Goomblah

I took a C-class asteroid that I had lying around from an old contract and stuck it on my space station. It was much more difficult and annoying than simply mining up an equal amount of ore, but at least it was an interesting challenge. Pushing 80 tons of asteroid around was not that easy; I would hate to try it with an E-class!

My space station orbits a little higher than all of yours do Orbital altitude is about 24x24Mm, which puts it at over twice the distance from Kerbin to the Mun. dV costs to reach the station from an 80x80 parking orbit are about 1250m/s (910 to kick it out there and 280 to circularize, plus a little extra for course corrections and rendezvous). I assembled it in 4 launches, ignoring the tug and SSTO docked to it. The first launch was the main body with the Mk3 passenger module; then I sent up the docking tugs, monopropellant tanks, science module (on the dark side of the station), and small docking truss all as one launch. Recently I added the longer docking truss, moved the old small one onto it, and added a second set of fuel tanks to give the station just enough fuel capacity to top off my Grand Tour interplanetary craft all at once. I've tried to design it as best I can to reduce part count as much as possible and minimize lag. The main sources of parts are the docking trusses and all the stuff attached to them; otherwise everything is very simple and minimalist, to the point that almost all of the modules do not have probe / MJ cores or reaction wheels of their own. Once the launch vehicle reaches the station, the station's two Klaw tugs grab the inert payload and attach it to the station; that way the payload goes straight from the launch vehicle's stability control to the tugs' stability control, and they don't need any RCS, electronics, or reaction wheels of their own. I'm sure you're wondering why I put the station in such a high orbit, though. I put it in an extremely high orbit so that fuel tankers coming from Minmus spend less fuel to reach the station, as opposed to a LKO station, where you're looking at around 1500m/s just to make a round trip from Minmus. This much higher orbit is a lot cheaper to reach and return from. But why didn't I just put the station in orbit around Minmus then? The reason: transfer windows. Minmus has an awfully long orbital period, which means that you may miss your ideal launch window by a few weeks because Minmus wasn't in the right place. In its lower orbit, the Kerbin Gateway Station has an orbital period of 18 days, meaning that, at worst, I will miss the perfect transfer window by nine days. It's also easier to plot maneuvers than it would be for a Minmus station, because there's no SOI change to deal with or orbital inclination. All I have to do is undock a few days in advance of the window, drop my Pe to 75-80km for a nice Oberth effect, then burn at Pe at the transfer window. In practice, this actually saves a significant amount of dV over an escape from LKO due to Oberth, even taking into consideration the burn to drop Pe. It requires a little more planning and tweaking to make the whole scheme work, so I generally don't bother for smaller launches, but if I'm sending an SSTO to Laythe and back (which is what you see docked up right now) I'll take the extra time to service my reusable craft.

That... is a LOT of monopropellant.

I personally looove the Ant. I build lots of very small probes and landers, so I find myself using Ants or Ant clusters quite often. I haven't touched Skippers in a while on my Career save. I used to use them quite a bit, even after unlocking the Mainsail, but the the Rhino and bigger payload masses came along, and not much has been seen of them since. I use Thuds for landing heavier horizontally oriented but vertically landing craft, particularly mining trucks and mobile base sections. Otherwise, I don't use them at all. I use mostly 6x1 panels, but I prefer the looks of the 2x3. In some cases the shorter, stubbier 2x3s work better, but generally I use 1x6s. I use the Mk3 RCS tank for mass storage for space stations or fuel tankers, but nothing else. 300MP is generally the most I ever need to get the job done, and I often find myself wishing for even smaller radial tanks (like 10 units) for smaller ships that don't even need that much. I use the Mk2 inline docking port fairly often; about half of my SSTOs use it. The other half have a rear-mounted shielded port; I generally use inline ports only if I'm using all the rear nodes for engines.

I launched the engine section of an interplanetary ship for my first Grand Tour attempt. As it turns out, I forgot batteries and solar panels, so the moment I shut off the engines to coast to Ap and circularize, the whole thing went kaput. So now a very large, very expensive assembly is falling back to Kerbin because it lacked 100 kg of electronics equipment...

That is a very long spaceplane Is it difficult to pull off a horizontal landing or takeoff? I assume that you don't perform a flare while landing because of the length.

My last week or so: Used only vernors, no linear motion Didn't reach orbit, add more RAPIERS Drove off a cliff, explosions everywhere Timewarped too far, missed launch window Launched giant ships for no reason

I'm probably going to give this a shot, most likely with ISRU. I was planning on doing a Jool mission, but without visiting Tylo, and with 2 ships instead of 1. I'll have to rework the whole mission to make it one ship, and making a Tylo lander will be tricky.

