Wanderfound
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Posts posted by Wanderfound
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I've just fired off a bunch of probes to Moho, Duna and Eve, all at the same time. You don't have to wait for transfer windows; just use more fuel. It's less efficient, but not impossibly so.
I haven't had the "Explore Moho" contract come up yet, but I expect it will have by the time the probe arrives.
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The space shuttle is a space plane.
I'd call it a reentry glider, personally. Which reportedly flew like a brick.
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What is the delta-v required to transfer to moho, and then orbit it?
Depends on when you go. You don't have to wait for launch windows; it's just more efficient to do so.
Have a play with this: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/
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I play with FAR, so I start loosing thrust at about Mach 3, at Mach 4 I start flaming out or overheating (Depending on what my payload is)
I also play with FAR; with the right plane and piloting, you can get beyond 2,000m/s and 30,000m on turbojets alone, without the need for more than a couple of intakes (I normally use one nacelle/ramscoop combo per engine). Once you get your altitude high enough, it only takes a tiny amount of thrust to continue slowly accelerating.
Climb slow, minimise your angle of attack, throttle back and shut down as many engines as possible (I generally build with an odd number of engines to avoid having to worry about asymmetric flameouts; at extreme altitude, the central turbojet is the only one left running).
Give it a try; build yourself a basic plane with a single turbojet, a couple of ramscoops and a pair of delta wings. See what's the absolute maximum speed and altitude you can get out of it while you circumnavigate Kerbin.
It will take some time to get there, but you'll be surprised at how much piloting influences flameout altitudes.
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Forgot about that. So far I'm using stock. I was thinking about FAR, but I wonder whether it would affect rockets flying in the atmosphere. IE, my existing designs, even if it's only during take off.
I was thinking in those lines. I should try on Minmus first, and with these designs, I will need to refuel quite a bit along the way. I'm thinking about trying a VTOL landing and a STOL take off - it's not like Minmus requires a long runway.
Minmus has perfect runways: the greater and lesser flats. Better than KSC.
FAR does affect rockets, but in a good way: it makes aerodynamics matter. With FAR, nosecones and fairings are actually functional, instead of being the counterproductive cosmetic pieces that they are in stock.
You do need to adapt your builds and flying style to FAR's more realistic aero, though. No more pancake rockets and no more "straight up to 10,000m then immediately slam it to 45°". Try that under FAR and you'll flip, break your rocket in half, or both. As with aircraft, you need to keep your nose fairly close to the velocity vector and turn gradually; start gently nosing over immediately after liftoff and gradually increase your lean over the first 15,000m of the ascent.
I'd strongly recommend trying FAR/NEAR if you're getting into spaceplanes; if you don't like it, it's easy to switch back. Spaceplanes are even more fun when they actually behave like real planes.
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In the spirit of doing something different, I was thinking about landing a SSTO in the Mun to rescue a stranded Kerbal - but how are spaceplane landed in a vacuum? With a rocket, I'd lower my Pe near the point I want to land, kill my horizontal velocity and fall from the skies. I could try that with a spaceplane, and make sure I level it when below 100m (and use monopropellant or a dedicated VTOL engine to slow down I guess), but can horizontal landings be accomplished? As I think it, there is no atmosphere to slow down the spaceship, so I'd be coming down at a great horizontal speed, so the ship would have to land pointing to the surface prograde marker - ie, with the tail up front. And a gentle deorbit has to be achieved beforehand.
Stick a few Vernors on the bottom, balanced around the CoM; they should be enough for a VTOL Mun landing. A few of the smallest radials would also do the trick.
You can do a rolling landing on the Mun, but it's tricky and you'll have trouble finding a sufficiently flat landing strip.
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Also, your flight profile is a little steep. What you should be doing is 45 degrees to 10km, then level out and gain horizontal speed until 20km or jet flameout (Whichever happens later) If your apoapsis isn't where you want it swap to rockets, if it is (plus a little extra margin) you can coast to apoapsis and circularize there.
