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Wanderfound

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Everything posted by Wanderfound

  1. You probably won't have enough launch TWR with only two turbos...but there's nothing stopping you from doing a four turbo version with a rocket on top. You don't need a lot of fuel to reach orbit if you're starting from 25,000m and Mach 4. The other fun option, especially if you're using a stage recovery mod, is to build a turbojet radial booster. An intake, a bit of fuel, a turbojet and a parachute; strap a few of those around your rocket for a high-efficiency kickstart. (mind you, just sticking a couple of SRBs underneath your payload is usually quicker and easier)
  2. I believe so, but get confirmation from someone with a better grasp of the physics. You still want to be launching "sideways" rather than up, though, in order to avoid losing too much to gravity drag. There's also the option of launching into an elliptical orbit, with it positioned so that your transfer burn happens at periapsis. That's tricky to get right, though.
  3. The lower you are in the gravity well (which implies moving faster to maintain an orbit), the more benefit you gain from the Oberth effect. You're best off in fuel efficiency terms starting your interplanetary burn from the lowest orbit possible; the transfer burn from 100x100 requires less ÃŽâ€V than the transfer from 70x70, but that saving is outweighed by the cost of lifting the 75x75 to 100x100 in the first place. There are still reasons for high orbits, though; especially with a low TWR ship, starting a transfer burn fom too low may send you back into the atmosphere where you start losing ÃŽâ€V to drag.
  4. The challenge in FAR isn't getting up to speed, it's doing it without tearing your wings off...
  5. No, you don't need separate SAS (torque) units for vertical vs horizontal flight. As for transition...keep the VTOL engine on, fire up the HOTOL engines, wait until you've gained enough airspeed for conventional flight before shutting down the VTOL engine. And expect to lose a bit of altitude during the transition. You can build so that fuel draws evenly from tanks around the plane, but you'd probably find it easier to use a fuel balancing mod such as TAC-FB (good) or Goodspeed (better). RCS Build Aid is extremely useful when it comes to placing your VTOL engines. These videos are all for FAR, but the basic principles are the same in stock aero. VTOL flying: Very good (not me) VTOL flying: VTOL building:
  6. You might want to clarify whether "don't go above 500m" means to stay below that altitude for the whole flight, or if it's just that the speed must be measured below 500. I ran it both ways just to be sure... So: 482.6m/s (Mach 1.41 at that altitude) without ever exceeding 500m, or 563.1m/s (Mach 1.66) with a diving approach. FAR was in operation, including aerodynamic failures.
  7. There are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet Aerobatic jet VTOLs work in KSP, too:
  8. Recreating some classics: Kerbodyne Benchmark XV. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/a72xhlbiicj7ocf/Kerbodyne%20Benchmark%20XV.craft?dl=0
  9. Kerbodyne Dinklage: small but mighty. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/xld39xs0eptuq97/Kerbodyne%20Dinklage.craft?dl=0
  10. Might be a chance to fix Jebediah's dental problems while they're at it...
  11. If all you're trying to do is avoid the delta-V expenditure of the climb to LKO, you don't need orbital construction, you just need orbital refuelling. Send up a big fuel tank with a probe core, some solar and a few docking ports on it. Then launch your interplanetary ship, refill it in orbit, and off you go. Efficient design helps a great deal as well, of course. Long-ranged doesn't necessarily require huge ships. For example, even without an orbital top-up, this one has about 7,000m/s in the tanks after getting to LKO: http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbodyne%20Spearhead
  12. You can send ships to Duna at any time you like; it just costs a bit more ÃŽâ€V if you do it outside the transfer windows. But as Duna only takes about 1,000ÃŽâ€V to reach normally, adding a bit more range to your ships is no great hardship. The most obvious way to manage precise landings on Duna is to fly there; stick some small wings on, glide to the target, then pop chutes and descend.
  13. Kerbodyne Spearhead: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/dd7zglnyllnq6b9/Kerbodyne%20Spearhead.craft?dl=0
  14. I did fix 'em; the auto-link parser missed it first time around.
  15. It can be done; I've sent SASless ships to the Mun and back. Spin stabilisation helps a great deal; angled tailfins in atmosphere, torque wheels in space.
  16. Yeah; I was simplifying a bit due to the context. Yaw is trickier to sort than pitch and roll problems, IME. Moar tailfin usually helps, but you also get weird interactions with other factors. I have no idea why, but I often find that shifting purely horizontal surfaces (canards etc.) can make the difference between red and green. And while shifting CoM forwards usually helps, this morning I had one that was reversing this; I ended up needing to shift weight backwards to sort it. Very strange.
  17. 1: Yaw problems = moar tailfin. 2: Don't use wing pieces as structural/aesthetic elements. They'll mess up your aero. 3: You need to set the speed when running an AoA sweep: the one you've shown has you at Mach 0.2, which is much slower than typical flight speeds. 4: Ditto for the stability analysis. Run it at Mach 0.5 with the altitude set to 5km and you'll get a better picture of what's actually happening in flight. And, to clarify: when you try to turn by banking over and pulling up, the nose yaws away from the ground? - - - Updated - - - Not that I know of, but I'd love it if there was.
  18. They're lovely, but unless we get some RPM-equivalent functionality into the stock game, they're just visual candy. Still, it's a step in the right direction.
  19. There are minor differences, but NEAR is fairly similar to FAR (minus most of the GUI analysis tools). See the links in my .sig for "how to build in FAR" guides. The GUI tools help, but they aren't necessary; you can get to the same resuts by trial and error test flying and tweaking. As a general rule, though: make it look like a real plane. If it looks like it should be able to fly in reality, then it probably will in NEAR/FAR. And try to avoid all of the bad habits encouraged by stock aero (e.g. intake spamming, wing stacking, part clipping, etc.); they won't work in NEAR/FAR.
  20. It's a screamingly obvious April Fool's joke. It isn't original or funny, but April Fool's things rarely are. April Fool's pranks are ye olde trolling, and are generally based on "laugh at" rather than "laugh with". The entire basis of them is "mock this stupid person who believed me when I lied to them". OTOH, this was just a misguided attempt at humour; there's no malice involved in this case. Not worth getting upset about, and unlikely to be repeated given the response.
  21. Everybody okay with an end-of-March deadline? Someone's going to have to come up with something fairly flashy if they want to beat MajorJim...
  22. Eh? My understanding was that NERVAs were supposed to have quite a bit of kick. Is the LV-N also underweight?
  23. Hopefully yes, but I'm not counting on it. LV-N's need rebalancing besides the fuel issue. The thrust is unrealistically low, as is the cost. There are reasons (largely political rather than technical) why we don't use NERVAs in the real world. The game should reflect that.
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