fulgur

Kuzzter was one of the greatest storytellers on the Internet. I have read published books which are far less well-written than Kerbfleet. & he created some of the best and most inventive spacecraft on the forums. I am so unbelievably happy that you can tell him how much we love his writing - I thought I'd joined the forums too late for that. And I sing the Kerbulan Christmas songs every year.

Jeb's Junkyard would like to congratulate SkyFall Industries on their planned development of a shuttlecraft. Speaking this morning, CEO Jeb (no relation) said "It's a laudable goal to have the cheapest possible reusable shuttle. And SRBs are pretty cheap. But do they have style? Style like our Libra Orbit? Nyoooooooom! Pchoooooooo!" Jeb (no relation) then spent fifteen minutes making aeroplane noises and waving his arms about. "Anyway," he continued, "an upscaled shuttle to carry cargo does sound like a useful thing. I think we might have a big tin can somewhere in the junkyard - let's go and dig that out!" --- I, fulgur, the real Miss BLANK of BLANK & BLANK College, University of BLANK, BLANKshire, BLANKland, United BLANKdoms of Great BLANKtain and Northern BLANKreland, regret to inform the assembled readers of this thread that I am extremely bloody busy with my degree & will be unable to play KSP myself until the end of term. Which, both thankfully and regrettably, is remarkably close. As such, I am living vicariously through Kerbalsaurus' flights, both of my Libra Orbit and other craft [no pressure :-p] but will be less able to provide updates, debugging etc.

I'm fairly sure that, because I am old-fashioned and don't use Steam, I don't show up on these metrics anyway...

That's one small step for a Kerbal - another step for friendship - and a big-S leap... FOR SCIENCE!

Excellent! I can't wait!

Excited for the first Libra Orbit flight! Did you get the autopilot to work? - I like Fulgur Kerman's moustache! Very RAF. Great seeing another satellite leaving for Duna... exciting times ahead?

Glad to see you've got over your burnout! Can't wait to hear more.

N 4

It looks like the engines you are using for the first stage are solid rocket boosters. You may have noticed some engines, like the Vector engine, can change direction by a few degrees (gimbal) in order to help steer the rocket. SRBs cannot do this. You could try using liquid fuelled boosters instead (I like the Twin Boar 2.5m booster personally). Also, I cannot see any fins on the rocket. Fins (ideally at the bottom of the rocket) move to deflect the air in order to help steer the rocket. Try adding some tail fins or winglets to the side of the rocket. You want large tail fins because the top of your rocket is so big and bulky. Other ways of steering your rocket are RCS / Vernier engines and lots of reaction wheels, but Vernier engines use some of your fuel and reaction wheels are very heavy. To insert an image into the forum, you need to copy the image link which ends in .png, like so:

N-40

I'm glad that you have been able to find a new mouse! I look forwards to the development of the story of Beyond and its many competitive and explosive private contractors. Have fun in school and make sure to keep playing KSP practising advanced orbital mechanics, calculus, vector fields etc.!

