EpicSpaceTroll139

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.

Find a ladder to get them down because their capsule would probably be hanging from the parachute tangled in one of the many trees behind my house. Ask them what the secret is to their 100% efficient closed loop life support systems. And other stuff.

Lol I'd have to learn a whole lot about analog computers first. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to do it xD. I get the feeling even a 4 function calculator would have 1000+ parts lol. Anyways, nice work with the KC-46!

I did some work on my Apollo replica. Not enough to post pictures about. I also started working on craft for a grand tour mission. My vacuum lander has batteries for landing legs. What could possibly go wrong? I was amused by the complaint of "High Transonic / Supersonic Drag!" Thanks FAR! I'll remember that next time I think of trying to make a Kerbal go supersonic in a seat using an ion engine. Minute hand now works on my clock... Theoretically at least. Haven't tested that.

Ok, so I spent a few minutes in Microsoft Paint, and I believe I've come up with a reasonable representation of the problem. Not sure how reasonable the representation of the fins is, I was trying to get it like I was looking from one side, and not from this 45 degree angle or so. So I painted the lateral area fore of the center of mass red, and the lateral are aft of the COM blue, and all the forward facing / leading area yellow. In the second picture I demonstrated the balancing of area fore and aft of the COM. The rocket has an excess of lateral area at the back, which is good. This means that if flying sideways it will generally try to rotate its nose towards prograde. However, the forward facing / leading area is a different story. The yellow circles, rings, and rectangles show approximations of the location and amounts of surface area (and thus approx drag) of areas when looking down from the top of the rocket. I didn't bother actually do a similar demonstration of areas canceling out, but it was easy to find that there was significantly more area towards the top. This means that when pointing close to prograde, it ends up wanting to turn to the side. I'm guessing the effects of lateral and forward facing area balance out at some angle between 0 and 90 degrees, so without control the rocket will end up tilting over to this angle, causing problems. If given active control surfaces, it could probably go straight though, as they would keep it from deviating enough from prograde for aerodynamic forces to cause this issue.

With FAR, making sure the COL ball is behind the COM marker is no longer sufficient. You need to make sure the center of drag (aka center of pressure, COP) is also behind the COM. The true COP unfortunately does not have a visual indicator, so you just kind of have to guesstimate. Try checking the data + stability derivatives in the FAR tab. I find things usually work best when there aren't any red numbers. Just looking at your rocket I'm fairly sure your COP is ahead of your COM, meaning you either need some form of guidance to keep it from tipping, or to redesign it with more mass toward the top and/or drag at the bottom.

I took little break from working on a public speaking class presentation and ended up making this "little" RC jet. Probably would be banned. It's about 1,250kg, can go more than 240m/s, and pulls almost 20g without slowing down much. It would probably go supersonic with adjustments for area ruling.

I guess I never come across the problem because I have this OCD thing that I never put a part where it looks like it could possibly lie along an infinite line from a thruster's nozzle. Even RCS ports which lack actual occlusion detection. * I also realized I was mixing up my engine names. I meant to refer to the Spark engine when I said Dart. I must say I haven't used the Dart much in space since it (for good reasons) got whacked with the nerf bat, as I generally favor isp over power in my designs. Though from its stats, it definitely would be good for more power. * Except when building turboshaft vehicles, in which this is kind of necessary for the turbines to work!

Is it that hard to make sure not stick a part under your engine ? lol Anyways, back on topic, as has been mentioned earlier, the Poodle has the best isp, and is reasonably light. Though if your payload is light (just a couple tons), the dart spark or ant would probably be best. For about 7-10 tons I'd recommend the terrier. I could test using math to see where the crossover points are.

Lookin' good! If you swapped the positions of the elevons you could get the slightly forward swept trailing edge. You could clip in two pairs of elevon #3s on the fuselage with just the edges showing for the strakes, if you want those details. @Servo Nice!... Dat harrier...