EpicSpaceTroll139

Hehe thought that too. Had meant to reference it but was busy and forgot. "You only live twice Mr. Kirrim."

I've found them useful for tiny probes and science return canisters. I imagine they might be useful for protecting small bits on the sides of Eve lander and such. I've also found the make for perfect LM foot pads (or whatever they're called). I'm blanking out on the name but some glorious fellow used them to absorb heat on the front of a stock 1800m/s rocket car a week or so ago.

I'm sort of a combination engineer and scientist. I build replicas, fit my craft to certain goals, etc, and in the process I test and retest them, optimizing for Δv and stuff. Currently I'm working on a grand tour setup. Actually a couple grand tour setups, one for minimal mass, one to take 3 kerbals with cabins.

Seems interesting. I tried making a Turboshaft car once but it bounced and exploded. I'll see what I can do.

Not that I'm aware of, but really, why not offset? If you zoom all the way in and move it by a pixel, that is enough to fix it, and the difference will be unnoticeable when flying. Most of my replica aircraft feature this at least somehwer in their design. My Saturn V undoubtedly will too when it's finished.

Z fighting! My eyes! They burn! jk I like the build. Looks quite accurate. Might be able to reduce part count a bit by using those fairings bit more for and aft of the bomb bay instead of what looks like 48-56 or so structural or Lf fuselages. But whatever's your style.

I'm sitting here scratching my head over the Δv of my LM. So I have 700m/s of ∆v in the ascent stage, which is perhaps a bit of overkill, but I figured I would just leave it like that for now. But the descent stage, as you may recall, for now has only that dinky little 1/8 size 1.25m tank (I forget what it's called), and so only had 60m/s or so of ∆v. I decided that for testing, I would also put 700m/s in the descent stage, and I could better optimize it as I figured out how the thing handles. So with descent tanks dry, the thing weighs in at 17092kg. It uses a Reliant engine with 310 vacuum isp. Tsiolkovsky tells me that: ∆v = veln(m0/mf). ve = isp*9.81 So, using this I can set up an equation to find the fuel mass I need to get the ∆v I want. ∆v = isp*9.81*ln[(mf + x) / mf], where x = the fuel mass I need in kilograms. So I solve for x and get: x = mf(e∆v/(isp*9.81) -1) Now that I have my equation, I can plug in my dry mass, isp, and desired ∆v. So my needed fuel mass is 17092(e700/(310*9.81) -1) ≈ 4420kg Rocket engines in KSP use a ratio of 9 parts liquidfuel to 11 parts oxidizer, each at 5kg/unit, so I can now calculate the fuel units using that. Lf = 4420*(9/(9+11))/5 = 4420*(9/20)/5 = 397.8u Ox = 4420*(11/(9+11))/5 = 4420*(11/20)/5 = 486.2u So I went into the craft file and put this much LfOx into the descent tank, and was expecting there to be about 700m/s in the descent stage, probably a m/s or so less as I rounded down the needed fuel mass by about 3kg. KER is telling me I have only 560m/s. So either I messed up or KER messed up. I guess there's only one way to find out which.

Yep it's a cool replica. Tail rotor seems a bit small though. I think KerbPaint kind of works for some parts. Then again, I haven't used it in a while.

Looks kind of blocky and gunshippy. Reminds me of a Mil Mi-24 Hind. Could almost just move the stub wings up and tilt them a bit, add some "rocket pods" and a couple doodads call it the Azi Ki-24 or something lol

It's not actually that complicated. Each leg is an independent craft, so that's 1 lander + 4 legs = 5 parts. Though it is only like that for a couple seconds, during the time it takes between the legs being decoupled and the docking port magnets locking them in the extended position. The hard part was dealing with non-visual collisions and clipping between parts.

I might do that. I recently got fraps, I need to learn how to use it. Edit: Aaaannndd... just realized I have to get the paid version to record more than 30 seconds and without a giant watermark... and it costs more than twice what I paid for KSP. I'm going to do some looking around, but anyone got some suggestions for free screen capture/vid software?