After a little bit of orbital rearrangement, Valentina and Samantha climb into the cockpit of the Spacebat helicopter, while Jeb and Doald stay in the Orthoklase mining shuttle. "Take us down, Jeb!" cries Valentina, and the six Aerospikes ignite, pushing the assemblage onto a suborbital trajectory. With glee, Jeb pushed the STAGE button and the ship broke apart. He pulled the Orthoklase round and returned to low orbit. Val lit up the two Terrier engines and pushed the Spacebat, and its delicate rotorblades, away from the empty and likely explosive fuel tank. The Spacebat experiences gentle flames licking over its fuselage as Valentina carefully controls the angle of attack, making sure this first aerobraking pass will bring us down near a nice, sunny, ore-filled spot. - "Was that the airlock?" Intrepid scientist Samantha Kerman slips out of the airlock to grab an EVA report and reset the scientific instruments - but she loses hold of the ladders! With vast quantities of grim determination and jetpack fuel, she manages to claw her way back into the cabin. Back on the day-side of Haut Oklo, Valentina pushes the Spacebat into a dive, heading down towards the rugged surface. For something as odd-looking as the Spacebat, it flies very well. Samantha pores over the mapping readouts and instructs Valentina down towards a large, flat area where she thinks the Orthoklase could land. Jeb takes a more direct route towards the landing site. The Orthoklase handles quite well in the lower atmosphere, despite its small wing area. Sort of like if you attached a paper aeroplane to a small brick. But only a small one. Anyway, Orthoklase makes a gentle landing quite near Valentina's marker. All the Kerbals get out and enjoy the feeling of radiation warming up their feet. Val and Doald wander over to the Orthoklase and get the mining set up. While Jeb and Samantha head down to the sea to grab some splashed-down science! With the dorsal rotors, the Spacebat lands in the water as gently as a non-space bat lands on a branch. Samantha gets out and grabs some samples of what appears to be a supersaturated solution of polonium salts. It starts to crystallise slowly around the grips in her feet. It appears something in the water is disturbed. "What's that?" asks Jeb as the light becomes slightly greener. "What?" asks Samantha, looking into the sky. She misses the mysterious entity diving back into the radioactive seas. Meanwhile, Val manages to get the Orthoklase airborne, a thing it really does not want to do. But as soon as it is, the shuttle cruises easily to orbit and meets up with the Duchess, carrying a full load of ore. And it docks straight to the fuel tank. Ore begins to flow through the convert-o-tron and fuel splashes into the empty tank. Now Val just has to [Alt]+[F12] infinite propellant and watch fuel appear out of nothing repeat the trip about a hundred times. Meanwhile Jeb flies around some highlands and also some lowlands. It's extraordinarily relaxing to float between brown-green hills and a pale blue sky. Jeb's missed Kerbin. He's also missed swimming, although the colour of this water appears a little unhealthy. He's glad for the lead coating on the underside of the Spacebat. Haut-Oklo is an incredibly beautiful planet and it's a shame we're not coming back here. It looks so habitable in the morning sun. Meanwhile, having taken the last trip up to orbit, Val heads down for the final time. She finds a nice flat spot on the equator, and lets the Spacebat come to them. Bye-bye Spacebat! You were an exceptional helicopter. Jeb and Samantha take the LITRE away from this cursed and radioactive holiday resort. while Val and Doald take the Duchess. Duchess is quite heavy, so the burn lasts a while. Soon after, we arrive back at Armstrong. as does the Duchess. The Armstrong Return of Science Experiments comes through again, delivering a nice box of radiation straight to Mission Control. and finally, Val takes Duchess back to its waiting miner and refuels, ready for the next mission. Sorry for not updating for a while - life has been a bit much. Sorry for not updating in the near future - uni will be a bit much. Next stop will probably be Bifrost, a very large gas giant with 6 moons. Any ideas for payloads? They will probably be delivered by the Duchess or a sister ship of the same design.

There are a lot of tiny asteroids which I am not going to visit because (a) I don't like visiting tiny lumps of airless rock (b) they have tiny SoIs and (c) Transfer Window Planner says they will take a total of 1012m/s to orbit. No, seriously: *** Following the highly successful mission to test refuelling at Desmet, we have developed a mission architecture for Haut-Oklo. It takes about 7000m/s each way to visit, and unfortunately we don't have any ships with 14,000m/s dV. But LITRE and the Duchess of Desmet both have enough fuel for a one-way trip. First up we have a disposable fuel tank, plus a long girder section. To the girder we have radially attached 3 probes, the Spacebat electric helicopter, and a counterweight made of liquid fuel. Next, we have the Orthoklase shuttle/lander. Haut-Oklo's 0.7 atmospheres means that I'm relying on wings to head for good ore spots and flat areas of land. This mission will be easier with 2 pilots, especially because RemoteTech, so Val heads out of Armstrong Station on Orthoklase. There's still a little fuel left in those Rhinos, which we'll be using. Val vents almost all the oxidant from Orthoklase in order to increase Duchess' dV. Firstly, LITRE leaves for Haut-Oklo... and a day later, and much slower, Val takes the Duchess through an incredibly slow series of periapsis kicks. The disposable fuel tank is emptied and disposed of. One day later... "It's beautiful!" whispered Jeb, staring out of the window. Samantha was busying herself with compiling reports from the magnetometer scans; after the crash on Armstrong they had lost quite a few computer systems and so the numbers she was staring at were in .csv format. "Oh dear," she said eventually, "it looks a little more radioactive than expected." "But we were expecting quite a lot of radiation," said Jeb worriedly. "Yes, but this is more." I don't think we'll be staying at Haut-Oklo. Valentina brings the Duchess into a somewhat inclined orbit, in order to launch the polar satellites. We begin to scan the surface of Haut-Oklo with extensive spectroscopic instrumentation. It turns out, if we need any number of nuclear reactors, Haut-Oklo could fuel them for millenia. Valentina lowers and equatorialises Duchess' orbit for a meeting with LITRE. and we prepare to head down through Haut-Oklo's atmosphere.

