TanDeeJay

Hi all, I have been developing my asteroid harvesting fleet and have my asteroid catching ship with just over 11k dV from 6 Nerv engines which goes out into Kerbol orbit to catch asteroids before they enter Kerbins SOI so that I can push the asteroids so that they enter Kerbin's SOI in as close to a pro-grade equatorial orbit as possible. This has been working quite well, and I've successfully captured a 1300t class E asteroid which my mining ship is happily sucking the life out of. Now it came to pass, that a new Class E asteroid was discovered which was on an orbit that would intercept Kerbin's SOI, so I sent my asteroid catcher out to get it. I still had more than 8k dV just before the ship grabbed the asteroid, and when I grabbed the asteroid, I discovered that it was 3600t and my dV had dropped to 176. This was the closest I've ever caught an asteroid at only 13 days out from entering kerbin's SOI, I've normally got 80+ days at this point. But anyway, this asteroid was coming in low to kerbin and was on course for a polar orbit, so I set a maneuver node to change the course so that it would have close to equitorial orbit (7 degrees off), but that node needed 167 dV, and I then set another maneuver node at the kerbin PE and found I would have needed 650 dv to pull the asteroid into a high kerbin orbit. Clearly, I am a LOOOOONG way short... even if I did not do the 1st burn and just brought the asteroid into a polar orbit, I would be short about 475dV. I think would need to increase the ships dV by about 25k dV in order to have enough dV to spare to be able to capture asteroids of this size. Am I thinking about this problem the right way? Is it even possible to capture such a large asteroid? Any ideas on how to manage a mission to capture such a beast would be greatly appreciated. (Note: I've tried to build my asteroid mining fleet so that it is fully reusable, and able to refuel itself ready for the next asteroid) Regards, John

I should. Ill keep an eye out for more "incidents" I posted a series a while back called "Saving Jebediah" when early on in my KSP life I accidentally sent Jebediah into a solar orbit when he was supposed to be going into a mun orbit. Then the whole space program diverted all their efforts to saving Jebediah, and after some 12 years Kerbal time, when I finally figured out Jebs orbit brought him close enough to kerbin that he could use RCS thrusters to get a kerbin encounter close enough to enter the atmosphere, he saved himself

Report into near miss between ACMII and Duna Porta docked with the 1kk/K Space Station Date: Y31 D285 3:10 Kerbinauts: Hervey Kerman Shelcal Kerman Began Kerman Incident description: Hervey, Shelcal and Began were piloting the ACMII mining craft on a mission to return to Asteroid ZFC-464 to continue the mining operation there in order to supply fuel to the Duna Mission scheduled to launch within the next 3 years when during their trans-asteroid burn, the ACMII passed within 10m of the Duna Fuela which is currently docked to Docking port DR-DPSR-2 on the 1kk/K Space Station. Timeline: Y31 D285 1:20 - Shelcal receives clearance to undock from the 1kk/K Space Station from docking port FD-DPSR-1 1:22 - Began initiates undocking procedure 1:23 Shelcal receives all clear notification from 1kk/K Space Station Hervey begins calculations for transfer burn to ZFX-464 and finds suitable slingshot around the Mun with a 6m burn starting in 1h 45m 2:53 Began observes that in the 1 1/2 hours since undocking, the orbital drift of their ship and the 1kk/K Space station looks like it might bring the 1kk/K station directly in their planned flight path. 2:54 Hervey aligns ACMII in preparation for the maneouver 2:55 Hervey, Shelcal and Began all observe the 1kk/K Space station as it drifts closer and closer to their line of flight 3:06 Shelcal advises they abort the flight as he thinks it will be cutting it too close. 3:07 Hervey overrules Shelcal with less than 60 seconds to the start time for their burn and reckons they will make it ok 3:08 - Hervey initiats 6 minute burn to begin transfer to Mun slingshot 3:09 Began retracts the #2 and #3 solar panels 3:10 ACMII passes within meters of the Duna Porta docked at DR-DPSR-2 Burn continues for another 4 minutes Mitigating factors: Maneuver was calculated without taking into account the orbital variances of nearby craft Reckless decision taken by pilot to overrule navigator Naming convention of spacecraft accidentally names the craft with a name very similar to a company often associated with a cartoon based on a very fast land bird and his canine adversary. I mean who's idea was it to remove the "Mk" from the ACM Mk II and just call it the ACMII??? Edit: sorry, I thought I hit the screen cap button just at the closest point, but the screenshot directory only contained the above 2 images

Thanks, I'll take a look at it.

