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bewing

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Posts posted by bewing

  1. One problem that I've seen: When you create a rover in the SPH, sometimes the default SPH symmetry puts the wheels facing north/south, rather than east/west. If they point east/west, the wheels work (which sometimes means you need to change the symmetry mode with the R key). If the wheels point north/south, they don't. To check during testing -- if your rover points along the runway, that's good.

  2. In our testing on that bug, Anquietas said that it was fairly easy to get the 45 degree connectors working (or, I assume, anything less than 45 degrees). I never bothered to test the 45 degree ones. And as I said on the bug report, I disagree with sal_vager's wording. It didn't just "get harder" to turn 90 degrees -- it's basically impossible.

  3. One nice thing about decoupling the nosecone is that it gives your kerbonaut a place to stand on top of your rocket. They can often climb up there to leave for (and it gives them a place to land when coming back from) an RCS-powered EVA. To avoid the whole "ladders all the way to the ground" thing.

  4. If you start burning prograde a little before your Ap, the Ap will slowly scoot forward ahead of you in orbit. If you control the thrust of your burn properly, the Ap will stay about the same distance ahead and not gain any altitude -- all the time, your Pe will be rising. You often need to thrust limit your engine, and just touch the thrust a little for this to work. It's just another trick that takes practice.

  5. First: no, if you put an MPL on the surface of Kerbin you get almost nothing for it, ever. A grand total of maybe 500 science points in 3 years, if you load every single one of the 500+ Kerbin experiments into it. (As I recall, an MPL in Kerbin orbit filled with Kerbin experiments will get you about 6000 science points eventually -- so it's not enough to fill out the tree.)

    I had a thread about the MPL once. Another player made a comment about a personal rule that he was only allowed to put one MPL in Kerbin orbit and load it with Kerbin data only, and that was it. If I use an MPL at all, I kind of like that rule. But an MPL in Kerbin orbit with one scientist only produces 5 points of science a day -- so a big science mission returning from the Mun or Minmus totally overwhelms the output from the MPL. That makes it more of a balanced part.

    It's also true that the MPL is on the tech tree in (what I consider to be) the best path to the Variometer device. So I get it very early in the game -- before I've even gotten to orbit, usually.

     

  6. Two hammers? Are you sure you don't mean three? Since you say you have three stages, I assume the hammers are the first stage. But two is a very unusual number for a stage.

    In any case, the "gravity turn" maneuver you describe is an advanced player technique to squeeze out a tiny bit of extra fuel in orbit, over launching the easy way. Forget that until you've had some practice.

    The easy way to launch (especially for beginners) is straight up. A level 1 pilot or OKTO can handle it on SAS and you don't have to touch anything until you are above the atmosphere. When the ship is on the pad, turn on SAS. This locks your rocket into staying vertical. Launch at full power. Watch your Ap marker go up and up until it's about 130 km or so (you will still be in the atmosphere at this point). Turn off your engine. Wait until your altimiter reads 60km. Turn off SAS, and hit D to rotate your ship. When your ship is pointing at the horizon, stop the rotation and lock it in with SAS again. Go to full thrust. Keep on thrusting until you are in orbit. (Your SAS will gradually climb above the horizon, and for extra points you can tap it back down occasionally to be on the horizon again.)  You will need a velocity of just under 2300 m/s to be in orbit. You'll make it every single time.

     

  7. Yeah, it makes me a little sad that there are no 2.5 meter LF-only parts. I like NERV tech, so I get my nukes as early as I can afford them. But that means that I make all my designs with MK1-sized stuff. Long and skinny. Drill:

    Spoiler

    screenshot9.png

    Deorbiter:

    Spoiler

    deorbiter.png

    My tourist bus looks a lot like the above drill -- with the ore compartments replaced with mk1 crew cabins.

    I suppose that for the aesthetic you want, you could attach radial MK0 tanks?

     

     

  8. First: your plane is very pretty. I'd put some little canards on the front, but you seem to have plenty of attitude control.

    BUT, the deal goes like this:

    1) MK2 parts (despite being supposedly "higher tech") have significantly higher drag than the equivalent MK1 parts. So by using MK2 you are already starting at a disadvantage.

    2) To have lots of fuel left when you get to orbit, you need to get through all that atmosphere with not much drag. So you need to pay attention to the way drag changes with speed and nose inclination. Drag basically goes with the square of your speed -- so you don't really want to be hitting 600 m/s until maybe 8km altitude. 1200 m/s at 22km or so. If you're going faster than that before then, you're going too fast. Drag increases rapidly as your nose rises from a 2 degree inclination, to 10 degrees, and then to 30 degrees. Then it really goes crazy. In the lower atmosphere, keep your nose to maybe 5 degrees above prograde, max. In the upper atmosphere, don't let your nose go over 30 degrees. 45 degrees is a very bad idea.

    3) You have a lot more engine than you really need, and engines weigh a lot. The whole point of RAPIER engines is that you do not need any other kind -- admittedly they are not as efficient as Whiplashes (or Panthers on afterburner).

    I like those shock cones myself, and I understand that you need something to stick them on -- but you may just want to try a couple of the radial ramp intakes, get rid of the nacelles, and the whiplashes, and see what happens when you just run on the two RAPIERs.

    4) Heating. If you launch properly, your speed will be between 1300 m/s and 1500 m/s (surface) between 25km and 35km alt. This is the danger zone. My answer is to climb through it as fast as you can (this is where I say you should let your nose go to a 30 degree AoA). There are other answers for how to get through this zone -- throttle back, minimize drag, etc.

    5) Don't overuse the controls. Every time you hit a key, it slows your plane down. A lot. I like using the SAS system, and just alternating between "prograde" and "stability" to control the nose angle.

  9. Move the wingtip canards to the front of the plane, where they can do you some good. Right now, they have no leverage -- they do nothing at all.

    The dihedral is not really an issue, I think -- AFAIK, dihedral is not actually modeled in KSP. Even if it were, it would be a roll stability issue, not a pitch stability issue.

    But as Venusgate said, move the wings back just a little bit -- get the CoL ball so it doesn't quite overlap with the CoM ball.

  10. 2 hours ago, Stocchinet said:

    That's a very cool spaceplane Aerogav, but regarding those big wings, they have a very little heat resistance, based on my experience they cook on reentry very easily, how do you deal with it?

     

    You come in very shallow, and bleed off all your speed in the stratosphere.

    I liked your first plane much better. You can double canard control by putting a pair of canard wings in a shallow X. I think all you really needed to do was add another fuel tank in the front of your SSTO -- once you dump the orange tank, move all your remaining fuel into the front tank. That'll rebalance your CoM.

  11. Definitely transmit. An MPL can only hold 500 science points at one time, so that's the most you can get if you recover the thing without transmitting. And they are very hard to land, of course.

    As FullMetalMachinist said, there is no penalty on transmission of science, and you can transmit repeatedly. Keep in mind that it takes 6 points of electric charge to transmit 1 point of science, though -- make sure you have enough.

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