Fearless Son

I rescued Elbal Kerman from orbit using this sporty little executive spaceplane: Worked great, got to orbit easily with plenty of fuel to spare, glided down toward KSC in a controlled manner, except... ... for some reason whenever I got over the runway, but before touching down, one of the wings would suddenly shear off. I cannot really explain why. I was not executing any particularly excessive maneuvers, other than some minor course adjustment, and it has been through plenty worse on both the way up and the way down. I had a quicksave some kilometers out from the runway, and it did it every time I tried to land. Darndest thing. I eventually landed at KSC before reaching the runway. Handled the low speed just fine, touched down smoothly, breaking was easy. Just something about that runway though...

Possible? Yes, though your estimation of its capabilities is a bit... Optimistic.

I think that this idea is having trouble because reactive armor is directional- you want the blast to channel the energy away from the hull. Unfortunately, KSP's physics modeling for explosions might not account for the shapes of the structural panels around those fuel tanks beneath the hull as fully channeling an otherwise circular point force calculation. However, the engine is set up to calculate vectored explosive forces in a particular circumstance, namely that of virtually any rocket engine ever, which is how any self-powered lander breaks before touching down. But most particular to this would be a set of upward-thrusting Seperatrons, triggered to go off just before hitting the ground, and arresting the velocity shortly before terminal impact. Unfortunately unlike reactive armor, this cannot be an event automatically triggered by the detection of external forces, and you would have to trigger it manually, making timing and quantity tricky to measure. On the plus side, plenty of lander capsules do this in real-life too!

Have you considered using a sub-assembly with a heat shield attached to a docking port? Send your reusable craft with one of those attached and do the aggressive aerobreaking. Then when the heat shield is depleted beyond its usefulness, detach that docking port and attach a fresh one in its place. You could dock several of them at a single station and then change them over during your lander's regular rendezvous. Maybe have docking ports on each side of the heat shield so you can transport and hold them all in a "stack" and attach from both sides. Then just attach your lander to one side, detach the other, and off you go. Sure the external hatch will burn up in the atmosphere, but the sub-assemblies are supposed to be expendable anyway. Just detach the old worn one before you do your corrective burn after aerobreaking and it will fall into Kerbin's atmosphere on its next pass and deorbit, clearing out the debris.

I have to say, that is an excellent looking light passenger spaceplane. It looks pretty easy to fly compared to some of the designs I have seen, really low drag profile probably means an efficient ascent.

Aye, I suppose you could. You could make the different colors though, which you cannot do on the Kerbals. Come to think of it, some avionics nosecones might be a good idea, if only because not every Kerbal who gets into one of these is necessarily going to be a trained pilot.

In fairness, it is a very Kerbal truck.

It does look like a prime spot for a pair of headlights though...

What Corw said. I like to use mono-prop engines when I want something cheap and light, like a satellite. Particularly when I want to build it really small, like a tiny sat that gets deployed from a large vessel making an interplanetary journey. I find a few RCS control points and a pair of mono-propellant engines on a small tank gets me plenty of maneuvering options without driving up cost or complexity.

It a "grabber" type to nab stuff in orbit and destroy it via atmospheric insertion? Would not want you to catch Kessler Syndrome...

SAS will use any available means of adjusting craft orientation you give it, which means if you have RCS enabled it will use RCS. My advice is to keep the SAS on for most of a docking procedure, but do not leave the RCS enabled the entire time. Only turn on the RCS when you need to gently thrust the craft, disable it when you need to change the craft's orientation. So for example, drift slowly toward your docking target, use SAS without RCS to adjust the orientation, then turn on RCS to adjust your approach vector. Disable RCS again and let it coast in on momentum. Re-enable RCS to make correction maneuvers, and disable it again when you go back coasting. Repeat as necessary until your ships are docked. Also, as soon as the docking ports begin to make contact, disable the SAS. The docking ports will use magnetic forces to pull the ships into final alignment with each other, and the SAS will resist that change in orientation, potentially causing the docking to fail and result in a bounce. Assuming you are stable to begin with, turn off the SAS at the last second and let the magnets do their work.

Many players like to clear debris out of orbit for safety's sake (I certainly do) but the odds of actually hitting anything accidentally are literally astronomical. Actually making a successful interception of something in an orbit is a challenge in itself (one that many players have to master for rendezvous reasons.)

Not directly KSP related, but I did finish installing a bunch of new computer components last night. Hopefully this means I can dock ships of increasingly high part counts without slowing my framerate to a chug. Installing those meant my computer was half disassembled and uninstalled the last few days, so I have been missing my KSP fix. Looking forward to getting back into it.

I think that the "parts" discussion is relevant to those issues. Having different sizes and power levels of the same kind of functional part can help keep the part count down to something reasonable. For example, if you start building a bigger ship, you might be needing to add more engines to bring up the thrust-to-weight ratio. However, that also ups the part count. But if you could have another engine that does in one part what those smaller engines could do in four (in terms of weight, ISP, fuel consumption, etc,) you can keep the thrust-to-weight ratio the same while keeping the part count down. In terms of development effort, asset shuffling produces a clear "bang for the buck", while strictly code optimization is more difficult, bug-prone, and harder to predict how much end gains you get out of all that effort.

One thing I would like to see is more options for hollow "structural" parts for large ship or base building. For example, the structural fuselage part makes a great small "spacer" tube that you can imagine Kerbals crawling between, as a connecting piece for hab modules or offset external crew modules on a ship. But the problem is the only come in one size, which means if we need more spacing we have to either up the part count or substitute other bits (I have seen people use solid rocket boosters sans-fuel for this purpose instead.) Some examples of what extended structural elements are good for are putting some distance between connected hab modules on a surface base, or building a torus around a ship or station. Or heck, just some aesthetic additions that will not kill you on the added weight (some minor weight is a fine trade off for style though.)

