Comet Tail

Okay, welcome back! Still no updates on the return to the moon mission - time to break the 4th wall and say I'm currently writing the descent program! Those poor astromares have been waiting for, what, two months almost? Well, good thing time doesn't flow in their universe until I'm ready for it to. Anyways, since my current job is writing a kOS code, let's talk about this kind of thing a little. If you don't want to, then you can just skip on by, but otherwise, expand the spoiler below! ADDENDUM: Okay, so, just putting up the Kerbal Engineer readouts really wasn't quite good enough, so here's more explicit information on the vehicle I'm using. Specifically, this is the Orion MPCV Lunar Mission launch configuration - for the one "in flight" right now in my save, to actually take men ponies to perform a lunar orbit rendevouz with an Altair lander waiting for them in Lunar Orbit, land on the moon, perform their surface mission, rendevouz again with the Orion, and return to Earth. SLS Block Ib Orion MPCV Lunar Rendezvous Mission Configuration Object 5 - Segment RSRM (each) Core Stage EUS Payload Wet Mass 748.2 t 998.27 t 154.13 t 41.3 t Dry Mass 97.35 t 94.07 t* 15.84 t* 33.6 t Thrust (Vac/SL, kN) 16,295 / 14,389 11,599.5 / 9,295 (total) 440.4 / - (total) - ISP (Vac/SL, seconds) 265 / 234 453 / 363 465.5 / - - Notes On SRB sep (t+ 142s) about .2-.5t of propellant remain. *includes interstage and separation motors. *includes 1,920 L of MMH and NTO for RCS and ullage Wet/dry mass refers to before/after SM fairing and LES jettison at T+ 154s *all masses in metric tonnes. With this, I was able to perform the last part of orbital ascent, TLI, and most of LOI with the EUS. Note that the RSRM's thrust curves mean they burn a bit longer than their thrust, mass, and ISP would indicate (since their thrust drops for part of their burn for max-Q, and again as they burn out).

Eh, it's largely satirical, just kind of poking fun at the real aerospace industry.

Certain members of the community, myself included, love Realism Overhaul. But even with all the amazing work done on that series of mods, there's one huge chunk of realism still missing from the game... The amazing world of government contracting! So here's the idea of what the mod would do: You can choose to play as big, established companies like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, with a brand-new amazing contract from NASA! With this option, you get to play as an executive. Meddle in your engineers' designs. Wait until they've finished designing a rocket, then go tell them it needs to lift much more weight to orbit! And most of all, get as much sweet green money-juice out of that contract as possible, making your design as complicated as you can - right up to the point of cancellation! And when you've done that, you can report every penny you've pulled out of NASA to your investors! Or you can play as a manager in NASA. Remember, your Ion drives are completely necessary to go to Mars - after all, if they aren't, then you wouldn't get funding to keep working on them! Get real friendly and convince upper managers just how vital your Ion drives are for a manned mission to Mars. And whatever you do - don't go under budget, go over budget so that next quarter they'll really see how badly you need a bigger budget! You can play as the head of NASA himself, as in the original game. But this time you don't actually design your craft, you just contract most of it out, and watch as your contracts grow bigger and bigger! Have presidential candidates come over to your state and promise to do big things with NASA when they're out of office and have no power to live up to their words! Be amazed and actually regain some hope for humanity when small startups work 18-hours a day to actually stay within their originally contracted budget! Or, you can play as one of the recent start-up private companies. You can do what's absolutely impossible, and the disullisioned engineers elsewhere in the industry think what you're doing is impossible - but boy do you show them wrong! However, you have to work 18 hours a day to make this happen. If you spend any less than that, there's always a big line-up of people willing to take your place if you fall behind! So how's that for a realism overhaul? But in case that all came off as a bit too negative, here's a neat reminder that NASA's still doing awesome stuff, even outside of SpaceX contracting:

That's actually kinda what I did - remember, though, I'm using RO so the parts are different. I don't recall actually seeing those, but maybe I just missed them? I used mod parts that are fairly similar.

