soulsource

My current record for a fully fuelled ship is somewhere between 14000 and 15000 m/s dV remaining when in LKO, split across three LV-N powered stages. The reason I built that monster was that I totally overestimated the dV needed to go to a low orbit around Eve. I don't have a screenshot, but I can make one today in the evening, since the ship is on a test-flight to Minmus. Well, the design might come handy when I'm going to explore the outer part of the Kerbol system.

I had fun, building a rover (or Eve-car, how Bill, who tested it, called it) that will be sent to Eve together with the lander in the first transfer window. I'm pretty sure that it will not work on Eve due to the higher gravity, but the test drive through Kerbins desert was really cool, especially when controlling the beast from IVA. Of course it will go to Eve unmanned, driving to the landers landing site on remote control. My goal with the rover is to also get the science for "Splashed Down", this is why there is a rocket engine/outboard motor mounted on it. The engine also comes in handy to slightly alter the landing point.

That should be doable. Nevertheless I'd skip two of the 90 points entries (maybe Aerodynamics and Advanced Flight Control) and get the 160 points "Heavier Rocketry" for the Mainsail engine. I have a lifter design using Mainsails and other Rockomax parts that gets 35 tons of payload to orbit (screenshot). If you radially mount some additional tanks with skipper engines you should nevertheless also manage. Yesterday I've finished my design for a refuelling ship that should easily get to low eve orbit. The test launch was funny though. It's perfectly symmetric and still it has the tendency to rotate when the engines are on. Can it be, that the largest decoupler is not balanced properly (I enabled physics for it to make it usable)? Anyhow, it's working, and in the worst case I can replace the Kerbodyne stuff with Rockomax components (the last stage is half full when the craft enters LKO). I also did another refilling mission for the lander for Eve. Three or four more, then the lander will be transferred to a high orbit around Kerbin and refuelled a final time, before it'll be sent off to Eve. The current flight plan for the Eve mission is as follows: On the next transfer window an unmanned fleet consisting of the lander and 10 tankers will be sent to a low orbit around Eve. The tankers each transport a full Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tank, the lander will probably burn the content of 13 of them (It just has an Isp of 360). One transfer window later the next fleet of tankers will be sent, depending on how much fuel is still missing in the lander. Also, one tanker needs to have enough fuel left to deorbit the lander. Again on the next transfer window,the crew will be sent to Eve, together with a return vehicle and a lander for Gilly. The Gilly-Lander will be decoupled first and bring two brave Kerbals to Gilly. While they are on their way, the return vehicle will dock with the Eve-Lander and Jebbediah will finally man the Eve lander. A tanker will dock to the Eve lander and deorbit it. As soon as the periapsis is within the atmosphere, it will decouple. The lander will descend and hopefully land in one piece and on solid ground. This requires a well timed burn just before the ship hits the ground, since the parachutes are too weak to slow it down enough. Jeb will plant a flag and pick up some dirt. The Eve lander will ascend to Eve orbit and dock with the return vehicle. Jeb will abandon the lander. The Gilly Lander will land on Gilly and return to the return vehicle. The return vehicle will wait for a transfer window to Kerbin and - surprise - return. For the most critical point, the landing on Eve, I'll make a quicksave and retry if I fail, since it already took me hours and it will take me quite some more to get the lander in Eve orbit.

I realized that I had calculated the dV values for my Eve mission completely wrong - instead of calculating a prograde burn (V_{escape} - V_{orbit} = (1-1/sqrt(2))*V_{escape}) I was calculating an orthogonal burn (V_{escape}/sqrt(2)). That's a factor of about 2.4! I can only say: Facepalm! The consequence was a redesign of the crew transfer ship. The now much lighter return vehicle allows to attach a lander for Gilly to that craft as well, and the overall amount of fuel could still be reduced. Sadly, also with the now much lower dV requirement, a transfer stage for my Eve lander is too big to get it stable with a reasonable amount of work, so the plan for that one is still the same: Bring the beast to low Eve orbit with its own engines, and refuel it there. I'm currently redesigning the tanker. My goal is to have at least one of the big Kerbodyne tanks as payload.

