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HorusKol

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Posts posted by HorusKol

    [Beginner] How to dock in 3 easy steps

    in KSP1 Tutorials

    Posted

    On 2/20/2016 at 0:14 AM, tbreimer said:

    I can get within a half kilometer of the other ship, I even got within .1 kilometers once. I just can't kill my velocity relative to the second ship without drastically altering my orbit so it doesn't even come close to the second ship. I've watched some video tutorials and people seem to be able to magically kill their velocity without changing their orbit, while I'm whizzing by the second ship at 100 m/s. Any help would be appreciated.

    I would do this, too - the first trick I learnt was not to just fire right at the target.

    The second trick was to use the map mode to get almost exactly the same orbit.

    The last trick was patience - when you get to less than a kilometer, try and get your relative velocity down to about 10 m/s - and slow down a bit as you keep getting closer.

    Why does the oberth effect work?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    I know that the oberth effect is that you burn more efficiently when moving faster. What i'm confused about is how it gets you a delta-v advantage when you have to spend delta-v to get up to that speed?

    The trick is not necessarily in using your rockets to get up to speed.

    If you get yourself into a lowish orbit around a body, and then burn a little to lower your periapsis (while keeping you apoapsis at the original orbit), you can then wait until you ship is at periapsis and then make a more efficient burn as you are being slingshot around the planet - that is where the Oberth effect helps. Then you can use a little more fuel to circularise (if you're just after a higher orbit) - or you have saved some fuel getting to another planet.

    Wikipedia also states:

    So if a spacecraft is on a parabolic flyby of Jupiter with a periapsis velocity of 50 km/s, and it performs a 5 km/s burn, it turns out that the final velocity change at great distance is 22.9 km/s; giving a multiplication of the burn by 4.6 times.

    How-to: Position satellite *between* mun and kerbin

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Option 1 - have the satellite follow the exact same orbit around Kerbin as Mun does, except outside of Mun's SoI.

    Option 2 - have the satellite orbit Mun such that it's orbital period matches the time it takes for Mun to orbit Kerbin - you'd have to do the Maths on that one, though, and I'm not sure it's possible.

    In either case, you won't get it perfect, but it should be close enough to work for a good while.

    Dumb and frustrating - the mistakes I make

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Frustrating fails (is there already a thread for these kinds of fails? can only find the launch fail thread)...

    So, multiple parts launched for a space station for a fine-print contract, got it all together out at 200 km using a tug and getting to grips with RCS, and then realised I made two mistakes:

    1. I let Bill take joy-ride and now he's up there with no return vehicle

    2. I forgot to put an antenna on any of the parts, so cannot yet complete the contract

    Simulating speed of light

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    I think the fastest I've been in KSP (admittedly, only to get to Eve and Duna) is on the order of 10,000 m/s (give or take 10,000 m/s)

    Speed of light is 299792458 m/s

    So, I've travelled at about 0.003% of the speed of light

    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_speed - relativistic speed is a speed which is a significant proportion of the speed of light

    It then states that this is at about 10% of the speed of light - which is 30,000 time faster than

    You're not going to see much in the way of relativistic effect unless you burn a long, long time...

    Anyone else who just plays career....

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Personally, I like some kind of structure (even "sandbox" games like SimCity 4 have a logical progression for growing cities). If there wasn't a career mode, I'd have probably followed the campaign list over on the wiki - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Campaigns

    As a very new player (I only started with 0.23 almost the week before 0.24 came out) I think it's great - especially with Fine Print mod. I've gotten multiple Kerbins to the Mun, probes to Duna and Eve, and now Fine Print is offering contracts for manned space stations in Ike orbit :) I think the tech tree needs a shake - I haven't tried Better Than Starting Manned as I'm not sure who well that plays with the contract progression, but something like that would be nice. Once I unlock probes (about the time I get into orbit), I impose my own rule that each celestial body must be visited by a probe before I can think about putting a Kerbin there.

    I mostly stick with career. I keep a sandbox game saved as 'experimental', but I like the framework career gives me for building up from a simple start, rather than being tempted into building complex monster rockets from day one. Even though there are no explicit contracts for stations, bases, etc., I still prefer building them this way.

