Zamolxes77

Fun fun, I just got to the space station, and to my horror, I discovered it has 2 senior docking ports asymmetrically and only regular docking ports along the CoM. Sadly my trade vessel has only senior ports, gonna have to revert to an earlier save. As a bonus, it has science inside, enough to give me tips where a derelict ship roams ! But no antenna ! You don't get funds anymore for transmitting science ?

Ship hunting sounds fun, what exactly are you suppose to do? Grab them with a klaw then sell them ? Been playing this for two days, a lot of fun, trading only so far. I have a beefy ship that can hold 3000 units of cargo, running wood from Kerbin to Minmus and bringing diamonds back. A bit tedious but I gathered up 45,000 funds, on top of my expensive 35,000 trader. I might have enough to afford a mining rig: a 4 part ship - my current transporter, a scanning satellite to look for ores and a refinery with an ascent vehicle. Satellite scans, refinery mines, ascent vehicle brings diamonds or steel to orbit and I'll pilot the trader. So you suppose to intercept them and bring them to space station to sell ? Does it matter which one?

No I'm not sure lol, I believe you are correct and is around 2500K. I gotta try what you suggested with the heat shield with no ablator, that sounds like a neat idea. My current design uses an actual fairing on the back end, seems to work pretty well. I thought about adding some wings to improve my drag coefficient. Neat idea ! <update> Damn my new ship I posted works even worse, I swear aerodynamic model seems to swing from one instance of the game to the next. Yesterday it worked fine, now it doesn't. i wonder if there's some horrendous bugs with the mod. <further update> I have tried the inflatable heat shield on nose, problem is, once inflated you can't deflate it (at least in this mod, never used it in stock), so when accelerating, having a mushroom on the nose proved to be ... extremely shaky at best. I replaced the fairing in picture with a heat shield, with zero ablator, added some wings A and wing D, plus I sneak 4 radiators in the wings, 2 on each side. Worked like a charm, I dipped at 37km Pe on 1st pass, when coming back from Minmus and Apo dropped to 6,000 km in one go. Everything stayed cool, except that reaction wheel i have under the docking port, I might have to move it somewhere else. Btw, if you playing Kerbal Kommander, apparently you can BUY ablator as any other commodity at the space station !

So find other solutions to the problem. The reason you have problems with flipping is having the thrust so far back and during ascent, as the fuel gets consumed, your CoM shift forward, way way too forward. A slight bump and you introduce a torque in your forward vector, instantly flipping the thing. Instead of adding fins, try to build your ascent stage AROUND your payload, so CoM doesn't shift much during ascent. Like this for example: The white rockomax tanks with all the engines are in fact the payload, while the orange tanks and the SRB's are ascent stage. Not only I use the engines of the payload for ascent, but by shifting the main stage around the payload I don't even need fins, Vector's gimbal is enough to steer AND I only ditch empty tanks, not expensive engines. I put that craft into orbit easy enough, albeit bingo fuel, so it will require a refueling mission, but its a long range refinery able to refuel itself once landed on a body. Note the parachutes, it can land safely even on Kerbin but won't be able to take off again, in Kerbin's case. Parachutes are there to safely bring back a 250,000 kerbalbucks piece of machinery, when eventually I design a better model.

I'm not trying to add a second mod that might conflict with this one, so robotics is out of the question. Didn't knew radiators help with dissipating re-entry heat, how many you actually need?

Started playing a mod, Kerbal Kommander, which is more of a KSP adventure game, in style of X3 or Elite dangerous. You basically take command of Jebediah (or other kerbal), in a junk ship and you make your fortunes by trading, mining, doing science, capturing roids. At beginning, you start with trading - you start only with 20,000 funds. Anyway, in order to cut flying costs, aero-breaking becomes EXTREMELY important - you don't want to burn extra fuel, which you pay for (gets deducted from your profitssss), if you can help it. SO the ships have to be designed to aero-break, without the use of heat-shields (you don't have access to KSC to replace them), multiple times. While I'm a fairly experienced player who clocked over 1,000 hours in this game, I guess I'm in a crisis of imagination. One method I used so far is engines 1st, ships with CoM towards the engines, so they will take the brunt of heating, sadly they can't take much, all are rated at 2000K (except nukes off course at 2900K, but they cost 10,000 kerbalbucks per engine). Another method I just thought of, is add shielded docking ports (2900K heat tolerance) on the front of the ship, but then the problem becomes of maintaining CoM forward, so the ship will naturally tend to turn nose in. Is there a way to recess the engines, so they don't get caught in plasma trail, so I can still aero-break engines 1st, but brunt of the heating is takes by the hull, perhaps a Mk3 adapter?

