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Nich

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Posts posted by Nich

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    On 2/1/2020 at 5:45 AM, KnedlikMCPE said:

    Is there a tutorial for rendezvous and docking in RSS?

    I am guessing you know how to dock and rendezvous in stock?

    What is the issue?  The only difference in RSS is reaction wheels can not hold your orientation and the distances are much larger and thus more sensitive.  RCS placement is pretty important.  You dont want your translations causing rotation and rotations causing translations.  Caps lock will help with this but you still need a decent RCS layout.

    For rendezvous:

    1. Set your orbit circular above or below your target depending if you need to catch up (below) or it needs to catch up (above)

    2. Put a node anywhere on the orbit and pull retrograde until you see a closest approach

    3. Hit next orbit until your intercept is a close as you can get it (~ 2500 km)

    4. Drag the node around the orbit until closest approach is < 25km (you may have to adjust retrograde/prograde depending how circular the orbit is) this is an engine burn and should be 20-200 dv depending on orbit differences

    5. Using MJ manorvor node editor add or subtract .1 or .01 dv from prograde until closest approach is as small as possiable < 5km (these adjustments should be less then 2 dv)

    6 After you have made the burn you should have 180 degrees around the orbit to intercept.  Half way there create another node and pull/push AN/DN to the intercept.  Then adjust prograde/retrograde until closest approach is < 1km

    7. At 45 degrees to intercept you can do one final adjustment to get closet approach < 200m (keep in mind how fast you are coming in and how big you station is as you do not want to run into it if you dont slow down quick enough.)

     

    If that doesn't help I could put together a quick video in about a week

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    On 12/24/2019 at 1:58 AM, todi said:

    That sounds... painful. Most people try to get out of the sounding rocket era as fast as possible. What year are you in and how many sounding rockets have you launched?

    I Have launched about 150 sounding rockets so far in my current 1.7.3 play through.

    On 12/24/2019 at 7:18 AM, RoboRay said:

    I think there's a designed-in assumption that people will want to have fun through exploration.  Designing around eliminating possibilities for min-max grinding tends to negatively impact people who play to have fun rather than to optimize production.

    So I had to re-read what you said 4 times before it really stuck and I realized we are saying the same thing. Below is what I had but I am not sure how to fix it while making it still enjoyable/playable

         "I hate to say it but rocket scientist love to optimize.  I think there are several factors at play here. First build rate needs to decay.  You can only throw so much money at the problem before you get diminishing returns.  To cancel this out rockets are an exponential problem thus contracts need to pay out exponentially.  As is the beginning contracts pay way too much and the more difficult contracts don't pay enough.  If you adjust this you create a wall right at beginning that some people will never be able to overcome.  i.e imagine if starting contracts only paid 200 funds.  Secondly cheap rockets are penalized.  Why does my 1 kerdit sounding rockets core take 50 days to build but my 80 kerdit rocket only takes 64 days to build?  This overhead really takes away any advantage you get from making cheap rockets.  Finally resuablilty needs to be nerfed.  I would suggest reducing the percentage complete based off the distance recovered % and making fuel require % complete to refill."

         I have also made things even worse on my self.  I designed a reusable 1 stage aerobe that can complete the 45-80 km sounding rocket low contract.  It only nets me 3-5k depending on the altitude however it only takes me about 8 hours between launches.  That is 4.2 million per year.  I have spent the first 4 months of my game launching this and I have 20 points in the VAB so far.  150 launches and I have had only 1 failure that resulted in a total loss of the vehicle.  I am able to grow my fleet of these by about .2 per month meaning that my income stream would grow infintly.  However I cant imagine doing this for an entire year so I think I am going to do what you suggested and just give myself 100k a month and start working on a recoverable sounding rocket down range and see how profitable that is.

    I would love to see funding type contracts.  Requires a new rocket design and pays very little funds however the payout is calculated based on the build rate, cost of the rocket, and the profit and pays out funds/second when the VAB is idol.

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    So I recently installed 1.7.3.  I think I may have mucked up my Kerbalism install.  I took out a plane and temp and pressure flying low at earth require 180 days/357 days to complete per biome.  Is this right?  It feels like these are the on orbit values.  Even at 4x physical time warp and a bomber with enough fuel to fly 32 hours (1, 8 hour work day at 4x) I am looking at 1-2 years to get all the biome data for earth.  I also have 2 buttons for most experiments which further leads me to believe I messed something up.