I have a space station with a number of fuel tanks and I'm finding it painful to select each tank to fill/empty when need to transfer fuel to or from passing ships. I'm just wondering if there is a mod that allows all tanks on a space station to be treated as 1 so that when a ship is docked I can just transfer fuel to or from the station without having to worry about which tank I am putting fuel into or taking it out of.

My asteroid catcher has pulled a class C asteroid into a 38000k orbit around kerbin, and my mining ship is currently in a 1000k orbit. Now, the asteroid catcher has a scheduled burn in 10d 2h 55m to adjust the inclination to an equatorial orbit, and I'm wanting to set up a maneuver for my mining ship to intercept the asteroid catcher and the space potato it has caught, and the time to the mininig ships maneouver node is 10d 3h 50 minutes. My question is, when I'm setting up the maneouver node for the mining ship prior to the asteroid catcher's maneouver, which "orbit" is the closest approach showing for? is it showing for the asteroid catcher's current actual orbit? or is it showing for the asteroid catchers orbit after its maneouver will have been performed? Regards, John

I'm trying to attach some RoveMax Model XL3 to a fuel transport rover I've built around a Mk3 Rocket Fuslage Long, and to be able to fit it within the large faring, I was wanting to use the BF-50 Size 1 Step motor to be able to rotate the wheels 90 degrees for launch, however, I can't figure out how to connect the XL3 wheels to the BF-50. It just doesn't want to attach. The attachment point doesn't show up on the BF-50 when I have the wheel I'm trying to attach. Any ideas on how to attach wheels to the Step motor's?

Thanks. not sure how I didn't find this thread

Thanks I'll take a look. That might give me a rough enough estimate to feed into KAC for my purposes. I'm not after an accurate projection.

Oh yeah, never thought of that side of the coin. Thats a good point. Build a feature that meets the needs of some players and all the others will expect it to work differently.

Recently I've been noticing all these dV signs pained on roads on my commute to work:

Ok, thanks, that makes sense. My thought was that none of that intermediate stuff should be taken into account, and that if the player hadn't planned all that intermediate stuff correctly, the alarm would take them back to the ship to find that the whole shooting match had shutdown because of an intermediate process failing Sounds like my best bet is to just: This was pretty much all I was wanting KAC to do anyway And your comment about a "note of why I set it" reminds me of something else that would be nice, a way of setting a "save note" that pops up when you load a game reminding me of what I was doing but that would be a discussion for another thread...

Yeah, thats true, but at the time you set the alarm, couldn't you calculate, based on the current rate of conversion multiplied by the amount of available storage, a time when the resource would be full?. of course it could not take into account any changes to conversion rates caused by things like insufficient power, so you might get to the alarm time to find the resource nowhere near full, but I think it would be fare to base the calculation on what the current conversion rate is, and leave it up to the player to build their mining operation such that they have sufficient power to continue at full operation during the night.

I have an enhancement request for KAC. Would it be possible to have an event for an alarm on a vessel when a particular type of resource is full (that is set an alarm for when all the ore tanks are full, or when all the fuel tanks a full) This would be useful for mining operations, so that it would be possible to return to a ship when it has filled its ore/LFO/monoprop etc. so that we could then immediately return to the ship to transport that load of resource, or for a ship that has stopped somewhere to refuel to then continue on its journey. Cheers, John (Feature reqest created on github)

And land? That would be awesome to see

Its the autocorrect on my phone that keeps converting mun to mum. Ahhahaha I corrected all the autocorrected spellings in the text but missed the title

Wow! Highly useful information! No wonder I had so much trouble getting back to kerbin. It also explains why the maneuver node for my mun returns from a mun prograde orbit always end up where they do. It never occured to me it was because that was retrograde to kerbin. And also why its always so much cheaper retuning to kerbin than getting to the Mun. Makes sense though. So how many days/hours either side of that mun polar orbit to kerbin transfer window is it still relatively cheap?

