xendelaar

Damn Slashy. That's a sweet little vessel you've got there. I would love to see you fly that thing into space. I bet i couldn't even get that thing above 15km.

Nice Challenge! Here's my entry for version 1.0.4: I was aiming for a 1.0t SSTO vehicle but that sadly didn't work out. So now I'm stuck with this 1.1t piece of junk . With some better flying skills, I bet it would be possible with less fuel. We're good to go! Counting down... We're right on track Apoapisis of 75km... 413 dV left... I think we're gonna make it. Setting up final node Starting burn Mission accomplished! We have a stable orbit. Here's the money shot

Nice Challenge! Here's my entry for version 1.0.4: I was aiming for a 1.0t SSTO vehicle but that sadly didn't work out. So now I'm stuck with this 1.1t piece of junk . With some better flying skills, I bet it would be possible with less fuel. We're good to go! Counting down... We're right on track Apoapisis of 75km... 413 dV left... I think we're gonna make it. Setting up final node Starting burn Mission accomplished! We have a stable orbit. Here's the money shot

Here's my entry of the K-PRize Challenge! It's nothing fancy or anything. I was going for a small/ light ship. I managed to build a 6t SSTO- ship ( with 18 parts). Here she is... the K-prize SSTO. Weighs 6 tonnes Ready for lift off I still don't know what the best ascend profile is... But I guess this works I have no idea what I'm doing We're in orbit! hurray for me! Getting back to the KSC... and we're coming in hot A nice view of the KSC We're almost there Touchdown! Time for some ice cream! Or visit my Flickr Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHskkhhK69

Wow! Amazing reports Hagen! Thanks for your interesting stories I didn't have time to read them all but I sure will soon!

sweet report Why does your Rover have fins? They look cool though!

Hagen van Tronje convinced me to try this challenge. Since I'm a rover newbe I started with circumnavigating Minmus with STOCK Parts only. I didn't check any other designs because I wanted to engineer my own Rover without any knowledge. When I got to the drawing board I thought, "what's important for a rover on minmus"? My first thoughts were: Enough delvta V vertical stabilizers to stay on the surface enough reaction wheels front bumpers for bumps in the road back bumpers to protect the engine So after toying a bit around I build this monstrosity: delta V budget: 1500 m/s drill and ore converter 3 ion engines for vertical stabilization (TWR 0,05) 1 nuke engine for propulsion (TWR 0,1) After building my Rover I build a transfer vessel and went to Minmus. You can check the complete mission album on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHskkc5Pms The mission was a success! It was very interesting to circumnavigate Minmus. The scenery is quite nice and driving 180 km isn't as tedious as one might think. My top speed was 50 m/s. And I only used 700 delta V. I never even had to use the drill haha. I'm such a n00b. It took me about two hours to complete the challenge. I've learned a lot during the mission. For my next rover I'll have to include some rocket powered brakes. Also I need more downward thrust and perhaps some upward thrusters to aid steep drops.

Hagen, I've got Planet Shine. Are there any other visual enhancement mods available at the moment? I just finished the cave man challenge so I'm up for the Elcano Challenge. I'm building my rig as we speak. I Can't wait to test my rover

I just finished the cave man challenge. I didn't take pictures so I don't have much proof. I just wanted to say that it was very interesting to design and fly my vessels with the set restrictions. I really missed KERs inclination data! It did make it much more satisfying when I first got an encounter with Minmus. I tried to get an encounter with Duna but that didn't work out. Props for all you guys who got to Duna and beyond. Thanks for the great Challenge Slashy! Like I said before, I didn't take any pictures of my Kerbin-, Mun- and Minmus- missions... but I do have some "proof"... I hope it's enough so I can collect my badge Cave Man Challenge by Cave man Challenge by

45+ hours. .. for one mission. .. that's impressive man! You must have some real patience and determination skills.

