Rakaydos

damit, I add 8 moduels to my prototype to give it the DV it needs, and now it consistantly krakens when cheat menued to orbit.

...you guys should see the whole video. it's even better.

If the treadmill cannot create enough force on the plane through the landing gear bearing to oppose the plane's jet propulsion, the plane takes off. For there to be any debate at all, the landing gear has to be basically locked up to generate enough drag- and even then, it may well not be enough.

So as I understand this topic, the premice is nonsensical- A plane on a treadmill that exactly matches the airplane wheel's dynamic friction with the foward prupulsion of at least one jet engine. The first reason this is impossible, is that airplanes are, by design, extremely light, and friction (dynamic or otherwise) is dependant on weight. The treadmill could be going fast enough to melt the wheels, and it still wouldnt stop the plane from moving foreward. But for the sake of the argument, lets skip that. Treadmill moving at trillions of miles per hour, plane stationary. The treadmill's friction with the air at that speed is remarkable, creating a blower. The exact effects on the plane depend on the size of the treadmill, but the moment the plane lifts from the ground, our nonsensical super-friction landing gear/treadmill combo doesnt work anymore, and the plane can acelerate normally into the headwind created by the treadmill.

I've just about got my earth orbit->tylo planned out, DV wise, and I'm going to need to "simulate" it to make sure, before starting the actual orbital assembily. However, other things have picked up, and this project is on the back burner recently.

So, simply as a matter of ridiculusness, lets say 9000 HG5s will allow comunication to Jool. A reasonable low- part launcher might have 6 components, with a hard- attached payload. (Reliant, 2 large tanks, decoupler, Terrier, 1 large tank) It is possible, then, to send up 20 antennas, a pair of docking ports, a probe core and a solar panel. You would need to grind 450 launches and rendevuses to assemble that relay... but it COuld be done.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/HG-5_High_Gain_Antenna

You'll note that I'm throwing together designs and doing empirical testing of DV ratings, rather than taking a calculator to it. I'm referencing those numbers against DV charts. My orbial assemily technique sacrifices module size for a guarntee of full fuel loads for the component- residual fuel in the booster is used for docking and discarded. I missed not being able to transfer crew in caveman- that would have been a nasty suprise, as I was optimizing my design for airless lift from tylo. I do have a docking port, so I may be able to get away with a "recovery package" I attach to the capsule before it comes home. (Service bay, parachutes, extra battery for SAS), though I dont think I can spare the mass for any science beyond crew reports.

Rocket math isnt my strong suit.

Assembily was finniky, but I put the tylo lifter into orbit for some DV testing. I ran into some fuel flow bugs (the tank the fairing was attached to wanted to drain last), but with tanks opened manually per stage, the lifter was able to achieve approximately 2560 DV above orbital velocity. That should give me 350 DV for gravity losses on tylo... at least once I sort out the fuel flow bug.

Ok, so if I havnt missed something, this module has both the wet TWR and the DV rating to go from the surface of Tylo to a low tylo orbit. The part count requires a build-a-rocket to get it into orbit. Kerbin ground tests says the TWR=1 at about 2 tons, which accounting for atmospheric thrust of the primary engine(16 vs 20) and Tylo's lighter gravity, gives it a tylo TWR just over 1 after it ditches the landing shocks. The Ant engines have a bigger atmo/vac performance gap than the primary engine, so the TWR should be semi reasonable. Gravity losses may still kill the idea, but I dont have hyperedit to conduct simulations.

"Using the setup you describe (compressed air gas thrusters) makes sence, but we're going a lot farther." Calling it now, minaturized Sabatier methane reactor and BFR RCS-based thrusters, for carbon neutral rockets that run on water. (plus atmosphere Co2)

Well, Landing is easier than a full mission. I put together a prototype in sandbox that can reach tylo surface from orbit without breaking the capsule, but I lost the engines and didnt have the fuel to get back to orbit anyway. And assenbily in orbit would be all kinds of painful, with 9 of my scaffolds interlocking crosswise in a grid. Eve landing would be easier than Duna, but eve return would be basically impossible... barring flat-launcher shenaigans.