I learned yesterday, that a) The Ballmer Peak is quite easy to miss - at least I blame it on the little bit of alcohol I had consumed, that I tried again to build a transfer stage for my Eve lander (see my previous post) Although it is in principle possible to build such a stage in VAB, it is practically impossible to get the thing stable enough to launch it to orbit. Alone that it gets bigger than the launch pad (to make sure its engines don't damage the lander) caused some critical failures... c) It's not a good idea to click the EVA button in low atmosphere. d) Kerbals in EVA can survive the crash onto Kerbins surface after falling hundreds of meters with nothing but their jetpack to brake. e) Kerbals cannot jump very high on Kerbin, so they need additional ladders in order to enter crafts on landing legs... Apart from all that funny more or less failures, I sent a few refuelling missions to the Eve lander in Kerbin orbit. Soon I'll be able to send it to a high orbit (just before escape) and do a final refill. I'm already working on the design for a ship that can bring a full Kerbodyne S3-14400 tank to Eve orbit, in order to have something that can refill my eve lander once it is in eves orbit.

I'm really, really impressed. My jaw dropped a little bit more with every picture. As a quick report from my mission to Eve: The lander is still in an elliptical orbit around Kerbin, which probably still counts as LKO. I've been sending up two refuelling ships since my last post, meaning that four of the eleven refuelling missions are done. Nevertheless I reconsidered docking an additional transfer stage, after estimating how many LV-N engines and how much fuel (no, I won't tell you the numbers, they are too frightening this early in the morning) would be required for the transfer in the worst case (it never hurts to have some reserves)... My current plan is to use the landers engines and tanks for the transfer as well, and to refuel it in Eves orbit. This might be more tedious and waste more fuel, but I'm absolutely certain that the other option - docking (lots of) additional engines to the lander - would make it wobble in a no longer controllable way. Just to be on the safe side, I'll probably use Minmus or the Mun as an intermediate stop to refuel the lander once more...

As said, for now it's just a lander, that in theory should get back to orbit. It has 7 stages (not counting parachutes), and I consider it frustrating, that just the small part on top will make more than four times the height difference of all stages below combined, not yet talking about the 3400 m/s dV in horizontal direction that it will give the ship as well... The most challenging part will probably be the landing itself, since the parachutes will only slow down the ship to 22 m/s at sea level (at higher altitudes it'll even be faster), so the main engines have to be fired right before it touches the ground. Luckily, a short burst should do, since the engines (there are no landing legs) have an impact tolerance of 20 m/s. I don't know how the whole construction will absorb the shock, but I'm rather optimistic that if the bottom survives, the rest will as well... I'll fully refill that beast, and then start drafting a transfer stage that can get this 2 kiloton monster into a stable orbit around Eve...

I managed to finish my design for a rocket that can ascend from sea level on Eve. It's in an elliptical orbit around Kerbin at the moment and I'm sending up fuel. Two of eleven refuelling missions are done. After the final one I have to either design a transfer stage that will dock to the lander, or use the landers engines to get to eve and send a huge amount of fuel along. The reason I'm even considering the second option is, that the lander design has a few flaws, and one of them is that there's a Clamp-O-Tron Jr. between the huge mass of the tanks and the Clamp-O-Tron Sr. that would dock the transfer stage, and I'm afraid that thing will wobble as nothing else has wobbled before... Still, I think I'll try. Real Kerbonauts don't need SAS anyhow ;-) <iframe class="imgur-album" src="http://imgur.com/a/USZns/embed" frameborder="0" height="550" width="100%"></iframe>

