Brainlord Mesomorph

Its been bugging me "The kickback booster" ? Execs from Morton Thiokol Inc. the developer of the SRB for the space shuttle went to prison for a government contract kickback scheme! (which included parts for the SRBs,) lol indeed /just thought I'd share!

I had a ship with nacelles below the fairing, and potato chip fairing pieces would get caught and cause drag. Clamshell separated cleanly. /so there's one reason

I read that most stock craft are intentionally designed w/ minor flaws to tease you in to fixing them. Not enough delta V for orbit? more fuel or more thrust! /I never use stock craft so i dunno.

seriously: this web page http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ will tell you WHEN to leave so you use the least fuel. (and what direction, etc etc) and the tutorial in my sig will tell you what to how to plot and execute that course. also learn what delta V is, and make sure your craft has enough delta V for the flight plus maneuvering when you get there. HTH

happy birthday! (kaboom) (my mom's 93rd is today)

Clipping through the surface of Kerbin was a bug back in 0.23

Hi guys, sorry I dropped this thread, real-life got in the way. I’m glad you responded, because I totally agree with you (at least I use to) but here’s the thing, we’re fooling ourselves a little bit with those numbers. I built myself a series of SSTO rockets very (very) much like your Cygnus series. And my point is: That if you play a tough game (and don’t F9 too often) then those numbers don’t hold up. You’re comparing recovering your rocket to not recovering your rocket, as apposed to not recovering a much cheaper rocket. Lets take your 100 tonne lifter, with 97% recovery (which you can’t really get on average) it costs 36,000 funds per launch right? But it costs 181,000 on the pad. Now can I build a stripped down disposable multi stage 100 tonne lifter for about 75,000. (actually I like it when they are about 100m/s shy of orbit) Lets say you have five perfect launches of your booster and then you crash one (you named him Brad, and then you totaled him ) Over 6 launches your costs now go up to 60,000 per launch. Suddenly my 75,000 Bic pen booster doesn’t look so bad. It only really costs 15,000 20,000 per launch (over the long haul) to just toss the booster. And that’s my point.

please explain. Isn't asparagus better than stacked stages? (seems logically better, all engines on from liftoff, all stages fully fueled after separation) what would be better?

Recovery is a good idea and IRL the recovery of lower stages is cost effective and definitely helps a space program get more bang for its buck. In KSP however, we have the physics bubble, which makes lower stage recovery impossible. The only way around this is the SSTO rocket, carry the whole rocket into space, and deorbit it later hopefully to the KSC. If you get to the KSC Peninsula you can get 90% value back, and all it costs is fuel. It makes sense. At least on paper. But somehow, I kept coming in over budget. So I had to take second look at how this actually works. To make a rocket SSTO and recoverable you have to add a lot to it. A probe core, parachutes, RCS, SAS, additional fins, heat shield, landing gear the list goes on, it can cost up to 20,000 funds just in additional parts. (“That’s OK,” you say, “I’m going to get all that money back when I recover the rocket.” In theory yes, but we’ll get back to that in a moment.) it also takes additional fuel to get all the way to orbit and still have enough fuel left for a deorbit maneuver, and you don’t get any of that money back. Plus all the extra equipment and fuel is costing you payload capacity, my guess is that a stripped down version of the same booster (fuel tank, engine and fins only) designed for suborbit, easily lifts 10 to 15% more payload than its SSTO counterpart. But still it’s OK assuming you get back to the KSC and nothing goes wrong. (But this is KSP and that’s a ridiculous assumption.) What can go wrong? I’ve been using as SSTO rockets for over a year now, and a lot can go wrong. 1. What if you miss the KSC? You might come down on the water, can your rocket survive that? Or in the black mountains to the west, and you’ll lose it. 2. It tumbles during reentry and the probe core overheats, you lose it. 3. They are often so large that they block their own solar panels, so they go dead in orbit and become a large expensive piece of orbital debris. Or go dead during reentry. You lose it again. 4. You overload it, and it barely gets the payload into orbit and comes down on the far side of the planet: 30% recovery, you lose money. Because recoverable boosters are so much more expensive to build and take so much more fuel, by my guestimate, if you lose one out of seven SSTO rockets, you give back all the profit you made recovering the other six! (and I certainly was losing 1 out of 7) So (in KSP’s physics/economics model) disposable boosters are actually cost-competitive, a lot easier to build and fly (just jettison and forget) and take a huge variable out of your budget. (IMHO: SSTO rockets just aren’t worth the extra trouble) And since we’re throwing the rocket away, there is no reason not to go for multi-staging, its cheaper, and since asparagus staging is the more advanced form of multi-staging, my rocket designs have now come full circle. I’ve rediscovered asparagus staging!

