ElWanderer
-
Posts
397 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Developer Articles
KSP2 Release Notes
Posts posted by ElWanderer
-
-
Screenshot would definetly help...
But if I understand the situation correctly, my advice would be to turn on the engine of the probe PRIOR to decoupling it.
Just make sure you throtle enough so that the probe would start going up as soon as it is decoupled BUT not enough so that the whole lander start flying. That way, the probe won't recouple itself as soon as you switch to it.
You can set an action group that decouples/undocks the port (may need to be both ports) and turns on the probe's engines at the same time. Make sure the lander's engines are turned off and throttle-up appropriately before hitting it.
-
Do real space craft do this?
Yes, well there is this one famous example. Some people call it a Mangalyaan manoeuvre as a result.
The MOM probe spent about a month in Earth orbit, where it made a series of seven apogee-raising orbital manoeuvres before trans-Mars injection -
I followed up "Next Mission" with "Next Next Mission" (and then "Next Next Mission II")... serious lack of imagination back then!
-
I've been having my marker flag at the end of the KSC runway keep disappearing. It could be that the game is eating objects. I'm only at about 10 flights so I don't think it's a max number of objects thing.
I had to keep replacing my runway approach flags in my last career game (0.23.5 to 0.25) - it got quite tiresome. I also had a probe disappear from low orbit around Pol. I assumed at the time I'd set the orbit too low and had a Controlled Flight Into Terrain, but now I'm not so sure. I had almost "60 flights in progress" at the time. The only mod I use is Kerbal Alarm Clock.
-
It's also possible to check if a vehicle satisfies the requirements before sending it to the launchpad; inside the VAB/SPH you can bring up the contract list in the bottom-right.
I've not had any wheeled base requests yet - did you have any contracts to test rover wheels that might have triggered them? It is possible it's a bug an oversight, similar to the one where launch clamps enable satellite contracts even if you have no solar panels yet.
-
I have been working on a spreadsheet that models a simple, vertical launch at split second intervals. For ages it was wildly overestimating how high an RT-10, pod (monoprop removed) and parachute should be able to go. Eventually I discovered SRBs have a drag factor of 0.3 rather than 0.2, no idea why, but it has a massive effect! With that extra drag taken into account, it still overestimates, but not by much (RT-10 with 30% fuel and 19% limiter actually went to 7040m rather than the predicted 7140m). I've just checked the mk16 parachute and it seems that has a drag factor of 0.22 not 0.2, which might cause the difference. I would try to correct it here and now, but loading the spreadsheet almost crashed my tablet. Will have to wait until tomorrow when I've access to a PC.
-
I kept hearing about it in the xkcd (a web comic) forums, as well as occasional mentions in the comic itself. There's also a cool thread about KSP in the "other games" section of the Civ Fanatics (Sid Meier's Civilization players) forum. It all looked a lot of fun. Eventually the game appeared in Steam, so I stuck it on my wishlist... and then bought it myself when there was a sale on!
-
If you have wheels, you can stick the part to be tested on a rover and drive it into the sea.
-
I think the devs have said crew allocations will stick in the updated editor in the next release. Pretty much everyone has the problem of Jeb trying to sneak onboard every launch. For now, sort out the crew allocation last thing before launch or try that mod.
-
6) On the very edge of Laythe's atmosphere, the drag actually appears to be negative. The air speeds you up at high altitudes.
I noticed this, when the 855km by 50km orbit that I set-up changed to 860km by 50km after a pass or two through the upper atmosphere. Thought I was going mad... Then I lowered the periapsis to 44km and that did start a slow aerobrake as intended.
-
One thing I do after performing a burn to set-up an intercept is to place a manoeuvre node on the intercept point. That alone can be used to set a Kerbal Alarm Clock alarm so I don't accidentally time warp past the intercept, but it can also be used to estimate the delta-v and burn time that will be needed to match speed with the target: fiddle with the node until your predicted orbit closely matches that of the target. So far I it's never been accurate enough to burn as per the node, but it's useful as a guide.
-
I do that all the time when flicking though my own screenshots on the computer...
-
Quick update to say my ship is on its way back to Kerbin - just the aerobrake and establishment of orbit to go then I can set about recovering the science and crew. I seem to have about a thousand screenshots to sort through when it comes to posting an actual mission report. I'd like to say I have everything covered, but I didn't take many early on, especially the first few launches - the ones I may not be able to recreate faithfully as the launchers worked in 0.23.5 but not since 0.24 (need moar boost...sepratrons) :/
My main reason for posting is that my cumulative delta-v usage ticked over 25,000m/s during the final plane correction burn. Big number, though the tug and landers did most of the burning; the mothership alone is only up to 7k.
-
My mission may not be proceeding according to plan, but at least it is proceeding - I have landed on Tylo and returned to orbit. It 'only' took seven attempts and a 1750m/s diversion of my mothership...
One calculation I apparently failed to perform beforehand was the delta-v of my nuclear tug with the lander, a probe *and the massive Tylo descent stage* attached (500m/s rather than the 2000m/s I expected, which is the figure without the descent stage). It used nearly all its fuel getting into a highly elliptical 5000km by 22km orbit, with the added problem that the closest approach always seemed to be in the middle of the dark side. After two failed attempts I redirected my mothership from stable Jool orbit to Tylo, rendezvoused at a sensible, circular orbit, refueled and gave it another go.
Attempt #1 didn't realise how early I would need to burn. Hit ground at roughly 1km/s. Exploded.
