moogoob

Hello everyone again! Ever since the Nastybird 2, I've been playing with that form factor. It took a while, but I finally got around to trying the Vector as a main engine. It's super-powerful, compact and efficient - and shuttles were what it was made for, after all! These are a family of 3 -\ The Nastybird 4, an all-purpose shuttle that can transport 4 Kerbals, plus a pilot and co-pilot AND a ~1-ton satellite. It can easily do crew rotations at an orbiting station or rescue missions. The Nastybird 4 - Nastylab edition is a science-oriented vessel, intended for role-play mostly. I can't really think of many practical reasons for why you might need it, other than perhaps for the extra Kerbal storage. The Cargobird 3 is, despite the number a full member of the Nastybird 4 family. It sheds the docking port and passenger cabin in favour of an extended cargo bay. This model needs boosters to get off the ground, but can space a whole interplanetary probe mission in one launch. All four models fly similarly and can easily land at KSC for full recovery of everything but the drop tanks. (and payload, of course. ) They feature parachutes for landing in water or rough terrain and are easy on re-entry so long as you follow my instructions. Behold: Instructions: Ascent: Just do a gravity turn like normal - MJ can handle this fine without much trouble. The Nastybird 4 and Nastylab both have a slight issue with developing a slight roll to one side during ascent - be sure to correct manually or your orbit might be at an odd inclination. The Cargobird is a bit tougher as it's much heavier, in fact during the stratoscpheric part of your ascent it actually relies quite a bit on it's wings' lift. This is normal - as long as your time to ap keeps going up you should be fine. Remember to stage off your drop tanks before you fully circularize if you want to avoid orbital debris! Also, remember to engage either the main or backup fuel cell located in the service/cargo bay, or you may run out of power and that would be bad. Lastly, I'd seriously suggest limiting the main engine's thrust to 50% or lower once on internal fuel - if only for the fictional Kerbonaut's comfort. Re-entry: Schedule a burn to bring your Pe down to about 15km and centered somewhere east of KSC. I use MJ's landing prediction and put the blue marker somewhere in the eastern sea. Then, pump ALL your remaining fuel into the front tank to adjust your centre of mass. If there's too much (3/4ths of max, for example) left, you might be too unstable in descent. Then, adopt a 45 degree or higher angle, engage both air brakes and elevon flaps and hold on. Keep this high angle-of-attack until your velocity falls below 1100m/s, then make a decision: If you're close to or over KSC, keep the AoA until you go subsonic, then glide into a landing, turning around if need be. Use bursts of your engine to keep up air speed if you go too far downrange. If you're still uprange from the landing strip, you may want to enter hyperglide, To do that, just disengage the brakes and flaps and point your nose forward. Then see how long you can keep up some absurd Mach number without engine power - you can go a pretty large distance if you keep a gentle drop. When you get closer to KSC, drop your nose and descend even faster into thicker air and slow down a bit before landing. Action Groups: 1:Start fuel cells 2:Toggle docking port 3:Toggle cargo/service bay doors 4:Unlock front-wheel steering AND toggle front gear light Lights: Toggle cosmetic cockpit and crew cabin lights Gear: Is self-explanatory Brakes: Activates A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. and landing gear brakes. Abort: does nothing. Download link: Dropbox (If you don't have Mechjeb installed, grab the files labeled "No Mechjeb") If anyone uses this I'd love to hear what you think!

BUT WHEN WILL THEN BE NOW?

I use Tarot cards of the Major Arcana, and group them based on main engine. Swivel/Reliant: Magician I, II, II-B, III, IV, IV-B Thud: Tower I, II Skipper: Strength I, I-B, II-B Mainsail: Chariot I, II, III, IV Heavy Twin Boar: Heirophant I Rhino: Empress I-B, II-B Mammoth: Emperor I, II, III, IV Heavy Vector: Death 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (depends on number of clustered Vectors) A "-B" means the addition of boosters. Increments in the number (I, II, III, IV) usually indicate increasing size/diameter of upper stages and thus size and fuel levels of the main stage. For example, a Strength I has a Justice US (Size-1 upper stage with Terrier) whereas a Strength II has a World US (Size-2 Poodle powered upper stage). My upper/transfer stages are: Spark: Hermit US (Uses the round-8; it's my current favourite lightweight probe launching upper/transfer stage) also Spark: Temperence (Using Size-1 fuel tanks - not used as often since the 1.0 aero changes and nerfing of the once-overpowered Spark) Terrier: Justice US Poodle: World US Skipper: Strength US (Matches naming convention for launchers with the same engine) Rhino: Empress US (One of my favourite "brute force" upper stages. Great for everything from big rovers to fuel tankers or station parts.)

I am SO downloading this when I get home. Laythe, here we come!

I totally forgot! My second manned trip to Jool back in 0.23.something had a ring of four probes around it for sprinkling liberally on the Jool system.

I once put a sattellite around Duna, as well as a surface lander in one launch. Launched them just stacked on top of each other and attached to the transfer stage, then separated once I'd done the capture burn. You could easily extend this to 3, 4 etc probes. Heck, it's been done several times in real life - Cassini/Huygens and that recent comet probe come to mind.

Damn, that's cool! What a drastic difference that 10x size modifier over real-life scale makes.

Not all today, but imgur was offline last time I felt like uploading, so here's a couple albums! [imgur]W58k8[/imgur] [imgur]Hoit8[/imgur] And one for good luck:

Ha! I never think to do low sun passes.