Thanks hagen for your kind reply. You've convinced me to try and circumnavigate minmus. I'm currently working on the cave man challenge but when I'm done with that i will try to circumnavigate minmus. I can't wait. I do have to read up on the whole braking bug issue. Never heard about that before. On a side note. ...aren't the biggest rover wheels capable of withstanding a velocity of 200 m/s ? (I can't check because I'm not at home) It sounds like they would work well in these situations.

Awesome blog slam jones. Very interesting. I think I'm going to use that.

How long does it take to perform a typical circumnavigation trip? This thread ignited some interest in me but it still sounds like a 2 hour waiting game. ... (even without all the crashes). The engineering part sounds like a really cool challenge though.

I build my miner landers as a streamlined rover/space plane. I put the whole mining rig on a set of wheels and lift the vehicle vertically from Kerbin, so drag is hardly an issue . On any given moon, I land the miner on its wheels so it doesn't matter if I'm on a slope. I normally use the airplane wheels, which have those cool 100% energy efficient lights XD. Landing on airplane wheels also has the benefit that you can save some delta V (30-50 m/s)by landing with some remaining velocity. Use can use the brakes to dissipate the energy. This is, of course, not relevant for mining rigs with an ore converter, since you have an unlimited supply of fuel if you land on the right spot... - - - Updated - - - However.. lifting off (from the moon) does require some extra torque from reaction wheels, since the engine is oriented horizontally (assuming you've landed on a flat area)

Hi everybody. First of all, thank you for all the quick and interesting responses. This community is a real special thing. Everybody is so friendly and eager to share their ideas. It's awesome!!! Steelsunoa: Planning/designing my rockets in excel is half the fun for me. I just love fiddling around to create an even better way of designing my rockets. I already use the rocket equation to calculate most of my needs. Just like Slashy, I calculate the optimum engine using the reversed rocket equation on all engines simultaneously. I then choose which setup is best based on weight and complexity. CanTab: 5 km is really low. If this is the case then perhaps it's not worth the hassle to find the physics and the math to solve this problem. On the other hand... It's still a nice puzzle I'll check my own ISP-Altitude graphs when I get home from my vacation abroad (which is tomorrow). mhoran: thanks for the info. I'm going to read them right after finishing this post! I know it's really complex to solve this problem analytically, but I'm trying to find a way of better guesstamating the design of the highest stage. For me, anything is better than just doing stuff randomly as I'm doing right now... Slashy: Your excel sheet looks a lot like mine! I think we're doing the same thing (more or less ). I also ignore the influence of the atmosphere mostly at the moment (save the initial TWR) but I'm hoping of optimizing my designs. Reading all these comments I doubt that I will be able to gain a little even if I'm able to "crack da code"... but we'll see. As a first step.. I was thinking of calculating my vertical velocity at a given inclination with a fixed TWR. That way, I know how long it takes to reach the point where vacuum engines perform better. I believe the wiki info displays the fuel consumption rate per engine, so that way I'm able to calculate how much juice I need to get there. It's not perfect and it probably won't work, but it's something I will test it tomorrow when I get back. - - - Updated - - - Slashy, you made sheets for calculating burn timing, resonant orbits and transfer windows??! Oh my Science! That's awesome. That must have been quite a lot of work!

My craft names are pretty boring. First word is the location it's meant going to.. followed by its mission and version number Some examples Jool-5 v1 Minmus miner v1 Mun Science rover v2

