Jovus

Today was meant to be just another boring old day of remote orbital construction: the R&D department put forth a proposal for the next fiscal year for KASA to build an orbital station around Duna, and Kongress passed the budget. (No one was more surprised than the administrator; you know what they say about preparing budgetary proposals for the annual review.) Since they now have this task on their hands with a strict 5 year mission plan, the first step is to put a prototype station in LKO to prove the technology works. This was all going according to plan, with another life-support module being sent up today by remote to dock with the uninhabited and inactive station. As part of approach protocol the orbital tug was undocked...and wouldn't respond to commands. When the engineer in charge frantically went through the reboot procedures, gave up, and finally pulled out the blueprints, Gene noticed the problem right away - the contractors hadn't installed any batteries or solar panels. There was heated discussion about what to do. They had a payload approaching in orbit and no way to dock it. (Technically, the launch vehicle should still had fuel enough after the rendezvous, but nobody wanted to try docking with a Mainsail as the only propulsion.) They could send up another tug...but that would require a complete re-design, a process on the order of several weeks, and time pressure was on. Besides, they had a perfectly good tug in orbit already, if it could just be re-powered. And it's embarrassing to leave orbital debris, especially when it's nothing more than a monument to your mistakes. Finally it was decided that they would launch three astronauts into orbit to perform field-repairs on the tug. A rocket was already designed and ready to go, and all that was needed was the repair equipment. Of course for a mission this time-critical and delicate you send only the best: And the flight to orbit goes off without a hitch: Unfortunately this is where things start to go wrong. The repair vehicle will take another orbit to rendezvous: (Yes, I did get it down much closer than that. Also, at this point the game crashed, which is why later on you see I actually have more dV than in this screenshot.) Which means the payload must needs park next to the station and wait. Not a big deal, but still an annoyance. However, the repair vehicle does get up to the meeting smoothly and on (the new) schedule, all thanks to the expert piloting of our very own Jebediah. Here he is coming up on the rendezvous, happy as always Final approach... ...and docked! Bob didn't believe he could do it all in one go. At this point, since there's enough fuel left in the main stage for a re-entry burn, the extra RCS the orange crew brought up with them is dumped into the tug. Waste not, want not. Then Bob and Bill play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who must get out and do the hot, uncomfortable work of an EVA. Jebediah refuses, claiming he'll put a hole in the heat shield if they make him do it. Bill loses best of three and heads out, where he promptly breaks the cargo container, spills batteries all over, and even manages to knock the box out of its bay. Here he is trying to convince the other two to let him back in after he bolts on the remaining battery pack and solar panel: When that doesn't work, grumbling all the way he takes the multiple trips necessary to go clean up his trash: And, pleasantly surprised to find it all still operational (according to field tests, aka a swift smack with his gauntlet) he finishes the job as originally intended. Then he gets back in the capsule, glad to take off that helmet. The guys at Mission Control give the all clear to come home, but Jebediah decides to stick around just in case something else goes wrong. The tug undocks and heads over to the payload: which uncouples obligingly as the tug lines up for final approach: and finally, a docking seal is confirmed. We're green to go! Tugging it over to the station at first presents no problem, other than the fact that it handles like a truck. However, as it comes around into the light again, Jebediah spots something. "Uh, guys? How are you going to dock that thing? It only has one port, and that's connected to the tug." Panic ensues in the Control Room. Did the other port fall off during maneuvers? No, Jebediah confirms that there is no damage to the payload. It looks like the port was just never installed. That's what you get for contracting your space station to the lowest bidder. It's decided on the ground that they'll just dock the tug with the station as a bridge to the aeroponics bay, and either send up an astronaut with a field-seal port later or just leave it that way. Jebediah, being the daring perfectionist that he is, isn't happy with this plan, and after complaining to Mission Control and getting nothing but flak for his suggestions, decides it's high time to override KSC and switch the tug to local control for his little stunt. He's going to dock it directly to the station. After all, a thing in motion tends to stay in motion, right? And the scales involved aren't large enough for the spherical coordinates to matter. It just requires a maestro's hand at the controls. And who's a master of tricky maneuvers if not Jebediah? (Maybe Archibald, but that's a different story.) The first attempt doesn't go quite as planned: but the second is next-best-thing to flawless. Mission Control will never want to unseal those ports anyway, right? And so the crew of intrepid astronauts takes a moment to witness the grandeur of this fully unarmed and partially operational orbital station before heading home:

We have built robots that function in the Venusian atmosphere for quite a while (measured in hours). For examples, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Venus_project and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_7

It depends. Do the Grox have a Jebediah-analogue? Because we all know that he'd come up with some crazy plan that just might work.