I have a method that is pretty much fool proof, which I developed it in .90 I believe, or whenever the career mode was introduced. Just like you, I'm obsessed with landing as close as possible to KSC AND recover stages as well, no recovery mods, just with chutes and good flying. Here it goes. Before you land, you want to set a Per of 70-71 km just above the desert continent, the one PRECEDING the Africa looking peninsula KSC sits on, assuming you in prograde orbit. Exact location doesn't matter that much, usually I aim for the shoreline, but a bit inland, 1-2 minutes of orbit travel perhaps. Once Per is set (with practice I normally set it to 70,500m pretty routinely), warp to it. Once there, hit retro until your point of landing reaches about midway, between the KSC continent and the one FOLLOWING it. There is like a "inland sea" there, delimited by 2 continents, I like to call it my "Burning Sea", it comes with a warning, watch for things raining down hehehe. The old airstrip is in that sea, also another island further North. You want your point of impact to be further out than the old landing strip, when you're in orbit, because the planet will rotate until you get there, also trajectory will alter due to reentry friction. If everything is set correctly, you should hit atmosphere just as you pass the shoreline of the desert I mentioned earlier and get heat effects a bit before reaching the shoreline of Africa continent. During reentry, you are free to aero break to alter your trajectory, if you think you aimed too far, or just stay retrograde and don;t do a thing if you think you aimed short. With some practice, you'll be able to land EVERYTHING at KSC, 100% of the time. Note: while this tactic works for SSTO's, its not 100% foolproof. For spaceplanes, you have to aim a little short, because you want to reach the runway, just as you pass those mountains west of KSC. Oh, make sure you have some heating protection. While its possible to re enter with un-shielded craft, especially the ones with 2000K skin tolerance, any parts that have less, will burn up, unless you carefully balance CoM of your craft, so the engine points backwards by itself. Note: If your Apo is too high, this will NOT work. If you come from a 500 km Apo, your speed at Per will be too high, over 2200 m/s, so again you WILL burn up, unless you have a heat shield and recessed engines. With this method I routinely bring back un-shielded main stages (engines 1st), capsules and such. One exception, Vector engine, although its rated at 2000K, it ain't, will always burn up if you go engine 1st. Oh and there's a 2nd exception, the Mammoth and Twin-boar engines will also burn up - they have smaller Vector engines on the back. Hope this works for you, let me know how it went !

Found a bug. Once docked to Kerbin Space station, it won't let me undock. For some reason, only station's dock port has option to undock and when you activate it, nothing happens, basically puts you in control of the space station.

Ok, I followed instructions to start a new game, PRECISELY, nothing happens. I start a new career, press KK button, start a new commander, select yes, funds get reset to 20k, all buildings but VAB and tracking station get locked, but then nothing. I go tracking station, no stations. I exit and reload, same excrements. There is a step missing somewhere regarding how to start a new game ... Only extra mods I have left are Engineer and Docking alignment, which they shouldn't impede the process. NVM, it works with a fresh install

I tried the Spatha, but engines are flaming out on the runway, am I missing something ? Myprecoolers don't act as intakes, I thought they never did. Is it something that Interstellar alters and on stock they're actually intakes also ? NVM, found the problem, Interstellar indeed modifies the pre-coolers, stock they double as air intakes as well. Damn.

Negligible. This is 1.1.3 not 0.25. Soupy atmosphere is gone and you don't go that fast low in the atmosphere anyway. At 10 km you can expect some 300-400 m/s and at 40 km perhaps 1200-1500 m/s. With the ascent profile I posted, you might get some heating effects around 30-35 km, but you save a crapload of delta V. Try it out, the more vertical you go to "escape quicker the thick atmosphere" the more fuel you waste.

That's the way I used to do it too, until I downloaded some craft with tight dV budget and learn to fly it, after talking to Rune. You are wasting some 300-500 dV potential, which is quite a lot if you're into Micro SSTO's for example. Try this. Do your normal launch, tip slightly and make sure by 10 km you're at 45 degrees. You can hold it there for a while, until your TIME to Apo is over 1 minute. Once there, hold prograde while at same time, reduce throttle so your time to Apo stays the same, aprox. 1 minute. Once you reached your target Apo height, tip to 90 degrees and continue burning horizontally, while maintaining the time to Apo constant. Obviously, once you hit 70 km mark, you can shut off engines and do next burn 5s to Apo. What will happen is basically combine the circularize burn and take off burn INSIDE the athmosphere, so you take full advantage of Oberth effect, will have to expend very little dV to finish off circularization. Using this technique, you can take crafts into orbit that seemed impossible before. 3400 dV, it can be done with 3300 dV after a bit of practice, even less.

Yes and no. There are only so many ways you can arrange several pieces and when you build a craft for a specific mission, they naturally will look very similar. Two SSTO designs, built for a round trip to Duna, carrying similar payloads and using same sets of engines, will look nearly identical. If you add more bits to a design, to make it your own, you're screwing up with the efficiency.

