Jump to content

NewtSoup

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    533

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by NewtSoup

  1. NewtSoup
    It's not tiny, it's just newly hatched :). The butterfly could be bigger than the ones today but the reign of the truly Giant insects ( 2 Foot Predatory Dragon Flies no less.. wouldn't want to be bitten by one of those ) Was in the Carboniferous about 300 million years ago whereas Velociraptor existed in the Late Cretaceous about 85 million years ago. I can quite imagine that a young/hatchling raptor would predate the larger insects.
  2. NewtSoup
    Making Stock Electric Prop Engines - mine always fall apart.
  3. NewtSoup
    Ok, thanks that's reassuring. As long as they're at least getting dirt on their boots then they're fine.
  4. NewtSoup
    For me at the moment it's this: Nice swing beat to dance to.
  5. NewtSoup
    Simple question - Am I reducing the experience my Kerbals can get on a particular flight by having a drone / probe core attached to the vessel? Example - Franwise, an engineer, has landed on the Mun and on Minmus and Planted a Flag on both. Both times were in a vessel with an OKTO2. She has experience in her log for "Plant Flag" but not for "Landed On". I tried landing with SAS turned off but that didn't give her the "Landed On " experience either.
  6. NewtSoup
    My two stations 1) Babylon K - currently in orbit around the Mun. Very Modular, solar panels can be swapped, lab can be removed, extended, command cupola can fly on its own. Even the engines can be swapped. I used skippers to put it in oribit and then changed them for poodles in LKO before transferring the station to The Mun. It usually has a mining / refuel vessel attached too, but that's on loan to Minmus Station at the moment. The landing craft is attached inline in this picture, it's behind the Cupola. I later undocked the cupola, moved the landing craft to one of the side docking ports and put the cupola back. 2) Minmus station. Here you see Minmus station with the Babylon K mining vessel attached on one side and an ore barge constructed for a contract on the other. The ore barge weighs over 50 tons when fully loaded and can re-enter Kerbin's atmosphere safely on a total of 44 Mk2-R parachutes and 8 Drogues for breaking. On the "underside" you can see Minmus station landing craft docked fore ( under the fuel tanks ) and the sky crane for base construction docked aft ( also attached to a fuel tank ). I think the whole bundle together looks rather good. Wheras Babylon K was designed with being able to transfer between planets in mind Minmus is always going to be Minmus and as such will take on an ad-hoc / organic growth. Expanded as needed with no overall design plan.
  7. NewtSoup
    From that picture the only thing I can think of is you still have 0.1 m/s velocity relative to the target. Well done on the rendezvous though. You don't appear to have any RCS thrusters. They make it easier to manage the relative velocity so you're not having to spin the ship all the time and use the main engines. If you don't have the tech / science to get to RCS thrusters then for that particular situation try reducing the thrust on the engine to 10% ( just right click on the engine to set the thrust limiter ) and then go back to spinning the ship and using very short bursts of engine to kill that last 0.1
  8. NewtSoup
    Remembering that the whole point of going to Minmus was to mine ore, Valentina has ordered the construction of an ore barge capable of carrying the 3050 units of ore and landing it safely on Kerbin. Although the Rura Penthe mining facilities are not up and running yet the Babylon K Mobile Miner is docked at Minmus Station with 1200 ore from the Minman Surface. Kerbal Engineers quickly came up with this. 12 x 300 unit ore cans, a 2.5 - 1.5 m quad coupler at each end, struts because 3 of the stacks of ore cans don't actually link to the quad coupler at the bottom end! 44 MK2-R and 8 MK25 R Parachutes and the rest yada yada.. Sitting underneath LfOx and Motors to put a small town into orbit. The craft was carefully transported to the launchpad. Where it promptly exploded. Everyone agreed this was a very promising start, if only they could get the tanks to go up as well. However a quick redesign of the fairing produced a vessel that was far less exciting. At 10km up the velocity was a little lower than optimal but it was increasing steadily and flight was smooth so it was decided not to abort. To everyone's surprise it actually made it into orbit with plenty of dV to reach Minmus. The extra fuel tank capacity was designed in because on the way back the 25 ton craft will be a 53 ton craft. Coming soon - Minmus supply and re-entry into Kerbin's Atmosphere and more base building and expansion of Minmus Station as a refuelling depot.
  9. NewtSoup
    Thanks again to everyone here. The results are recorded in my "Going To Minmus " Thread.
  10. NewtSoup
    And now with some help from my friends in the game questions forum I have managed to put the habitats into orbit. With a little more persuasion they actually made it to Minmus orbit to rendevouz with Mimmus Station. Once in a stable orbit along side Minmus Station, the Sky Crane detached, docked with the habitats and took over. The fuel tanks from the habitat transfer craft were added to the station as storage and the engines discarded. Now it was time for a landing attempt. Did this go smoothly first time? No it bloody well did not. But I did record the final ( successful ) approach to Rura Penthe and landings. I'd have preferred to get closer but within 1km was close enough for a twenty ton payload suspended under four terriers and a handful of girders on a single docking port junior. After some shuffling of habitats across the Minman Surface the base looks like this.
  11. NewtSoup
    @swjr-swis Thank you so much for your hard work there. Your changes are more or less the same ones I made to finally get it into orbit. To answer your question on how the payload works and the reason for not using the 2.5 decouplers. Looking at the picture above you will see there is an orange tank - this will be discarded along with it's skipper engine. That will open up the poodle under the shroud. The poodle is held on by docking ports so that the tanks supplying it ( along with surplus fuel ) can be added to my Minmus space station and the poodle ( possibly ) discarded. That leaves the stack of 4 modules. At minmus station I have a "Sky Crane" with a docking port jr on the bottom can take the stack of modules down to the surface of minmus and drop them one by one. Each module has a battery, small solar panels and an OKTO so that they can drive themselves several hundred meters, if needed, to join onto the main base (Rura Penthe). The main base will consist of a command tower, the four habitat modules, a drilling module, an ore processing module, Ore tank modules LfOx tank modules, RCS tank modules, some solar modules and some fuel cell modules ( for the minman night time). Every module is based on that cross shaped support with wheels and docking ports and they interlock in a grid pattern ( which I tested first on Kerbin to make sure they do interlock properly ) Eventually the habitat modules will be populated by labourers ( low paying tourists who just wanted a flight around Kerbin ) This is all the first stage in Empress Valentina's Kerbal Empire Expansion program.
  12. NewtSoup
    It made it into orbit. Turned off the auto struts on almost all the pieces and what I kept stayed at "grandparent". Now I understand better how autostrut works and why it fell over on my ship. It was ocurring without autostruts. Then it was occuring with autostruts because I added too many in the wrong fashion and the rapid restructuring was causing the issue, at roughly the same AP each time because that's when the fuel ran dry in the main tank. All makes sense now. The advice on bracing the RCS tank helped the original problem of Kraken without struts. Big thanks to everyone who chipped in with their help @bewing @Cpt Kerbalkrunch @Foxster @Three_Pounds
  13. NewtSoup
    I would agree with you but I'd already done a few direction changes with no issues. Yes I tried killing the engine on a previous one - throttle up fine.. throttled down bang!. That was without a direction change. Glad I was able to show you exactly what happens. You can better understand my consternation now haha. By the way that break was again at the junction between the RCS Tank and the Fuel Tank, Yeah I think that rocket is just fundamentally flawed. Must be using Kraken scales in some of the plating.
  14. NewtSoup
    Tank rearrangement didn't help . But this time I had the foresight to record it. So for your delight and delectation, I proudly present: The Kraken Woke! ( A Short by NewtSoup Kerman ) I apologise for the 720p. I need a better Linux recoreder, it doesn't record sound and it didn't record at native screen ( I am using "record my desktop" )
  15. NewtSoup
    @Cpt Kerbalkrunch @Foxster I added an extra stage and actually got to 77km but it went nuts while lifting the PE which got to 5km before the Kraken woke. So close! I am going to keep the extra stage as it's an improvement. And I will rearrange the tanks as suggested. What looks like a smaller rocko tank is just the shrouding around a poodle engine but what I've done is got rid of the X200-32 put in 2 X200-16's sandwiched the RCS tank between them and strutted as suggested. If I can just get to a stable orbit LOL. I've not cheated to orbit ( very much considered it though ) but seeing as my last attempt exploded at 77km and most definitely in space I'm guessing the results of using set orbit would be about the same.