    I installed Kerbalism (core), from master branch, and then copied everything from ROKerbalism (configs), from master branch replacing everything that had a conflict.  In  KerbalismConfig/Profiles, I deleted "Default"

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    Ya I am not sure I like how the early career is structured.  I have played a couple of play through and I think the best start has 100-150 points in the VAB with a level 4-5 pad before investing anything in science.  With 20 points in the VAB I was making 7k every 15 days on sounding rockets or about 170k a year. I ran into pad weight limits so I started investing in science which was a mistake.  I should have kept investing in the VAB and pad until I am making 340t rocket in a day.  This should be enough to fling stuff at the moon with basic tech.  And it is a sufficient build rate that I can do pretty much anything I want (Man base for the Moon or Mars) with about a month of build time.

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    Ug I spent 4 hours building an optimized 19.997t rocket. 

    3 stages,

    325kn LR79 class for 1m49s gave it a nice 1.4 twr off the pad to minimize gravity losses

    68.6 kn LR105 class for 4m30s made a decent sustainer but I wish it could have gotten down to 50-55 kn as the current stage has too high twr and doesn't burn for the full 5m30s

    20 kn W-class vacuum has way too high twr but it has the best ISP and can use balloon tanks which gives it a hands down advantage until the RD105

     

    I was in the final phase of testing before checking how much lead I was putting into orbit.  After about 10 failed ignitions of the LR105 class I finally find they cant be air lit until tier 5 or 7, cant remember.

    <throws computer out the window>

    <goes and picks it up>

    <Purchases 60t pad and starts building my standard R107 60t Lifter>

    any suggestions on how to make Simple Procedural Engines configs for R107 and R108?  These engines really don't work great until you can put 300-400t on a pad. and need to put 15-25t in orbit.

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, siimav said:

    Yes, I've done it from the 20t pad. I think the rocket had RD-101 + 2xAJ10-27 + XASR stages with Tank-II. I really wouldn't recommend going that route though. Ideally you should build a 60t pad and use proper orbital rocket engines for getting into orbit. If you haven't already done it, then accept the First Scientific Orbit contract which has an advance large enough to purchase all the tech you need. It becomes available after accepting the First Orbit contract but has a 2 year deadline which may require some planning to get the required science instrument unlocked in time.

    Thanks I will keep trying.  Ideally if you can get 20t to work then scaling for 40t and 60t is pretty simple with mass to be used for satellite contract's comsat payload.

    RP-1 Realistic Progression One for KSP 1.12.3

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    Has any one managed to put a low tech object into orbit with a 20t launch mass?  Even with early AJ-10s and LR89/79s, balloon tanks and Tank III I cant seem to get it done.  That is not even considering the fact that I have no idea how I am going to get the 450k I will need to do tooling and engine unlocks.  My sounding rocket contracts are only netting 12-13k and take about 21 days to build.  FYI that is about 2 years doing 35 missions assuming they are unlimited.  My aerobee core weights .063t which is lighter then the spudniks at .083t although both of these seem heavier then I remember.

    Rapier closed cycle, OP or in need of a Buff?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    11 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

    or go back to stock... SSTOs for 3x kerbin are quite punishing... for now I switched to 2 stage designs with the rapiers just burning long enough to get the Ap high enough so that the 1st stage can be recovered.

    Still, I don't see why their vacuum Isp has to suck so much. Its not realistic (the real engine its based on should have close to optimum vacuum performance), it doesn't make sense from the perspective of where the closed cycle mode will be used (high altitude/vacuum, never at 1 atm). It just reeks of artificial balance to stop them from being too good for their 1 and only 1 role.

    I'd be fine with nerfing their atmospheric closed cycle Isp... which is quite good (better than a Rhino/swivel/reliant/spark/Skiff, for comparison). I don't get the reason it has good atmospheric Isp at all... it makes no sense from a realism, design, or balance standpoint.