Well, sadly my bear paws are way to big for a keyboard, any keyboard.

Nothing wrong with my install, fresh one since last week when 1.1.3 came out. Only mods I use are Interstellar, which doesn't mess with aerodynamics. You are correct, your ship it can, in fact, make it into orbit with 1,000 dV left in the tanks or so. Problem is getting there, ship presents some high instability issues around 15 km or so. After 10 aborted launches I managed to figure out the problem and one trick is to lock the fuel in upper adapter. That doesn't solve the issue, just makes it less prone of flipping in mid air. Anyway, once in orbit it performs very nicely. I did not believe it will survive the reentry, but it did, my testing wasn't exhaustive though, it re entered with some 800 dV worth of fuel, which I burned during aero break. Normally ships re enter atmosphere with very little dV left, if any, so I didn't get to test if it can withstand the heating effects. When completely empty it hits the ground at about 15m/s, which to my surprise, again, it didn't blew up or shed parts. Must be the crash tolerance on those M beams.

It is, however its extremely inefficient. During atmospheric flight, atomic engines get a penalty, I think they function at 33% efficiency or something like that, so instead of 60kN of thrust you get 15. Furthermore, you craft has to be very light, small, in order for the Nerv to have a chance to push your craft from 24 km to 70+. If for example you get a TWR or .64 or lower during this phase, its very likely your plane will crash (run out of fuel) instead of making orbit. A much better option is to use rapiers and Nerv's on you design, while carrying a limited amount of oxidizer. Around 24 km, switch rapiers from air breathing mode to closed cycle and they should run out of oxidizer when you reach your target Apo, outside the athmosphere naturally. Then you coast and circularize using your Nerv. Here is a micro SSTO, that uses the concept I stated above: 1 rapier, 1 Nerv, and enough dV to take off, go to Minmus, land and return to KSC, with 2 Kerbals. This is my shuttle craft and rescue vehicle: Using only rapiers its easily capable getting into orbit and still have a large amount of dV left for orbital ops, around 1400 dV or so. On the plus side, it has a docking port, so it can refuel in orbit and be used for interplanetary missions. This following one is a concept I was working on, trying to determine what's more efficient: rapiers with Nerv's or Whiplashes with Aerospike. Whiplashes beat rapiers in athmo flight , Isp wise and aerospikes beat rapiers in weight, thrust and Isp in Vac. They're also one of the most efficient rocket engine in ASL flight. Sadly I used a completely different plane for my experiment, so I'm stonewalled. If I had to draw a line though, 2nd design is best: higher payload, in form of crew cabin and nose with more dV left in LKO.

I tried your craft, sadly it doesn't work in 1.1.3, not enough dV, not even to get into orbit. But with several modifications and a bit of streamlining : Fuel lines are not necessary, I only add them so Engineer would display the correct data. If flown properly, craft can get into a 75/75 LKO and still have around 900 dV left in the tanks. Also the body is made out of heat resistant materials so it would not disintegrate during re-entry, at least not as easy as before. Engines were offset to install a senior docking port on the back, during aerobreaking, deploy the airbreaks. At the joint where fuel lines are, a cargobay can be installed and a modest payload can be taken into orbit, probably around 5 tons, didn't had time to test that aspect.

Maneuver nodes. It was a great tool to learn the game and use it for small trips, it has become a major hindrance for executing complex trips or small, discrete adjustments. The reason why is broke its because it relies on two very imperfect tools: the movement of the mouse, which can get stuck or "catch " on a small imperfection of the mousepad creating great surges into the vectors adjustment and player's wrist. Sadly we're not all 12 and our wrists don't function the way they did 30 years ago. Yes, there are mods to alleviate the problem, but every time I use a maneuver node, I get the feeling an early alpha mechanic is still in the game and is not very good at what it suppose to do.

