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James Kerman

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Everything posted by James Kerman

  1. James Kerman
    I think it depends on the TWR. I mostly fly rockets and the higher the thrust to weight ratio, the more aggressive I fly.
  2. James Kerman
    The spaceplane has plenty of power so I flew 5deg from take off until around 450m/s and then pulled up to about 15deg until apoapsis was 72000m.
  3. James Kerman
    What is your flight profile?
  4. James Kerman
    Sorry, I meant to say I removed the small intake and the NCS Adaptor and replaced them with the shock cone intake.
  5. James Kerman
    The small centre air intake at the front is not rated for the temperatures experienced during ascent so I switched it for a shock cone air intake and made Kerbin orbit with just under 3000DV flying manually.
  6. James Kerman
    Yes, the junior drill needs to have 5% ore concentration or more to operate so I'd use a single large drill. There is a large probe core behind the large reaction wheel so an avionics pod is redundant, you should swap it for a nosecone or intake with lower mass. Yes, almost all parts in KSP are buoyant. Ore is very heavy and counteracts the parts but it takes a little experimentation to get a vessel balanced underwater.
  7. James Kerman
    It's often said that a good spaceplane also makes a good submarine in KSP. You are carrying a lot of mass in the ISRU setup. This setup will take longer to refuel buy has about 1/4 the mass: The trick for slow refuelling is to get everything going, return your game focus to the tracking station and warp time for a few days. I'd also remove the avionics pod as the large probe core has all the same functions.
  8. James Kerman
    P12
  9. James Kerman
    Congratulations! It took me a lot of time to be able to do what you have done in the last few days so I'd say you're probably a natural spaceplane pilot and designer. Onward and upward! Using this online tool it looks like you'll need around 1350 to get to the system so you'll probably need to use some gravitational assists off the moons to get to Laythe (the only other place in the stock Kerbin system where you can use airbreathing mode) and refuel.
  10. James Kerman
    'Tis P16.
  11. James Kerman
    Yes, because they function in both airbreathing and vacuum mode it saves on dry mass, even though they don't have the best ISP in vacuum (you are not carrying engines that can only be used in one mode and then just act as dead weight). Disclaimer - I'm not the best spaceplane pilot but I can try adding ISRU and crew to your design and run a mission to Duna and back over the next few days.
  12. James Kerman
    P15
  13. James Kerman
    P10
  14. James Kerman
    Hi @JoshTheKerbal, we have snipped your paste of a log file because huge text posts like that cause page loading issues on the forum and make navigation difficult for members on mobile devices. We reiterate @Brigadier's advice to upload to a storage service and then post a link here.
  15. James Kerman
    P6
  16. James Kerman
    My mistake, I think you had it right before as I didn't realise the wings were full of LF. Sorry about that.
  17. James Kerman
    One thing I've noticed that will give you some extra performance is that all your propellant tanks are full of LF + Ox. Because you are doing half the ascent in airbreathing mode you can remove some of the oxidiser from the tanks in the VAB.
  18. James Kerman
    Well, I destroyed the plane while landing! Important lesson - don't forget to jettison the ore before you come back down!
  19. James Kerman
    The only thing I changed was the landing gear configuration, the tanks still have 300 ore in each one. This is a very capable design and would be an amazing exploration spaceplane if you add an ISRU system.
  20. James Kerman
    Made orbit flying manually with around 1300Dv to spare: Mun Flyby:
  21. James Kerman
    Okay, I think the reason you can't lift off the runway is that having the rear landing gear so far back makes the spaceplane very hard to rotate off the ground. I shifted them forward a bit and managed to take off:
  22. James Kerman
    Yes. I'd like to try flying your design. I'm not sure if this website is available to you but KerbalX is a great, free place where we can publish our designs so that others can try them.
  23. James Kerman
    Yes. If you scale the design up and it should be able to carry more.
  24. James Kerman
    By it I was referring to the spaceplane and you would also need to add more wings. This thread has some good information on increasing your 'payload fraction' - the amount of cargo you can carry:
  25. James Kerman
    Well, you are trying to get a lot of ore into orbit! I'd try reducing weight by changing it to 1 rudder, maybe use the next landing gear down (although this may cause the SP to swerve around while taking off). Another option is to make it bigger and add moar engines.
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