Claw

Well, I'm not sure if I'm really ready to post or not...but I figure I might as well let people know what kind of insanity I'm planning. For those of you familiar with my Elcano missions, I'm planning a combined Jool-5 and Elcano mission set. I'm setting out to circumnavigate all five Joolian moons in one big mission. Though I've already completed an Elcano of Laythe, I figure I'm forced to do it again if I want to claim the title of JoolCano-5. Here's the start of the Jool-5 relevant posts. If you want to step back a little more to the philosophy, that's here in the mission announcement. The first full mission post isn't up yet, but I did do a shakedown run inside Kerbin's SOI and have posted a few pictures. Next post will be the launch and transit to Jool.

-Twenty! {-1}

Don't get me started. heh

Van, you just lost so hard. Dang it...so did I.

I would agree with Alshain on that. It was nice to get some of the extra details (when there were some) but I'm also okay with the new format. What I like better is that they seem to be adding more pictures with the content.

While that's an understandable request, there's not really a time limit for "abandonment" of a thread. It might be good to give him a bit more time.

There currently isn't an official release of 64 bit KSP for windows due to instability. I believe there is a community method for enabling the 64-bit version, but that is "at your own risk." Some people have good luck, and othere have a lot of problems.

If you can, try running KSP in borderless window mode. You can activate that mode by creating a shortcut to KSP, edit the shortcut properties, and adding -popupwindow to the end of the command line. This will force it to start in a frameless window mode. So it will look full screen, but won't actually be full screen. Sometimes that helps with this issue. Also, is there a reason you need to run in OpenGL? Or were you trying that as a fix? Sometimes it doesn't work so well, but depends a lot on the hardware.

Val is right. What you might be running into is when using a swept wing...If the connection point of the swept wing happens to be in front of the CoM, but the control surface is behind the CoM, the control surface will not deflect the correct direction (appears inverted). The fix is to move the swept wing further back.

It's a problem with the input locks. If you switch away at the wrong moment, the game locks out all input and the result is this camera angle. If you open the debug menu and click "show input locks," you can clear them out. That will fix the view and allow you to keep playing.

When you get thrown off the horse...you have to get up, dust yourself off, and get yourself a new horse. Back to the Drawing Board...Again! So the Mothership needed a total redesign. It couldn’t aerobrake and didn’t have enough fuel to slow down without aerobraking. It’s flawed at a fundamental level (especially for 1.0.5), so rather than bellyache about what’s lost, the Mission Director just scraped the whole thing. The engineers actually went back to some previous ideas for a Mothership which included symmetric cargo bays on the sides of the ship, rather than along the length. The general idea is a more pancake-like Mothership with symmetric fuel/engines on two sides, and symmetric cargo modules on the other two sides (#BringBackThePancakes!). With that idea as the basis, they set to work first on figuring out how to get the crew home (i.e. building the mission backwards). Core Crew Vehicle After iterating through several design concepts, the Mission Director decided to go with a separate smaller return vessel for the Jool->Kerbin return trip, rather than trying to bring the whole Mothership home. The issue was that with all the extra cargo storage needs and heat shields, the baseline Mothership was quite heavy. And then the engineers said “Smaller! What the heck, it still weighs over 20 tons!” The Mission Director figured at this point in their career, Julella and Obemy have earned a little comfort during travel. But even with the comfort, the Jool 5 Challenge puts the crew in the position where they have to come back down to Kerbin at the end of the mission (a required part of the rules). So in addition to the “comfort” module, the engineers included a handy-dandy Mk1-2 capsule for the crew to recover on Kerbin. Cargo Modules Unfortunately, as it turns out, the cargo bays are heavier than fairings, and are also not quite long enough for the Laythe boat. The tips of the pontoons dig into the end of the bay, and lengthening the bay means adding several more tons to the ship for zero real gain. That’s actually rather unfortunate because I think the bays look really cool, but the ship is already quite large. At this point, I need to start shaving off weight where I can. Partially because I don’t want the ship to get too heavy, but also because I already know part count is going to be a killer when trying to launch this entire thing at once. So the cargo modules will still use fairings for storing the mission payload. However, I still wanted to keep the cargo areas on the side of the ship, because the extreme length of the previous Mothership became a problem. That also means the ship will be wider and need a huge heat shield for aerobraking. Fuel Tanks and Engines After the main components of the Mothership were established, the fuel tanks and engines were built around the cargo fairings. During building and testing, the engineers filled the cargo fairings with cans of silly-putty to simulate the mission payload and save on part count. Mating the Mission Payload Filling out the cargo modules was also rather interesting. Because of how the ship is built, the fairings needed to be constructed first so that struts and structural members could run through the fairing walls for support. So the fairings were put into place, then the cargo fit inside. In some places, that meant some interesting rotating and offsetting to get all the parts and pieces inside without clipping. Heat shields were fitted to the bottom of the ship. They actually became a fairly integral part of the overall structure. There’s not much to say here, other than they look pretty cool when heating up... Mothership Shakedown Mission The crew is excited, yet terrified, of this mission. It’s such a long endeavor that failure to meet a Jool-5 objective near the end will kill so much work. I think, as such, this will be an all or nothing attempt. Elcano is the priority, so failing at a Jool-5 objective will likely result in forever abandoning this grand Jool-5 / Elcano adventure. (I’m not going to restart and drive all those worlds again.) So, as a pre-Jool checkout, the entire ship was flown on a test mission through the Kerbin SOI. All of the major elements that weren’t tested as part of the design phase were tested in space around Kerbin. The basic mission profile was a takeoff from KSC into about a 150km x 150km orbit around Kerbin. The launch included only one crew member who “volunteered” to test out the Laythe boat reentry capabilities. Julella and Obemy are still aboard the Duna-Ike-Dres Mothership in an inclined elliptical orbit around Kerbin. The Duna Mothership was rather slim on fuel when it returned from Dres, so this shakedown mission was also a good time to go pick them up using the tug. Julella and Obemy then went on to test out each of the major systems. The crew jotted down some notes during the mission so that the engineers could evaluate and make some adjustments for the JoolCano-5 mission. The Shakedown Mission finished about three days prior to the Jool transfer window.

