Loren Pechtel
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Posts posted by Loren Pechtel
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Expanding upon FullMetalMachinist's answer: Except for struts and fuel lines Kerbal rockets are pure trees. Branches can never cross no matter what the rocket looks like. You get only one decoupler to knock off that stage. If that's not enough to get it clear you need separatrons (note: you have to rotate them, the supplied rocket points down) or there are some mod parts that include separation motors.
When staging in space I have never had problems with a single decoupler that is placed close enough to the center of inertia (not the center of mass! You need to consider how far away from the decoupler the mass is, although I have always done this by testing rather than with a pencil & paper) of the stage. In atmosphere things don't behave so well, bigger stages need separation motors. If you're playing with separation motors you probably want to download SmartStage. Separatrons are a royal pain to properly configure on an asparagus-staged rocket, SmartStage generally can figure it all out for you, but doublecheck as I've seen it confused at times.
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6 hours ago, TBryson2 said:
Thanks for the feedback, stagerecovery is what I was looking for.
TB2
Yeah, it works like a charm. One thing to watch, though--your first stage might be in physics range at landing. If so you have to make sure it's chutes actually work--deploy at a proper speed to avoid destruction. Stages that will be outside physics range get simulated landings, the chute controls don't matter--they simply touch down at the velocity the attached chutes would slow them to. In theory you are also allowed to include some fuel and a probe core but I have never experimented with this. It might be worthwhile when landing big stages.
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On 5/29/2016 at 8:42 PM, Kerbart said:
For me, a large tank on a Minmus lander definitely is the way to go. For particular biomes you'll need large inclination changes, costing relative (it IS Minmus, after all) large amounts of fuel. You might as well spend that fuel on hops. I get all biomes covered with two trips down to the surface.
No, you can do all of any body with a single small inclination burn: Upon arrival in the SOI immediately do your inclination burn to 90 degrees. Now you won't need any more unless you don't get the ascent correct. In my experience MechJeb can't get this launch correct, though.
On 5/30/2016 at 8:06 AM, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:Minmus encounters can easily cost 1200m/s dV if you don't launch into the right orbit. And getting EVA's back into craft on Minmus takes >10min sometimes
Huh? I've never seen a Minmus launch that needed even a tenth that not counting the fuel to simply get that far out. Ignore the planes, pretend Minmus is in your plane when you burn. When you get halfway there correct your orbit. It's much less expensive this way than fixing your plane before you burn. Note that MechJeb's transfer orbit then fine-tune does exactly this.
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It's not my first time with the unrecoverable spin but the rest is unlike anything I've seen before.
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First, a Kerbal rescue went bad. My Kerbal got flung away from the rocket at about 15 m/s, tumbling so badly that the system couldn't figure out how to cancel the spin. The jets kept firing wildly, pausing a bit and then firing again. Since there was no hope of recovery I reloaded to the save at the launchpad--and my rocket immediately headed up a couple hundred meters--the engines were not burning! It tipped and started to fall, I reverted--and proceeded to fall into the launchpad about half it's depth, then head up. Revert--fall half it's depth and there were rocket parts heading into the sky all over the place but no visible boom. Revert to VAB and it's flown fine so far.
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On 6/3/2016 at 8:56 AM, Dizor said:
Try this mod version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2HHoyq3mBJiX003ckNmcjlxa3M
This one should be good.
No more exceptions and I do see the "wants to board" message--but I still had to board the old way. Note that I was attempting to board a 5-seat rocket with 4 seats occupied (I was scooping up a convenient Kerbal and doing a tourist contract at the same time.) Seat #1 was open, though, and boarding worked properly from the ladder.
Edit: Same problem with a bigger rocket, albeit with tourists in some seats.
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5 hours ago, Dizor said:
Please check if any exceptions are thrown when you press B in EVA. Press Alt+F12 -> Debug -> Scroll down and see.
No need to scroll, a flood of object reference not set to an object exceptions when he is apparently in the trying to board state. Unfortunately, that's all it says.
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How does this work??
B toggles between <kerbal name> is hesitating and no text at all. Boarding works exactly like it did before.
KSP 1.1.2
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1 minute ago, KocLobster said:
Thanks for letting me know. I didn't realize that your version numbers were going backwards.
Of course they go backwards--his mod is for rocket bits that are going backwards, what else would you expect the version number to do? :):)
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1 hour ago, frankcastle said:
Works perfect...
That's a bit fancier than I was picturing but it certainly looks like it will do the job.
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After being flung away three times and crashing the game once on a single Kerbal rescue I'm wondering if there's a mod that would allow boarding from a few meters away from the hatch. The kraken that tosses Kerbals for touching the rocket seems much more aggressive in 1.1.2 than in 1.0.5 and I'd like to cut down the opportunities for causing grief.