Sweet! Thanks! I'm glad to see logic and reason prevail. I've had to deal with a lot of bearucracy this year, so this is refreshing, lol. So, turns out ascent without it isn't so bad, but I'm definitely going to need to figure out how to make guidance work to get back to a runway... I splashed in the ocean, though, in (mostly) one piece. Turns out the simulation of where stuff is shielded from re-entry heating or not isn't very good for protecting RCS jets, and when the part-makers made these RCS jets they were thinking of orbit-only RCS units, not the kind that are on the nose of the space shuttle, so...

Currently have achieved orbit around the Moon. An Orion MPCV and Altair lander are currently docked and orbiting the moon. Detailed report later. EDIT: apologies, it's crunch time IRL on some projects, so real life is getting in the way of this right now...

Heyo. Okay, so there's that one rule... What if we write our own script in kOS? Isn't programming an ascent trajectory from scratch more difficult than using MechJeb, or even flying it manually? I'm thinking of taking up this challenge in realism overhaul with a precise Space Shuttle replica. So landing accurately with it is going to be ludicrously difficult, heck, making a landing kOS script would be freakishly difficult, too, dealing with actual re-entry heating, and requiring the insane precision that RSS will require... The accurate, guided re-entry part would have to be a summer project

So, I decided to start a thread on the progress of my space program. See, Realism Overhaul is a great deal of work, and takes a lot of time... Also the SLS is awesome. EDIT: So let me specify something - the title says "Constellation" in quotation marks. Although I'm not launching Ares LV's, I'm basically doing the same program but with the SLS. The plan is to return to the Moon, build a base there (developing the kOS software along the way), and use those lessons to try to make a Mars base. Landing multiple objects next to eachother on Mars is going to be HARD, but it's going to be easier on the Moon without any atmosphere, so I'll make kOS software that can do that, first, then worry about atmosphere later. Oh, yes - btw, I'm also using kOS, so the harder piloting-skill-requiring maneuvers will be completed autonomously. I'm doing this so I can get consistent performance out of my vehicles. /EDIT So, anyways, here's my "return to flight" - EM-1, an SLS Block I sends an Orion spacecraft around the moon. I use a mis-mash of various mods on a build of KSP that doesn't auto-update, since I don't want an update to break everything... Chaka Monkey Exploration Systems (CMES) and the IRL SLS launch (formerly in December of this year... ) November 2018 have inspired me to try making an SLS in RO. I did some tweaking, CMES's native SLS has some collision issues with trying to attach larger boosters, and is a few tons off, so I patched together an accurate SLS, myself, but still using CMES's fantastic Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS) / Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS). Anyways, the SLS is awesome. Take the Space Shuttle External Tank, stretch it longer, and stick 4 Space Shuttle Main Engines on the bottom to get the core. Add 2 extended (5 segments instead of 4) SRB's on the sides for boosters. Now, the SLS Block I will take a DCSS [Image1 Image2] and modify it to make the ICPS. I'm not sure what modifications they are, but they're pretty minor... Anyways, to get the performance of my rockets consistent, and so I don't have to fly for 5-20 minutes every time I launch something, and because it's cool and fun, I use kOS to automate the launches. I can talk a bit about how my ascent program works, but I'll save that for when I launch the SLS Block 1b, because I had some HUGE challenges with the ascent program and had to overhaul it to work with that. Suffice it to say, my program is incredibly robust in that it works for just about any rocket, but only if they have pretty high thrust/weight ratios on later stages. The SLS Block Ib (which uses a new, much bigger upper stage) has a second stage with SUPER low thrust, but more on that later... For now, enjoy my run-through of EM-1! ...Oh, by the by, "EASA" stands for "Equestrian Air and Space Agency" I somewhat recommend seeing the images much bigger, but I'll also put them here: I'm somewhat considering doing a Venus flyby or something, old Apollo-era style with a Skylab. Got some really cool art of it. [gallery1 gallery2] EDIT: Forget that style, I'm gonna throw in, say... 3? 5? or so highlight images from each mission! That will make this all a lot more interesting: Expand the spoiler to see EM-1's highlight album. ...I MAY have gone a bit overboard and past the 3-5. Full album is still available in the original post, above, but I have cut out quite a few and tried to make this the "Best of the best of the best". CLICK TO SEE EM-1 - FIRST LAUNCH OF THE SLS BLOCK I, THE RETURN TO DEEP-SPACE EXPLORATION WITH A CREWED FLYBY OF THE MOON.