Does this also apply when transferimg from a mun polar orbit back to kerbin? The few times I've had to do that I had enough trouble getting to kerbins atmosphere that I considered moving my station back to a prograde orbit.

So to do mun 1st, I would need to carry a separate mun habitat module and not just rely on the minimus base to temporarily provide the necessary increase in supported number of kerbals? I started designing my craft with 2 separate modules, but wondered if it would be possible to do it with just 1. Separating a module and docking it is not that difficult. I've built a multi module habitat ring in my sandbox where i had lots of practice doing exactly that. DPAI mod helps a lot there. I was actually thinking of using some of that 1200 dv to do the kerbin to mun transfer and then refueling at the mun station, but if that makes the ship not "new" I guess that means I can't do it that way? Or would it only become not new if the ship docks and completes the contract, so that if I used a ship already docked to the mun station to transfer fuel, then the minimus base would remain "new"?

I have 2 contracts, 1 to increase the capacity of my mun orbit space station by 5 and a 2nd to build a base on minimus to hold at least 5 kerbals with 2 scientists. I was thinking I might be able to combine these 2 missions and stop off at the mun station to drop off the mun expansion module, and then to fly on to minimus with my base. Now, technically, I could complete the mun mission just by docking my minimus base to the mun station for 10 seconds, but that would leave the mun station with a capacity of 16 rather than the contracted 21. Would this cause a problem later in the game? But my real question is how hard is it to get a direct flight from mun to minimus, given that my mun station is in a polar orbit? And what is going to be my most effecient way to make that transfer? My "minimus base" stage has about 1200dv.

I love this mod and don't have any problems with it in 1.8.1

After many experiments, the Kerbal Space Program is proud to announce the Official opening of the 1kk/K Space Hotel. Initial plans was for a single habitat ring, this ring required 4 launches to place all components in space, as initial attempts to launch with a single launch saw no sign of launch stability, so I split it into 4. Single launch arrangement: Split launch - Hub: Launch 1 was the Hub module which came with the spokes attached vertically to the center core and placed within a fairing proving a stable launch. The central core also came with a "Screw-Driver" - a small probe containing a reaction wheel, a large RCS tank with a set of RCS thrusters, and a docking port on one end and a snr docking port on the other. Once at 120k orbit, the "Screw-Driver" is used to take each of the spokes and attach them radially to the core. Split Launch - Living quarters (3 required): Then the habitat modules are launched in pairs connected to a habitat lifting module. Three launches required to get all 6 habitat modules in orbit. The final stage of this lifting module has sufficient DV to rendezvous with the hub at 120k, and then to return to Kerbin in-tact. With careful de-orbiting it should be possible to land the habitat lifting module near the space center maximizing part refunds. Again, the "Screw-Driver" comes to hand docking to the outside docking port on each habitat segment, and then maneuvering the module to align the inside docking port with one of the spokes. Jebediah complained bitterly about suggested an update to the MKII design requesting to have the outside and inside docking ports aligned, as the offset design of the MKII was extremely difficult to maneuver. NOTE: there is only 1 "Screw-Driver" supplied with this Habitat Ring. Do not loose the "Screw-Driver". They are only available with the purchase of a Habitat Ring, so to obtain a replacement "Screw-Driver" you would need to buy a new Habitat Ring. So, the designers promptly took Jebediah's comments to heart, and built MKIII Habitat Ring, which they then proceeded to launch, forcing Jebediah to remain with the station for re-commissioning the extra expansion. Note: the initial lifting module for the hub contains sufficient deltaV to push the completed habitat ring to match orbits with a 1000k orbit space station hence the name: 1000k Kerbin orbit Space Hotel or 1kk/K Space Hotel for short... The "Screw-Driver" contains sufficient monopropellant to be able to maneuver the completed ring from the initial hub lifting module to being docked with your space station. In tests, the Habitat ring has been maneuvered into place from as far out as 1000m. Each cabin is built around a Mk3 Passenger Module that has been retro-fitted with Luxurious bedroom, space-bath and space-kitchenette, and can accommodate up to 4 Kerbals. Lift access takes you through the spokes to the central core where other parts of the space station may be accessed if you have sufficient access permission. Please submit form 1kk/K-SH-XS1 to the 1kk/K-SH administration if you believe you need elevated access to other parts of the space station. A heavy objects airlock is available for use upon request. To use, make sure you have your 1kk/K-SH-apartment key as this will provide you access to the heavy objects airlock if you have been granted access. Note: the heavy objects airlock looks very similar to a PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container. NOTE: we do not appreciate Kerbals trying to hitchhike in the airlock! Any Kerbals found hitchhiking will be sent to work on one of our many asteroids to mine and convert ore to fuel for supplying our happy customers ships ready for their next journey. Liquid fuel, Oxidizer and Mono-propellant are available for purchase from 1kk/K-SH. Discounts are available to Kerbals who are staying on the station. There are 4 Docking port Jr's on the station. If you require access to a docking port Jr, please fill out form 1kk/K-SH-DPJR1. you will be notified if there are insufficient docking ports available during your requested stay. (There are sufficient standard docking ports for 1 per cabin. If you require additional docking requirements for your stay, there may be an additional charge (up to the cost of designing and launching a new docking module. NOTE: if multiple customers request additional docking requirements, the cost of extending the Space station may at the discretion of the 1kk/K-SH management be distributed between all customers. However, the management reserve the right to charge the full cost of the expansion to ALL customers who made the request. you will be notified on arrival which option the management chose) Enjoy your stay at 1kk/K Space Hotel

