zolotiyeruki

On the previous attempt, both engines relit just fine, so it was able to flip to the correct orientation just fine. This time, only one engine ever relit.

Looks like only 1 engine relit for landing. It was really trying to start....

Oh, man, my heart about stopped when the countdown paused at T-0:10...

Just bumping this--I tested it this morning, and this mod works in KSP 1.11.

Hi All, There's a new release up on github today, and hopefully CKAN will pick it up shortly. And hopefully I've done all the steps right. This new release is compiled for 1.11, and adds a new "zero" button, for reverting a part's rotation back to 0. That one's for you @Gavin786

That's interesting, because in the most recent launch, they only mentioned a single engine for the landing burn. Maybe they were simplifying it for the masses?

Two thoughts about the recent starlink mission: 1) As I recall, the F9 reuse goal was 10 flights. They now have a booster that has hit 8. Dang, that's impressive, and dang, that's a lot of money saved. 2) In some of the early landing attempts, SpaceX tried some 1-3-1 landing burns, and there was speculation of a 3-engine hoverslam, as an optimization to squeeze a bit more payload into orbit. Why did they abandon those efforts?

I started poking around, and was able to get a "zero" button in place and working, but the layout is messed up. I don't know if I'll be able to get it working in EVA construction mode. As I said before, I'm a complete noob at mods, although I have lots of experience programming. It only took me about half an hour to sort out the code and figure out how to add the zero button.

Given that SH can hover, how much shock loading would we expect to see on the grid fins?

Down there, you'd probably be lucky to dig a foxhole without hitting the water table...

I'm not terribly concerned about landing accuracy--the last few dozen F9 boosters look to have landed within a meter or so of dead center on the landing pad. There aren't many last-second failure modes, and SpaceX have found many already (running out of hydraulic fluid for the gimbals, low header tank pressure, out of fuel during the hoverslam, etc), and there's not much fuel left to go boom at that point anyway. Not that I wish to minimize the damage that 200 tons of stainless steel can do when falling at dozens of meters per second, but we're not talking about a massive explosion even if something *does* go wrong. The ability to hover makes this considerably easier as well, because it means that cm accuracy isn't necessarily required during the landing burn--it can hover and translate as needed for a few seconds. It still sounds bonkers, though.

Hi All, maintainer here. Over Christmas, I'm hoping to dig into the source code for this mod and another I maintain, to see if I can make a few tweaks. Be patient, though--I've never actually *written* any mods, I just recompile them for now, so there'll be a bit of a learning curve...

That is probably another Autopilot mod. Maybe Kramax or AtmosphereAutopilot?

Keep in mind, though, that regardless of the use case on earth, the eventual goal is to land these on Mars, then refuel and return. Depending on the mass of the payload up front, filling the fuel tanks may shift the CoM towards the nose (or toward the rear!). Speaking of which, was there a mass simulator in the nose of SN-8, or was it just a hollow shell? As I recall, it wasn't a dropped tank, it was a change in the voltage spec for some instrument or tank heater.

He hasn't posted in here that I'm aware of. Going that far on a Goliath is impressive, especially with no autopilot, and managing heat with flags is a new trick I've never heard of. That craft had well over 1,200 parts, though. Yeesh, how on earth did his computer handle that? Rigid Attachment, maybe?

A few seconds before ...er....touchdown, lots of green flames from the engine on the left. I seem to remember that being associated with lots of copper combusting that shouldn't be combusting...

So close. I even had a bunch of coworkers gathered around to watch...

Wow, that's a lot of engines, and well done! You've been added to the leaderboard. If I were in a pedantic mood, I would disqualify your entry on a number of points: 1) you have RAPIERs, but no preflight screenshot showing no LF 2) your screenshot at the end does not show the craft at a full stop 3) you are not within 1.1km of the KSC 4) No F3 screenshot 5) No screenshot on the far side of the planet

Is there a substantial difference in apogee between RTLS vs droneship? Regardless, I suspect it's an issue of entry angle--RTLS comes nearly straight down, while ASDS landings come in at a much shallower angle, leaving more time to aerobrake before hitting the denser atmosphere.

True, and it's worth pointing out that the $1-2 million is SpaceX's cost, not the price they charge to customers.

Holy smokes, they're now expecting $1m per 100 tons? I.e. $10/kg? Last I heard it was $2m. That's going the opposite direction of what usually happens.

All those issues sound a lot like Floating Point error, and it's a very real (and troublesome!) thing. I seem to remember that several years ago, someone from the KSP dev team posted on the blog about the issues they face. Part of the problem is that we expect great precision (on the order of a centimeter, when docking), across enormous distances (Eeloo is something like 100,000,000,000 meters from Kerbol), so you're looking at 13 orders of magnitude.

To be honest, probably not by me--while I've done a fair bit of programming in my time, the extent of my knowledge for building plugins only goes as far as being able to recompile them against new versions of KSP, and I'm woefully short on spare time to pick up yet another hobby

Alright, I finally have my first entry for the Voyager division. I managed 19x times around! Woohoo! https://imgur.com/a/Ms6hE72

Cool, cool! Er.....I mean.....nicely done! And without Rapiers, no less!