Disagree. The air at 10,000m is still too thick for serious speed, and if your jets are flaming out below 25,000m then there's something seriously wrong with either your plane or your piloting. A well flown and built non-airhogging plane should be able to reach 30,000m before it chokes. Just below 20,000m is where I usually level off; ~35,000m is where I typically start burning oxidiser.
As far as restarting Flamed out Jets, the only way to do that is to lower your altitude, or raise your speed.Or shut down some engines, or throttle back a bit, or reduce your angle of attack.
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Important question: are you using stock aero, NEAR or FAR?
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Joachim, you should get TAC Fuel Balancer. Very handy and simple. Pretty much renders the "yellow tube" obsolete.
TAC-FB feels a bit cheaty to me. Set up your tanks and fuel lines right and you don't need it.
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Depends on what you mean by "better". Chutes are easier to land safely, wings are easier to land at KSC.
It's KSP; do whatever is most fun for you.
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Haven't looked at the download, but you deserve credit just for "I made a thing". That's the true Kerbal spirit.
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No...it's a higher orbital speed for a lower circular orbit. But I don't think it makes that much difference since the applicable distances are from the primary's centre, so eg a 150 km Kerbin orbit isn't anything like twice the size of a 75 km one.
Get into a low orbit. Accelerate. You'll end up in a higher orbit. Higher = faster. Higher is slower relative to ground but faster relative to a universal reference frame.
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Running into the side of a mountain while in "orbit" just sounds like a bad day... LOL!
The only problem I see with extremely low orbits around planets and moons with no atmospheres is speed. The station would be moving so fast, it would make it extremely difficult to rendezvous with. Someone said earlier in this thread that higher orbits give you more time to catch up to the target, which also means "more elbow room" for errors. One false move with a station in extremely low orbit and both you and it become a debris field.
Scott Manley probably does it in his sleep though...
I don't have any trouble with it; although a low circular orbit has a higher speed relative to the ground, it's actually a lower orbital velocity than a high orbit.
The only real issue with very low orbits is that there's no room "underneath", so you always need to raise your orbit above the station and let it catch up to you, instead of dropping into a lower orbit and chasing it down. That isn't much of a problem over the Mun, because the orbital period is so short that the station will catch up fairly quickly even if it starts just ahead of you.
I typically launch my lander into a 8x8km orbit, match inclinations and then set a prograde manoeuvre that puts me within a couple hundred metres of the station the first time the lander comes back to the site of the prograde burn.
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Is 8k above the Mun still a stable orbit?
No atmosphere; 1m above the surface is a stable orbit. The only reason to raise it to 8,000m is that you're at risk of running into the side of a mountain if you don't.
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If they're stations designed to be visited (refuelling depots and orbital labs) I usually place them equatorial and as low as possible (so, 70,000m over Kerbin and just over 8,000m at the Mun). If they're survey satellites designed to take science readings over an assortment of biomes, I use a polar orbit instead.
The low altitude Mun station (lab/lander/fuel tank) is getting a lot of use; the attached lander can pop down to the surface and back while expending very little fuel. I just wait until I'm almost over the landing site I want, decouple and burn retro for a descent with very little thrust wasted fighting gravity. I usually get the horizontal velocity zeroed at about 1,000m above the surface and then give it a quick vertical burst in the last couple of hundred metres.
You do need to be a bit careful not to clip the crater lips on the way down, though.
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O_o
That makes no sense at all. Besides, I'm running ATM, so it's certainly not the issue.
I have no idea of how it's happening, but it's a fact that as soon as I installed ATM everything went wonky, and as soon as I uninstalled it everything went back to normal.
The space station one was particularly weird; it's an orbital fuel depot that doesn't even have an engine and the RCS was off. Time warp and it freezes as normal, but as soon as you come out of warp it begins to rotate on the long axis, and the rotation keeps accelerating until you turn the SAS on which gradually damps it out. Turn the SAS off, and it all starts again.