Challenge accepted.

I just sent my first mission to Duna today, in traditional kerbal fashion - I strapped a jet powered by an aerospike in an extremely unbalanced manner to a large rocket with giant fins and boosters, then sent it on its way: This rocket has more or less exactly the amount of dV needed to reach Duna with its payload, considering the difficulties and losses incurred due to the imbalanced setup. With a little tweaking of thrust limiters, I was able to use the aerospike in conjunction with the main engines to keep thrust balanced in space: Aerocapture was smooth as silk; I didn't even see any re-entry effects. Just cobra, cobra, cobra. However, as it turns out, Duna isn't the easily-flyable yet low-drag atmospheric paradise this thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122944-Duna-s-Atmosphere-in-1-x makes it out to be. My plane would need a lot more lift to have even a reasonably low stall speed, and so landing didn't go well. I probably could have made it (and was very close, too) but I knocked off the aerospike during landing, then went over the edge of a crater, with predictable results: Fortunately, this plane was sent as an unmanned test, and no kerbals were lost. All further lift-based landing missions to Duna have been cancelled pending the development of an extremely high-lift craft to handle the thin atmosphere.

Why not just land in the ocean? That will give you water readings, no problem. Just go out a km or two from shore, plop down with some parachutes, and science away.

I just got my first meaningful payload to orbit today, in a Mk3 SSTO. It weighs just over 100 tons fueled and with a 10-ton payload; it's not an incredible payload fraction but I'm happy to get anything to space at this point. This particular spaceplane has been outfitted with a refinery and several drills in the cargo bay; I plan on refueling in LKO, then hopping over to Minmus, refueling again, and then flying to Duna. It won't have enough fuel to return by itself after reaching Duna orbit, but I'm going to establish a mining base on Ike that will be able to resupply it.

Geofgard and Bartwise decided to take the new rover for a spin around KSC: THOSE ARE SENSITIVE ELECTRONICS, DON'T DRIVE THEM IN THE POND! "We were just testing the rover's self-righting capabilities!" (They do work) Now to send some rovers over to Heron! Or not... the aero really does hate fairings, doesn't it... I lost control at 15km, and staged repeatedly to try and save the rovers, which ended up looking really neat as all six descended on their parachutes: However, a water landing causes issues for the rovers, which are intended to land on certain tougher bits to cushion the impact, but in a water landing, most or all parts impact at the full velocity, which destroyed a few 6m/s tolerance parts on the rovers, crippling them: Time to revert and try again with no fairing (and probably fewer rovers; six rovers really bumps up part count) ~~~ Update time! I managed to get a four-rover rack docked with the Heron's side port, which is a little bit of a tight fit with the SSTO on the rear: Part count in this area is now almost 700, and my computer is not happy. I'm going to have to really start reducing graphics quality to get acceptable framerates... In the meantime I will put the Heron in a higher orbit so it won't be rendered at the same time as the Atlas, which will reduce part counts to manageable levels in any one location, and reduce dV costs slightly.

SSTOs are probably the best way to get cargo and Kerbals to and from a Laythe base, if reusability is a concern. One capable of taking an orange tank to orbit would be handy for a refueling station around Laythe, since you could mine the surface for fuel, then take the ore/fuel (depending on your refining preferences) to orbit, as opposed to sending a tanker from a distant location like the Kerbin system.

I'm making some final revisions to the SSTO, now in its fifth version, seen here docked to the Heron's new survey module: Some screenshots from SSTO v3 testing, after a water landing: The nosecone was destroyed in the landing; I was using the fly-by-wire nose for some reason. It is redundant with the drone core, so it was replaced with a regular nose for v4. Giant helmets are a safety hazard. And a pretty neat screenshot from Jeb's POV:

Hitting Z instead of X. I have made several missions much harder and even lost a few because I accidentally went full throttle instead of cutting engines...

