Randox

Just a brain problem. The relay separates from the carrier ship with only the force generated by undocking, so both craft are in almost the same orbit. Usually I'd make a small burn to distance the craft. This time I let them drift and didn't see I was pointing at my carrier stage when I started my burn.

Trying to get back into the groove in preparation for the new game. For my first mission I decided to launch my pair of interplanetary relays (into alternating highly elliptic polar orbits). Had a non-critical collision during the insertion burn for relay one, which is now a bit lopsided: I'm not sure exactly how close I was to plowing the relay directly into the launch vehicle, but it was someplace between the radius of that radio dish and the missing large solar array. The relay was deflected about 80 degrees off course on impact, though SAS and gimbaled thrust was able to bring it back on target very quickly. For those curious, this relay undocked from the parent ship about 8 minutes prior to the launch burn. Separation was probably around 300m.

I once landed on Kerbin with a Kerbal riding shotgun on the exterior ladder. It was a result of my first manned orbital rendezvous. I had a small purpose built rocket that went up first, equipped with a single occupant command pod and an RCS system (since this was to be the craft to make the final rendezvous), and the second rocket was carrying my Minmus lander, using a 3 man pod that was fully crewed. After circularizing the larger rocket a couple km away from the smaller craft, I switched control and immediately advanced the staging, jettisoning the command pod from the rest of the craft and stranding myself in orbit. Hearing epic rescue music in my head (and perhaps doubting my ability to make a rendezvous again), I was able to maneouver the larger rocket into a closer parking orbit and then EVA the stranded Kerbal over to it so he could hand on to the ladder. This was frankly a pretty stupid idea not just because the 4th Kerbal would have to ride on the outside, but because that lander wasn't designed for a powered landing at all. It was supposed to jettison the command pod to land, but most of the ladder was on the fuel tank so I couldn't detach it. I did a slow burn of the engine on the way in to keep my speeds down, and reconfigured the parachutes to deploy as high as possible to try and avoid ripping the Kerbal riding on the ladder off the craft when they opened (it worked!). I opted for a water landing to try and avoid blowing up on impact, then decided that was still probably going to end poorly and so took control of the 4th kerbal right before landing and had him jump. It worked. The running rocket engine didn't cook him, though the entire rocket very nearly landed on him. The rocket did break up on impact a bit but nothing (important) exploded, and everyone survived. Yay team!

It's been long enough that I don't really remember. Up until double checking to see if my assumption was right, I figured I was introduced to the game by a youtuber (One F Jef), but his videos start at a later update. Best as I can figure, I was probably pointed to this game by the forums for one of the RuneScape fansites, and would have discovered Scott Manley a while after to better figure out how to play the game (ah, the good old days of flying strait up at the Mun). Also, that was about 9 and a half years ago. Yikes!

I like OBS. As noted above, like Shadowplay and Relive, OBS can make use of GPU video recording. That's probably preferable to CPU based recording pretty much all of the time anyway, but doubly advantageous for a game like this that is so demanding on the CPU relative to the GPU. While OBS is much more involved to set up and tune, where ShadowPlay and ReLive pretty much work out of the box, OBS has a lot more flexibility and can do some very useful things. A stand out to me are the available audio tools that can run in real time, rather than cleaning up mic audio in post. I don't have a great mic, so I need to run it through some filters to clean up all the weird noise and make it not sound like it was recorded on a tin can. As a bonus, by doing the audio cleanup while recording, I potentially had the option of uploading strait to youtube and editing there (depending on the type of video I was doing). By not editing on my own machine I avoid loosing quality to the re-rendering process (if I were really into it, I'd have a dedicated hard drive and I'd re-render at a much higher quality and file size). That said, while I can't state it's the best (because I don't know, not because I don't think it's good), the editor I picked was VSDC Free. I believe I picked it largely because it has an excellent feature set for a free program. At least, it was the only free program I found that I liked and did what I needed. The paid version is also relatively affordable. Plus, the program is a little weird in how it works compared to most editors, and that appeals to me I guess. The paid version is able to make use of GPU hardware acceleration for supported codecs, like OBS does for recording. OBS is the only free non GPU specific recorder I know of that can use the GPU for rendering, and so far as I know, no free video editor has that particular feature.

