RizzoTheRat

After sending 3 Kommsats and a ScanSat to Duna last night, I discovered that trying to deploy satellites from with within an interstage faring compartment is pretty much impossible when you have a minute comms delay (RemoteTech). So back to a pre-launch save and Breaking Ground parts to the rescue.

It's easy to get a bit obsessed with it

I went to Duna. Now I freely accept this doesn't sound particularly impressive, but I'm rather proud of the fact that it was the first time I'd done it completely hands free, with the entire flight being done by my kOS script. After selecting the mission (Duna - Equatorial orbit) the only input from me was to change the camera position and switch to the map. Still a few bugs to iron out but it gets the job done. Apologies for the length of the video, I was planning on speeding bits of it up but then realised my video editing software is on my other computer, which is in a different country... Dunno why it defaults to rubbish quality though..

The lander would be way lighter than anything that can single stage it from Kerbin, and potentially the whole thing could be lighter as it doesn't need anywhere near as much fuel, but yeah it wouldn't be eligible for the K-Prize as that's about single stage to wherever space planes, which is a subset of fully reusable vehicles and excludes the most efficient way of doing the job

I really enjoy the early career game and have tended to start a new career with each new KSP version, meaning I don't have particularly big and cluttered saves. I usually do one mission at a time, so my current Duna mission is the only thing flying besides a couple of unmanned stations/landers around the Mun and Minmus, and my communications network. This means my save game is really easy to pick up if I've not played for a while. However I stopped playing for a year or so and had a bit of a detour though X4 (disappointing), Superhot VR (awesome but too short) and various other games before going back to KSP, and I realised the other day that I started back about a year ago and have been playing regularly since then. Different mods help keep my interest too, and I'm currently somewhat obsessed with kOS, which is a double edged sword when it comes to not playing for a bit, on the plus side I know I can put together a ship and fire it off to the Mun or Minmus, or at the moment up to the Duna mid course correction, without any issues. But on the negative side trying to debug code I wrote 6 months earlier and haven't looked at since can be tricky.

Never realised you could do that. Not a bad idea. Bloody annoying when you rescue about 3 pilots in a row. The most useless profession in the game IMO as all my craft get a probe core/RGS. I currently have one on a possible suicide mission just because I can't be bothered with the 20 seconds comms delay when I'm trying to debug a kOS script

I think I've got about 15, with the maximum I can have being 12. Gotta love rescue contracts

What's that you say Corley? No parachute? Yeah well I don't think it's going to be a problem Take 2, MOAR snacks!

I've spent most of this evening frustratedly watching not a lot happen. It turns out trying to debug the kOS script for my Duna mid course correction is a bit of pain when there's a 20 second communication delay (RemoteTech). I think in future career firsts out in deep space are going to involve sacrificial Kerbals! Oh and I'd forgotten how much of a pain the %&$£ Ike is!

Bear in mind an SSTO doesn't mean single stage to another body. A nuke powered craft capable of getting from LKO to the Mun and back which fits inside the cargo bay of an SSTO is a lot more efficient than lugging a load of useless wings and jet engines to the Mun.

The most efficient way to take off from an airless body is to give it just enough vertical velocity to clear the terrain, and then burn horizontal all the way. Therefore the most efficient way to land is to do the opposite, but it can be tricky to get right. The Apollo landers went for a constant rate of descent, pitching the lander up more a you slow, this works great for low TWR landers where your burn time is pretty long. Sadly it looks like @GoSlash27 post on his alternative Reverse Gravity Turn has sadly been borked by Photobucket In general though set a low orbit, but then drop the Pe above your target area, rather than trying to drop from a higher circular orbit. If you get the Pe right you can burn retrograde all the way to the ground. I personally prefer a constant rate of descent deceleration and come to a horizontal stop a decent distance above the target, not as efficient but it does prevent lithobraking incidents. The Vector engine, very high TWR

I really love managing to fulfil multiple contracts in a single launch, especially when you can piggy back your own stuff like a KommSat on the same launch for free.

It means I have to learn how to do it

I have a few but they're not hard and fast rules I don't use manoeuvre nodes. I'm doing as much as I can via kOS, and prefer to do all the calcs and manoeuvres in my code. This means no putting in a node and moving it about until I get the intercept I want, and forces me to understand the maths behind it. Unfortunately every so often something goes wrong and the pilot has to take over, but I'm working on having some additional bits of code to allow various manoeuvres to be done outside of my main programme. I also try and avoid using PIDs for the same reason but that probably only makes sense to kOS users. I try to avoid leaving debris in space, but don't always succeed. I usually aim for stage burnout just before circularisation, and later in the (career) game I switch to SSTOs to avoid dropping junk. But sometimes it's unavoidable and I'm not bothered about clearing it up, but it does mean I have a lot less junk in LKO than if I didn't keep an eye on it. I don't hire kerbals. Everyone I have besides the original 4 is a rescue...or as I like to think of indentured servant. Standard rules of salvage, if you need me to rescue you, your cheeks belongs to me! Is that a glitch or is it due to the momentum of the docking craft? Not thought about it before but it'd be interesting to see if docking from different ends has different effects.