That sounds logical. I tried launching a multi-fueltank module for my spacestation with 4-way radial symetrical docking ports at the top and bottom. Each fuel tank was individually launchable including RCS with thrusters, reaction wheels, and a RC unit and with Snr docking ports either end to plug it into my space station. I had 3 launched and connected in an L shape then I launched a 4th tank and tried to dock it with 2 ports on one of the existing tanks and 2 ports on the other to complete a square. not quite sure what happened, but only 3 pairs of the ports connected. the 4th pair seemed to be slightly mis-aligned, so I used the dock-rotate mod to try and straigten things out, but I moved things too far and I managed to get the ports hooked on their outside edge, kind of jambed... I kept trying to fix things with dock-rotate, but I eventually discovered that one of the other (previously docked) ports had become detached from its fuel tank, and was just floating in space. I came to the conclusion it is either a bad design arrangement, or I had the wrong approach when docking. I docked the usual way of aligning 2 ports using the Docking port alignment indicator mod, which meant the 2 ports on the side which were supposed to dock with the other tank on the side were sliding together sideways, which was when they initally got the side edge collision that probably pushed things out of alignment. perhaps I should have come in such that the ports approached at a 45 degree angle.

I did a bit of an experiment to test this. While it is not possible to have multiple connection points as the OP asked when constructing in the VAB/SPH, I have found that if you have 2 ships that have 2 docking ports each, and you are careful in how you place those docking ports, then when in space (or on the ground...) if you align both pairs of docking ports on both ships correctly, then when you dock, both pairs of docking ports dock. You have to undock both pairs before you can separate. I'm not sure how the game deals with the grandparent/root relationship in this situation though. My son had an idea of using an arrangement like this for increasing the structural integrity of space stations.

Got my Space Hotel module docked to my space station. Come one come all to enjoy a nice 1000k journey above Kerbin. The luxurious cabins have plenty of space for you and your family! With your own personal docking port you can park your space ship right outside your accommodation. Why not bring your friends families as well! book now! Only 100000 Kerbal Bucks per Kerbal! Wanting to visit the Mun? Or maneuver on Minimus? Or take a jaunt to Jool? Or been ever thinking about Eve? Then this is the perfect stop off for you! Refuel your ship while you enjoy one last night of luxury before you head out into the cold dark universe. The offset alignment of the inner vs outer docking ports proved to be an issue when trying to align all the parts once in orbit, but I will try out the docrotate mod suggested by @Dave7 in another thread to fix the alignment.