I've started the design of a Lander for Eve. Since I'm pretty pessimistic regarding the elevation of the landing site, it will be built to be able to take off at sea level. That said, the design is "just" 1.4 kilotons at the moment and still only goes half the way out of eves atmosphere, so the final weight will be even higher. Maybe I should start over and try to keep things even lighter, or use asparagus staging. Also it seems I hit the bug with the biggest decouplers - whenever I try do decouple the first stage, the game locks up. Luckily I found the "Fix" and will try it now. Edit: The "Fix" does indeed work. Just for fun I tested taking off with that beast from Kerbin. It easily went on an escape trajectory from the Kerbol system, with still three stages full. Eve's obviously a pain. Funny will also be to get that beast to Kerbin Orbit without decoupling anything... To also report from the not so crazy design side: I landed my first unmanned probe on Moho. Transfer went nearly smooth, only the burn for the gravity assist with the Mun had to be split to two, since the probe ran out of power on the night side of Kerbin. The landing was soft, only one solar panel was damaged. The probe never was intended to return, so this is not an issue at all.

I know, but for FAR I still consider it not precise enough. One also needs to change the "zero" value of the controls using ALT+[W,A,S,D] in order not to spontaneously deconstruct the plane. Well, what did I do in KSP? Actually: Not much. I spent more time in emacs writing scripts that help me plan my missions. All I did in KSP was the experimental confirmation of the theoretical predictions (all on Kerbin, using small unmanned rockets), and well, my estimates are not that bad, compared to flight performance in game. I'll start designing an Eve-Lander today. Not, that any of my other missions would be progressing - I hardly time warped - and therefore the Moho-Probe I was talking about a few days ago is still in Kerbin orbit, waiting for the Mun to be in the desired position for a gravity assist...

After trying to get rid of my graphics performance issues (enabling HyperZ helps a lot, but aerodynamic effects are still not running as smooth as they should) I just played a little bit with FAR, DRE and Isp Difficulty Scaler again. The first thing I learned were the system requirements of FAR, or more precisely, the system requirement: A gamepad or joystick. Luckily I have a Wiimote and a Wii Classic Controller lying around, which can be connected to a PC using Bluetooth, and with that I was finally able to fly planes without having them break apart due to a too long press to the pitch control buttons on the keyboard. I also finally managed to get a ship to orbit with the realistic preset of Isp Difficulty Scaler. Compared to stock KSP it needed an amazingly huge rocket. I'm looking forward to my next savegame, which will be with this setting. Nevertheless, first I want to accomplish a few things with stock KSP, like landing on and returning from Laythe and Eve.

Yesterday I was at my girlfriends place and since she still had some work to do I installed KSP on her computer temporarily (she doesn't like the game for reasons beyond my horizon and eradicated the installation immediately after I stopped playing). Since I didn't bring my savegame with me, I started a new career mode game, this time with FAR and Isp Difficulty Scaler (what's the official acronym for that?), the latter set to the realistic preset. Well, I suck at rocket design, obviously, since all my attempts failed to go to orbit. Some rockets were promising, having an apoapsis at 80000m or so, yet they always ran out of fuel before the orbit could be stabilized. Nevertheless, I really liked the realism, and whenever I decide to start a new career on my PC, it will be with FAR, Isp Difficulty Scaler and DRE. Another thing: Although my girlfriends computer has a (far) weaker GPU (R7 250x) than mine (R9 270x) the aerodynamic effects did not cause framerate drops on it, while my PC gets nearly unresponsive as soon as those are shoen. Both GPUs are using Radeon Southern Island chips and both were run with the radeonsi driver. Software difference: She is using Ubuntu (Mesa 10.1.0), I'm running Gentoo (Mesa 10.1.1 till today, now updating to Mesa 10.1.4) I'll try a fresh install of KSP on my PC today and see if the issue is caused by something in my settings files. Of course there might be an easier explanation: My CPU has a worse single core performance than hers, and that could be a bottleneck in case the aerodynamic effects depend on CPU power...

