Vigelius

It would seem that we are go for launch with the 0.24 mod updates. Seriously, check out the new textures, I could spend hours just gawking! It looks like the Real Engines pack (which I use) has now been incorporated into the full Realism Overhaul (which I have not used, as yet). Either way, there will have to be a period of re-engineering before my space program is back in the challenge. Watch this space.

As far as I know, RSS isn't updated for 0.24 yet. Personally, I'm messing about with other things until it is. Don't worry, we'll be back!

Thanks! No worries Nicholander, enjoy your holiday! Nontheless, I've kept on cracking. A smaller update this time, building on the Lunar surface infrastructure.

Try putting something (anything, lights work well) as a guide where you want the second end to go. Snapping will apply to the guide object, you can place your strut and then remove the guide. Saves all that faffing about trying to eyeball where the strut should end.

This. I do play with RSS, the same rule of thumb seems to apply. This challenge has entries from people doing RSS lunar stuff in all kinds of different ways, might be good for inspiration.

As above: I use them for tweaking intercepts, usually a way before an SOI change where the burns can be tiny. Radial to fiddle with periapsis, normal/antinormal to change my eventual inclination.

Me again! Another update. I've got a short mission to LEO, infrastructure both on and around the Moon, and a returnable crew in both. Enjoy!

Does anybody know how to go about lining rockets up next to each other, for display purposes? I'm pretty sure I've seen pictures like that, with launchers lined up clamps and all on the runway - but I can't actually find any now I come to look... I'm just trying to do a bit of a visual size comparison of my launcher family.

I agree with Jimbimbibble and Hodo with regard to your TWR. Having any more than you absolutely need in any given situation is just making life hard for yourself. Your design is rather spindly. Don't be afraid of a shorter, fatter rocket. That will help structural integrity of the stack, and also makes it easier to cluster engines. For aerodynamic stability, I like to put tiny fins at the base of my second stage, and then at the base of the first stage I put whatever size fins are neccessary to put the CoL very close below the Com. Early on you get nice control to start your gravity turn, then as your first stage depletes the rocket becomes more and more stable. Only use SAS in the first two stages if you're not going to touch the controls! For example, launch with it on, turn it off to begin the gravity turn, and then use it very sparingly on the way up. Turn it off before you make course corrections. It has a habit of overcompensating for wobbles when it straightens up after a manoeuvre, which builds into a positive feedback cycle and shakes rockets to pieces! If you see an oscillation beginning, knock off SAS pronto. You might get some design inspiration from this challenge.

Kerolox is more dense and less fuel efficient than hydrolox, so the equivalent top part of your first stage would have been much heavier than the equivalent hydrolox second stage to achieve the same dV. Not to mention that you're carrying those super heavy engines all the way up. And yeah, only having 4/5 of them probably didn't help either! I can't help feeling 400t might be waaay excessive! My lunar stack was 180t by the time it got to parking LEO, and I'm pretty sure that could be trimmed down. Perhaps design a launcher capable of 200t for a bit of wiggle room, but a 400t launcher would be an absolute monster - I'm not sure the game could deal with something that big! Massive respect if you can prove me wrong though...

Don't be afraid to make the upper stages fatter than you think they should look with those smaller engines on them - every increment of extra width will give as much extra capacity as several increments of extra height. When I first tried I ended up with a rocket that looked like the Eiffel tower, and flew about as well! I use the Nova-Punch Bearcat 5x (which basically looks and pushes like five F1s) doubled in size to 10m (conveniently, the same max diameter as the procedural interstage fairing) as my guideline. I travel up the stack setting sensible diameters; same width for the second stage, a little less for the third. I then travel back down the stack setting lengths to achieve the initial TwR I want for each stage; about 1 for third and second, about 1.2 for first. Fine-tune the more forgiving upper stages a bit for dV, the end result is something that more or less looks and behaves like a Saturn V. At that sort of size though, simplicity is king. I had a few configurations which were much more complex, and they all either blew up ('crumpled' ) as soon as the thrust came on or folded at the top of stage one as soon as I tried to start the gravity turn. It's a pretty close-run thing.