I use sandbox mode and SOMETIMES (if I'm in a hurry or testing for interplanetary landings) hyperedit, unless I'm just recreating a design I know will work cause I've built dozens in its basic style.

I made a little Virgin Galactic-style suborbital hop plane once... I didn't prefer it over a normal launch, but the benefits of being able to use more efficient engines in the high atmosphere IS tempting. The problem I found was getting that combo of TWR and efficiency that makes air launch into an actual orbit useful. Ended up just using a Thud clipped into the craft, for TWR reasons. That said, for a suborbital hop it's a fun little flight, and I can see why space tourists are wanting to plop down six figures.

Already do the first, sometimes do the second but I've found that for many designs you need a lot of RCS thrusters (and monopropellant) to un-flip a rover that's gone upside-down, which would be my biggest use for them. High-speed roving control would be my second. As to grip etc. A. I'm hoping Squad's put some attention on wheels re: 1.1 as their physics are kind of funny right now and B. I tend to drive slowly. Euro Truck Simulator 2 (which has been eating into my KSP playing time) has taught me patience - better to get there safely, sanely and in one piece than to risk flipping your truck on a highway interchange and losing the whole mission's profits. Of course, if you WANT to race on the moon, that's fine too. I'd give that one some bigger engines though. At that point, wheels are only holding it back.

I've been making a lot of rovers recently, for something to do until 1.1 What I like is that they are a DIFFICULT payload, and force you to really think. First you need to make a car. That works. Preferably at night as well. AND you need to test it. Then you need to somehow make your car fly, usually with a simple skycrane setup. I use them as I can then just land the rover on its own wheels, no flipping the rover off the top of a landing stage or anything, then just fly them away to a safe distance once your cargo is on Luna Firma. THEN you need to somehow attach this (often off-balance) contraption to a transfer stage. THEN you need a big enough rocket to lift it, and not flip out because rovers are as aerodynamic as a piece of toast and fairings are broken in the current version. So yeah, I like them as a challenge to get anywhere. THEN you get to drive ;em, and that's a whole other set of challenges.

And in Space Engine. Would love it when/if the other planets get the Mun's style of procedural crater system. Adds a lot to the place, and makes rovers neat as there are actually things to look at and photograph. It CAN make landings harder, though. I'd aim for the centre of the craters if I felt I could drive out of them without flipping my rovers. (if you can't tell, I'm in a bit of a rover binge.)

You might have an alternate patched conics display mode active - the default connects all the trajectories, that one seems to be moon-centric. The closest I've come to a "crazy" trajectory also involves Jool. I launched a mission, but didn't want to wait for a true hohmann transfer so did a higher-energy one instead - maybe an extra 500 to 1000 m/s ejection from Kerbin. What was crazy is that my fuel reserves were too low to both capture AND hit both of Jool's outer two moons once the extra energy was taken into account. So, I asked in the advice forum and got "do a Tylo slingshot!". En route, I learned how and executed said slingshot from all the way out between Dres and Duna's orbits, winding up with a final total capture AND plane change burn of UNDER 1000 m/s, and from a high-energy transfer too. Low energy transfers don't even need a burn if you use Tylo effectively. So, not all that crazy but at the time I thought it was so.

There are people who don't do this?!? Some of my best designs (Angrybird, Nastybird, several rovers, SAS Death family of launchers...) come from daydreaming.

I'd rather have sequential damage on parts - have engine exhausts scorch and smolder things rather than explode them immediately, for example. Or have minor collisions crumple, dent or scratch up parts. But yeah, it would be neat if there was a difference between "took a chunk out of the VAB" and "took out the VAB" too.

A space ladder would be sufficient for Gilly.

Sandbox mode - my rover design save (SMS Automotive). Sent a rover to the mun. Then I wanted to drive it, so I sent its designer, Bill, to the the mun. Then I felt bad for Bill and had Jeb pilot a habitiation base and land it nearby. All in all, a good test of the equipment. It's been a while since I did a mun landing, never mind three to the same spot in one sitting.

Heavy landing pads (like on the Nostromo from Alien) would be good too - flat, low-clearance but perfect for underside of larger bases and other heavy things.

It would be an instant fix to the "stuck antenna" problem at the same time.

I.. like.. tank butts and I cannot lie! XD Anyways, there are quite a few clamoring for the removal of butts. Squad themselves said they were testing a system by which certain inline engines might re-size themselves to disclude the butt when attached to smaller nodes.

One little tip to anyone who updates from a previous version: you can clear up 20+GB that are left over from your previous install by running Disk Cleanup afterwards. Among them are several gigabytes of leftover install files that outright tell you to delete them, and some that you can delete if you don't think you'll be downgrading to win 7. Thought some might find this handy.

0. I think there might have been a number there once, when I tried installing KW Rocketry or something. None of my current mods use it. *shrugs*

I use it all the time. Because it's the only size 3 engine that can fit in-line with the size 3 decoupler, it's a great choice for giant upper stages. A rhino, big tank, size-3 fairing, size-2 reaction wheel, batteries, mechjeb and mounting hardware is my Empress upper stage. Sometimes you can even launch them as a launch stage with a small enough payload. I mostly use them for the biggest payloads - lifting 160 tons of fuel into LKO, for example is in the upper range of the Empress' capabilities.