Because instead of actually updating the installation instructions, or saying "these instructions are not valid again until RO updates", OP decided to add big red text that's only implicit rather than explicit, so OP sends conflicting messages by having the ckan installation instructions up, which explicitly tell you you can install RO with ckan (though this is no longer true, I guess), and red text that just tells you that RO has another update. For all I know the previous version of RO works with 1.2.2. I've seen plenty of games where not every single update breaks every mod. Sorry if I'm a little short, but it's been a crappy week and a "RO is not currently compatible with 1.2.2" would've been a sufficient [snip]

I'm not seeing RO on ckan...

So, I have a huge, delicate Realism Overhaul install that I keep from updating so mods on it don't break. I wanted to make an SLS replica, and went to make the Orion capsule, and thought I'd have to do a whole bunch of work to make an accurate one in RO by dredging up the old CMES mod and making it work in newer KSP. But alas, not only is the mod still up to date, and it isn't updated past my install of KSP so it's compatible - which is amazing - but there's been a lot of awesome work done on making it RO compatible!!! Holy crap, man, I freaking love you! This is like, the singular best thing to happen to me this entire week. You have no idea how freaking happy this makes me - and I nearly lost it to see the LDSD (big inflatable hypersonic deccelerators) parts set up for RO! So. Freaking. Awesome! All the love. Make a Patreon and I'll probably throw money at you. Though that might not be legal because this is a KSP mod, but also might be if it's not technically paying for it? I don't even know. Point is this is amazing and thank you for doing this! Parts I'm most happy about: 1. Altair lander descent stages. 2. Deep space long-duration habitat modules 2b. and their cupolas that look beautiful and aren't terribly oversized unlike the stock one 3. Hypersonic deccelerators to make big packages on Mars feasible 4. Orion MPCV 5. SLS. Though I am actually using a custom build for the Block I core, which according to this will use 4 RS-25's, not 5, but will use the CMES core for block Ia and II. But the ICPS and EUS are freaking life-savers. Again, all the love. This may only be #5 but it's my current project (SLS replica of all the currently planned flights) so I'm pretty freaking happy about it. Where's the add rep button? Does that just happen when I like one of your posts, or?...

I actually know that guy - Veon. Hopefully he'll reply to my messages I've modeled a lot of static things in my time. I don't think I've ever really done well, or great, but I do have some experience at least. I've dabbled in some characters, too, and turned up some decent results. But hey, thanks, it's good to know I'm not just missing something. That you know about Veon but nobody else is pretty telling that this may pretty much be the case (that nobody else has done it before aside from them).

So, there are a great number of tutorials available for modelling parts for KSP... But what if you want to model a character? Say, replace the kerbals with actual humans or something else entirely? How do you import those animations, textures, etc? What kind of poly count should I aim for?

This is why I use kOS. I made a C++ script to simulate an ascent and actually planned this thing out

I've actually noticed a similar problem that may be related - I've built a few craft now where the engines don't gimbal. I guess I have to use the stage command to ignite them in order for their gimbal to work? Also, question; I've noticed the Co2 scrubber produces water at a rate of 0.00329... So, in other words, in one day, the scrubber will dish out 284 liters of water per crew member? Is there a zero or a few missing here? I don't think my six kerbals are drinking a few liters a day and exhaling a thousand liters to the dehumidified out of the air... Tempting to get a big powerplant, an electralysis plant, collect the scrubbed water and turn it into Hydrolox fuel for a nearly unlimited fuel supply, though, limited only by my Lithium Hydroxide to keep the Co2 Scrubber running XD

Hey, I'm a RO/RSS user, and I've modified the Super100 config to work in RO. I was/am trying to create a lunar CSM, so I didn't need/want the built-in rockets, so sorry to say those aren't in the RO config. But in case you're interested.