Things to consider: i. As you say, the F1s can seriously push (and they aren't throttleable). If you're trying to 2-stage it, by the time your huge first stage depletes it will have some mental TwR going on. That puts a lot of strain on your stack, and might make controls difficult to use. ii. Hydrolox is much more efficient than kerolox, and second stage engines are much lighter than the F1s. You only really need the massive pushing power for as long as it takes to get into a position where a hydrolox stage is able to take over, any more seems a bit like using a hammer to crack a nut, and you're carrying a lot of weight. iii. Doing it on a huge second stage runs into the same TwR issue, hence the division of a Saturn V into a second stage with five J2s and a third stage with only one. iv. The lighter your craft becomes, the more critical 'dead weight' becomes. Since your upper stage doesn't need a TwR beyond about 1, any engine pushing you beyond that essentially becomes dead weight and will be unnecessarily reducing your total dV (for that stage, and for any stages before it). Clearly adding an extra stage is also adding weight, so there will be some critical point at which it becomes worthwhile. I'm sure someone more numerically minded than me has already done the maths - I haven't, but my second stages usually cut out with a final TwR of about 2.5-3 Hope that helps a bit!

As promised, an update! I'm shooting for repetition of hardware as much as possible, and this adds to the portfolio. Incidentally, I'm rubbish at names. Anyone got any good ideas what I should call my launcher family? I'm going with Goliath atm, so I have Goliath I and Goliath V so far. Goliath I isn't all that Goliath by nature though, so perhaps another name would be appropriate... There's more from Goliath V in the design phase btw! Modlist: * Real Solar System * Real Engines * Real Fuels * Procedural Parts * Procedural Fairings * Procedural Dynamics * Ferram Aerospace Research * Deadly Re-Entry * MechJeb * NovaPunch * AIES Aerospace * KW Rocketry * Space Shuttle Engines * Lazor Docking Cam * SafeChute * Kerbal Alarm Clock * KSPX * B9 Aerospace * Kerbal Attachment System * Final Frontier * Active Texture Management * FusTek * Connected Living Spaces * Ship Manifest * Infernal Robotics*

Wow, this is frustrating! I've just spent a good few hours running and re-running different approaches, and I reckon I'm going to need a complete redesign. I can get down to about 5.5km/s, then get sucked into an inevitable fiery death. Bleeding off all the fuel lets me hold the nose where I want it for maybe a minute or two more, but eventually the flaps blow up and its all over. One runthrough I was being more aggressive with manouevres and managed to get locked into a stable but completely uncontrolled belly-first descent which pulled enough g to get me down sub-mach, but then the whole thing was completely uncontrollable and came down short over the ocean anyway! Nightmare! Anyway, this is the craft in various states: New wings perhaps? with more lift, and less stability.

Thanks! I like the lack of a strict scoring system for this challenge btw - gives a nice inspiration for mission ideas without the feeling of 'jumping through hoops'. Expect more updates to my submission!

Doesn't hit any achievements, but here's my Apollo-style Moon mission from a couple of weeks ago: Modlist: * Real Solar System * Real Engines * Real Fuels * Procedural Parts * Procedural Fairings * Ferram Aerospace Research * Deadly Re-Entry * MechJeb * NovaPunch * AIES Aerospace * KW Rocketry * Lazor Docking Cam * SafeChute * Kerbal Alarm Clock * KSPX * B9 Aerospace * Kerbal Attachment System * Final Frontier *

So just flare as much as possible 'sideways' essentially, keeping altitude around 60-70km until enough speed is gone to make a deeper dive safe. That makes sense! So what does a safe speed look like? Also, how far ahead of the planned landing site do you generally place your periapsis?

I'm having trouble getting my Shuttle-type orbiter back into the atmosphere! Real Solar System, FAR, DRE, Real Fuels... It's fundametally a B9 and Procedural Wings construction, using the Space Shuttle Engines mod for propulsion. It took a bit of balancing to make it aerodynamically stable with the massive load of engines at the back, but with a bit of careful juggling, extremely swept wings and carrying plenty of surplus RCS fuel in the nose I got it there in the end. Not given it payload yet, but the CoM is inside the payload bay so that should be fine. Sussed out the off-centre mass/thrust problem, got the thing into orbit, flexed the robotic arm, was feeling pretty happy with my efforts. Then the time came to deorbit and everything fell to peices (literally ). First attempt, I did what I do with capsules - drop periapsis to about 60km and follow the path down. Trouble. Deceleration was not exceeding 1g. Things started blowing up, control surfaces first and shortly afterwards the rest of the craft (heated to about 1500/1600 degrees at the time. Ok, that didn't work. Try something else. So I dropped to the same periapsis as normal, but this time resolved to hold the nose up at about 40 degrees as I went down. Sure enough, I got down to about 70km, lift and drag began to kick in and speed began to very very gradually bleed off. Trouble was, I started going up again! I travelled an entire half-orbit at between 70-100km altitude, but only dropped from Mach 27 to Mach 26. I then got a bit more positive about going down, and then as soon as I got below 60km the stability of my craft in this thicker air meant I could only get the nose up by about 5/10 degrees, deceleration still didn't hit 1g. Same end result as before. Obvious answer seems to be that my craft is too stable and I need to bring the CoM and CoL closer together. Trouble is, I then wouldn't be able to hold the nose high at all without it flipping out altogether (as happened with a couple of prototypes). How do you folk get your spaceplanes out of orbit???

