Edax
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Posts posted by Edax
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If you can read the ribbons in my Sig, then it says it all.
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On 6/7/2016 at 7:56 AM, Val said:
Yes, it is possible to make LF-only designs. Quite doable with Nerv/Whiplash and Nerv/RAPIER(Airbreathing only) comboes.
But in practice it's more efficient (dV vs. total craft mass) to include a little oxidizer for the RAPIERs.
A well designed craft around 36t with 2 air-breathers (Whiplash/RAPIER) and 2 Nervs should be able to get to orbit with at least a couple km dV or more depending on payload.
Barring issues with exploding landing gear, these 2 examples should still be valid for 1.1.
The first one is capable of getting to orbit even if you remove the oxidizer.
https://kerbalx.com/crafts/8018/
I haven't made an SSTO in a long while, mostly because the landing gears all explode, meaning all the planes I have an orbit can't land, and all the designs I spend weeks designing and testing can't take off. I've never really bothered finding out why the landing gear has suddenly becoming a big problem, I used that as an excuse to take a break from KSP...but what is the problem with landing gear now? I know it had to do with the big overhaul patch and I haven't built a plane since that could successfully take off and land without damage.
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Challenged myself by building a single engine rocket that could achieve orbit and return with the engine to be reused. The result was a impractical, sandbox only rocket for getting to orbit. The rocket had to be made backwards with the capsule on the bottom, so that the fuel tanks would detach from the top. I needed the vector engine in order to get enough thrust, which makes it impractical for career mode.
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Sticking a blunt object at the front of the craft will create a detached shockwave which will keep the heat off the craft. If said blunt object has high heat tolerance (like the shielded docking port), your craft can survive very high speeds in low atmosphere. Of course the trade off is that you have a poor aerodynamic form, which means you will have to fight a lot of drag and lose out on a lot of SSTO efficiency, but the upside is that you can reach faster speeds with exploding. Good for designs have a lot of engine power and no critical need for efficiency.
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Actually, this started happening since the new reinstall when I tried to get the thing to the launch pad. I don't even know what to think...Anyone see this before?
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Just finished reinstalling KSP. Looks like I will indeed have to rebuild this thing from scratch, I can't even get this thing on the pad anymore:
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35 minutes ago, Plusck said:
Understandable. However there appears to be quite a few things wrong with it as it is:
- those fuel lines parallel to the XL girders don't seem to touch the outer stacks but are instead attached to the docking ports. Is this deliberate?
- the struts appear not to have symmetry - especially what looks like a single strut connection to the top of the comms tower thing and between the tops of the outer stacks. Others are off-centre on the boosters (generally not disastrous, but it adds instability),
- the girders on the outer stacks, which connect to the decouplers on the main stack, look very much like they'll hit the nosecones just underneath them when you stage,
- the outer stacks aren't centred on those same girders,
- is that the M700 orbital scanner? If so, I don't know if it has a different aerodynamic model when opened or closed, but I would leave it closed just in case,
- I also don't know whether KSP considers gimbal angle when it determines whether your exhaust cone is hitting the ship and therefore gives zero thrust, but the girders holdng the bottom kickbacks on are within the scope of gimbal from the twin boars and therefore, if gimbal is active on them, will be hit by their exhaust cone.
So it looks great in its bewildering complexity, but it isn't all that surprising that it's blowing up...
The fuel lines that run parallel in the XL girders aren't functional, they are aesthetic, to provide a logical reason as to why craft docked to the port can be refueled.
The strut attached the comms tower I removed because it was a connection between a nosecone and girder, which I thought was the original problem, but that didn't fix anything.
The giant LFO boosters decouple when in orbit, so there is no risk of hitting the nosecone during staging. The payload is launched mostly empty, it's designed to carry on a minimal amount of fuel, and drain leftover fuel from the boosters once in orbit.
True, it's really difficult to center things like that in the VAB, for once, when I'm attaching the boosters, I can't see the alignment.
I've tried launching it opened or closed, doesn't help with exploding.
Gimballed thrust hasn't been a problem before.
Here's a video of the launch of the earlier "lighter" variant so you can see that the launch isn't all that complicated, it's merely the payload that complex.
Basically there's 2 stages. Ignition, then decouple solid rocket boosters. The rest will go all the way to orbit. It's just with the heavier variant, I've added a few extra solid rocket boosters.
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46 minutes ago, LameLefty said:
As a honest-to-$DEITY aerospace engineer (no joke - it's my undergrad degree), your craft is pretty complex for a single launch. Yes, I know, #lolsokerbal ...
Thing is, as KSP has matured over the last year or so, it's getting harder and harder to lob "unnatural looking rockets" like that from the ground in one piece. The error messages you're getting indicate - to me - that your .craft file is confusing the bejeezus out of the physics engine; parts are moving a tiny bit in relation to one another due to wobble or aerodynamic stress during ascent and at some point it just goes kablooey.