Wow! Thanks for the awesome, nicely summarized update, here! I was just on the way to catastrophe having used only the link from the first page... Question about the images on the first page, though; what part-mods is that "Spacestation 16" using in that imgur album? I noticed some very nice-looking ISS-like modules. Well, darn it! I'm playing KSP to explore stuff in space - land on the moon, then move on to Mars and the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and even drop by Titan - but this is making Earth so spectacularly beautiful you're going to make me spend a tremendous amount of time making airplanes and flying around the planet instead of leaving it! Spectacular job. Btw, I think setting the atmosphere's scale to 50% on Scatterer makes it the most realistic looking. Flying at 30-50,000 feet in an airplane, I can take a picture with my phone and it looks like I'm in space - it even kind of looks like it to my eye, hah. The sky gets dark and atmosphere's haze drops low really fast. By 70,000 feet, sky should be pitch black and pretty low, yet on the default settings it looks like I'm at 70,000 feet when I'm at 200 km Not really complaining, though, it was pretty easy to fix once I figured out Scatterer's F10 gui configs. Also, way less buggy and more stable than earlier versions. That's definitely come a very long way. Grats Btw, are there any configs for the rest of the solar system yet? I think I'd actually have a good deal of fun making them, if there aren't. Name the folder after the body, set up Scatterer's config to include the planet - it didn't take that long to figure out Earth's. I could probably do the rest of the atmosphered bodies over the next few weeks if that would help (taking summer courses), and see if you like the product. I'm really shocked that Scatterer's config tool seems to naturally make sunsets/sunrises over Mars blue... Wow. I guess calculating things accurately are how it makes Earth so breathtaking, so it's only natural it would be accurate on Mars, but still, wow.

Not quite a colonization challenge like USI Kolonization - just something a bit more basic with the bare necessities I outlined earlier. Drill ice and minerals (all lumped into "ore"?), add the water to the life support systems and greenhouses and the minerals to the greenhouses to supplement the waste for fertilizing the greenhouse. Electrolyze some of the water to get oxygen for your life support systems. @VaPaL I think I still prefer TAC - not sure if USI is supported with RO, but more than that, having things individualized means you can have 3.5 days of water and 70 days of food - and then use a water purifier to take greywater and purify it, making those 3.5 days of water last 70 days. But if your mission is only 14 days, it makes more sense to pack all the water upright, since the purifier themselves tend to be rather heavy. Also for example, what I've outlined above wouldn't work with USI. Drilling ice gives you water, which you electrolyze into H2 and O2, and send some of the water into the ECLSS and some to a greenhouse for the plants, and the greenhouse would make food and consume waste. You'd also, almost certainly, have a water purifier on-board so you consume water a lot more slowly than any other resource - which wouldn't be true if you didn't bring a purifier.

Alright - I haven't replied in so long because I've been trying to gather up information to make a good reply. Apologies. So I've looked into things, poked around a bit - basically, the problem comes down to this: There's just not enough variety, or enough modules that really make sense for surface bases. So, the first question is what does a space colony look like to begin with? Well, here's a look. Bigelow is looking to set up inflatable habitats, partnered with NASA. But whenever I think of all the nitty-gritty logistics details, my brain just kinda locks up for some reason. These modules are connected. How did they get that way? They're also on their side, in terms of how you package things in a rocket, typically. You can arrange the rockets so it descends "on its side" (in the arrangement shown), but then balancing the center of mass and thrust vectors becomes tricky in Kerbal, where you really just have your eyes. All that aside, though, the one big thing is just the inflatable modules. I guess what I'd like to see is an RO adaptation of Porkjet's habitats. I used those in an older version of KSP, but here are the issues; a) Scaling: I'm honestly not sure if this is an issue or not - I could never tell just by looking if their scale was off, but RO does, in fact, use a different scale than vanilla KSP. b) TAC life support: It looks like USI-LS is in competition with TAC, but I use TAC just as a thing of habit - I think its' what RO originally used, if it even supports USI even now. I guess the bare necessities for a colony would be something to turn "ore" into water (and possibly turn water into LH2 and LOX with some electricity - there's already stuff that does that, but it'd be convenient to have that integrated in), and maybe "waste", if you have a greenhouse take "waste" and water to make food. Alternatively, you could cut the waste out (pun not intended, but relished nonetheless). Then you could set up a little research base with your bare minimum - greenhouse, extractor, refinery, and lab/habitat (powerplant is being lumped in with those, but this - especially if it's nuclear - would likely be yet another module). Will be one heck of a challenge to set all this stuff up on Callisto Maybe I could hop in and just DIY. Currently waiting on Porkjet's fixes for the latest update, though, ckan won't even let me download it at the moment, though of course I could grab it the ol'fashioned way...