    To  be fair they are one of the most expensive nodes in the tech tree to unlock.  So I cant argue against making them a disgustingly OP engine.  Could always counter balance by adding a ton or 2

    Rapier closed cycle, OP or in need of a Buff?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    25 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

    Admittedly, I don't use R.A.P.I.E.R.s much for many of the reasons you just described.  I find most spaceplanes I build tend to be built with high-thrust Whiplashes and a low-thrust, high ISP vacuum engine.  Instead of the long, slow speed build up of the R.A.P.I.E.R., I go for an aggressive ascent at a forty-five degree (give or take) angle where the Whiplashes can build a bunch of speed and send the plane into a suborbital trajectory on air-breathing thrust alone, then uses a long, slow burn from it's vacuum engines to circularize. 

    Such a design is not, strictly, as efficient as more "elegant" spaceplane designs, but it gets the job done in a shorter amount of time and doesn't require quite a fine-tuned an ascent pattern.  It deals with more drag, but it also gets out of the draggy part of the atmosphere quicker and before spending too much fuel fighting it.  It would burn up if it had to fly like that most of the time, but since it gets out of the atmosphere quickly, that's less of an issue for it.  A small radiator can help bleed the heat off one it escapes the air.

    For this type of assent wouldn't panthers be better

    Rapier closed cycle, OP or in need of a Buff?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Nich

    @KerikBalm I didn't do many pure rapier designs to be honest.  Most of my stuff was meant for Minimus refueling so it had a nuke stage.  Lite nuke (or nuke cluster) at 20km around 1600 m/s.  Flame out at 24 km around 1800 m/s and switch to LFO mode to raise orbit to a 70x30km orbit and burn the nuke to finish with a 75x75 orbit.  I always had melting problems with the rapiers if I was too low and thrust problems if I got too high.  I used a shock spike in front (antenna) and reversed shock cones clipped into the rapier.  With the low enough drag I never had an issue breaking the sound barrier at sea level but getting off the runway was difficult.  I felt like 1650 is just the point stuff started melting at 22km. But like I said it has been multiple versions since I have made SSTO's  1.3 or 1.4 I am guessing

    Rapier closed cycle, OP or in need of a Buff?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Nich

    35 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

    But the hassle and amount of time (mostly due to the 20+ minutes per test flight) required to perfect a spaceplane design increases as the square of payload size, it seems :mad:,  I know some folks groove on solving this sort of problem but I don't.  Thus, my SSTO spaceplanes are all small personnel carriers.  But that's challenge enough because instead of landing on the KSC runway, they land on the lumpy ground of other planets, so need enough wing for a safely slow approach speed.  RAPIERS seem to have problems with this sort of thing.

    I have noticed everyone tends to land 2x as fast as they should be.  You should be pitched up to 5-10 degrees when your wheels make contact.  Learning to land on an uphill is quite challenging but it can greatly reduce your stopping distance.

    But yes if I am making a SSTO plane I generally plan for at least 4 hours to put it together.  My hardest part tends to be reentry getting a case of the flippies, then lawn dart, then flippies as I make adjustments.

    Rapier closed cycle, OP or in need of a Buff?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Panthers and whiplashes are not even close to being in the same ball park.  It has been a while since I have made a space plane but I remember them having a top speed in the 1200 range at 17ish km.  I typically hit 1800 at 22ish km with air breathing with the rapiers.  This means you have basically doubled your dv needed to reach orbit.  I do kind of feel Rapiers with reverse nose cone clipped in are OP.  They really should just remove the tail node.

    I would agree that this engine is clearly based off the saber engine and should have really good vacuum isp but how would you balance it?  In RO you have to use hydrogen which would double or triple your tank mass and you need 6000 dv out of the LOX stage.  Do you nerf all air breathing by making the speed of sound 70 m/s thus giving the rapier a top air breathing speed of 420 m/s and a ceiling of 8km?

    Using flaps to prevent spaceplane flipping

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    On 5/28/2019 at 8:02 PM, Milesy said:

    Interesting idea, I never tried that.  How would you trim the canards on takeoff? by having them deployed?  If so it sounds similar to what I was doing only in reverse so I'd be interested to hear if  you have any success with it.

    Hold ALT while doing wasd will make a permanent adjustment.  So just hold ALT-S until canards look level.  If you have rear pitching surfaces you may not want to do all the way to level.  Forgot how to clear it.