So I wanted to make something like this: I found a two bladed rotor to create so much vibration that I couldn't take off, so I ended up with a 3 bladed design that looks like this. It flew once briefly in unmanned form. Now my engineers are afraid to go near it, calling it spawn of the Kraken. Upon placement on the runway it violently hurls itself partway into the ground blowing lots of stuff up. Then the weird stuff starts happening. There are some cubic struts and other parts floating off into oblivion, in complete defiance of gravity. Others orbiting around the wreckage. Many are bent in a tangled mess. Some of those orbiting struts are going through walls.

FINALLY IT WORKS! IT *bleep*-ING WORKS! YES! YES! YES! It's 294 parts tho... without the big A rocket attached... I might have some ideas for how to reduce part count, but not by a significant amount.

Sometimes the strut logic leaves me baffled. Those long struts crossing the structure should be in the same relative places as the one in the upper right.

I've been reworking the descent stage on my LM replica to try to make it less of a jumble of parts and more of an organized machine. So far I've changed the side panels to be movable in bulk as opposed to individually, allowing me to move them all off and access the internals without fear of messing up the octagonal prism shape. While I was at it, I disabled power production on them. Maybe my lander will look like it has solar panels, but it won't be using them! I've also replaced the quadruple set of fuel tanks with one clipped into the top of the engine. I'm hoping for this to be temporary, as I want to keep hacks to a minimum so I can maybe enter this thing into stock challenges later. Anyways, I'm also reconnecting the struts, so that they all attach to the decoupler at the core, making it easier to move active parts like the leg mountings around, and just in general know what is attached to what. Lastly, I replaced a couple of fixed leg struts with fixed radial antennas, as they're lighter, and have the convenience of not disappearing if you touch the part next to them wrong. The goal is to eventually get the legs smoothly deploying and make the descent stage easy enough to modify that say, if I wanted I could just pull off a side panel and fit in a rover* or ALSEP or whatever. *I might try to make a lunar roving vehicle. No promises. Going to finish the rocket first at least.

While unrelated to the problem at hand, I can't help but suggest that you move your rear gear forward so that they are only a short distance behind the center of mass. Having your gear at the very back like that can prevent you from taking off until the end of the runway, and sometimes cause problems during landing.

Out of curiosity, what would a new space plane builder be doing that these would be significantly helpful with? Heating is quite forgiving in KSP. If the problem is on ascent, just throttle back and climb a bit. If it's on reentry, pull the nose up. If you can't pull the nose up, you were probably going to lawn-dart anyways. Idk, maybe it would help more experienced players doing extreme stuff with space planes, but what I see happening with new space plane builders is them seeing the part and thinking it must be some necessity on space planes, and so adding it. The parts would then add weight and drag and make it harder to get to orbit.

Maybe. More I'm legit curious to see how that would work. I've tried turning fairings inside out for negative mass to try to make a blimp. It didn't work.

I may now have a theme for my grand tour lol. DISCLAIMER: Commercial video is obviously owned by Volvo, not me.

I might have to steal that xenon-tanks-for-engines idea in some of my future planes. I followed up on my idea to redesign my grand tour drive to not haul unessential mass to Moho, and wow did it pay off. Now just one of the xenon tanks gives me plenty of ∆v for the operations there. I'm guessing the Moho operations will probably use about 3/4ths of the tank, possibly a little less if I can empty one of the Oscar-B tanks. The rest of the design has also been changed, with MOAR STAGING! The 12,191m/s of ∆v is an underestimate, as LfOx and the relevant empty tanks will be dropped off as they are used. I don't know exactly when those will happen, so I left them last in the stack. Still need to determine if the vacuum lander can handle Laythe. I'm mostly worried about atmospheric entry and landing. If it can make it through that, it should have enough fuel and power to brute force it's way to orbit. I'm completely redoing the Eve lander. I knew it had looked strangely small for an Eve lander, but had payed more attention to the KER readout. When I loaded it this morning, it turned out I had the readout set up wrong. With proper setup, it told the hard truth. The TWR started at 0.49, and didn't go above 1.0 until part way through the penultimate stage burn. Hopefully the vacuum lander will do well on Laythe, so I don't have to worry about keeping the core of the Eve lander intact. If so, I might just use the EVA pack to complete Eve orbit. Though it might be nice to keep the pod so I can use the EVA pack more than once. Say, for Gilly, Bop, and Minmus, and also have pack fuel to spare for any unforeseen incidents requiring "get out and push" shenanigans.