First thing I'd try is installing Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - if that works, great. Problem solved. If not, I'd do what @bewingsuggests and rebuild the craft. I wouldn't take it apart, I'd just start completely over from scratch and see how it goes. it's possible the .craft file has gotten corrupted or confused over time.
I managed to get this up in February, it seemed to go fine. All I did now was remove the top 3 docking ports, and stick a science unit and 3 xl girders. Although, I am aware that something happened during the patch, the bottom solid rocket boosters before would only lightly wobble around, but now they violently wobbled and ripped the landing apparatus off along with the bottom part of the payload. I fixed that by tying a strut to the body of the payload, and that's when the flight lasted long enough that I encountered the explosion problem.
As for mods, I have Mechjeb, Planetshine, EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements, Distant Objects, and Stage Recovery (that doesn't work.)
I hesitate to rebuild it from scratch since it's been slowly modified of the course of 8 months and tested to perfection. This is not the easiest thing to rebuild...
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1 hour ago, bewing said:
The destruction itself is, I'm sure. But a strut doesn't just fail for no reason. So there is either internal stress from a clipped part, or aerodynamic stress that will show up in the form of pieces of the craft starting to wobble. So any wobbling that shows up just before the explosion is interesting. But we beta testers were in fact seeing non-part mods causing in-flight issues. So don't rule them out completely.
But is that a strut that's failing? I removed all struts attached to the nose cones, but I still get a "linkage" failure between two parts that aren't even near each other, with nothing connecting the two. There is no wobble leading up to the explosion (if parts were wobbling off, I know to add more struts).
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16 minutes ago, bewing said:
Well, I can say for certain that the "parts missing after reverting to launch" thing is a new bug that I've never heard of before (and I keep close track of the bugtracker).
You do have one mod loaded (at least) -- and you really have no choice but to also try removing all the mods and launching the rocket again to look for differences.
One other thing I can say is that I know it is possible to slow down time. I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but I saw it done once on youtube. So you may want to figure out that trick, go 50 seconds into your launch, and slow down time so you can maybe see better. It's not an answer, of course, but we all need more info here.
I do have some mods installed, the only part mod is Mechjeb.
I'm not exaggerating when I saying the destruction is instantaneous. If I scroll down the whole damage report, they all happen at the exact same second, and you only hear one explosion soundeffect. Some of the side boosters will survive, but it appears the entire rocket instantly collides with itself to delete itself from existence. Although, sometimes the top half of the rocket will survive, so I suppose the problem part is in the body. But again, I have no girders segments anywhere near the nose cones...
Maybe reinstalling the game will help...
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5 minutes ago, bewing said:
Hmmm. And it still gives you that same status report when it explodes, after removing the struts from the nosecones?
Yeah. It's always the first thing to fail. I'm not even sure where the failure is happening because the whole rocket is instantly destroyed.
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36 minutes ago, bewing said:
It is always the same linkage that fails? If so, try adding a strut. Or remove the girder.
I'm not sure what the linkage is, I have no girders connected to any nosecones, and I've removed all struts from nosecones, but that is the first linkage to fail.
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I've added a modification to my ore freighter by adding some girders on top to look like a comms relay, but apart from that, I've gotten 2 versions of this ship to Minmus already (before the patch that is), so I can't understand why it keep exploding. There's no pogo, just 90% of the rocket is instantly destroyed randomly about a minute from take off (there is no chain-reaction of failure), and according to the damage report, the comms relay is where the trouble starts, but I don't know how this can cause such a powerful insta-explosion. Is it a bug of the new patch? Is there an old part from the previous patch that is not reacting well to the update?
And sometimes when I revert back to the pad, parts are missing, along with my astronaut.
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After getting hooked on Fire Emblem, I finally complete the Conquest campaign, I finally got back to the Jool mission I was on weeks ago and managed the first travel stop and landed on Pol for the first time. Since I was being super cautious, I let the mission run for an extra 300 days just to save a bit of fuel by reversing my orbit so it would be counter-clockwise since the gravity brake put me in a clockwise orbit. I should probably hit up Laythe next.
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18 minutes ago, TimePeriod said:
Don't fly SSTO's, so I don't see any problems.
I'll get right on that.........
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1 hour ago, AeroGav said:
I build oxidizer-free SSTOs with Rapier/NERV engine combo and plenty of Big-S delta wings. Getting up to the Rapier ceiling is the easy part, what sorts out men from boys is the ability to progress from there to orbit with just the meagre 60kn off each NERV engine. So long as your thrust exceeds total drag, you're getting closer to orbit with every passing second. With the stock aerodynamic model, optimum lift:drag ratio occurs at 2 degrees angle of attack at subsonic speeds , rising to 5 degrees as you approach orbital velocity.