I can't seem to find this mod on Ckan anymore... Did you pull it because of the centrifuge bug?

So, I'm updating my KSP and putting on all the mods I like for it - I go super mod-heavy, realism overhaul, real solar system, etc. etc. Basically, I want to simulate a space program, set a moon colony, Mars colony, maybe an asteroid mining base, and even set up a base on Callisto. Maybe pay Titan a visit, too. I'm going to need a lot of habitat parts, especially for the deep space stuff. But I don't see many habitat part mods that are compatible with RO. Habtech is probably the closest to what I want, though I'm not sure how it interacts with (or doesn't) life support system mods. Or Porkjet's Habitat pack. I think Kolonization systems makes it a lot more complex than I'm looking for, though it does look really neat. I just don't want to have to constantly manage the colony while I'm waiting for multi-year flights to leave/arrive. Any recommendations on which ones to get? If any?

Fantastic deal, here! I'm loving Realism Overhaul, and I always have to avoid everything stock because they just look really weird right next to real-looking parts. Now I don't think I'll have to avoid most of the parts any more! Lol. What visual mods are you using? That looks amazing!

I'll echo Felbourn here, and also add my 2 cents: First stage should start with ~1.2 to 1.4 thrust/weight. 1.5, 1.6 is getting a bit high. Any higher than 1.6 and it's going to be very hard, more than 1.8 is going to start to become impossible with burning up on the way up. 9,600 m/s is the standard I use, and I usually like a little extra to be safe. Second stage needs at least ~0.6, preferably more around 0.8 T/W at start to make it easier. There's no real reason to not go higher, though. 1 to 1.5 won't add too much engine mass, and will make dealing with gravity a breeze. Start climbing straight up, but then as early as 10 km altitude I like to be at about 70*, then slowly bring it over so that you're at ~40* or lower by 30 km. This is roughly the space shuttle's ascent trajectory, and it seems to work pretty well for pretty much all my designs. From there, watch your apoapsis - ideal is 100 km, 150 is acceptable, any lower than 100 km is going to be a bit dangerous. Also keep an eye on your vertical speed - make sure at first stage cutoff that you've got a good 500 - 800 m/s, if you've got a really low (0.6, 0.5) T/W on your second stage - then simply hold about 30 or 15* pitch and wait until your T/W climbs to about >1.1 or >1.2 to pitch higher than that to keep from plummeting. From there, simply adjust your pitch to try to keep vertical velocity nulled out, and cut off when you're at orbital velocity. (7,850 m/s for 100 km). [though I use mechjeb's report on my apoapsis and periapsis to determine when to cut off the engine(s)] Ehh, I may have made that sound a bit too complicated; but that's how I do it and it seems to be very efficient.

Just at the poles or all over? Also, this is obviously some sort of noise/randomization error with the terrain, but apparently there actually are places kind of like this IRL A good start might be to see if any planets or moons don't have this issue at the poles, and then try to see how their file/data structures are configured differently. I'll start poking around with that when I get some time. Also, are you using KSP 0.9 as well, or the newer versions? - - - Updated - - - N-body dynamics or microdragging or something - I think there was some mod that simulated microdragging, which is what this sounds like. Just a vague thing off the top of my head, though, but something to consider. --- Can confirm that some planets - at least Earth - work just fine at the poles: (This is Antarctica)