Nice writeup, cheers. I'll have a read through in depth later.

If you set your parachute to open reasonably high up you should have enough time to eva the crew, have one of them take the science from the lab, and then jump and use their own parachute. I'm not 100% sure how well having 2 of them on chutes at the same tie works, but I'd expect it to be ok if they stay within physics range. If not you could experiment with the impact tolerance of a kerbal. Parachute one away with the science and leave the other one hanging on the ladder on the side of the lab.

According to google the fastest prop is the TU-95 Bear, and thanks to it's supersonic blade tips it can be detected by underwater microphones designed to detect submarines I guess supersonic tipped ducted fans would be a bit quieter but sure'y the shrouds would take a hell of a beating from the shocks?

Manned landings. First the Mun Moon then on to Mars. It's probably not the most efficient way to explore, but they're more versatile than robotic missions and will hopefully lead the way to some kind of resource extraction and use. Plus of course a return to the moon will probably be the biggest news story of a generation and hopefully spark a lot more interest in both space exploration and in science in general.

Their health and safety record is worse than Boeings though

That's about Mach 1 at sea level isn't it? I guess the physics doesn't model the blade aerodynamics In real life the record is about Mach 0.8

You need the KAL-1000 controller as well as the hinges. You add the hinges to the controller and then set up the position against time for each hinge on that controller. There's a few tutorials around but I've only used them for simple preprogramed deploy/stow actions rather than controllable movement. I found this video quite good to understand how the KAL-1000 works

Breaking Ground or the FireSpitter mod are what you need for robotic arms, although there are some specific mods like Canadarm. However I don't know if a way to tie it to a control stick. In BG you can set up action groups to individual controllers so could potentially have an action group that manipulates all the joints to move the end of the arm in a specific direction, but you'd need a lot of action groups, and then map the action groups to the directions on your stick. I believe IR's Sequencer works in a similar way too. Another option would be to build your own controller in kOS but that would take a while too.

The advanced grabbing unit (AKA The CLAW) can grab on to anything, so is one option. Another option is just to send another vessel with a couple of empty seats (eg a Mk1-3 capsule with only 1 pilot on board) to rendezvous but don't dock. Just get fairly close (100m or so will do) and then kill your relative velocity (clicking on the blue bit above the docking ball cycles it between Surface, Orbit and Target velocities), then EVA the crew and use their backpacks (R to switch to RCS mode) to fly them across to the rescue ship. If you've not already got the hang of Orbital Rendezvous it's a skill you're going to need so this is a great opportunity to learn/practice it. Plenty of forum threads and instructional videos around on how to do it and it is a tricky thing your head around to begin with but once you get the hang of it it's actually pretty easy. eg

Fantastic! I keep meaning to have a look at how to make sounds just to give me alerts when different phases of programmes run (rather than the all to often default beep when they don't run!), but that is freaking awesome!

Decided to completely overhaul my kOS scripts, as it was getting pretty messy and hard to slot new functionality in. As a result my space programme is not progressing in the slightest at the moment. After several bug related failures I got atmospheric launch and circularisation running last night with a test launch of my next planned mission. Still need to put in the code to wait for the right Phase angle before launch before I do a live launch though (4 RemoteTech Kommsats and Scansat equipped science probe as my first mission of the career to Duna). I'll then rebuild the Interplanetary burn, braking burn, etc as the mission progresses. I already had the menu structure to build the mission file on bootup (eg New Mission -> Duna -> Equatorial Orbit) but now implement the mission file differently, so for example timing the launch for the correct phase angle or inclination now happens as part of the Launch function not the Mission builder. Hopefully this will simplify things a lot, and make picking up a mission part way through from an autosave a lot easier, and trust me, when you're learning kOS you use autosave and revert a LOT. I've got a little while before I need to worry about the fact my current menu structure allows for 10 items but there's 17 bodies in the standard solar system... I'm also planning to add in an option to just execute a node (well over 1000 lines of code and I don't actually have a function to do that yet :D), and one to refuel a vessel docked at a station. Tempted to start a kOS tutorial/blog as well as I found it quite hard going to begin with.