So true. I'm terribly tired, because I just had 5 hours of sleep tonight, just because that stupid SSTO had to be changed since I misaligned the payload docking port... Center of Thrust and Center of Mass were not aligned and it got uncontrollable in thin atmosphere. Of course moving that docking port also affected the truck that brings the payload over... Well, at least the last of quite a few "one more" tests was a success. Although the plane didn't go to a stable orbit, it was nearly there, and definitely good enough to deploy the probe it had carried up (apoapsis at 75000 m, periapsis at 58000 m). Only bad thing: When finally circularizing the orbit of the probe using its own ion engine I crashed one of the solar panels into the spaceplane. Still not catastrophic, this just means I will not be able to go to full throttle with the probe for more than a few seconds, but "nearly full throttle", which can be maintained until the xenon runs out is probably enough. The return of the plane was a near catastrophe, since it had very little fuel left and without some fuel in the front tanks it has an awful tendency to stall. Happened two times, both when I tried to do a turn to get it above solid ground. Well, in the end Jebediah got the plane stable again, just 600m above the sea, and he even managed a beautiful landing afterwards.

Well, my never-go-back lander for Moho is called Mohobo. Because it can't get back to it's home ;-) At the moment it's still at Kerbin, but in 4 days it will do a gravity assist at Mun and continue to Moho. The liquid fuel tank and engine is actually the second stage of the launch rocket and it's nearly empty. Hopefully this was the last non-SSTO mission for such small probes. The probe itself is using a single ion engine. Yesterday I've been building a "better" SSTO. It's about four times the weight of my first successful attempt and just barely reaches orbit, but it looks much better. After I successfully tested it, I decided to put some payload, just to realise that the cargo bay was too narrow for any transport vehicle to enter, so I spent hours to build a transporter that has a long protruding armon which the payload can be placed. It took so long, because the arm had to be at the right height to allow docking the cargo, and of course a counterweight was necessary as well. Really frustrating were the attempts that seemed to work until the already undocked arm of the transporter got stuck and broke the payload... Today I'm going to get the first payload, a probe, to orbit. Not that the Launch window for its flight to Jool would be anytime soon, but an unmanned probe won't care. <iframe class="imgur-album" src="http://imgur.com/a/FafEe/embed" frameborder="0" height="550" width="75%"></iframe>

Yesterday I designed an unmanned probe that should hopefully get to the surface of Laythe. Also, I managed to get my first SSTO with payload (said probe for Laythe) to orbit and back to solid ground. Well, the mission still was a failure, since (again) I forgot the comms on the probe, so it's completely useless, but at least I have a working SSTO design... Let's see, if I can land the SSTO again today. The unmanned probe to Moho, whose flight I reverted after I accidentally lost all the fuel tanks (the cause was something I consider a bug - see my previous post) is now (again) on its way. Soon (still 4 ingame days to go, but those warp away like nothing...) it will make a gravity assist at the Mun and then continue towards its destination.

Yesterday I finished the design for my first manned mission to Duna. Behold the Spiceworm 1 (still in VAB, since the launch window is more than a year away): This ship will have a total weight of 34 t when in Kerbin Orbit. The LV-N powered transfer stage just has 60 kN thrust, so it will have pretty long burn times. Nevertheless, if I didn't totally miscalculate, it should easily get to Duna, even if I miss the optimal launch window (there's enough fuel to change angular momentum around Kerbol form Kerbins orbit to Dunas Orbit with about 1/3 of the fuel as emergency reserve). The lander has a lot of parachutes (terminal velocity should be about 1.3 times higher than on Kerbin, where I tested the design) and aerospikes both for the final burn during landing and as first stage for the ascent afterwards. After the experiments are performed, the material bays, nose cones and goo containers are jettisoned (with separatrons) to lower the weight. To finally reach Duna orbit again, an LV-909 is used. The return vehicle itself is using an ion engine and will just bring back the Mk1 Pod. As a side note: I know that those ladders are ugly, but my graphics driver (radeonsi) has issues with the lights of the mobility enhancer. If I use those, my FPS drops below 30. So, although the original design had extend-able ladders everywhere, I decided to go back to the static ones, that don't reduce my framerate. Let's pretend they aren't there, OK? Also, I learned the hard way, that it's not a good idea to edit the text for Kerbal Alarm Clock alarms while controlling a vessel. After doing so, I was quite surprised to see parts of my unmanned Moho probe slowly drifting away from the probe itself... Well, I (unintentionally) went to the next stage by typing a space character, and jettisoned my (half full) fuel tanks of the transfer stage... I reverted that flight, although it's a pity, since I already had performed a successful gravity assist at the Mun and also already performed a 10 minute burn to get the periapsis on the orbit of Moho... I'll try again, this time with locked stages ;-)