Well, most of the roles have been exemplified by above posters, I'll list mine. 1. Perfect for tugs. In early and mid gameplay, I quickly create a fueling depot in orbit, with a 4 LVN tug. Large interplanetary ships or stations launch empty, dock with the tug and a second launch brings up the fuel. Whatever it doesn't fit in the newly assembled ship in orbit goes into the fuel depot. Using this tactic, my launches stay relatively low count for parts, easy to maneuver and very, very efficient, not to mention CHEAP. Every single part is 100% recoverable, including the main stage of every launch. Also every launch brings up a new heat shield, and a set of parachutes, a "landing module" if you will. Heat shield gets mounted either on top or bottom of the tug, so it can aerobreak on its return trip and gets ditched into atmosphere once target orbit has been achieved, while the chute module gets mounted at the end of the mission, to retire the tug if better parts become available. First nuclear tug used regular docking ports, but once senior port becomes available, old TUG and space stations get retired, for 100% refund. 2. Interplanetary engines for SSTO. You cannot beat 800 isp. Coupled with that the simplified logistics, you use only one type of fuel for both ASL and VAC burns and is extremely hard to justify using some other engine in place of an LVN. Once Rapiers get unlocked, SSTO receives a small fuel+oxidizer tank, just enough to get the craft from atmospheric flight to desired APO, circularization burn is executed with the LVN's. 3. Landers and science hoppers. Once you get to the Mun and try to science mine it, it becomes very important to "loiter". Each cycle of break from orbit - land - take off - make orbit - circularize eats up some 1200 dV or more (on Mun). Using LVN's is a wonderful option, that will give your science hopper an immense dV reserve, you can "hop" from biome to biome, without the need of going back into orbit after each one and wait for next shipment of fuel from Kerbin. Once that shipment of fuel is needed, well you can use the nuclear TUG you parked in orbit and bring over a very large quantity of fuel, 12,000 dV worth. On top of it, you can add extra capsules on your lander, so experiments can be repeated as many times as the number of capsules available, each capsule can contain a full copy of experiments which eliminate the need for repeat visits of the same biome. It took me for example only 3 expeditions to completely mine all 15 biomes of the Mun and completing additional 4-5 contracts, mixed in with the "hopping for science".

I used many different designs of landers, here is my latest form. Is constructed around 4 Nerv atomic engines and has the possibility of "loitering", flying from one biome to another. Its ample tanks give you 6k dV. It also carries 4 distinct capsules, its main function being an experiment hog, that quadruples the experiments. When touching down in one biome, all 6 instrument experiments plus the 3 reports and surface sample, are repeated 4 times, each batch of experiments is stored in one of the 4 capsules, until all 4 are full. Later, experiments are flown out and distributed: one copy gets sent back to Kerbin for recovery, a second copy gets uploaded to local science lab in orbit of the planet where experiments occurred, the other 2 sets of copies are sent to science labs across Kerbol system, as the need for data arises. Here's the craft paired up with its standard science lab, in orbit: Note that its not entirely a stock build, the science lab module and the RCS thrusters on the lander are the ones provided by Interstellar-E, but they can be switched out quite easily for their stock counterparts. During operation, several flaws have been discovered. Access to equipment bay is very difficult and the work becomes tedious when trying to stock reports all over the body of the craft. ANY "encounter" between a kerbonaut with the landing struts leads to an explosion, looks like the R&D department packed all the landing struts cylinders full with nitroglycerin. Due to that, the entire concept has to be redesigned, placing the 4 capsules close to each other, possibly connected, and the science package needs to placed extremely close, preferably in a spot that doesn't require the kerbonaut to move around to access the capsules. Access to the ground should also be extremely easy, far from any landing struts and with no possibility for our personnel getting their head stuck into crannies, looking for snacks.

SUCCESS !!! 100 LKO and 200 m/s to spare. Instability trick was the fuel pumping, I actually just disabled the tanks and enabled them later. With that, you don't even need hold to prograde, is stable enough for manual.

The initial instability is very early, right off the pad. I normally fly everything manually, I guess I should give the old "hold to prograde" button a try. I'm trying new ascent profiles, normally I tilt a bit late so I arrive at 45 degrees at 15km, gonna try a new one, 45 degree at 10 km and keep time to apo around 30 seconds instead of one minute, see how that goes. Thanks for suggestions.

Well I, tried it out, seems a bit unstable or my flying skills are very poor. Once I added 4 fins, it got under control easy enough. KerEngineer rates it at 3,400 dV with 4 fins added, I manage to limp in a 75 LKO, with 100 m/s left in the tanks. Any hints about how to fly it more efficiently in 1.1.3? I never thought I can get a 3,400 dV craft into orbit and circularize lol, normally I aim for a minimum of 3,700 dV for that.

Very nice one Rune, can we please have a shot of the back of the ship too, or a .craft file please?

Honestly, I didn't see any difference, but then again, it might be something subtle. To me it seems a lot more important to carefully manage your ascent profile, since one mistake can mean you burn extra 200 m/s. Sometimes I have to learn to use those overlays that show the aerodynamic forces. For example in some cases, I managed to peak at 1300 m/s at 24 km, in others, using same plane, barely managed 1200 m/s, and in one case 1150. Once I managed 1400 m/s at 23 km and plane disintegrated when I toggled the rapiers, probably I didn't close the intakes quick enough. Thanks. During this challenge I learned a lot. You should see some of my old design SSTO's lol, huge mammoth with very little dV. I designed a small, rescue shuttle, with things I learned, can hold 6 people, docking port, rcs, the whole 9 yards and still has 1500 dV AFTER circularize at 75 km ! And is not much bigger than this LOL, 25 tons or so: Big Boy: New hotness: