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Posts posted by DunaManiac

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

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    I haven't seen a lot of mk2 fighter planes recently, so I decided to build my own: Behold the Indivisible series. This particular model has a missile launcher mounted on top to make quick work of surface Anti-Aircraft Artillery and slow lumbering bombers.  It flies remarkably well despite the missile emplacement.

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    So I put it up against another fighter jet I designed (inspired by the F-16), the G4B. The G4B mostly evaded the missiles due to it's counter-measures but the Indivisable's guns made quick work of the G4.

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by DunaManiac

    Today I planned to do a few routine missions down to the surface of Minmus, but today, I discovered something...

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    I was scouting out locations for a landing site for a new unmanned ground station, as a part of Project LONG, (Long-term Observation for New Gravimetric anomalies), the ground station is being sent along with a satellite and another ground station. I selected two possible sites and used the Service lander to bring some experiments to the surface from Service Station 1. The first site was the bleak plateau of Site E, near the Lesser flats.

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    Moving on, after going back to Service Station 1 to refuel, Al and the Service lander set out again.

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    Next up was Site F, set in a small flat in the southern hemisphere. Quickly I took a liking to the place, but I noticed something.

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    In the upper center, above the lander in the shot is texture glitc that I've seen occasionally on Minmus. I call them, "rifts." They are a window into the interior of Minmus, which as most KSP players know is absolutely empty. I've seen one up close once before, with the Advanced Mobile Surveyor (AMS), but it was tiny:

    Spoiler

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    Not a particularly overwhelming one, but I'm sure a momentous discovery for all of kerbalkind.

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    The worst terrain glitch I've ever seen most momentous discovery known to kerbalkind. I didn't stick around long enough to see if it persisted between loading, but it most likely does not. This is in the southern hemisphere, and not particularly near the poles so it's unlikely to be permanent. But still, it was cool to see.

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    EDIT: Turns out the rift is persistent. Coordinates if anyone wants to check it out:

    34° 46' 14" S
    44° 59'42" E

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Sometimes even a routine mission to add another module to the fledgling VENTURE station can be pretty at least. Minbus 12 was a simple mission to Minmus and back, the 13th launch of the Minbus, to bring the 7th module to VENTURE, the Environmental Control and Regulation Module. The module also contains a large amount of fertillizer for VENTURE's agriculture module, which has yet to be launch.

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    Liftoff! The mission is carrying 3 kerbals, aboard the standard lifter.

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    The launch to orbit went smoothly as always, it was nice watching the reverse sunset, due to the altitude the sun rose above the horizon briefly before sinking once again.

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    Leaving Kerbin,  I had a record time of 5 days to a Minmus encounter, considering the fact that most of my missions take 10-15 days to get there.

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    What's that little white dot near the center of Minmus on it's darkside just above the craft? Is it a glitch, a star that's shining through Minmus? No, it's VENTURE.

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    I obtained an intercept on the first side, (thankfully,) and was able to dock quickly. Soon after docking I moved the Minbus up to the Transportation Node's docking port in order to prevent the station from wobbling.

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    Soon after, it was time to return home, after another few days in space, Minbus 12 splashed down safely just off the coast of the supercontinent, a successful end to yet another mission.

    Show off your awesome KSP pictures!

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted

    Recently I did a mission to replace an old module aboard my Minmus station, using my new Fortitude class SSTO.

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    Leaving Kerbin

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    Visiting the (very incomplete) VENTURE Station to replace a docking port.

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    After that, I visited Service Station 1 to deliver my cargo, a new Utility module. The space station seems big, but it's dwarfed by the Fortitude, and I've been working on it for 3 (in-game) years. The space station wasn't designed for docking with something this large, so it took a while to get it to dock correctly. The port that was intended for spaceplanes, is actually not even tall enough, since I didn't want to risk bumping into the lower station.

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    Eventually, it was time to go home.

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by DunaManiac

    Recently, I've created and built a brand new class of spaceplanes, the Fortitude Class. The Fortitude class is a Mk3 Spaceplane, the first of it's kind (and the first I've ever successfully built) SSTO capable of reaching Minmus orbit and back. Unlike SSTMin, which was a general purpose mk1 spaceplane which had no real purpose other than to pave the way for more advanced spaceplanes and to perhaps shuttle crew back and forth. However, the Fortitude Class is designed to carry supplies and cargo to Minmus orbit. It's four puny LV-Ns have too little TWR for landing, so I have a spaceplane in mind that will be rated for landing. However, this is about the Fortitude.

    Spoiler

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    The early ascent went by without a hitch. There was a close call when I pitched up too much and nearly destroyed the aircraft, but luckily the aircraft held together.

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    At approximately 20-30 kilometers up going at Mach 3.8, the airbreathing mode began to run out of steam, so the closed-cycle mode kicked in, carrying the Fortitude's apoapsis above the upper limits of the atmosphere.

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    Finally, after the closed-cycle mode burned itself out, they shut down, allowing the small NERVAs to carry the Fortitude the rest of the way into a parking orbit in low orbit around Kerbin.

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    After 12 days in transit, the Fortitude finally arrived at Minmus. It's objective was to do a visual survey of VENTURE station. It can't be called a space station just yet. Currently VENTURE consists of only two modules, the Command and Control Center, part of the central truss, and Minbus 7C which delivered the truss is also there, since I didn't have any further use for it but didn't want to throw it away.

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    Fromund and Neller Kerman both serviced the station. Their purpose of arrival was to place another docking port on the node, since I somehow managed to lose it when I was copying over the truss during launch it was torn off. The other docking ports could have also suffered damage as well, necessitating a crewed visual sweep of the "station." It was also a good opportunity to test out the Fortitude for the first time, because Minbus 8 was due to be launched soon and would have been perfectly capable of servicing it, command decided to test the Fortitude instead. Fromund alos did a survey of the lower docking port while the Fortitude floated in the background.

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    The port is successfully attatched by Fromund, and the two both return to the Fortitude.

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    Leaving Minmus, the Fortitude returns to Kebin and begins the first of several aerobraking maneuvers to bring the Fortitude back into LKO.

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    Finally, the Fortitude began the perilous final descent back down to the KSC. For me this was the most stressful part of the mission, since I had no idea whether the Fortitude would stall and crash as it did many times during testing. Fortunately, I had managed to perfect the design, and it had reliably landed safely several times during simulations. Now the final test was here: could it land safely, or stall and disintegrate.

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    I miscalculated during descent and managed to overshoot the KSC during the final approach. In this screenshot the spider web of struts that were needed for it not to disintegrate during the slightest pitch during descent is visible.

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    The unintended side effect of overshooting was to show off the plane's phenomenal flying empty of fuel, better than when it's full of fuel and even better than it flew during testing.
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    To the immense relief of the KSC and myself, the four kerbals and the fortitude finally touched down at KSC. It lost only a single airbrake.

    Meanwhile, simultaneously, I was servicing the MTGO, which sits in a very low orbit over Minmus. A few pictures are below:

    Spoiler

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    I always love to visit the Minmus Trace gas orbiter, which orbits inside Minmus' halo. It is so low that it's hard to tell that it is in fact in orbit from a picture, which I assure you, it is in orbit. I always love to have them fly in formation. This is now my third servicing of MTGO, and I always love to do it.

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    The service lander has had some battle scars, such as losing a solar panel and having it's magnetometer jammed open (while the crew of Minbus 6 had a lot of fun trying to fix, and later break the magnetometer, they were unsuccessful), it has already done some 10 landings and 5 servicings, and 4 years on duty. It has proven it's worth.

     

    How do you keep the game fresh once the regular career is no longer challenging?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by DunaManiac

    What did the trick for me was to focus on one target in every save. In my current save my single target was the exploration and colonization.

    Another thing was to add additional constraints to the game, like above. For me, what got me back into KSP after my hiatus was to combine USI life support and Kerbal Construction time, that I haven't tried before. That combination added challenge to the game - time management.

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

    Maybe you tried this but... looking at the pic when it's about to touch down... you have canards lifting and elevons pushing down. Elevons going up produce downward (negative) lift. I think this is why it's stalling. Sure, they help pitch the nose up, but increasing the AOA of the wing doesn't give much lift because the elevons are pushing down. It does produce a lot of drag though - bad combination at low speed. So I would disable the elevons at the root of the wing and just make the control surfaces at the wing tips ailerons. You may need bigger canards though - maybe try biplane canards. Then the CoM may need to move forward for stability. But I think it would fly better at low speed that way.  What part are you using for the canards? I don't recognize them.

    The canards are from the procedural wings mods.

    5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

    Restock DepthMask. It's a mod feature that makes things that would normally show when clipped through the intake to stop showing. Various other stock parts have it.

    That's the very normal effect of a plane taking on huge dynamic pressure when pitching up in low and thick atmo. I'm guessing you're pitching up while faster than Mach 1 and under 5km altitude. While weak joint strength is a big deal, you can still reduce your need to spam strusts by finding the ideal ascent angle for your plane and letting it cruise at that angle.

    The other very normal problem (might be there, too) of having the engine mass (and empty tank dry mass) too far back and too much forward control surface.

     

    The odd wings and canards are B9 Procedural Wings.

    Poor lift|mass ratio makes for a high stall speed and more likelihood of stalling during reentry. This basically means you don't have enough wing. You may also be very draggy and so would get hit pretty hard in the fuel economy by low altitude drag and the transonic drag spike. Both of these can affect you concurrently.

    Thank you for all the advice.

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Today, after several days of effort, I have finally finished designing my Fortitude class Mk3 spaceplane, capable of going to Minmus and back. I plan to build a separate class rated for surface landings, as the TWR of the Fortitude is too low to attempt a landing. Not all of the kinks have been worked out, as it has a nasty habit of losing the four nuclear engines due to aerodynamic forces, sometimes taking the rudder with it.

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    (I don't know why the intakes are blue like that)

    However, designing the space plane was difficult, and it went through a lot of design revisions before completion. The spaceplane had a habit of stalling, and subsequently disintegrating, requiring the use of all those struts, here are a few shots from that:

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    First trial: utter disintegration while launching.

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    Trial 2: Attempting to take off - doing a wheelie blew the tail, causing the plane to crash after takeoff. Thankfully for the nonexistent crew, the cockpit survived.

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    Trial three: Crashing into the ground after failing to take off.

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    Trial Four: While successfully reaching orbit, it stalled upon reentry and was subsequently destroyed.

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    "Did we lose something?"
    "Nah, I'm sure it's nothing."
    Half the continent was irradiated.

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    Crashing into the ground after a failed landing, the plane didn't have enough pitch power.

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    Overshot the KSC and crashed into the water. Again, the cockpit survived.

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    Botched landing: the plane didn't have enough pitch power, causing it to hit the runway way too hard which destroyed the wing. The plane then veered off the runway and smashed again directly into the launchpad. (It was a total coincidence, please believe me)

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    Plane successfully landed, but lost two airbrakes, the rudder, and the four nuclear engines. Due to a sloppy landing on my part and the lack of yaw control, the plane rolled off the runway, but survived relatively intact.

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    The plane landed successfully and mostly intact, but again the nuclear engines were torn off.

    There were many more failed attempts that simply stalled rather than even reaching the runway, so that's it for the fail montage.

    King of the Hill

    in Forum Games!

    Posted

    I annihilate your new hill with a gigantic Mass Driver from orbit, blasting it to atoms.

    (Strictly speaking, I didn't touch it...)

    Then, I simply invert Earth's heightmap terrain, moutains become oceans, oceans become mountains, and the crater is now a hill.

    My inverted crater hill.

    What’s the most “Jeb” thing you ever did in ksp?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by DunaManiac

    The most "Jeb" thing I ever did was probably my first (and currently only) manned Moho mission and return about a year ago. It's probably the largest rocket I've ever built, due to the fact I simply brute forced it rather than doing complex gravity assists to reduce delta v. The result of that was this:

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    And this is from LKO! I needed an even larger rocket to get it up there in the first place, rivaling the real-life Saturn V! In fact, it needed not one rocket, but two on either side. I admit I could have made this significantly less complicated but where's the fun in that?

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