I use hyperedit in my sandbox game where design and test gear. NEVER in my career game,

Everything Squad has created is their property and should never be used by anyone else for any purpose especially commercial purposes. as such I would never Google the words "how to extract 3D models from Unity games" and I have no idea what you might find if you do that, That said, I wouldn't think squad's going to sue anyone for a little bit of fan art.

not if your target is on the opposite side of your perfectly circular orbit, one of you is going to have to go into an elliptical orbit (or wait a good long time w/ a relative speed of 1 m/s). About debris: 1. I also use the barely-suborbital second stage, or just go SSTO. 2. I have a method of deorbiting all my orbital construction debris: As I build a station or ship, I leave all the debris (girder segments, separator rings, orbital stages of various payload modules) all attached to the ship until the very end, Then at Ap, (100km) I do little retrograde burn that puts my Pe at about 50km (about 15 m/s) then I jettison all the debris, turn around and accelerate back up to orbital velocity. its fun to watch the clean, finished ship fly out of the cloud of construction debris. Then you switch over to any piece of debris, and watch it all come down. (all gone!)

doesn't that make rendezvous a real pain? I try to put major things (stations, ships under construction) in a 80x100 orbit, so a ship in an 80x80 orbit has lots of intercept opportunities.

I had a near miss with space junk once, scared the hell out of me! a stage separator ring passed within 10m of a space station at about 5m/s, actually cast a shadow on the station as it passed, it was debris from building the station which it what put it on such a perfect orbit. today I deorbit everything I can, but still have some junk up there. (which should have been a choice on the poll)

Gravity! AFAIK: Gravity is the only thing in this physics model that could effect both the ship and the pod at the same time. Gravity is wobbling?

update on this here

(not looking for support, more of a bug report, but figured the mods would move this here if I posted in KSP General Discussion. If I’m wrong about that pls move it there) In two other threads (this one and this one) I was discussing a problem I have where a large interplanetary ship I have, after I undock the last fuel tanker, begins to wobble and shake and shakes itself totally into pieces. (very explodey!) There were various suggestions from other users like SAS problems and part clipping. So I was doing a series of experiments trying to figure it out. I had the patience of Job. And used my very best computer scientific method . I eliminated SAS and part clipping, it actually seemed to me that the problem was simply this arrangement of parts. As long as I undocked one of the major components of the ship it was OK. Any one major component. And as soon as I got all the parts back together, in any order, in any sequence, and in any arrangement, it would start to shake. This morning, I patiently started another set of experiments. This time I undocked a very minor component, a Science junior with two docking ports. Docked back the last of the major components, a lander, and it was stable! Okay, still using scientific method, I tried a different experiment. I undocked a different very minor component, and put back the lander, and the ship takes itself apart! That’s interesting. Let me try to repeat the success of my first experiment. I reload, undocked the science pod, and put back the lander. And it starts to shake! And now the weird part: As the science pod is drifting away from the ship, and the ship is beginning to shake violently, I noticed the science pod is shaking too! It’s wobbling side to side with the ship. As if the fabric of space time is being distorted (and the ship and science prod are both being affected), or perhaps the science pod was quantum entangled with the CoM of the ship. Obviously I don’t believe either quantum entanglement or the space time continuum exist in this physics model. So, if I have absolutely no idea what that was! But science continues! That experiment had worked when I had first loaded the game this morning. So I quit all the way out. Start the game over, and repeat the first experiment. It works. OK, I quit out, reload the game, and this time I just put back the lander, the last of the major components. And the ship is stable. It’s been running for half an hour, I’ve saved and reloaded, it seems like it’s fixed. (But or how long Mr. Spock? For… how. .. long?) So that’s two things I’m reporting: 1. Very strange physics behavior,(The Wobbling of Space Time) and 2. the fact that a fresh restart of the game can make it go away(?). EDIT: Oh, 1.1.2, Win7 64 8gb RAM intel graphics, KAC is my only mod,