On Thursday evening I started the design of a vehicle suitable to get to, land on, and return from Duna. I'll use staging, but no docking (too many docking manoeuvres during the Mun mission...). The return vehicle will sit at the top of the lander. Nevertheless I made the mistake to use the fuel consumption numbers from the Wiki for the calculations, and it seems some of them are outdated. For instance, according to the Wiki, the LV-N should use 1.53<code> </code>l/s fuel in vacuum, yet using the numbers given ingame (max. fuel usage: 2.4995<code> </code>l/s, Isp=220 s in atmosphere, Isp=800 s in vacuum) I get a consumption of 0.6875 l/s in vacuum. Actually I didn't realize the discrepancy until I tested the design and got to Duna orbit with more than half the fuel left. Since it was only a test flight, I reverted to VAB and will now change fuel tanks. Also, the ship was hard to control, since it only had the reaction wheels of an Mk1 pod. Maybe changing the fuel tanks will also fix this, but I think the smartest thing to do is to add another set of reaction wheels to the lander, also to make landing on slopes easier. I'll post screenshots when the ship is done. Nevertheless, it will still take about 2 (ingame) years until that vessel will be launched, in order to get a nice, short "half a year" transfer. Otherwise Jeb might get bored, and we all know what happens when that happens ;-) In the meantime, I think I'll launch some unmanned no-return missions to other planets that are in a more usable position.

Today I finished the systematic study of the Mun by landing in the last two biomes I hadn't visited before: the Northern Basin and the Southwest Crater. Afterwards Bob, Calbas and Kirlas left both, lander and orbital station behind and returned to Kerbin. When checking the results I realized that I missed some of the possible reports, simply because I forgot to get crew reports from some of the biomes. Nevertheless, the whole mission yielded 6428.4 science points - enough to unlock all remaining items in the tech tree. So, no need to worry about the missed science. If I ever want to land on the Mun again, there is now a perfectly working science lab with a working lander docked to it and enough fuel for at least two landings waiting in munar orbit. All it needs is crew, and maybe some additional fuel if the target is far away from the equator. Since I have unlocked the whole tech tree, I think I'll postpone the planned systematic study of Minmus, and go to (and also quite important: return from) other planets instead.

Today I continued with my study of the Muns surface. Probably the most difficult landings up to now, and I hope for the next few days: The Poles and The Polar Lowlands. I'm particularly happy that Bob managed to find a spot in the Lowlands, that was just high enough to be touched by sunlight. Otherwise taking off would have been difficult, considering the power consumption of three ion engines and the issue that there are at maximum only 1050 units of electricity stored in the landers batteries, and less after landing, since, to avoid breaking them, the solar panels have to be retracted a few meters above the ground. Now the Kerbonauts have to wait in munar orbit, until the last two missing biomes, the Northern Basin and the Southwest Crater are reachable from their orbit and in sunlight. Luckily this should only take about two days. I also started with the design of a lander for a manned expedition to Duna. My first test in Kerbins atmosphere was a success, yet I might need to reduce its weight if I want to get it to Duna without running out of fuel...