That's got to feel pretty awesome! I think kerbal engineer is able to pull height data at arbitrary points. If memory serves, it would need to do that for bodies with atmospheres where it does a projected impact location that differs from the raw trajectory. Or I could be wrong and it may just be making a guess using the altitude at the games projected point of impact as a proxy value. There is also the kerbNet system, which has altitude data. I'm not sure about accessing that data for a script, but that might have potential. The real trick to me is not just pulling off the suicide burn (which is plenty hard enough), but doing so and landing in a specific place. To that end, perhaps a script that uses a target vessel on the surface for the calculations, at least to start with. It would provide precise location and altitude information you need, and I think plenty of us would find even that more limited application super useful (you tend to waste a lot of fuel trying to land ships together - at least I do).

Being able to write in both C# and lua is probably about as good a pair of options as we'll get. Lua is light and simple to support, and not being compiled gives it complimentary uses to C#. Python isn't really fit to purpose in my eyes. It's slower than lua, and it has a bigger footprint. The advantages it would enjoy are chiefly that it's very popular (which may open up the door to some potential modders), and that it is backed by very comprehensive standard libraries. I wouldn't complain if they supported Python because its a language I really like (it's also possibly the easiest language to read, which makes it perhaps the best language in which to be tinkering with lightly documented code written by other people :P), but it wouldn't be at the top of my list.

I lost a probe. Two, actually, but I think I can recover one. I am testing an extra planetary orbital refinery around Minmus. I am primarily interested in any parts I may have forgotten (I should make checklists), and any quality of life improvements. The first launch was an object lesson in deploying a very large clamshell fairing before clearing 70km. It didn't clear me and turned one ship into several. That probe was lost to the ocean. During the second launch it occurred to me I didn't include any antennas. "No problem" I think to myself. "I have a level 3 ground station and a pair of deep range relays in orbit. It will be fine." Nope. Mun would be alright. Minmus is not. However, the station has a double intercept. It will return to Kerbin in a couple days and head right back. I'm unsure if I can rendezvous during the second transfer, but I'll absolutely try. That would be a huge achievement. Either way, I'm going to launch a communications retrofit that I can attach. Whether I can install it in transit or have to chase the ship to Minmus and install there, I'll get it. Going to have to do some math for this. I've never attempted to rendezvous in transit before, and I feel lime the timing margin for this is only a few seconds. I'm also going to need a ship that can pull 15 g's or more.

To enable intersellar travel, even in a scaled down universe (and frankly, it's not that scaled down if the distance is ~2 ly), we're going to have to encroach on fiction and torch drives. At least, we are if the goal is to have an endgame where you are setting up self supporting bases and building ships in another star system on a timescale that isn't getting into generational ship territory. But I get your point. I have to be on board with Metallic Hydrogen though. Yes, the current signs point to it either not being possible at all, or not being viable with known projected technology. But...it's also really cool, and something that would be absolutely amazing if it were real because it would be both massively useful, and not an existential crisis. Metallic Hydrogen doesn't lean so directly to building an actual torch ship, and by extension, doesn't readily turn into a weapon that can destroy entire planets by running into them. I can see something that probably isn't possible would be an issue...but I think I have to side with the rule of cool on this one. Besides, if we don't include it in a game now, it might be disproven before we have another chance I do feel like concessions to gameplay are going to need to be made, and while I would like things to be grounded in good existing and speculative science, I also have a day job and would like to see myself building ships on planets in another star system sometime before the year 2025.

That might work better for some of these low thrust designs. My sandbox career ships are mostly centered around 2.3 launch TWR, and my gravity turn habits are certainly based largely on that experience. I've been coping alright with these less powerful rockets, but I've not nailed the launch procedure yet. Without a consistent launch regime for lower thrust rockets, I am relying on my skill as a pilot to cope. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong that time. I know I had to hold attitude before 10km to pause the turn, and that I was meeting my 50 seconds to apoapsis shortly after, but I think I neglected to do a sanity check on my vertical speed. Basically, I was checking off the usual boxes, and ignoring other signs for which I don't have specific criteria that something had gone wrong with my ascent profile (I expect I made too large an initial turn). I need a mod for black box data (I think I saw one like that too)