I'm realizing we could recreate some of them in KSP

High res, ready to print http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/?linkId=25534071&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link (I'm printing the last one)

UPDATE: My problem was clipping. I already had this problem in the VAB when I put the ship launch pad up. But I didn’t realize you could have it after docking. Apparently (IMHO, I have no evidence of this but this is my guess) you can dock two spaceships (or parts of spaceships) that touch without a problem. As long as you continue you’re fine. But if you save and reload, when it rebuilds the model in the computer memory now the parts intersect. Now they’re clipped. So now part one is pushing against part two but they are interlocked so they can’t come apart, so part two pushes back with an equal and opposite force, and then part one pushes back with an opposite force to that, PLUS its original force (and due to a flaw of the physics model) the forces is just keep accumulating. Anyway, advice to the OP: reload the game and undocked the last thing you docked to your station. If that doesn’t work watch the thing shake itself apart and notice what part comes off before it stops shaking. Let me know if that helped, EDIT: NO! I spoke too soon! As soon as I reconnect all the parts to this thing (now WITH NOTHING TOUCHING) , it starts shaking, and rips itself apart. I have two identical landers on both sides of this thing and if I undock either of them the shaking stops, and as soon as I put them both back on... shake rattle and boom! ALSO: yes there are (4!) grabber units. unused. I thought they were OK now ( I never any probs w/ them) what the story w/ them?

Having the same problem with a large ship. it shakes itself apart (SAS doesn't help) I have a couple of things I can try, I'll keep you posted.

I think the original Kraken was a bug I had back in 0.19 or 0.23. If you were time-warping into areobraking a small dot of white and blue and black would appear below your ship, I think it was actually the inside of the sphere of air, that was somehow showing up through the planet. The game was no longer registering the surface of Kerbin at this point. and as you would "land" this blue dot would get bigger and bigger and bigger and then at sea level, it was as big a Kerbin and just ate your ship, you would into negative altitude and the game would crash. eventually any bug (esp ones that break ships) are "the Kraken"

OK what now? Finishing orbital construction of my interplanetary cruiser, the last tanker undocks, and the whole ship starts to shimmy and then shake, and then it shakes itself totally apart! I’ve turned off SAS, has no effect (actually seems worse?) I’ve deactivated each and every SAS module, same problem. (even the probe cores) Then I notice that as I undock the tanker, the CoM shifts directly into the center of one of the SAS modules. (hmmm, maybe a bug?) So I tried an experiment, I undocked a different ship from the other end of the cruiser first, the ship remained in stable. Then I undocked then tanker, still stable. I was able to dock back all of the other ships and finish construction. I figured it out!(I thought) I made a mental note, to tell you guys in the forum about that. then I save and reload the game. As soon as the ship loads in the physics engine, it starts to shimmy, and then shake, and it shakes like a rag doll in a dog’s mouth, and its gets all explody. And nothing I do SAS or otherwise seems to help. Any ideas?

I have often said the Kerbol system is adorable! From each of the moons of Jool you can clearly each of the other moons. I love the fun-size solar system!

1. toggle main engines 2. toggle secondary engines (usu. vertical thrusters, or rockets on spaceplanes) 3 & 4 other engines and/or mode switch on RAPIERS and Turbojets 5 SCIENCE! ... 9. lock landing struts / extend ladders/ deploy drills (ground mode) 0 solar panels / radiators/ open bays/ deploy antenna (space mode)