May be a weird interaction happening somewhere; there are a dozen or so mods in play on my game (nothing too wild; FAR, TAC-FB/LS, KAC, Proc Fairings, EVA Parachutes, Enhanced Navball, Spaceplane Plus, Editor Extensions, Mechjeb, EVE with a basic low-res pack; I think that's all).
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I've never had much luck geting a craft up to that speed that low an altitude short of shinanigans involving mainsails and infinite fuel cheat. Airbreathers its just not happening.
Climb and dive, levelling out at the appropriate altitude, with a fairly low-drag design. Pure air-breathers can crack 2,000m/s at altitude, and you can hang onto that speed for a fair time when you come back down.
But yeah, there are complications however you do it. All part of the fun.
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I'm afraid I have to agree with other posters here. Something in NEAR is giving me a hard time (flatspins, uncontrollable aircraft) in a way that I never experienced before, neither in stock nor in FAR.
Possible culprit: I recently installed Active Texture Management and then had to uninstall it as it was making all of my craft behave in very strange ways (oscillating rolls on aircraft, space stations tumbling end over end for no reason unless I kept SAS on, etc.).
I use FAR rather than NEAR, but it may be worth trying without ATM if you have it installed.
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Lol ya I've had one along those lines. you prety much need to go way up and crash dive into the atmo from interplanetary return speeds or higher while thrusting all the way down. Dont plan on recovering any of that ship, your either going to miss time it and plow earth or you'll get it right and the ship will rip apart when the chute deploys causeing you to plow earth.
Atmospheric jet aircraft + an action group used to detach the parachute immediately after deployment.
The ones that give me trouble are the high and slow ones; it's hard to fly a plane to 30,000m at subsonic speeds.
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I always play with FAR and DRE installed and built an SSTO that can reach MACH 5.2 at around 25,000m using Wanderfound's excellent advice
I will stick up some piccys in abit.Nice plane; glad I was able to help.
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Agree with Lego part, disagree with the rest.
I think I did get carried away by rhetoric a touch. It's certainly possible to come up with creative designs using B9 or Spaceplane Plus parts; they just don't force creativity on you the way that the stock parts tend to.
I think the Lego analogy still stands, but with the added caveat that you're free to ignore the instruction booklet no matter which parts you're using.
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Considering that there's no orbit decay, perhaps a difference phrasing?
"Scientist working on Skylab is getting a bit bored of the scenery."
Mission: Adjust Skylab orbit to 150,000m ~ 200,000m.
That also works, but I was thinking of something that was generated with a periapsis of 65,000m or so. Slow aerobraking.
I'd like there to be some missions with a sense of urgency to them.
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I've tended to strap them onto my spaceplanes to do on the way to orbit [1]. Getting a spaceplane up to orbital speed and altitude can get a bit repetitive; having something to do on the way mixes it up a bit.
[1] Including this interesting one: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87950-Testing-times
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I would suggest widening the window for the tests.
instead of "do test above 10km and below 11km at between 325 and 450 m/s" just have "do test on kerbin (in atmosphere) at greater than x km, and at greater than x m/s" pick greater than or less than, but dont give the test a ceiling and a basement, keep it wider.
Whereas I'd prefer exactly the opposite. I want a contract that requires me to test a booster while pulling more than three but less than five negative G's between eight and nine hundred metres off the deck at a speed just below Mach 1; that would be a challenge.
But really, what we need is all of the above. Testing contracts, exploration contracts, rescue contracts, easy contracts, hard contracts. The more diversity the better; something for all tastes and all experience levels.
I will stick up some piccys in abit.
Fly KP (High-speed low-level fighter aircraft)
in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange
Posted
Incidentally: I've found that the NRAP test weights make very good kinetic bombs. Indestructible, concentrated mass, looks the part and can be tweaked to whatever size and weight you like.