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14 minutes ago, Foxster said:
Well, is it just a capsule weighing 0.8t or is it a lot more? If more, are there any aero bits to provide braking? Running out of charge? What Pe did you have and from what altitude?
Need more info here and, yes, a picture tells a thousand words.
Capsule, two of the two-Kerbal cabins, probe core, batteries & a reaction wheel, plenty of chutes.
The thing is I reloaded and successfully brought it down and I think it's the 6th mission that I flew that rocket. (I've been taking 5 (minus however many rescues I can do) tourists to orbit Mun with it.
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4 minutes ago, Foxster said:
Picture?
It didn't occur to me to save one and I can't imagine what it would have shown that I didn't describe.
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5 hours ago, Deoxys_101 said:
I think another problem may actually be that I don't know how to get to the Mun easily. My current method probably wastes a lot more fuel then most other methods. Basically I do it by flying to the same "height" as the Mun is at and then proceeding to fly against the horizon to create a big orbit. However, I set the orbit to the opposite direction that the Mun is moving so that I will essentially run into and get a Mun encounter. I've tried waiting for the Mun to line up closer with KSC but only once did I manage to get it perfectly where I had a Mun encounter without having to fly against the horizon. However, this is something that varies from ship to ship. For leaving the Mun though, I fly up to about 100,000m in height and then use a maneuver to get out of the Mun and into a big orbit around Kerbin. Then I use another maneuver to actually get back to Kerbin.
Medic!
Jebediah just had a heart attack upon seeing this trajectory!
Once you're in Kerbin orbit place a maneuver node, pull the prograde up until it reaches the Mun's orbit, then grab the orbit and side it around until you get an intercept. Burn that, it's a bit under 900 m/s. You'll need a bit over 300 m/s to get into a fairly low orbit about the Mun. I don't recall what it takes to land.
Note that from a financial standpoint you're better off not landing on the Mun until you have to. Minmus first, a much lighter rocket will do the job.
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On 5/20/2016 at 4:09 AM, Warzouz said:
The pressure parameter was very useful in 1.0.4, your could auto deploy chutes around specific altitude. But in 1.0.5, several things where changed and chutes were much more fragile. Now chutes must be open very near the ground.
It's true that in 1.1 chutes were fixed, but I don't know if i't safe to auto-deploy them using pressure parameter. Safety is based on speed.
Yeah, when are we going to get a speed setting on chutes? They should be safe to stage during re-entry and then pop at their safety limit. I haven't even seen a mod for this.
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Things seemed normal as I was coming back from the Mun, everything seemed fine as I entered the fire. I burned the last of my fuel and dropped my booster (at that point it was on a path that stage recovery would catch) and it looked like my periapsis was going lower than I would expect but it didn't look catastrophic.
I come out of the fire and there's no mach effects around my craft. My speed remains basically constant at a bit over 600 m/s all the way to the ocean. How I'm oriented makes no difference on this and my capsule doesn't have any problem with being turned crosswise.
I've flown this rocket before, I should have no problem getting it under 500 m/s to pop the first chutes.
Two unusual things about the mission:
1) While chasing a Kerbal just above the mountaintops of Mun I had no prograde/retrograde hold, but I did have normal & radial. There was no pilot on board at launch although there had been one for a bit that I picked up in Kerbin orbit.
2) For some reason I have never been able to stage off the booster, although Mechjeb has no problem discarding the stuff that doesn't make it to orbit. Selecting the decoupler on the rocket and firing it that way works fine.
Note: Reload/retry/it worked normally. Huh???
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9 hours ago, FirroSeranel said:
I'm not 100% sure it's working for recovery though. I've only done one vehicle like that (the second I flew back to the ground manually), and the third is falling right now. In the one that I let SR handle, the report was a bit odd. It said it reached a terminal velocity of 3.6 m/s which is fine... but it also said it burned up in the atmosphere, which is odd because the stage had a probe core, antenna, and enough fuel to do about a 1000 m/s retro burn, so the powered landing code should have made it survive.
Unfortunately, the way Stage Recovery works this is possible--it won't use that fuel to retroburn to save it from the fire. It doesn't actually land your stage at all, when it goes out of physics range SR decides what the stage is capable of and simulates that. Thus it could have been going too fast to survive the fire but SR didn't realize it could be saved by a retroburn. Discarded stages normally do not have the fuel for substantial retroburns!
