ejhawman

Hello all. I've decided to post pics of some of my craft developed so far. Some background: I first heard of KSP when I was viewing Let's Plays of various games on YouTube. I was primarily going through Final Fantasy XIII when one of the random recommendations that came up claimed to be for a mission to "Duna" being assembled in "Kerbal Space Program". It was, of course, Scott Manley's Interstellar series. I checked it out, decided it was worth looking into further when I had time, and went on my way. Some months later I had the time, and went through Manley's videos. This led me on to macollo, ThorLP, Kurtjmac, and countless other KSP enthusiasts, and gave me a greast desire to play. Alas, my video card had died in December 2012 and the only replacement I could get for my elderly (mid-2006) system couldn't handle 3D gaming. I could only watch others play. For Christmas 2014, my older brother took pity on me and got me an Alienware system capable of handling modern games. I immediately grabbed KSP from Steam on Christmas Day and started playing around with SRB configurations in sandbox mode. I intended from the start to get MechJeb and KER but these slipped my schedule for months as I got familiar with the basic game. It took me over a day to get the proper touch for guiding my craft into proper orbits manually, but from there I had no trouble setting up maneuver nodes and using them to get around the moons. It took another few weeks to develop the touch for managing my landers down to safe landings on Mun. Minmus ws much easier, of course. I was ready to move on. I decided to use the sandbox save to develop craft, and started a science save for some sense of progression. I built flyby missions to Eve and Moho, then lander missions to Duna and Dres, in sandbox and copied them to science. This led to big, flashy missions like the Duna Science Fleet - five landers and a return bus, of which the bus proved unnecessary as the landers had the dV to return directly to Kerbin. Allison, Hersey, Kerwise, Joedous, and Burbles became heroes of the space program. I suffered my share of tragedies. The first time I lost Jeb in Science, I was driving him across the Mun in a Super Science Rover when it jumped on a small rise in the landscape and flipped on its side. I tried to get it upright by firing my main engines and ended up destroying the craft and killing Jeb - then, when I tried to reload the quicksave, I reflexively hit F5 instead of F9. Later, during the Duna tests, the worst loss of the program occurred when I arrived at Duna too far out for my remaining dV to allow capture; I self-destructed the mission, losing Jeb, Bill, and Bob. After this, I started the practice of doing fine adjustments to my encounters from 20-30 days out. Ike was raided for science points using rovers: Bill and Bob went down, one of them (I forget which) damaging his craft on landing when he landed near the north pole with solar panels extended and went for a surface sample, falling from the craft through two sets of panels, which he could not repair. This hampered power generation and limited him to half the expected science yield - he couldn't make it to two of his target biomes. Still, he made it back. Dres was raided by four lander-hoppers each packing two science instrument packages; they would land, take readings, jump to another biome, take readings again, and return to orbit for rendevous with a bus that returned to Kerbin.They made it back just before 1.0 hit, which would have made their mission impossible to recover safely. After that came months of developing craft for late-game missions: Laythe, Tylo, Moho landers for bus and single returns, Eve ascent vehicles (still in progress...), an Eeloo mission. Once I had everything but Eve solved, I returned to my science save to start using what I'd learned. Which leaves me with these...

Started the Great Moho Science Raid. I may have bitten off more than I can chew...

Did some Laythe landings and ascents. This one got to space easily. Another version, landing in water and using asparagus staging, wasn't stable after the first set of tanks staged away. So, I learned Laythe likes onions and hates asparagus...

I'd like to show the KSP community my process for making a mission. Fair warning, this will be image intensive. Right now, I have a sandbox save and a science save; I haven't started a career save yet, which will probably change how I do things, as I swill be subject to budget constraints. For now, I simply build away, looking only at KER to see if I have the right dV, TWR, and possibly weight limits. Most of my missions are built around retrieving science from some distant biome. My objective is generally to return as much science as possible by returning the instruments to Kerbin, or putting the results in the hands of a Kerbal who will return. For this, I rely on a standard science package: The default configuration uses a docking port to attatch to the ascent vehicle; once the package has done its work, it gets blasted back to orbit of its target to change out the ascent stage for a return booster. 1.0 has forced me to develop an extended configuration for reentry to the Kerbin atmosphere: The heat shield has to provide a heat shadow for the delicate instruments. (I suppose I should also put everything in a cargo bay, for good measure, but so far I've gotten by without it.) The fairing on top mostly just has to provide a balloon to keep the package righted during reentry; only the parachute needs to be inside. For a trip to Gilly, Duna, Dres, or Eeloo, I can carry these integrated into a liftoff package capable of getting from the target surface to recovery on Kerbin. For the heavier Joolian moons, I will send the reentry attachments with the return booster. Let's try, for instance, a Tylo lander. For the ascent stage, I find this to be adequate. A reaction wheel keeps the craft stable during the late stage burn (it tends to get unbalanced as the fuel runs out.) A small asparagus cluster gets me as much dV as I need, with generous padding. All stages have LV-909s to keep TWR up. This is what has to get to the surface. I need another 3500 m/s to get safely down to the ground. For this I use another asparagus cluster, this time with 2.5 m tanks. A single Skipper gives enough TWR for Tylo. This much has to go on top of an interplanetary transfer stage. This starts with a Mk 3 LF tank with four smaller LF tanks to serve as mounting points for the nuke engines. This, in turn, needs further asparagus staging for enough dV for transfer from Kerbin to Jool, minor trajectory adjustments, deceleration at Jool (alas, direct aerobraking in the Joolian atmosphere is now instant death) and insertion to Tylo orbit. All that goes onto a lifter made of Kerbodyne parts, using Mammoth engine clusters. In contrast to the four-way symmetry asparagus staging of the upper stages, the lifter uses six-way symmetry, onion staged. The outer onion layer tends to bang destructively against active tanks when staging away, so I need sepratrons to help. But mere sepratrons are pitifully weak for these huge tanks; so I use SRBs. All of this for a haul of science from Tylo. For landing on Laythe, I am testing this ascent vehicle: Land configuration - Water confuguration: (structural fuselages make good pontoons) I have also gooten good results with this clunky looking thing: All of these can get to Kerbin orbit by themselves, so they should work on Laythe.

Lately I have been working on Laythe ascent vehicles. They tend to require more bulk than I expected, due to a strange effect: losing thrust at certain altitudes and/or speeds. This happens with aerospikes, LV-T30s, even Skippers. I get to around 15-20k, thrust at max all the way, and without having to touch the keyboard the thrust meter suddenly dives, fluctuates, sometimes cuts out entirely. This tends to make ascent from Laythe partly an endurance run, so I need much more fuel than I should. I've seen this lifting off from Kerbin with a few vehicles as well, but much more rarely. Has anyone else had this happen? Is this a known issue not mentioned on the wiki? What could be going on here?

Like many of you, I started my KSP experience in sandbox, doing stuff with SRBs. Herewith, a progression of my earliest works:

Ah, thanks! I think I see it now.

Going to try to post an album. Not sure if it's similar to posting a single image.

Testing image post...

Hello all! I'm not exactly new, been playing KSP for six months, but only now getting around to joining the forums. I should be trying to post images and albums soon.