Yea, I took my prototype over to a sandbox file and cheet menued it over to tylo orbit-- tank stacking vertically is too floppy, and even sideways really caps out at 2 tanks before floppyness of the scaffold limits your throttle. Part of the problem is reusing the Material-bay equipped Science pod for the payload, as science equipment nearly doubles payload weight. If I aim for the Jool 5 Level 1 challance, without science return and just use a lander can... but that doesnt help floppyness issues. I built the scaffold to allow tractor-style designs, but I'd need more scaffold to do it with the crew pod hanging down (to allow notional asttronaut deployment and recovery on Tylo and Laythe) Concerning Jool Capture, my initial thought was tuning the time-to-periapes to probably intercept tylo, but we dont have that in caveman. A low jool oberth burn needs abou 200 m/s (160 m/s officially) to capture from earth- about 550 total to get down to a tylo-crossing orbit, and another 1100 to get to (and again to get out of) a 10 KM parking orbit.

...I have, in my head, a brilliant idea for a Caveman Tylo Lander. I need to run numbers to see if it actually makes sence. So, Tylo is easier to launch from than Kerbin. And a Reliant- based kerbin SSTO can work with 14 small tanks, a capsule and a chute (.9 tons payload)- that's 8.775 tons wet mass (other than the engine) with 630 units of liquidfuel. I have a reliant-launchable "fuel pod" design that's 2.548 tons wet mass with 200 units of liquidfuel, that can be stacked in series, and even includes a crossfeed-allowed decoupler for easy staging after orbital assembily, as long as it's attached either laterally or tractor style to fall away without causing problems. And I have a "scaffording" subassembily that, if it works as intended (testing ongoing) can keep engines on different sections pointed the same way, for .595 tons drymass per segment. (Launched on end in a fairing) (Also, the scaffolding itself includes decouplers for the end attachpoints, allowing staging off entire sections once they've served their purpose, but that's for jool mothership use) Two reliants should be able to lift my standard science pod (1.410 tons, or less than 2 capsule+chutes), 3 scaffolds (1.785t), and 6 fuel pods (15.288t) from tylo (.8 G), with a reasonable reserve for orbital rendvous even without staging. (18.483 tons without engines, or 20.983t with engines producing 480 kn thrust) Making them Poodles gives much better ISP on tylo at the cost of some extra dry mass- 1.95 tons per engine with my existing poodle subassembily vs 1.27 tons per engine for just a reliant+docking port. If scaffolding assembily works, this should be able to lift from tylo easilly. Then it's a matter of landing it on tylo, a kerbin return rocket, mothership to get it to Jool, and figuring out how many assembily launches are needed for the mission overall.

I've designed a "simple" 3 launch, 3 stage lifter that can put a full (short) 2.5m tank into orbit, with connections to link with a poodle that can reach orbit in the 2 stage version of the lifter. Actually looks fairly similar to Mue's design, though I use Wheelslys and landing gear instead or rover wheels. I've also got an eye on Jool, but without Kerbal Engineer, designing landers will be rather hit or miss...

I did this without documentig it, entirely in the Kerbin subsystem on normal. Is there a separate challange for Beyond Kerbin SoI Caveman?

As I understand it, elastic forces complicate that setup. There needs to be something rigid to dampen bounce effects between the two.

It's been said that you joined SpaceX because you were getting bored. With the worlds first production Full flow stage combustion nearing completion... What's next for you? What comes after Raptor?

I've been working on debugging my Skipper-based Caveman Build-a-Rocket, and recently worked out that my 2 stage 2.5m design (which can be asembled with reasonable reliability) has a payload to orbit of about 4 tons. I'm about to try designing 3rd stage into the Payload Adapter assembily, with a potential payload increase to ~5-7 tons while still fitting in my per-segment mass budget. (assuming the extra mass doesnt cripple my poodle stage's ability to get out of the atmosphere)

Would I have your permission to fork your mod, for the purpose of implementing a stock system?

I'll check them out.

Any reccomendations?

And my reply stands- not everyone who wants interstellar flight wants 1/10th scale RSS.

Moving the Vanilla Planets folder out of that pathway caused Kopernicus to fail to load.