The problem is that at 30km+, the air is VERY thin and flying the optimum angle of attack for lift/drag ratio can result in stuff overheating from being too fast, too low, for too long. The limiting factor for me, when i add too much cargo, is that i run into a dilemma - not exceed 5 degrees angle of attack, and blow up. OR, pitch up to 10 degrees and be higher up, and cooler, for a given mach number. But, my drag is then too much at this increased alpha to gain speed, and i gradually fall back down into the airbreathing reigime again.
Yeah, after the latest version change, I've given up pure-LF SSTO launches, I instead use disposable oxidizer tanks and raipers which I dump when I'm in orbit, so that the remained spaceplane is pure LF-goodness.
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31 minutes ago, FancyMouse said:
Known bug since early 1.0's. Below 1Mm you can't enter non-physics warp (so 0.2Mm~1Mm is a magic area where you can only warp if you're already in warp from outside). Try not to exit warp as much as possible (impossible for aerobrake, but you might be good if you just need gravity assist).
I had to unwarp for a 250 delta v braking burn, but then got stuck in acceleration mode afterward.
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So I've just entered Jool's SOI for the first time ever, and as I was attempting a gravity assisted brake maneuver, I ended up stuck in "acceleration mode" where I could no longer time warp or return to KSC for several long minutes. What causes me to remain in acceleration mode while my engines were off? Is this normal? It was only after I left the room to do some chores and returned did I finally regain time warp, but even then, the acceleration mode flickered as I did so.
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Dipped one of my spaceplane prototypes in Eve's atmosphere for some easy Eve high atmosphere EVA reports and science.
Also mined Minmus some more. Still trying to perfect the look of a mobile refinery.
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I have no idea what the official determination on what a "moon" is. When Sputnik was launched, it was consider Earth's second moon. Early stories in the 60's referred to orbital spacecraft as moons. Under that definition, then sure, a captured asteroid can certainly be consider a moon. Indeed, Pluto has many moons, and their so small and have strange tumbling roations .
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2 hours ago, montferrer said:
Hi guys! I'm trying to land on Eve and refueling there with ore from de surface. But I don't know why, while entering atmosphere (at 80k meters aprox) my two 'Drill-O-Matic' Mining Excavator overheat and explode, making the rocket unable to refuel.
Here's a picture of the rocket, does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!
You can kinda cram a drill-o-matic in a mk-2 cargo bay if you put in at an angle, or you try and use the mini drills and put them in a mk1 cargo to shield them from the heat, but the drills have to be able to deploy out of the cargohold and hit the ground, so that could be tricky to design around.
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Kerbin is pretty great. It's got a hanger and VAB so you can build ships on it, and it's got a nifty runway and launchpad. Plus, fuel can be easily acquired on that planet and it's got oxygen that can effectively power jets! Tricky to aerobrake though.
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4 minutes ago, Renegrade said:
That would actually be trivial to do - as it stands, ships are a bunch of interacting physics parts, which each part being it's own separate component. Each component exerts force on every other component, etc, hence slinky rockets made out of battery stacks and such. Like most serious problems, this does not lend itself well to multiprocessing, or even computing for that matter. The simple and obvious solution is to part weld each stage (or indeed, the whole rocket) into a single part. It would easily speed the game up tenfold (if not a hundredfold or thousandfold or more), allowing for much, much bigger rockets. The downside is that structural design would pretty much vanish at that point.
That's why Space Engineers can handle much larger ships part wise: they're actually just minecraftian voxel grids and have little or no self-interaction. The grid as a whole moves, not the individual parts.
Even if the solution is simple, it hasn't been implemented yet, and I believe it should be addressed before start thinking about improving the graphics.
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I'd only want this after they solve the framerate issue on all 200+ part spacecraft. Otherwise, this game would devolve into a power point presentation.
The K Prize - 100% reusable spaceplane to orbit and back
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas
Posted · Edited by Edax
I achieved the K-Prize 2 years ago with a crazy 12 engine flying wing,
but I haven't played since then, so I decided to resurrect one of the last projects I was working on, a Thunderbolt II configured circumnavigator, capable of landing anywhere on Kerban and returning to KSP. The high mounted engines and wings allowed for safe waterlandings. For kicks, I replaced all the LF tanks with LF+O tanks and made it an SSTO with the idea that it could possible work as a more effective spaceplane on Laythe then what I currently have, which isn't optimized for water landings at all. Discovered that it actually works, despite not being ideal for spaceflight at all. The reason I'm posting in here again is because the Thunderbolt II configuration is somewhat unusual for an SSTO, and this is my first K-Prize video.
So what's I've learned from my Thunderbolt II
Pros:
Looks very distinct from nearly every angle.
Excellent aerobreaking capabilities, was able to glide all the way back to the runway.
Docking Port aligned with centerline.
Water Landing Capable
Heat Resistant
Cons:
Engines not aligned with the ship's centerline. Limited thrust in space.
Inefficient aerodynamics.
Inefficient fuel efficiency.
Limited Delta-V, 2k when fully refueled.