Hmm, I'd forgotten about it but actually I had a mysterious vanishing a while back. I had a two-part craft which had done a Gilly landing and was waiting in Gilly orbit for the return window, whilst I was busily doing other launches. I happened to notice that the same crew had popped up on a new flight, which confused me no end so I went back to have another look at the Gilly craft - no longer anywhere to be found, no debris, nothing. I put it down to not having recruited enough crew, so the new flights were just drawing from the existing pool, notwithstanding the fact that they were halfway across the solar system already. Possibly something associated with the way life support mods handle crew? Never did find a decent answer.

From what I've seen, yes.

Yep, weird MechJeb behaviour happens to me too. 2 main problems, first is that it gets confused moving to a target attitude and forgets to stop turning, second is that if it's already in the correct heading it then executes a rapid, repeated 90-degree roll back and forth. My solution is usually to let MechJeb point me in the right direction but actually execute the manoeuvres myself. In terms of gravity turn, slowly-slowly-catchy-monkey. Begin the turn almost as soon as you leave the pad, but only keel over by a couple of degrees. Then follow your prograde vector the rest of the way, that should have you following a decent ascent path. The marker a lot of people seem to go by is that you want to be at 45 degrees by the time you hit 1km/s - I tend to get there at more like 1.3/1.4km/s. Remember that the good stuff is horizontal velocity - so long as you haven't reached apoapsis yet, you can burn horizontally and it will keep rising! Also it isn't the end of the world if you have to keep burning after you pass apoapsis, so no need to lose sleep over it getting a bit too high. In the MechJeb ascent guidance window you can turn on 'show prograde marker', which will essentially give you a heading to aim for but won't turn on the autopilot. You can then fly the ascent yourself, but keep an eye on where the autopilot would be steering you. I find that helps a whole lot. It can be a little jumpy though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

I'm using the RE pack. I stripped out the Klockheed_Martian gimbal dll and stuck a fresh one back in, that seemed to fix my problem (at the very least reduced it far enough to be workable). I've finally achieved what I was shooting for! A report with pics is now up! I didn't go with the full Realism Overhaul collection in the end, but so many of my problems were answered reading through parts of this thread that you all have my eternal gratitude!

So far in my KSP playing I have not been one for posting long after-action reports, but for this I make an exception because one single mission has taken so long to build toward! This all started when I tried out the Real Solar System mod and was instantly a newbie again, struggling just to make Low Earth Orbit. I was hooked! It was immediately apparent that I had problems. Firstly, I was having to build absolutely huge rockets just to get a single probe core into orbit, and doing so with the tanks I had led to massive spindly affairs that flexed horribly. Procedural Parts fixed the flexing, by allowing me to create custom tanks in whatever shape and size I could desire. Real Fuels with the Real Engines pack fixed the sizing issue, by: i. introducing a variety of real-world fuel types with much more sympathetic masses, and ii. changing the stats of all engines in keeping with real-world varieties. I could now put my probe cores into orbit on things which looked like reasonable rockets. The next target really broadcast itself - I must shoot for the moon! And so began a challenge which taxed my design ability, my flying skill, my understanding, my computer and my patience! Voila! Massive thanks and respect goes out to the creators of all the mods I've used here, and of course to Squad!

This is a painfully familiar problem. I've built a huge moon-landing stack, reasonable proportions, just about solid enough not to Kerbalise on the launchpad, apparently with the right TWR and dV in the stages etc etc. It even lifts off, at least far enough to clear the launch clamps. Trouble is, as soon as I try to exert any sort of control, the extreme gimbal snaps it at the top of the first stage. I've tried: - MechJeb launch. Clears the pad with the correct end toward space, quickly picks up a fire-end oscillation and snaps. - SAS launch. Behaves much the same as a MechJeb launch. - Unaided launch. Clears the pad in a random direction, accelerates rapidly in that direction. Attempts to correct result in the whole stack reorienting, and vigorously returning to ground fire-end first. - Mixed launch. SAS allows it to clear the pad in the direction of space. Turned off when the oscillations begin, begins to fall over. Turned on again, overcorrects, oscillates violently, snaps. If I strut this thing any more it's going to start looking like a suspension bridge. I'm getting desperate!

Nope, all still present and correct!