It seems Fengist is taking a bit of a hiatus from the forums.

Nope, I think he's asleep. How about @Ted! (haha)

That's a fair request. Indeed...this is correct, which makes sharing the launch/transit rather difficult because it's a few posts. Here's the transition from Duna And the recovery vehicle that was sent from Kerbin. The vehicle was sent from Kerbin well outside of the optimal launch window. I think that thing needed something like 10k dV to get there in time. (Also, please don't let my moderator status sway your rules. )

Yes indeed! I'm going to guess Red.

Nope, not fixed yet. There may be some editor work in 1.1 as part of the GUI update, but no firm words yet.

What about driving around Dres? Does that count as big?

I finished my Pol Elcano not too long ago. Still catching up on posts for that mission report though, so I'll be back.

-18!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (-1)

Very nice. I ended up with a smaller design for my Laythe boat due to the full Jool-5 requirements of bringing all that stuff along. Good luck!

Old indeed. I kill enough kerbals during testing, experimentals, and bug fixing that when I play regular games, I try to go out of my way to save them. I figured maybe that balances things a little.

@Sean Mirrsen Ha, yeah I found the noparse tags get messy when you have to edit the post. Things start shifting and disappearing. It was noparsed initially, but then when you edit, the noparse tag disappears and the thing you wanted visible gets parsed anyway.

I've learned to trust my little rover quite a bit. Although I fully anticipate having to take things slower on those bodies, if Minmus is any indication. Indeed. I will probably do it last on my profile, since it's probably going to be the longest and most annoying. Though Laythe might also take that title, since I already did it... I'm not sure if I should say thanks or not.

Now that it's underway, I've started posting about my next Elcano adventure. For my next trip, I'm combining the Jool-5 and Elcano challenges into a big mission to the Joolian system. I've started posting the mission planning here. The next post will be about the mission start. Much like before, I'm actually a ways into the trip itself, but posting the mission report is lagging a bit. (I'm trying to catch up, but catching up means no driving, so...)

The engineers cackle as the first simulations of the grand JoolCano Mothership come back. Well This Should Be Easy 1.0.5, you continue to crush my soul. With the redesign of the boat and the total fuel requirements, the engineers elected to go for minimalist designs. The Tylo Crew vehicle contains seats only (no capsules) to keep weight down. Also, the Tylo rover and Tylo crew vehicle are going to land separately (again, to keep size and mass down). A single lander would be capable of bringing down both parts together, but the overall size starts ballooning. Also, the crew needs a way to get the rovers (and themselves) from the Mothership to the other landing sites. Initially the engineers started designing a tug that would move the landers and rovers around the Joolian system. The initial designs ended up in such a way that the tug had more than enough dV and TWR to get to and land on Pol and Bop. A couple gold donut tanks were added to ensure there was enough dV for a trip to Vall, and the JoolCano5 Tug was complete. It will also be used to drop the boat and crew vehicle on Laythe, as well as deploying the rover and crew vehicle for Tylo. Best of all, it’ll act as a rescue vehicle in the event of an issue getting to orbit, much like the previous Elcano-Laythe trip experienced. The basic Duna Mothership design was used as a starting point for the JoolCano5 Mothership. Really what it amounted to was mounting the boat and landers in a fairing on top of the rover carrier. The whole ship would then fly to Jool and aerobrake around Jool (since that is supposed to work now, right?...RIGHT!?). Also, because I simply didn’t feel like docking all this stuff together in LKO, I simply stuck it all together and launched it in one go (plus that felt like it fit the Jool5 rules better, though not completely necessary). The thing is so tall and wibbly-wobbly, I wasn’t even sure it would make it to space. But after a few tries it did. I ultimately sent it on its way to Jool to give it a tryout. After many (many) failed attempts to aerobrake at Jool and Laythe, the design was finally abandoned. It was simply too bendy, too tall, not enough control authority, and the aeroshell was ultimately a failure as a heat shield. I’m not sure that the fairing would have worked before 1.0.5 either, but there simply isn’t a big enough heat shield part that works with this configuration. Aerobrake: Failed Aerobreak: Highly Successful (FYI, this post covers around two weeks of work, lots of frustration, and led to taking a break from Elcano for a while.) Next up will be actual mission start. I promise.