  16. NewtSoup
    Quite, the struts and autostruts were added to try and combat the snapping. @Foxster yep, thing is though I need those docking ports as the tanks are going to become part of minmus station. And anyway it's not snapping at the couplings but at the joint between two same size tanks. However taking on board what you've said I may try adding an extra stage to shorten the craft before burning for orbit and circularisation.
  17. NewtSoup
    Added more struts in an attempt to strengthen that junction, Same result . Yes it's stock. I will post the craft file shortly. here's a link to the craft file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5NgotHMtCRVNHNuQ0JYRUJ5X2s/view?usp=sharing
  18. NewtSoup
    Hi, Can anyone help me with my launcher? It's a 45 ton payload being launched by a lifter of suitable dV. The takeoff and ascent are smooth, easily controlled and uneventful until ap reaches ~73,000m and alt reaches ~ 55,000. At this point the rocket simply falls apart with no warning, no explosion, no flexing, it's just like the Kraken reaches in and snaps it in two. What's odd is that it's not breaking where you might expect, at the docking ports or at a decoupler but at the junction between the FL-R1 RCS tank and the Rockomax X200 as shown by this picture. I have autostrutted everything in an attempt to solve this and added actual struts between what i thought were the weaker parts and indeed the soft junctions don't spilt. Just the one between the two tanks. I have even put 4 struts between the two tanks and it still suddenly snaps. Though I have noticed on the last attempt that it goes into a very tiny but rapid vibration about a second prior to breaking. Does anyone have any suggestions? Edit: Curiouser - it happens when the AP reaches just over 73,000 meters each time, this last failure the alt was 69km but still failed at the point the AP reaches ~73,000
  19. NewtSoup
    Having made a successful Mun to Minmus Transfer ( way more efficient than going back to Kerbin and then out to Minmus ) Franwise has docked with Minmus station, transferred the bulk of her fuel over and is now ready to land at the planned site for Rura Penthe and oversee construction. Meanwhile the first component of the base has been launched into orbit and is ready to be picked up by the Sky Crane and transferred to Minmus Orbit
  20. NewtSoup
    Ok I will try that but 2.6.22 seems to be working with other mods. However it did fix it. My labs will now hold 6 Kerbals. That has surprised me as the download for the the 6 Crew Lab is the 1.3 update and 2.6.22 came with it and I would have expected a working MM .
  21. NewtSoup
    Yeah I have the mod installed correctly. In my Game Data folder I have a KSC folder rather than another game data. Module manager is in fact 2.6.22 which is the one that it comes with. Perhaps it just doesn't work with the Linux game client. Would be weird though as every other mod works.
  22. NewtSoup
    @Tex_NL I have downloaded and installed the Lab Mod, I'm using a newer module manager than the one shipped with the mod yet my labs still only hold 2 kerbals. Any ideas?
  23. NewtSoup
    And so it begins. The first labourer destined for Rura Penthe: He thinks he can just buy a quick orbit around Kerbin. Little does he know that he is the first cog in the machine of the great Kerbal Empire Expansion!
  24. NewtSoup
    I know others have done it and I won't be the last either but I was particularly please with this result. Having rescued Parey from the suface of The Mun and Oremy from orbit of the same I let them have a few hours R & R and snacks aboard the space bus docked at Babylon K ( Only Parey was granted access to the K proper due to the all female crew, no boys allowed! ). Once refreshed they were taken by Space Bus ( previously Level Up Bus in another thread but renamed ) to Kerbin Orbital Station where they transfered to a rocket bus flown by Valentina. As Valentina had a go at throwing the ship at the KSC. The results were better than expected. At 7km up things were looking very promising! Then at 1100 meters she remembered that she should probably open parachutes at this point. The final result being a gentle touchdown on the landing gear just 1.8km from the VAB
  25. NewtSoup
    Oh definitely. The whole mining vessel is more than capable of making it to Minmus ( and many other places ) and she was going to be on loan from the K during base construction anyway. She will enjoy instructing the tourists who thought they were getting a holiday in the finer aspects of drill maintenance and ore processing.
×
×
  • Create New...