You can still get there by using a couple Rockomax 48-7S engines; you just have to plan your fuel budget accordingly. Oh, and it really doesn't hurt to aerobrake at Duna and Kerbin when you get there; it cuts down your dv requirements considerably.

"Should be" and "is" are different things, though ultimately I agree. With those huge RCS tanks, you stick one on a station module if you're going to use it as a refueling bus, or an orbital tug you never ever want to bother refueling. The tiny 50 unit RCS tank is more than sufficient for your one-time docking needs, and if it isn't you're doing something gravely wrong. In addition, you can drop the third strut and move that blue-and-white whatsit up. Further, you can drop all those batteries on the service module - a crewed module can do just fine without electricity during Duna's night period. Beyond that, stick a Mainsail on it to get to LKO, and then an LV-N with appropriate fuel to get to Duna.

This is true for most Kerbal Scientist, but not for Werner von Kerman. His glasses are kept on his face by an extremely miniaturized HEX AI probe body and a suite of carefully tuned RCS thrusters. Thus his pride at being the eminent kerbal scientist - it's deserved.

Is there some specific way to attach something to the in-line wall of the cargo bay? (That is, attached with the same central axis as the cargo bay itself.) Specifically, I'm trying to put a docking port there, for transportation of payloads, because the only other option I can see is to use decouplers. However, when I try to use docking ports, they clip each other, instead of being docked.

Yes, I missed that at first. Or rather, I caught it when I downloaded the craft file, but it was a small while between the download and the flight. However, my reported experiences were after sorting that out.

Maybe a little? Maybe? But nothing that you can't just pull back - it has pretty amazing yaw authority, too. Then again, maybe my practice of intentionally pointing normal to the surface until around 45k altitude on re-entry is strange? I find it helps me slow down really quickly, and at those altitudes your Q doesn't build up enough to tear you apart for behaving like a Newtonian wing. ETA: Don't think I'm complaining about the Velociraptor II, either. It's a great plane as well. I even managed to get it to space after accidentally ripping off the Aerospikes on takeoff, then come back and land.

Spins on re-entry? I haven't yet spun out on re-entry. As for the controls on touchdown, the only thing I was touching was the brake, but I probably did have a small sideslip angle; SAS likes to fly that thing with a sideslip around 0.6 degrees, I've noticed. The throttle was next best thing to off.

Well, at first I tried to fly it like how you recommend the Velociraptor I, which obviously didn't work. After that point I pointed the nose up ~50 degrees until around 10k, at which point I pulled back to ~25 degrees. The reason I had a bit of trouble was because after about the 10k altitude mark the prograde vector begins to drop away from the nose, so while I was pointed around 25, it was pointed around 10. Which meant I had to be very careful not to get enough Q to rip myself apart before climbing to about 22k (at which point I was able to throw the nose up a bit more). It may indeed have been the case that I climbed too fast: at about 12k I was doing something like 500 m/s. All this is without the aerospikes turned on, and with SAS. (I fly everything with SAS, and use FAR exclusively, and never use the flight assistance toggles at all since they invariably cause me to crash in interesting ways.) I'd have to say your Benchmark is an extremely flyable plane. I haven't tried the Scattershot because the first time I took the Benchmark out I got to space no problem. The only thing I might change (and this is definitely just a 'might') is that it has an impressive amount of pitch authority, even at extremely high speeds in the lower atmosphere. Also, I'm not sure the spoilers actually work on it; they might be assigned wrongly in the .craft file you released.

Yep, I figure it was the SAS trying to maintain a fractional roll angle. It was indeed the Benchmark, because a blind dog can get that thing to space.

I landed a spaceplane on the KSC runway. From space.