Attempt #2 hit ground at roughly 500m/s. Exploded.
Attempt #3 beautiful descent until the fuel ran out a few hundred metres up. Exploded.
Attempt #4 hit ground too quickly. Exploded.
Attempt #5 landed gently but too much horizontal velocity. Fell over, exploded (partially - Kerbal survived but marooned)
Attempt #6 hit ground too quickly. Descent stage engines exploded and most of the landing legs snapped, but everything else was intact... until I decoupled the lander before running up its engines. It slid off sideways, flipped over and powered into the ground (somehow the pod and Kerbal survived). Exploded.
Attempt #7 textbook landing and mostly textbook ascent to 80km by 80km orbit (should've been 30by30 as that's where the tug was). Based on fuel usage, it took 3150m/s to land and 2700m/s to take off. No explosions.
I've also landed my spaceplane on Laythe. The rest of the mission should be relatively easy, right?!
-
I reckon I currently score 1.6 (Kerbin system, docking, been to Duna and back, landed on some other bodies but not returned).
This will leap up to 4.7 once my ongoing Jool-5 mission is complete and safely returned to Kerbin.
-
Ordinary monopropellent thrusters have a vacuum Isp of 260, the O-10 has 290, so it depends which engines you mean.
A wet mass of 6.32t with 1.72t of monopropellent (based on just a pod and four tanks) gives 810m/s delta-v with the lower Isp value, or 900m/s with the higher value. That's quite a lot just for manoeuvring, do you know how much you need? The figures will be lower if you're carrying anything else with mass (goo, for example) or if I've cocked up my calculations.
-
It might help if you disable the gimbal on your big engine
I found it behaved pretty much the same with the gimbal locked and thrust limited to 15%. After that I was amazed it would survive unscathed on nukes alone.
Just done a plane correction burn with the lander moved to the back in place of the booster and it seemed much more solid.
-
So it seems that when I fire all my engines for departure:
This happens:
(followed by the ship veering all over the place until the weakest point snaps and lots of things explode)
The booster was strutted to the main body, as it was the central booster from launch (it was getting into orbit about 1/3rd full of fuel, so I thought why not keep it and refuel it?), but the heatshield and lander/Tylo-descent stage are attached to the front in series with ordinary docking ports, which lets them swing around all over the place when under heavy load. Fortunately the effects are much, much smaller when firing just the nuclear engines (though I still burned through about 12t of monopropellent trying to keep it pointing in the right direction). Once the booster section has been jettisoned, the lander/Tylo-descent stage gets docked round the back in its place... which will hopefully be much more stable.
With all the engines firing, the fuel in the booster should have given me 2450m/s-2 worth of delta-v and a burn time of about 6 minutes. With just the LV-Ns, I now have far too much fuel (the booster had about 90t left when I detached it) and the burn time was about three times longer, so had to be split over multiple orbits.
This seems to be a drawback to launching the main body of the ship into orbit early then replacing most of the components over time as I came up with better designs/researched new technology/found this thread. This wasn't originally intended as a "Jool-5" ship, but a general, re-usable interplanetary explorer I would send out with a lander attached, along with support ships carrying fuel, extra landers etc. Then I found this thread and plans changed... I like to think that if I were to start again from scratch, I'd come up with a much, much better design!
Anyway, at the third attempt my 7 Kerbals have left Kerbin's sphere of influence and fingers crossed they will actually make it to Jool.
-
Rescuing a Kerbal triggers a message to tell you they've joined your space program. That's tied in with contracts, mind.
In future, there could be other messages to alert the player in there.
-
One thing I learned the hard way: when deploying landing gear (to land), don't just hit the button to cycle the gear. Visually confirm the gear is down. Because the first press after launch is meant to raise the gear, I often cycle up/down/up early in a mission so that I've confirmed the gear works and the next cycle is down. But one time I didn't do that, didn't check and ended up smashing my engines to pieces and flipping my lander.
-
I got somewhat over-excited about finally flinging together a spaceplane fuel tanker that made it off the KSC runway in one piece, such that I forgot to go back to the hangar and check where it's centre of mass would be with the tanks empty. I should also have taken it as a bad sign that it left the runway by flying off the end and descending to 40m over the ocean before it finally started to climb agonisingly towards space. Instead, I foolishly sent it into orbit, docked and transferred a piddling 15t or so of fuel to my half-finished Jool Exploration Ship.
On re-entry it flipped over and flew backwards into the sea at high speed. Turned out the centre of mass had moved quite far back, well behind the centre of lift/drag. At 250k cost with 0 return, it would've been cheaper per ton-to-orbit to send up one of my ridiculous, pre-0.24, nuclear tankers. Back to the drawing board!
-
New point for landings:
After landing, disable SAS.
That one killed my first two Mun landings. First one tipped over after secure landing because SAS tried to counterbalance the slight uneven surface. On the second one my batteries where depleted by SAS (before I had solar panels availible).
Ah yes, I always turn RCS and SAS off now, after a lander slowly burnt through almost all its monopropellent just from sitting on a slight slope. I was lucky I noticed the exhaust plume before it could empty the tanks completely.
Vertical Probe Launch (and recovery) using a docking port
in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Posted
Hmmmm, you could build all bar the docking ports symmetrically, then manually place ports one by one, then place probe sub-assemblies on top of them one by one. That'd allow them to have different action groups. It would get very complicated, though, especially if you end up with all four spots filled. Interesting design, by the way!