    Get the Fine Print mod :)

    What really affects the total delta-v of a rocket?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    1. Make everything that is not fuel on the rocket lighter (less RCS, less batteries, unmanned, i.e. building small) : this has a huge impact on delta-v.
    2. Add more fuel : diminishing return on delta-v after each added tank because of the so called "tyranny of the rocket equation", use with caution. You've already noticed this when you quadrupled your central stack without seeing much change.
    3. More efficient engines might help BUT if they are too heavy, they can hurt rule #1. For light ships, a light chemical engine might yield a better delta-v then a more efficient but heavier NERVA for example.
    4. Staging removes "dead mass" (empty tanks, engines which thrust is not needed any more), thus improving rule #1 on your rocket the moment you stage. Probably the easiest trick to increase delta-v as you have already noticed... :D

    And be very careful about using multiple engines. For interplanetary stages where thrust to weight ratios don't matter, you'll always optimize delta-V by having just a single engine. Why? Because a single engine will still burn as much fuel as multiple engines (given enough time), but will do so with less mass. In a sense, multiple engines are just dead weight. (This is obviously not true when you require high thrust such as for launch or powered landings.)

    These help a lot - thanks

    What really affects the total delta-v of a rocket?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted · Edited by HorusKol

    I'm using KER to figure out the delta-v of my rocket, so I can better plan missions - but I noticed that the changes I was making to my rocket stack wasn't really affecting the final delta-v all that much.

    So, I started with my probe, put the smallest tank and an LV-909 under it (lander). Under that, I had one of the 400 tanks and an LVT-30 (transition). Under that, I put 4x400 tanks in a stack on top of another LVT-30, and then 4 of the BACC solid boosters on decouplers.

         **
         ||
         /\
         ||
         /\
       | || |
       | || |
       |.||.|
       | || |
       ^ /\ ^

    I found that if I waited to fire my main LVT-30 until the BACCs had burnt out, I got a significant boost to my delta-v, but then other changes were minimal - for example, adding 4 or 8 of the smaller SRBs added only a couple of hundred m/s. I even changed my quadrupled my central stack (4x the fuel, 4x the thrust) - barely registered any change.

    So - what really affects the total delta-v of the rocket - it seems more staging would be better?

    Program Names?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, decent (and original) names can be hard...

    In the career mode, I used Crossbow for the series of rockets I built to meet all the contracts you get before you reach orbit.

    Then, the Mun and Minmus missions were Silline (Selene coming from the Greek goddess the Moon and, well, silly).

    My probe missions to Eve and Duna were named Valcan (can = probe, and from Vulcan = Roman god of fire).

    The last series I built before having to format my computer and losing the career save were the Teincan probes (tin can) I had on the way to Jool and it's moons.

    I think Greek and Roman mythology have some great names that can be riffed on - but there's a bunch of other sources:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_reporting_name#Lists_of_NATO_reporting_names

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Naming_conventions

    Edit:

    Oh, and of course - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NASA_missions#Manned_missions

    Falling kerbounats on Mun, possible suit depressurization

    in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion

    Posted

    I was assuming the OP meant having the suit visibly collapse around the kerbal and have the model stop reacting to player input. Dead bodies could be an interesting addition to the game, but I'm not so sure I'd actually want to see it.

    I agree - dead bodies would be a grim addition - I just wanted to point out that the "general" idea of "real" is actually not (and exploding kerbals wouldn't be much better, anyway)

    Interplanetary ship lost electrical power

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Are they facing the sun?

    Are they eclipsed by another planet/moon?

    Are they capable of keeping the whole ship charged - is there something draining all the power?

    Mods?

    They said they were in direct sunlight.

    There's a stayputnik and I'd left SAS on - but this ship is the same design as two others that have left Kerbin SoI and they were happily running at 100% and staying these.

    The only mods I have are the alarm clock and KER.

    Interplanetary ship lost electrical power

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    I'm inclined to think that the panels are in the wrong orientation, either they are not facing the sun, are being blocked by another part, or the sun is being eclipsed. If you right click the solar panel it will tell you its status. It will also tell you how much power it is producing and how much sun it is getting. If all else fails you could try warping a bit and seeing what happens.

    Both panels said they were in direct sunlight - but generating 0 power.

    Interplanetary ship lost electrical power

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted · Edited by HorusKol

    So, my first probe out of Kerbin SoI and on the way to Duna "suddenly" lost power - even though it has solar panels.

    Everything seemed fine - the ship launched, I got it heading out of the system, and once I'd done a few more Munar launches I decided to launch two more probes of the same design out to Duna and Eve. I'd set an alarm on the first probe out to prepare for an adjustment burn about halfway to Duna, but when I switched to the probe, it was dead in space - I couldn't even turn SAS off.

    The other two probes are also out of Kerbin SoI - but they're working fine and the solar panels are keeping the batteries topped up at 100% easily enough (I see the charge dip when pitching/rolling and then return).

    So - what happened to the first probe? Bug? Or is there something about being halfway around the solar system that will stop my other two probes?

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