Career. I find the limitations of funding fuel my creativity. It gives me concerns like, "How cost-effective would this launch be?" and "What should my next big space center upgrade goal be?" That in turn is fodder for my imagination for challenges I impose upon myself.

The curve is quite steep, but this is a game that rewards persistence and a willingness to endure failure for the sake of learning. It is pretty light on the hand-holding, and largely dumps you into the shallow end of a big pool and lets you figure out how to swim from there. Some people might recommend you start with the sandbox for maximum freedom, but personally I find the freedom a bit too overwhelming at first. I would recommend career mode first because it limits what you can do in the beginning, which gives you a chance to build up a few concepts before you can start seeking more ambitious goals.

I assume the command chair is inside the utility bay? I do not know if you have a mobility enhancer inside there, but I would recommend one if you do not. Not all planets are going to have gravity conducive to jetpacking up there, and the design is a little hard to clammer over to get to the control seat.

If you have powerful enough rotational torque, you can possibly flip the craft around. It may not be geometrically favorable, resulting in a "roll" more than "flip", but there are things you can do with just that. For example, variable geometry like landing legs can change the shape of the craft, letting you roll it in unusual ways. This is particularly useful if you can lower and raise individual landing legs in the middle of a roll and possibly "bounce" from the force of it deploying. This can in turn allow you more freedom to use your torque, or impart enough force for the RCS to right it, or just get pointing in approximately the right direction for the engines to lift the lander on minimal power so you can correct the orientation. Incidentally, I find SAS can be both a hindrance and a help while landing. On the one hand, it helps keep the craft pointing in one direction. On the other hand, the craft needs to "settle" on the ground to be stable and if the landing is not perfectly perpendicular to the surface (it almost never is) then the SAS might actually try to fight against the craft settling and overcompensate, making the craft more likely to tip than not. It is good to get a feel for deactivating and re-activating the SAS as the craft lands.

Over the last couple of days, I accepted several contracts, most prominently taking a tourist to the Mun and back and taking gravioli readings at three nearby points on the Munar surface. I tried to do all of them at once by building a 3.5 rocket with radial engines and a rover in an internal bay. I get a little paranoid about running out of fuel during Mun landings, so I added a bit more to the transfer stage while still in LKO: Still paranoid, I gave it another fuel injection once it got to Munar orbit after having discarded its transfer stage in and used its radial engines. Finally, we managed to touch down a few kilometers away from our target zone during the night. I realized too late that I had forgotten to add landing lights if we had to do a night landing, but managed to make it safely to the surface anyway with the perpendicular lights projected by the rover in its bay. I waited until the sun was up before starting the day's work. Bill and Songar managed to get the rover out of its housing, but accidentally broke some of the rocket's solar panels in the process. Oops! Better stow those before deploying the rover next time. We ended up traveling three and a half kilometers from the landing site to reach the furthest measurement site. The rover was a pain to control, often flipping, though the RCS thrusts helped keep it grounded, flipped it when it needed to be righted, and gave it traction when it desperately needed it. The crater in particular was a navigational pain, we tried going around it but would occasionally fall in and have to navigate through it anyway. One or both Kerbals fell out of their seats more than once and will need to be treated for whiplash when they get back. Still, it managed to soldier on, only losing a single solar panel during a particularly bad flip. We started running out of power and monopropellant on the way back, and at least one cause of that became apparent: Kerbin eclipsed the sun. We had just enough to coast back to the rocket. Next time I think I will use a small monopropellant-driven EVA navigation system instead. Still a little worried about fuel, but fortunately we had enough to get back to Munar orbit, then I decided to chance a least-fuel exit burn back to Kerbin intercept. We seemed to have just enough! We orbited once, passing over our landing on the way out of Munar orbit. We can still see the abandoned rover from here! Or initial aerobreaking might have been a mite too aggressive, but other than some scary warning lights blinking, nothing catastrophic happened. Subsequent areobreaking passes were much more thermally gentle. Forgot to get a picture of our splashdown, but we did successfully recover everyone and the rocket.

A picture of the Falcon's concept art, for the curious: (Mostly sharing because I happen to be friends with the concept artist who designed it.) Actually I could see a Kerbal version of this, with a sealed cockpit up front and an open bay with a few command chairs inside for passengers.

Wow, I wish those were stock! The Sepratron is great, but the game really needed inline versions with the new aerodynamic model.

I think in this context it may be like, "I am overwhelmed with the amount of of ways I could possibly try things, can you show me some reliable examples to inspire my own work?" At least, that is why I spend so much time going over the forums.

Last night I built a probe-controlled cargo dropship for landing modular base components on extra-Kerbin surfaces. It has enough fuel to ascend to 58 km over Kerbin's surface from sea level under its own power, so it should be plenty for places like the Mun or Minmus. The landing gear and hull are all rated for up to 50 m/s impacts, so it can take hard landings if it has to. In the event it becomes unbalanced after landing, I have confirmed that it can tuck in its gears and panels and it can roll itself to an upright state on its reaction wheels before redeploying its gear. The vehicle is symmetrical, so its unloaded balance is excellent and it drains all its fuel evenly so controlling it as it goes in to land should be simple and responsive. I call it "The Base Bus": [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/E2BtzQf.jpg[/IMG]

If RPG is correct, then it sounds like it would be a good idea to have Aerospike LFBs in the lower atmosphere that you can detach after getting some kilometers up, and use a Vector as your main thrust engine once that gives out.