I do-ed it! I do-ed it! From space and everything! Well, not quite. I overshot by a huge amount (about 1/5th of the the planet) and had to circle back around and cross an ocean, but my final approach was perfect, and I touched down in the first third of the runway, and applied the brakes...and then picked up some strange yaw from them and flipped over sideways and exploded. But! That totally counts. It just means I need to quicksave right before landing. (I don't feel quicksaving with aircraft is verboten, though I avoid it with rockets.)

I'm having some mild trouble getting the Velociraptor II up to orbit; I can do it, but it likes to bounce around near 15-25k m ASL. Most notably, unlike as advertised with the first craft, it will not climb vertically, and in fact you have to fiddle with the thrust quite severely because it has trouble climbing, but will happily go fast enough at any altitude to tear itself to pieces. This isn't a complaint about the plane, which is great, but rather to let anyone else who decides to download it and give it a whirl what to expect. (All that said, I'm a spaceplane newbie in the extreme, so it might just be my lack of skill.)

Also, it depends on injection angle. Even assuming a capture star of exactly the same mass and no loss of speed, a planet can still be captured by another star if it cuts across the system in the right fashion. Viz. gravity is a lot more coplicated than KSP gives it credit for.

So then do both flaps and spoilers steepen the glide angle?

One other thing I've noticed is that while spoilers are supposed to decrease lift, depending on your speed and their strength (i.e. their size and deflection angle) they can incidentally increase your angle of attack, which increases your lift...

Interesting. Without fine controls on descent I pretty reliably rip the wings off due to trying to make tiny adjustments (while going, say, Mach 0.98 @ 1100 meters) and way overdoing it. My 'advice' above (which was really just reporting) wasn't to do with distance from the strip, but distance on the altimeter, though they are loosely related.

EdFred, thank you, that was extremely helpful. By the way, in case you all are curious, have a picture: I've found that, very roughly, a good rule of thumb is: if you're below 1000m, your velocity needs to be below 200m/s (preferably below 175m/s) - if not, wave off, you're doing it wrong. Complementarily, if you're above 3000m, your velocity needs to be above 250m/s. Of course this all varies with airframe. Oh, and fine controls are necessary unless you want to just return the cockpit. ETA: I forgot to add, because I just figured this out: the position of your velocity vector below the horizon is important. When you're making final approach for landing, it should be ~2-4 degrees below - not more, not much less (again depending on approach path - if you're going to the middle or end of the runway, a velocity vector pointing too shallow will cause you to miss, but one pointing too steep will always cause you to crash. That's velocity vector, not nose indicator. The latter's also obviously important, but the velocity vector is what determines whether you're going to belly-flop or miss or actually make a sensible landing. (This is the bit I think I was missing most - it should be obvious, and it is in retrospect.)

For your first extraplanetary foray you might want to try Minimus instead of the Mun. It's about 20-30 dv further away, but because the gravity is so much lower landing (and escaping once you have) are much much easier.

I figure I'm going to have to put in 10-20 hours of solid practice to actually consistently land without exploding or waving off until I get impatient (at which point, see previous). My problem so far hasn't been lining up over the runway - it's been coming down fast enough without doing it too fast once I have. Thanks for your suggestions, though. The flags will be especially helpful when I'm trying to figure out how to get down after a Mun run (presuming I ever get there).

So I've done a lot of reading about how to build planes, and I daresay I have a decent, if not absolute grasp on the basics of the subject. I can get my planes to take off. I can trim them and fly straight, or turn about, and with some even do loops - all with or without SAS (though with is usually easier, of course). What I can't seem to do is land them on the runway. (I can fairly often land somewhat near the runway, on the beach or the grasslands beyond.) I end up either overshooting and having to fly back, or dive-bombing the runway with predictably hilarious results. To that end, are there any tutorials in existence for how to land your plane? I understand that much of the answer depends on the individual airframe, but are there some broad guidelines on approach profiles I should be looking for? For example, if I'm 1km laterally away from the runway but 5km up and moving at 200m/s, I know I'm definitely flying back for another pass. Are there any tips for how to get those approach profiles? Thanks in advance! (FYI, I'm using FAR and DR.)

Yep, that was it. Thanks.

Huh. That doesn't seem to work for me - it might have something to do with the fact that my mouse is in fact a touchpad.