Code Charlie Foxtrot - You Will Not Get To Space Today Not a huge amount of progress made today. I need moar science to do the things I want to do, including the things I would be doing to get more science. So basically, the space program is in a standoff with linear time. Finally accepting that, in order to get science, we might have to visit new places, it was decided to send a couple Kerbals out to Minmus to grab some more quick science. It didn't even seem hard to do; we just took the overbuilt Mun Lander, slapped some more science gear to it (i.e. made it taller and less stable), hired our first new recruit (to reset the science) and threw it on the launch pad. I even took a bunch of pretty pictures, which I will now use as a story aide: I'm So Pretty! The rocket was a bit slow off the mark, but nothing Jeb and Zeltop couldn't handle. After all, this was basically the same rocket our program had launched twice already, without incident. Except a bit longer, and a bit heavier... See, because the rocket has a pretty low TWR - less than 1.5 for much of the ascent - it needs to loft the gravity turn a bit. It needs to fly a bit high, get out of the atmosphere a little faster. This is doubly true given that the ascent stage isn't quite enough to put the rocket in orbit, and without running the gravity turn high, the fairing would end up being opened too low in the atmosphere. Like this: Pictured: Not Plan A (30 km ASL @ 1,300 m/s) The rocket ended up dipping too low in the gravity turn, and the ascent stage ran out of gas at around ~1300 m/s at only 30km. Way too fast; way too low. Ground control ran the numbers and confirmed the rocket was able to hold at 30 seconds from apoapsis, but within seconds of losing the fairing the heat alarms had started to sound. With a vertical speed of only 50 m/s, Jeb knew the lander stage riding on the nose would disintegrate long before they ever made it to orbit. Summoning all his skills as a pilot, he valiantly raised the nose to boost the ascent rate. What a guy! Pictured: Totally Controlled Pitch Up Maneuver to Boost Climb Rate and not a Code Charlie Foxtrot That lasted for about 5 seconds before the whole craft went cheeks over teakettle. Now flying mostly sideways through the air, plus backwards, at substantial speed, the entire control console lit up like a Christmas Tree with heat warnings. Jeb tried to use tactical bursts of thrust from the main engine to help the SAS system regain control, but it was no use. With the very real possibility that the parachutes might burn off, Jeb had to cut the lander loose. Without the lander, the command pod needed to go retrograde to shield the parachutes, so Jeb released the main engine too: Launch Aborted! While the total loss of this ship would certainly be a blow to the space program, Jeb and Zeltop managed to seperate from their stricken ship safely. The command pod safely spun into a retrograde position, and after a long wait for the atmosphere to do its thing, the parachutes were deployed. Don't Know What We're Going to Land On, But We Know We'll Land on it Safely Jeb and Zeltop were perhaps a little pale when they were picked up, but a few snacks cheered them up right quick. Zeltop was informed that, with all the other astronauts currently deployed on Mun, she didn't need to worry about missing the next flight. Her and Jeb would be taking another go at this whole Minmus thing just as soon as soon as a new rocket could be built. Yay!

First Stage + LFO Boosters + SRF Boosters (not mentioned in post. They were half full to get under the weight limit, and gave me a TWR of 1.3, which I misremembered as 1.1) First Stage + LFO Boosters First Stage Orbit was finalized by the orbital engines, which are listed as the fourth stage. So it's a two stage rocket, as such (launch and payload), but it's listed as 4. Here it is with the fairing removed (so that will throw the numbers off a tad): Looking at those numbers now, I think establishing an orbit took about 4,100 dV. Don't launch 1.1 TWR rockets kids!

Simulated construction time and planning. In lieu of a mod for this function, I am limiting the pace of my launches based on Monthly Budget. Launches from the VAB and SPH for new designs and space missions are limited to one per 7 days, and a quarter of the budget (so if something costs more than a quarter of my budget, it will be delayed). Woomerang and Dessert can be used for extra launches, at the rate of two per month each. I use Woomerang a lot for probe launches, and Dessert is typically reserved for things like rescues or resource replenishment.