Hey @GregroxMun, is Haut-Oklo's biome map meant to look like this? SCANsat refuses to believe that the southern half is in daylight, and only identifies 2 biomes, most of which is the Poles. I didn't fly very far from my landing point but my helicopter also only identified 2 biomes (though I did get splashed science ) It's a shame because Haut-Oklo is really very beautiful.

I have designed a really big rocket. Someone wanted a satellite to crash into Desmet, and they paid us √500,000 to do so. We have no idea where these contracts are coming from or what all these square roots mean, but they make Mortimer seem very happy as he putters around his rebuilt finance offices. Back to the Really Big Rocket. It has a Really Big Payload. Like so. The Cerulean-class Space Tug is the forwards section with the six nuclear engines and the massive antenna. The middle section is an empty fuel tank, and the final section is the "Desminer" mining rig. Mission profile: visit Desmet and mine some ore. Thrust to weight ratio is a little bit low. But not for the potato "moon" Desmet! We land the entire thing on its tail and start mining. Back at Armstrong Station, Jebediah is itching for his next assignment. He, Samantha and Doald all climb into the LITRE. As an afterthought, he quickly docks Iggy Pop 1 to the front of LITRE. It's always useful to have more fully fuelled ships. "What are you doing, Jeb? I thought I told you to wait in orbit!" "Quit worrying, Gene! Gravity's so low here I'm almost on an escape trajectory!" "Hey, Gene? Are we going to have more than one of these space tugs?" "We've got more than one design, but yes, we need to carry quite a lot of hardware around the system for cheap." "In which case, we need some names. I christen this one the Duchess of Desmet!" A lot of World Firsts from this mission. We're creeping towards profit! Undocking and re-docking, mere metres above the surface. Jebediah now holds the record for lowest-altitude docking (not one that Val intends to break...) All the ships get fully fuelled. Duchess has about 10,000m/s with that fuel tank attached! Iggy Pop stays put in Desmet orbit, while the Duchess of Desmet and LITRE head down to a 500km parking orbit. Next time, we're going to head over to Haut-Oklo, our first major interplanetary mission! I haven't peeked at the actual appearance of the planet, but I understand that it's got moderate gravity, high atmospheric pressure and a slightly warm surface. If anyone has any ideas about what I should send there, I'll gladly listen. ... Transfer Window Planner tells me it will take 7000m/s to go from Armstrong to Haut-Oklo. LITRE can head there one-way, and even the Duchess can't actually make the round trip. (That's why she's so big... I want her to carry mining equipment, and I want the mining equipment to have 2500-3000m/s sea level dV on Haut-Oklo).

I love the tiny ion lander design, and I can't wait to see the end of your journey! The reason the dV indicator is wrong is as follows: Finding the actual ΔV of a ship using ion engines and fuel cells is a (fairly easy) exercise in calculus left to the reader.

With our expedition to Lu complete, it is time for our next expedition: a mission to the other Trojan, Garner! Instead of being π/3 behind Armstrong, it's π/3 ahead, requiring more dV to reach but less to leave. Also, its gravity and SoI are smaller. A small container of liquid fuel is sent up to refuel LITRE. Since we had to mount two expeditions to Lu, each with thousands of m/s dV, we don't have quite as much of a budget for Garner. Therefore, Wernher cooks up an all-in-one vessel which can grab science, refuel itself, and even carry ore back up to LITRE (not difficult with Garner's low gravity). I present: the Gardener in the Light. LITRE, fully refuelled, heads out again. Val, Bill and Bob head out aboard; we'll need our best engineer to run the experimental mining setup and develop improvements for future missions. Even with Valentina, a genius pilot with a gift for orbital mechanics, setting up our manoeuvres, it is still near-impossible to circularise efficiently at Garner. This is because we need to (a) make a two-thousand metre per second retrograde burn and (b) do it in a SoI spanning 45km above the surface. However, Gardener in the Light has some spare fuel and so manages to return to low Garner orbit. Starting the burn a lot earlier, LITRE's high dV allows it to circularise in a single burn, and head over to the Gardener. Bob heads out of the capsule and looks at some random bits of goo he fished out of the sewer. Oh no... is that an external seat? Val and Bill get to sit inside the cabin while Bob sits outside staring at the Science Jr. Garner's surface is quite bumpy and high. Pictured: Val passes over the surface, at orbital velocity (200m/s). The first landing is in the half-night of the Ilio stars. Everyone has fun wandering around in the low gravity. Also, we set up the deployed science experiments. We have enough fuel for about 3 landings, making our third with 100m/s to spare. Landing on the sunny slopes of Garner, Bill activates the drills and watches as ore flows into the tanks. We hit all the biomes. It's fairly boring. Ascending back to orbit with a full tank of ore. We are able to refuel about 1/5 of LITRE's tanks with one flight. We then cheat our way to full fuel tanks repeat the missions to the surface and back. Leaving Garner is also annoying as it's impossible to complete the burn while in the SoI of Garner. Upon exiting, the manoeuvre resets to 0% complete, and is now pointing somewhere completely different. This is one of my favourite KSP photos. The crew return to Stronginthearm Station in triumph! Heading down quite close to KSC Island. With quite a lot of science and cash having been earned, we are now ready to upgrade the R&D building and build some really big rockets. Next time: building some really big rockets.