Hi everybody, I like to plan my expeditions using excel. I made this sheet that calculates the lightest engine setup for a given: Payload TWR desired delta V budget current altitude from kerbin (because the ISP changes as a function of the atmospheric height) Calculating a setup in vacuum is easy with my sheet. However. Getting into LKO is a little bit more difficult. Below approximately 10-15km, the ISP for vacuum engines drop rapidly. In that case atmospheric engines are better suited. I tried to calculate how much delta V I need to get from 70km to 15km and from 15km to 0 km, but I'm not able to figure out all the math. The ascend profile and drag losses make it too difficult for me. So I'm still stuck at guessing the required vacuum delta V (say 1800 m/s) and then slapping an atmospheric engine with a budget of 1700 or something on the bottom of my setup (my total delta V is approximately 3500 m/s to get in to orbit). Although this approach always works, it doesn't feel like a very efficient way of designing a rocket. So here's my question: I was wondering how you boys and girls calculate the "best" rocket setup to get a given payload to orbit. With "best" I mean lightest setup. Do you use a rule of thumb to get the right setup, like 40% atmospheric engine(s) and 60(%) vacuum engine(s)? Or even better: is there a way of calculating the delta V budget to get to a certain altitude (at a certain flight angle and set TWR). I would love to expand my excel sheet with more maths... XD Also, how many stages do you guys normally use to get to orbit?

I'm currently sitting in this luxurious resort with my girlfriend, far away from home, in a beautiful foreign country. It's sunny (35 deg Celsius), I've got a stunning view. The food is great, people are friendly, and here I am... just lurking on the KSP forum... Reading all these awesome posts in envy. I can't wait to get home! I 've got a ton of new ideas I want to test. Darnit I'm really addicted to this game XD

I moved my ship from the highlands to the midlands and there I did find ore! The overlay didn't show any ore on the planet, even with a 0% cutoff, isn't that weird? I didn't use the cheat menu to 'show biomes' btw. Thanks for all the suggestions.

My scanner isn't able to find any traces of ore (0÷ threshold) on pol. Maybe it's not accurate enough? I'm using the m700

So, Bill and I have been on a "grand tour"-kind of journey: Hopping from planet to planet and refuelling there on the spot. We're having a blast roaming space. We just arrived in the gravitational field of Jool and landed on Pol. I assumed that all planets would contain at leas a small concentration of ore, but Pol doesn't seem to have a gram in its crust. :S This made me wonder.... are there more planets which don't have the precious ore melange? I made a small list of ore-containing planets/moons that Bill visited so far: Moho Gilly Kerbin Mun Minmus Duna Ike Dres does any of you know if there are other celestial bodies that contain ore?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=454238113 This is my latest mining vessel. Isn't she a beauty?.. ok... i admit it is rather ugly. ..It's an all in one surface refinery, with a twr of 0.5 and delta v capacity of 6km/s. I only use one drill because more seems like a waste of mass to me. Bill is leading this expedition to increase the ore extraction rate and to plant flags and stuff. Minmus is only one of many destinations of this journey. I'm trying to perform a small grand tour with one vessel, without visiting eve tylo laythe and jool. First stop is the mun, followed by Minmus, gilly, moho, gilly , minmus, duna, ike, dres, pol, bop, vall and finally eelloo. The mission is funded by contacts to make it more interesting. I'm currently making my way back from moho to gilly without running into any major problems.

Before version 1.0 i hardly had any kraken encounters. But now. ... my ships freeze and lock up after i get out of time warp all the time. They won't turn and won't change in velocity when i fire up the engines, although the engines are spitting fire like trogdor the burninator. . It happens Like every 5-10 minutes flying in space (it's not a power issue ) . A restart "solves" the problem temporarily. Doing a grand tour was a great challenge before 1.0, but now it's even more challenging: the game is testing my patience skills while i restart the game.. XP

I've got the same problem.I deleted all my mods in order to check if that was causing the problems but the bug remained. Also, are you able to rotate your station when this bug occurs? My vessels just freeze up (with enough battery power in stock ). Do you use a claw on your station? This part i known to be ables to summon the glorious deep space kraken. A way to fix the acceleration temporarily is to go to back to the ksp Base en reselected your vessel. A restart also helps. However, when you have to restart every 5 minutes (which happens in my case)..it's not a valid solution anymore.

I've found the answer. There's something wrong with one of the mods I've got installed. I removed them all (20 or so) and after that, the docking mechanism worked! Thanks for the tip ftunk70. N It was the Achievement mod... Thanks again for all your help guys!