9 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:I'm playing 6.4x scale in my current career, and have cranked the recovery velocity up to 5,000 m/s. Orbital velocity is 6,100 m/s, so this feels right to me compared to stock. That said, any stage going that fast is going to fly a long way around Kerbin before coming back down, and be recovered at 40% or less of value, which means it's only marginally worthwhile to add expensive chutes for what is typically a smallish sustainer stage. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I could probably just reduce it to 4,000 m/s with little to no impact on the finances of my space program...
Yeah, the downrange penalties are insane. I slapped chutes on a booster that had gone to the Mun, I had enough fuel left to nurse it down to a safe velocity before staging. It landed fine--for 10% recovery!
Although the one that really bugs me: I built a jet rover (from the SPH, jets but no wings) to gather science. I recovered it while it was nosed up against the SPH--for 98%. I get 100% if I'm farther away, out there on the runway!
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10 minutes ago, Agathorn said:
I seem to be having a bit of a problem with this mod, and I don't know if it's because I am being stupid or what. Can I ask please how this mod is supposed to to operate?
I click the icon and nothing happens, yet I know there is science to be gathered. Other time, it just automatically pops up the science window and I can click the transmit, sometimes it doesn't. Like I can't find any consistency to how it works.
So what is the proper method of using this mod?
Before you fly your rocket check the settings--it has to be turned on. If you're using per-craft settings it needs to be turned on for each rocket. You also have to set where the science goes (I think it should figure this out on it's own, though.)
Beyond the setting issues it works perfectly so long as you're in your spacecraft. It's broken while you are EVA.
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29 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:
Is this a mod? I did a few google searches and can't find it. In fact, I can find precious few references to the word in relation to KSP at all.
You can't find it because it doesn't exist.
What you should be looking for is a mod called "Biomatic". Mount the component on your ship and it will let you kill timewarp when entering selected biomes. Useful but low orbit is fast, you can't always react in time to grab an EVA report from a small biome. I did manage to get every bit of low orbit science I had unlocked out of a single mission but there were some small ones I blew through a dozen times before I finally got them. It works perfectly on larger biomes.
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1 minute ago, EstebanLB said:
Shouldn't this requeriment be added for increased realism?
When spacecraft are on rails there's no stationkeeping on orientation. Thus how would you keep it pointed at the planet anyway?
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54 minutes ago, vcordie said:
In the meantime, I have a suggestion for you. Install Biometric. It'll kill time warp on entering biomes or situations that you choose, its a bit finnicky and not exactly what you're looking for, but it will help.
Second this. I tried this for the EVA science and the only problem I had with it is with tiny biomes--it would correctly kill the warp but I would overfly the biome before it succeeded in doing so. Despite fighting it I managed to get all orbital science I have unlocked from a single mission to the Mun.
To me fixing the EVA reports (and probably surface samples also, but that's much less of an issue) is of much more interest. That science harvesting mission would have gone much easier if I could have simply left my Kerbal EVA until he entered an biome I hadn't done yet. With that there would be no need of a dewarp.
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On 5/9/2016 at 8:32 AM, TrooperCooper said:
If you are into recovering and reusing stuff, making it worthwile and also giving you tools to develop and test, I highly recommend the Kerbal Construction Time mod together with Stage Recovery.
Stage recovery gets you some cash back without a lot of hassle. Beyond that one's time is better spent on contracts than flying things back.
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2 hours ago, carlorizzante said:
I'm happy to confirm that SR works. Perhaps I wasn't doing things properly myself, or perhaps some mods conflicted, can't say. Either way, the mod works on my system, and it's awesome, thanks!
Edit: Actually, perhaps I wasn't properly setting the minimum pressure at 0.5 :-/
Something I have found with Stage Recovery that can result in lost stages:
It only works properly if the stage either can truly recover on it's own (chutes that are properly set to land it) or if it's outside physics range. I've lost more than one booster that I nursed down through the fire but then it fell too close to me.
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1 hour ago, Warzouz said:
KER has slope related data which is VERY useful. When KER says you'll land on a 45° slope, time to light you engine and burn sideway or pray your ship is well designed (but with the actual strut bugs, it won't save you...).
Eye-balling is possible but it's usually had to distinguish slopes from flat terrain until very near ground.
You can still use the "touch and go" manoeuvre : land on the slope, let your lander contact with the terrain, and fire engines before it fall or slide. You'll be going down the slope, hoping for a flatter terrain to land on. Viable if you have reasonably high torque.
Either way, it's always easier to change landing location when your trajectory is not vertical. Shallow landing is easier to tweak at the last minute. It'll cost more for a vertical approach.
Engine? What engine? This happened coming back to Kerbin.
Avoiding too-steep terrain isn't that hard when you have a rocket under you.
The weirdest kracken yet!
in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Posted
Duh! I know it kills rotation but I never thought to apply that to an out-of-control Kerbal.