It is not quite July but I am now free! Following the disappointing performance of the Lunder and LITRE, we launch some shiny new replacements. LITRE, now with extra fuel tanks, heads over to Stronginthearm Station to pick up Val, Bill and Bob for their trip out. We all meet up at Lucinda Station. Val manually pilots the Lunder in because 0.3 seconds of signal delay is quite annoying. A quick and skilful descent brings Val and Bob to Lu's Antipyrian Lowlands. and the Highlands and the Slopes and back up to orbit for a refuel. We also crash the old Lunder into the surface for seismometer science points. Val heads back down to the Synpyrian basin and we hop around various similarly coloured patches of rock in the name of science. We head back up to Lucinda and get back into LITRE. Departing... and arriving. Another science return box is sent up. The precious surface samples are sent down to our R&D building. and arrive "safely" on the surface of Armstrong. We didn't make enough money to upgrade the R&D building to level 3, so next time we'll scout out a variety of temperature and pressure surveys... above Garner!

Looks great! Can't wait to see that spaceplane If you open up the settings (ESC -> Settings from in-game) and scroll down a bit, there should be a setting called Conic Patch Limit. If you increase that setting, you will see your trajectory more than 3 SoI's in the future. I also like to turn on Advanced Tweakables and the Extended Burn Indicator.

Can you Set the Mun as your Target? The Mun is in a 0 degree inclination orbit of Kerbin.

It's usually easier to have one ship in a much lower / higher orbit than the other one, so that they have different orbital periods and can catch up quickly. Then, make a manoeuvre node with whichever ship you are in control of. Make it prograde / retrograde so your orbit crosses the other orbit. Move the manoeuvre around the orbit until you get a close enough encounter. If you can't get a close enough encounter this orbit, right-click on the manoeuvre node. You will see a red "delete manoeuvre" button and two blue "increase/decrease orbit" buttons. Click the blue "increase orbit" button. This will move it onto the next orbit (i.e. one full orbit in the future). You can keep doing this to get a close encounter. 0.0km is obviously ideal but 2-3km is perfectly fine. Once you are at the encounter, make sure you are in "target" mode on your navball and burn retrograde to cancel your relative velocity. If you are a few kilometers away, you can just point towards the other craft and burn directly at them to get closer.

Very exciting! Did you do the graphics in Powerpoint, by any chance? (There's a grand tradition of KSP powerpointilism...)

A more detailed series of screenshots (still not a video though ) If this doesn't solve your problem, could we please have some more screenshots?

Jebediah's Junkyard Statement on the crash of the Libra Orbit Test Vehicle. It is deeply unfortunate that our Libra Orbit test vehicle came to an untimely end. At Jebediah's Junkyard, we know what the general public are asking: is the Libra Orbit a deathtrap? And the answer is of course yes. But to what extent is it a deathtrap? Surprisingly, the answer is "not very much." We have performed extensive sea testing on our old prototype airframes and the result is always the same: crew survival. This is because Libra Orbit has a stall speed of around 30m/s. Our crew cabins are designed to survive 40m/s impacts, so even though the main fuselage would explode on landing, the crew would survive. However, we have also introduced new safety features to the Libra Orbit: a nose-mounted parachute, and a pair of miniaturised "Juno" jet engines. This provides two additional abort options in case the wing structure is damaged, or the plane is predicted to land in inhospitable areas. In regard to concerns from Kerbalsaurus Kerman about the orbital dV, our simulations have found that the craft orbits consistently with remaining dV of 500-600m/s. This is more than adequate to reach Kerman Station's 200x200km orbit and return, especially if a shallower descent profile is used to maximise the drag of Libra Orbit's large delta wings. For descent guidance, we recommend the incredible Kobymaru's computational guidance systems. Jebediah's Junkyard are also proud to announce that we are working on a much larger orbital shuttle, with seating for 6. However, before we finalise the design, we would like to ask Beyond about the current technological developments of their "K-plane" program, and whether there have been any breakthroughs in hypersonic technologies.