    Building a working space elevator in KSP

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Nich

    Personally I like mag lev launchers.  One mag lev launches straight up.  A second mag lev in orbit accelerates/decelerates depending on perspective into orbit.  The second mag lev then reboosts its orbit using ion or other exotic high efficiency thrusters preferably nuclear powered or ground based laser powered.

    As part of a collage project I did the calculations for a carbon nanotube static space elevator with no margin would require 2 ropes weighting a total of 638 kt and would only be able to lift 50 kg into geostationary orbit.  It had a max width of 62 cm

    Orbital inclination change: Efficiency question.

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

    Consider the case of a 180 degree inclination change from LKO.

    Orbital velocity is about 2350. In this case, there is no An/Dn (or they are everywhere, however you want to look at it) because the desired orbit and target orbit are coplanar. To reverse your orbit in LKO, you'd need to burn 2350 to kill your orbital velocity, and then another 2350 to reestablish orbit in the other direction: 4,700 m/s for the plane change....

    or...

    You burn 900 m/s and get your apoapsis way out... at apoapsis, its only a few hundred m/s to reverse direction, lets say your orbital velocity at Ap is 200 m/s, so to change inclination 180 degrees is 400 m/s.

    Then you burn 900 m/s again at Pe, total cost: 2200... less than half changing it in LKO. 

    You always want to change your inclination when you are moving slowest. However, you can't change your inclination to your desired inclination at any point in your orbit: ie when you are over the north pole, there is no burn that will put you in an equatorial orbit, you must first cross the equator before a burn can put you in an equatorial orbit. You can only insert into the desired orbit from the An/Dn. 

    For small plane changes, it doesn't make sense to put your An/Dn very high, but for big inclination changes, it does.

    Back to the LKO example, if instead of a 180 degree change, we did a 90 degree one, (starting from equatorial orbit with kerbin's rotation) we'd need to kill our "east velocity" component, and give a north or south velocity component of 2350 m/s. We could do this with a 45 degree burn, which would require 2350/sin(45) = 3,323 m/s... still a lot more that boosting Ap (at an An/Dn), and then doing the plane change.

    Now lets say a 45 degree change... then our forward velocity decreases by 1-1/sqrt(2), and our upward one increases by 1/sqrt(2). Ie "X": velocity from 2350 to 1661, Y velocity from 0 to 1661. deltav_X is 689, dV Y is 1661. We could do this with a single burn (pythagorean theorem) of sqrt( 689^2+1661^2)= 1798... call it 1,800 m/s... vs which is what it would take to boost Ap way up, then bring it down (a 45 degree change wouldn't take 400 m/s at Ap, which was estimated for the 180 change... lets say 100 m/s instead).

    So... the two become relatively equal at about 45 degrees. If you need to change your inclination more than 45 degrees, boost your Ap way up at the An or Dn. If you need to do a change of less than 45 degrees, just pick the An or Dn that you are moving slowest at.

    Forgot to mention leaving the SOI.  I once managed a 167 degree inclination change around the Mun with 12 Dv but that was a very special case.  If you are boosting your AP to change inclination you generally want to do some of the change while boosting and unboosting (if airless body) as well but the savings are small (5% at most).  The only way I have found for a minimum Dv is numerically solving.

    How do you rate KSP's learning curve?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, RocketSquid said:

    My problem is that it takes a lot of time and tedium to even get to that point unless you use mods to fiddle with the contracts. All of the early ones have a low enough payout that getting enough for anything but the most ruthlessly optimized mun mission takes so much repetition. I’ve heard that once you get past a certain point, it becomes a lot easier.

    Mun is a waste of time.  I just complete the contract to open Minimus contracts.

    Been a while since I have played hard stock but my contracts are generally

    Launch a craft

    Suborbital

    Orbit (polar orbit for science)

    Unlock terrier

    Mun flyby and polar orbit (you have to go back to KSC while on flyby to pick up orbit contract)

    Upgrade tracking and mission planning

    Rondavou

    Docking

    Rescue contracts x5

    Mun landing (1 way probe)

    Minims Flyby and orbit (same as before)

    Unlock Spark and upgrade vab for parts

    Scientist minimus hopper with, SAS probe core science jr and bio and all other science normally get 7000-9000 science but those might be on normal numbers.

    Unlock station parts and upgrade pad

     

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