Well, since I didn't post the whole weekend, todays post will be about more than what I did today. As I was already planning when I wrote my last post, I did a successfull landing in the Muns Twin Craters. Well, again I tipped over the lander at launch, since I (again) forgot to switch on thrusters before throttling up. Luckily I was at least smart enough to retract the solar panels beforehand, so I could get it upright again without any damage, and the mission continued. Since there still was enough Xenon left on the orbital station, I also landed in the Muns Midland Craters, which were the last location close enough to the equator to be reachable with the Xenon reserves of the lander. Afterwards I sent an unmanned refuelling mission that filled the still attached transfer stage of the munar orbital station (which, btw, is just a science lab with Xenon and RCS tanks and solar panels). After properly disposing the refuelling ship (aka crashing it on the munar surface), I used the transfer stage to change the orbit of the orbital station, lander attached, to a nearly polar one. From that I performed a proper landing in the Polar Crater. The next plans will be quite challenging: Landing in the polar biomes with a solar powered lander which was designed to be used at midday. While, when the sun is close to zenith the orientation of the lander can be changed arbitrarily, close to the poles, where sunlight is always coming from the horizon, one does not have that freedom, but must carefully handle the throttle and orientation of the craft in order not to run out of power. Here's a screenshot of the Munar Orbit Station, with the lander docked to one of the three docking ports, the return vehicle still attached (with a design flaw: I used a decoupler instead of a docking port), and behind the return stage the (at that time as good as empty) transfer stage. The station was sent to the mun with a crew of 2 Kerbals, while the third crew member was flying the lander from Kerbin to the Mun separately. It turned out that this was not the worst decision, since by doing so the transfer stage didn't run dry and could be reused for orbit changes. Regarding the lander I'm particularly proud of the placement of the RCS tank - between the 3 ion engines. By placing it there, it makes a nice counterweight for the Mystery Goo Containment Unit. Sadly I only took screenshots while landing in the twin craters (at least I think it's from there). As you can see, I'm horrible at landing, usually spending nearly 2/3 of the fuel in the process. Luckily, getting back to orbit is easier, so 1/3 of the fuel is by far enough to do an orbital rendevouz with the station and dock.

Since I'm new to this thread, first I'd like to say "Hi" to everyone. Now to what I did yesterday: I finally managed to land an ion propelled landing unit in the munar canyons. Twice. The first landing attempt worked well, but the lander came to rest on a slope (what I didn't realize, until it actually touched the ground), from which I failed to launch again - after throttling up the lander tipped over and I could not get it upright anymore. Nevertheless, I retried (from a quicksave with lander still attached to my munar orbital station), and this time, although just landing a few meters from the previous spot, everything worked as planned, probably because this time I switched on thrusters before attempting the launch. Bob brought back some interesting surface samples, and nice seismic data. The next target will be the twin craters. Afterwards I'm going to refill the xenon and liquid fuel tanks of the munar orbital station. The first in order to do at least another 4 landings, the latter in order to achieve a (nearly) polar orbit with the station, so the lander needs less delta-V to reach the polar biomes. Not, that my lander would not have large enough xenon tanks to get there from an equatorial orbit, it's just that I still need a lot of experience, regarding fuel efficient landing... Anyhow, my next post will have screenshots.

Hi everyone! I started playing the game right after the xkcd comic about orbital mechanics was published. Of course I first got the demo version, but from the first launch onwards I got more and more addicted to the game. The same day I bought the full version and started a new game in career mode. Well, three weeks later I now finally have started a systematic scientific study of the Mun, using an orbital lab- and xenon refueling station together with an ion engine propelled lander (luckily, those beasts are far more powerful in KSP than in real life )... While speaking of real life: I'm currently doing my PhD on solid state physics. I really enjoy digging out basic physics knowledge for use with KSP. Yet, the game has also shown me, how much of that I actually forgot meanwhile... (For instance, my attempt to calculate the ideal thrust as a function of height, using the variational principle, failed horribly with an infinite recursion - I'll simply stick to "terminal velocity equals ideal velocity" for now...) Well, anyhow, I might show up in the forums more or less regularly from now on, since I often have the urge to tell someone about my latest successes (or catastrophic failures) in KSP, and my girlfriend has already grown tired about the topic... I'm looking forward to some nice discussions. See you later, soulsource