I'd like to see how you make it float

Weird aero physics. Is your stuff attached to a node or radially attached?

I did some testing of my previously shown grand tour vacuum lander at Tylo. On stage separation (it needed a partial descent stage for Tylo), the Kraken hurled it into a violent spin (I think there was possibly some non-visual clipping between the stages), which spelled boom when skimming along 200m above the surface at 800m/s. I ended up coming to the conclusion that the design was sub-optimal anyways. The ion engine, which I thought would be great for landing on most other non-atmospheric bodies, was just too much dead weight during the Tylo landing. It was also going to be hard to keep it running long enough during landings on any of the outer Joolian moons and Eeloo without adding more batteries, further increasing mass. So, I did a complete redesign, shaving off anything I wouldn't absolutely need for a Tylo landing. The lander can be seen here sitting upside-down on top of a prototype mothership. The part that will be used for Tylo includes all of the Oscar-B tanks. It uses all of its power system components as landing gear, since they actually have better impact tolerance than the cubic struts. I hope I don't regret this abuse later. Anyways, the mothership is an atrocity. It has FIFTEEN FLIPPITY FLARPING HOURS OF BURN TIME and around 16km/s of Delta v in the xenon tanks with fully fueled vacuum lander attached and full LfOx storages. I'm thinking of redesigning it so that the LfOx storages can be detached from the drive section, so I don't have to decelerate all that mass for Moho capture and then re-accelerate it again when I head out to Duna. Instead with a decoupling version I could detach from fuel storage, decelerate just the ion drive and lander at Moho, land take off again, grab the ion drive, and accelerate again. If done right, I should be able to catch up with outbound fuel storage, and then proceed to Duna. Also been working on a "lightweight" Eve lander. It's got a bit over 6000 vacuum Delta v and 3000something at Eve sea level. Not sure how comfortable I feel about that. Might need more boosters. Also might be able to get rid of the drag + mass of the docking port if the vacuum lander proves capable of working on Laythe. Although it might be useful to have the pod later for landing back at Kerbin. Then again, there's always the heatshield + seat trick. Once again I got the "High Transonic and Supersonic Drag!" warning, which is kind of the whole idea of having a giant inflatable heatshield. Edit: @Servo iirc from working on my LM replica, those solar panels are high poly and / or have multiple collision meshes (presumably one for for each square panel) or something, resulting in noticeable lag when large numbers are used. Though once the panels are broken the lag reduces to as if they're any other part. If need be I might be able to figure out a way to get rid of the panels by poking around in the craft file. Probably something along the lines of setting the status to "BROKEN".

Huh... I thought I had read somewhere that the axis of rotation was simply equal to the inclination of the orbit around the parent body, not necessarily the sun in particular. Learn something new every day lol. Anyways yah Principia is amazing.

I think axial tilt could be fudged. My idea is you could make a tiny "fake" body, perhaps even without any visible mesh, with a very small SOI (doesn't even need to be 10m in radius, with very low gravity. Then have the body that you want to have tilted orbiting it at the desired inclination with a very low radius, such that the planet doesn't wobble noticeably. If done right the player would be none the wiser that there was a ghost body inside the planet. My reasoning for thinking this could work is that it is possible to put Kerbin in an inclined and very low radius orbit around Gilly using hyperedit, and it seems to work as I described.