asteroids don't have gravity in KSP. Probably the best practical thing you can do around an asteroid is the attached ring habitat that Cmdr Ar1ne started.

Wow, nice truck! And welcome to the forums!

Nice ship. Looks like you put a lot of work into this. I'm not big on missiles and bombs in this game, but I like the overall design. It looks nice from above. With the layers of control surfaces, it sort of looks like a stack of blades.

Very true. Unless it's needed for landing strength. (I know, not by much...)

Well, here are my thoughts on your lander, but I am just one opinion in this place. Things to get rid of... - Get rid of the extra monopro tanks, unless you reallllly want them. They are unnecessary for your rescue mission and only add weight. The lander can comes with some monopro so it's there for small maneuvers if you need/want it. - Get rid of the MK1 pit and and replace it with the lightest probe core you have. - Don't forget to move the parachutes. If you have a flat probe core (other than the sputnik one), then you can also get away with the smaller stack mounted chute. It should be capable of supporting a return of a lander can and probe core at Kerbin. - Get rid of the Advanced SAS unit. You probably don't need one at all on this lander since the lander can and probe core will be enough torque. - Swap out the two Z400 batteries for 4x Z100s. It will be only half the power, but a whole lot lighter. 400 electricity should be enough for your rescue operations. - You can consider cutting the number of lights from 4 to 2. 2 should still probide enough light and will drain the batteries slower. - Move the connection point of the landing legs up some. That'll help with the tipping. All those things should really lighten the load. Plus if there is a mistake, you won't strand another Kerbal. Just make sure you kick out the crew member when you launch the rocket so there is rescue space. I also agree with adding some drop tanks to the side. Don't forget to put some engines on them or run some fuel lines. As an advanced topic, it sounds like you are stopping all horizontal velocity before the vertical. This is certainly an easier technique to start with, but it can burn a lot of fuel on the Mun. You'll either need to pack on more dV for the lander, or try a more fuel efficient descent. If you can do most of the burn pointing at the retrograde marker, that tends to be a bit better. It takes some practice chasing around the retrograde marker. You also don't want to slow down too much while still high above the surface or you'll burn extra fuel. The goal is to get the retrograde marker to the top of the navball right as you're approaching the surface. There's more to it than that, but hopefully that's enough to get you started practicing. Minmus is an easier first target once you rescue the guys. It takes the same skills as the Mun but it a lot more forgiving. Good Luck, -Claw Oh yes. As for the lander height. It does look a little tall, but if you're able to land it like that then it's good enough.

Agreed. If you post a picture of your ship, you will probably get more advice than you thought possible. I'm also sure a few of the people with tutorials will wander through here too.

Nice concept Slashy. I like it.

Yes. Generally speaking (for most typical designs) the CoM tends to wobble less when the rest may wobble. Because of that, using a control part near the CoM will reduce the chance of resonance. For the same reason, putting torque modules near the CoM can have the same effect, which I think is the root of the "torque at the CoM is best" claim. But torque concentrated near the CoM can still cause the ship's "arms" to bend excessively. It's all very conditional on the design, which is why it's hard to give an absolute rule.

No, seriously. Torque works like this in the real world too. Torque is not an intuitive thing like regular levers and point force because it is rarely encountered in everyday life. This is not some happenstance property of KSP. Placement doesn't matter for adding the potential to turn. But since spacecraft generally aren't rigid bodies, placement does matter for being able to turn without ripping things apart. It's not necssarily that the Control part is at the center. Just that it's at a spot that doesn't wobble much. Especially if that wobbly spot is somewhere away from the torque, which can get out of sync with the torque and cause the SAS to resonate. Orientation can play into it depending on the resonance, but a less wobbly location has a much bigger impact.