Adventures Without SAS - Just Banging My Head Against My Desk I'm afraid that this post will be light on pictures (as in, there are none). I was, as the title implies, far too busy banging my head against various objects to take good pictures, so I'll keep this brief. Playing in career mode has been an eye opening experience in regards to all the things I take for granted. Case in point: Despite apparently still lacking most of what I need to make this work, I decided to start building a base on Mun (I am using MKS and USI Life Support). Launch pad weight restrictions meant I launched with my first 3 stages having a TWR of 1.1. Successfully taunted gravity (which was good, because there was no plan B if it didn't make it to orbit over Kerbin). Made it to Mun with almost no fuel left, so I launched the previous missions Mun Lander as a fuel tanker. Got enough fuel to land with 50 dV to spare. Decided to try and move to flatter ground a few metres away and ran out of fuel right before touch down. Bounced, did a cartwheel, stuck the landing. You know, the usual . Then I used the Munar Lander to send down an engineer and pick up the pilot I used to land the proto base. Yeah, about that. Engineers can't use SAS . I guess I should have known that from sandbox...but it's been a while since I did anything like this (by which I mean land something that didn't have a crew of 3+). That lander has 2000 dV. I burned at least 1200 dV landing it. Well, landing implies a level of control. I spent at least 1200 dV spinning my way out of orbit and crashing at non fatal velocities in the rough vicinity of the target area. I was only 5 km off target Bonus points to the fact that, as it stands right now, I have no way of getting Bill and Bob home. There is one ship in the fleet rated to land on the Mun and make it back to orbit, and it carries one Kerbal. But I should have the technology ready to retrieve them by the time I need it. Side note, I have an idea to retrofit that lander for Kerbin re-entry that I need to test. Should be amusing. One thing is for sure, career mode has really put the "Kerbal Spirit" back into my space program. The gulf between what I assume I can do, and what I can actually do (with my current resources), has turned my space program into the most slap dash, fly by night kind of operation it's been since I first played the game, and I'm loving it.

Overbuilding and Worldview - Docking Just Became Routine? - WARNING: May Contain Humble Brag! My first ever career mode is coming along nicely. Last up on the list was putting a flag on the surface of Mun. Given the almost random assortment of engines and fuel tanks the early part of the tech tree has given me, this promissed to be a bit less routine than usual. I failed to take a proper shot of the craft in space, so I'll stick a shot in here is a shot from the VAB with the fairing and engine shroud removed, and the TWR displayed. Ignore stage 0 though; that's the dV it would have if the Munar lander were to push the command pod around. Actual Munar Lander dV is 2,000 dV, which given how effeciently I tend to land, is a comfortable 500 dV safety factor. Also note what a lovely job I did with the TWR ratios, and how breathtakingly close this rocket is to not flying I started to have doubts about the TWR when my rocket just kind of floated above the launchpad as the clamps released. Anyone confused by the engine counts in stage 4 should know that the central stack includes a pair of radial engines to boost the TWR of stages 4 and 3. Anyway, the rocket flew, slowly, to orbit. True to form, though you can't see it, the boosters are topped with SAS units to prevent the craft from wandering off course along the way. I've had plenty of that nonsense already. But how it flies, or even the mission, isn't what made me stop and go 'huh'. No, there is something very fundamental about this style of design that signals a fundamental shift in how I play the game that I hadn't really noticed until now. It's the lander. More specifically, that I didn't think twice about having one. Now, I have made this style of craft once before to land on Mun, shortly after docking ports were introduced to the game. Docking in orbit has been something I've been able to do, and have been doing, since some point during the patch prior to docking ports being added to the game. But I've always been apprehensive about it; it's always been a (big) deal. An event of note. But when I designed this particular rocket, I knew pretty much as soon as I started that I wanted to use that Wolfhound engine (because it's amazing), and that as a result, I was also going to use a separate lander. This design was in fact so successful that after Jeb had gone and planed his flag on Mun, that I was able to refuel the lander and send Valentina down as well. I'll not bother with more pics, because we've seen it a thousand times before and that's not what this post is about. It was only after everyone was safely home, with all the science recovered, that I actually stopped and realized just how unlike me this mission had been. I mean, I've clearly gotten a lot more comfortable with docking in orbit over time when I look at how my missions have changed...but this was the first time that the fact my mission would include orbital docking was as noteworthy as the fact my mission would include getting to orbit, and I thought that was kind of cool. It's like the time I realized that I no longer thought about shifting gears with a manual transmission. Docking is now something I have done enough that I can simply...do it. The last remaining general skill for which that isn't true for me is interplanetary encounters, though I'm not nearly as nervous about those as I used to be for docking. My general knowledge on how to set up encounters has developed enough that, like rendezvous, I've all of a sudden become comfortable with radial in/out maneouvers, which makes things much easier.