My ultimate goal is to set up permanent bases in the Jool system, preferably on Laythe and Bop. Here's my planned mission profile: - Heron will carry a small SSTO for Laythe, some landers, rovers, and survey equipment, and a small orbital tug to aid in space station assembly. Atlas will follow shortly after in the same launch window, carrying mining equipment and space station parts. - Heron and Atlas will meet up at Bop, and will drop off one of two miners to begin refueling. Once they are refueled, they will move on to Laythe, the final destination for most of the mission's equipment. - Heron's survey module will undock and shift into a polar orbit to scan Laythe for a good landing and mining spot; once it has found a good site, Atlas will drop the other miner to the surface, and Heron will drop its landers and rovers to begin building a land base, using the SSTO to transfer crew if needed. - Atlas and Heron will also begin to assemble a space station around Laythe, using Heron's tug and Atlas' parts. - Having delivered their payloads, Heron and Atlas will return to Bop for refueling before making the return journey to Kerbin. I have no idea whether this will all work or not, so I am going to do a test run to Duna and back before heading for Jool. Currently, the main items I still need for the mission are the base components, both for the space station and ground base, as well as the rovers. I just recently added a survey module to the Heron that can operate independently off of a Poodle, and the Heron has a small lander with a surface scanning module inside of its rear cargo bay. I can use the same type of mining equipment that I use on Minmus for Bop, and attach a few parachutes to the miner for Laythe. I do need to make sure that the SSTO can dock with the miner so it can refuel, but tweaking port heights shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I sent some additional engine components over to Minmus to make the return journey from Minmus less annoying for my LV-N cargo hauler (now named the Heron). I added two more LV-Ns and a Rhino - way more thrust than is necessary, but I plan on using the Heron for my Jool mission, where it will be pulling a lot of stuff with it.

I do this for all my spaceplane re-entries, as well as with landers and rockets. It can make the difference between a toasty but manageable descent and a complete failure. The Flying Slab (link below) was able to decelerate using this method on a suborbital trajectory at altitudes as high as 65km. By the time it reached the thicker atmosphere at 25km it was only moving at 1600m/s; it barely got hot at all. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33312-Showcase-SSTO-s%21-Post-your-pictures-here?p=1952607&viewfull=1#post1952607 In real life, it almost certainly would have been torn apart by atmospheric stresses (and it blew up in-game, too, but for different reasons)

Even better than switching your orbital direction once you reach Minmus is performing a mid-course adjustment to make sure you cross the correct side of Minmus on your way there; if you need a prograde orbit, stay to the right of Minmus (or whatever side is turning away from you) and for a retrograde orbit stay to the left. You can change your direction, inclination, and altitude of your orbit by making a tiny burn (as in 10m/s tiny) a little while after you finish your transit burn; I usually do it once I'm about a quarter of the way there. Burning normal or anti-normal will put you in a polar orbit or change your inclination up or down; radial and anti-radial will determine which side of the object you cross.

I got bored and decided to see if my small SSTO could reach Minmus with only closed-cycle RAPIERS; it worked, and had enough dV that I could even completely turn around my orbit after I accidentally entered Minmus' SOI going the wrong way. I docked with a few ships I already had in orbit, though in a really strange orientation that neither ship was even meant to do:

My Minmus mining setup looks like this: Shown are two miners hooked up to the same orange tank; each miner has a converter, four fuel cell arrays, two Gigantor solar panels, four drills, and a large ore tank. Each one can fill up an orange tank in two hours and forty minutes at night; in the day, when the fuel cells don't need to work as hard (and use less of the converted fuel) efficiency increases to about one every 2 hours. Together, the speed is doubled and they can top one off (with the monopropellant tanks, too) in just over an hour, even at night. Docking is a breeze; I just land the tanks close by and then drive up to the port; with a little fiddling with the landing gear and RCS, I can have them hooked up quickly. I want to use larger fuel lifters, though; I spend more time docking the tanks than I do filling them up

I managed to land the replacement miner with out any accidents or kraken issues, which is above average for my current luck. Now I can fill orange tanks faster than I can dock them, so I decided it was time for a new miner and fuel hauler, so I designed this monster: The only parts of this thing that stage are the Skippers and Mammoth. Six LVNs should carry it the rest of the way to Minmus after refueling in LKO. However, the fuel lines are poorly laid out and so fuel drains from the wrong tanks at the wrong time, so I couldn't even get it to orbit the first time I tried. I've also been practicing flying SSTOs; this one (I haven't come up with a name yet, haha) can reach LKO super easily now that I know how to fly it; it can break the sound barrier and hit 1400m/s in a 45 degree climb, and is an impressive atmospheric flyer as well, with good maneuverability in atmo and a very high TWR and cruising altitude (it has more intakes than absolutely necessary, so it can maintain sufficient intake air at high altitudes). Of course, it can only deliver a single kerbal to space (and return via a clipped OKTO2), but it's fun and easy to fly.

Sent over a new lander and crew to replace the one lost in transit: I did it with a new cargo hauler with LVNs. The low thrust and heating issues make it very difficult to use, which is why I added nacelles with docking ports to allow for conventional engines to be added as needed to handle faster burns.

Billy-Boblock? Billy-Boblan? Gaze in awe upon Billy-Bobmon Kerman! Billy-Bobmon Male Profession: Engineer Courage: 0.911 Stupidity: 0.789 badS: true