Let's see if I can get this post done before getting ninja'd. I'm surprised you didn't find anything, since this particular topic usually spurs a LOT of conversation... Well, I can say what you are thinking is correct. If you place the Torque modules in bad spots, it can cause the ship to flex and bend around. Doing the "worm" as you so put it. One thing to understand first though, is that placement of the torque modules does NOT matter in terms of how well they turn the craft. Whether they are at the center or at the ends of the craft, they will apply an equal amount of "turning ability" on the ship. And the ship ALWAYS turns around the Center of Mass. As far as scaling up, you are generally better off spreading the torque modules around a little. The reason is because all that bending and flexing gets spread out over the ship. If you put all the torque modules in one place, then all of their combined bending gets concentrated into one (or a few) joints on the ship. This is usually a bit painful for those few joints. Yep, you can add more torque modules to help turn around faster. Adding RCS out on the extents of your ship will also help turn faster while placing less bending stresses on your ship... However, for Torque, it's more important that your ship is fairly stiff and the torque a bit spread out. Also, place your "control from here" part near the center of the ship, or on in a place where the ship won't be "bendy." What happens is that once the ship starts to wobble, the SAS reacts to the control part bouncing around, which inputs more torque, which causes the ship to bounce around more, which wiggles the control part, which causes the SAS to react... Hopefully you can see where that is heading. Hopefully that gives you a good start. -Claw

I'm sure there is some mod, though I don't know a name off hand. However, if you want to do it without a mod, you can make your .cfg changes with a text editor. Then switch back to KSP and go to the Space Center screen. Bring up the debug menu (ALT+F12) and go to the resources tab. (I think it's resources...) There is a small button up by the top left that says "Reload All" You can do this from a few in-game locations, but not in the VAB/SPH.

It might be easier to offer suggestions (in addition to the above) if you can provide a few well lit pictures of the station, and maybe some of the early stages of exploding. Also, bring up the F3 menu and see what is the first thing damaged. There are a few, wacky, unexplainable bugs like this. Some of the can be fixed or worked around.

Yep, it looks like you already transmitted that science once. After one transmission, you will need to start returning the experiments to get more science from that biome/conditions.

Okay, so if he isn't attached to the command seat, then generally you want to use the "If your kerbal is frozen in the T-pose, but unattached to anything" section of the OP. The game still bugs out in v0.23.5.464 when crashing a rover. If you are able to load the game and he's showing up as "Mun Rover IV Debris" then that's what you want to search for in the save file (like you said). I would recommend doing a quicksave and editing that file rather than the persistent, plus that will ensure the quicksave is up to date. Once you do your new quicksave.sfs, check the timestamp on the file to make sure it is the one that updated. Keep a copy of both those files before you start messing with them. If you can't find anything labeled with that name, then please make sure you are looking at the correct save file location. Any ship that is in-flight is stored in the save files and nowhere else (unless you have mods that change that). (It also dawns on me to ask if you are a steam user?) Once you find your guy, I'm pretty confident that one of these two fixes will do it for you. If you are having a problem, feel free to put your save file up on a file sharing site and link it here. I'll try and take a look. Please let me know if you have mods and where your guys are stranded. It make it easier to dig through the file. Good luck. -Claw I saw your other post. If you somehow bumped him out of the command seat after the crash with another kerbal, then you may have a slightly different problem. If you can, please describe a little how the whole thing happened. Cheers

Edit the original post and click "Go Advanced." From there you can change via the dropdown and save. Glad you got it sorted out.

This is pretty common. The altitude cutoff is 1Gm around the sun.

Works in stock also.

If you are going to go through the trouble to edit the save, it's probably easier and safer to place the first part with symmetry. Then go into the file and remove the mirror flags and sibling part identifiers.

It's a reported bug with the claw. Grabbing onto a ship with two claws from another ship causes one of them to invert. Note, it will do this even if the "target" ship being grabbed is not the one with the claws, so long as the claws are on the same "grabber" ship.

Be careful about running into the problem. Once you have the problem, you need to exit and restart KSP. Otherwise each craft you switch to will start acting strange, racing off or just exploding.

At the risk of getting pulled on another tangent, both suggestions are valid. Your original posting was illustative of a technique. And what Red Iron Crown said is also true, provided you feed the fuel upward 1 tank at a time, then connect the top fuel tank to the engines. It's simply asparagus staging in a train stack. (I think someone gave this a name, but I forget.) There are a few tweaks you could do to your design, but I don't think that was really the value of your post. I actually somewhat like your idea as it could simplify the understanding of a complex fuel system at maybe the cost of some extra parts.

Sorry we missed it. For your, it looks like there is a claw on top. If that's the case, there has definitely been some wierdness with that thing. Sometimes it just sticks inplace while everything else rips off around it. Was this craft consistently broken like this? If you removed KER would it still do it? If so, then I would love to get my hands on it because it might provide some clues to the claw mystery.