miklkit

Been experimenting with this drag thing and it is really weird. Some things will not attach correctly in the cargo bay and some will. Batteries, structural, cargo containers, and C&C stuff works fine. Fuel tanks do not. I built an ore carrier and it could not go supersonic because the ore tanks caused so much drag. Here are 2 screenies, one with ore tanks and one without. I accidentally found a way to get tanks into the cargo bay without causing drag. Just dump them in any way they will fit. They look ugly just sitting there randomly but do not cause drag.

How many Rapiers does that thing have now? My formula is 8 Rapiers and 5 NERVS and this works up to 242 tons, although that heaviest one does struggle to get supersonic. The lightest ones fly almost like MK1s. It could be some parts have become misaligned and are creating drag, or an engine is now occluded and is not giving any thrust. Using a spaceplane to recover stuff works fine. I have an ore carrier that carries up to 3000 units of ore back to Kerbin. Hauling cargo out is another story tho. Build a base on Minmus to refuel and the whole system opens up for exploration. My furthest base is on Bop. I use rockets to get the mobile science lab and the fuel trucks out there and spaceplanes for everything else. You will need those Rapiers for landing and takeoff on the Mun. It has real gravity. You will be surprised at how much fuel you will need there.

How many NERVs to have? It depends on the weight of the craft. Under 200 tons 4 should be enough to overcome Mun gravity after using Rapiers to slow down. Over 200 tons needs 5 for sure. Maybe the tipping point is 190 tons. Fine tuning your ascent profile is vital to getting into orbit. I like to pause at 8000m and level out in order to build up lots of speed, then let it climb up. When it stops accelerating I switch modes and light the NERVs. When the AP hits 50 I shut down the Rapiers and go prograde to 80k. Then circularize. There are lots of different methods and this is just what I am using now.

Yes I messed up the landing and yes it was fully crewed. I only had 2 Kerbals left and they had to make the rescue crew. It still took 2 trips.

Yeah I should try that. I just started using that drag indicator and do not know how to read the bars yet. Not sure what I'm seeing.

It should not be. I started with the cabin and added onto that.

Yeah, those are not the best screenies. As I see it the top red bar is the cabin and it is very long, the middle red bar is the fuel tank which is small, then the 3rd red bar is the rover with that blue vertical bar and the red bar going back. It is pretty long. What is not shown is the 4th bar, which is the rear ramp section. That is surprisingly draggy. This is a newly built spaceplane just to test the viability of the ramp. I took precautions to build it so that there would be no aero forces in the cargo bay, but there they are anyway. I built the fuselage then the mounting system in the cargo bay, then the rover and the rover is dumb. It has no control unit like an OKTO. Did manage to get it to the Mun and the rover detached and ran around and reattached just fine. Landed on Kerbin well too. It is much better than at first when it could not even go supersonic. Not enthusiastic about installing FAR as it would most likely require me to redesign my entire fleet of spaceplanes.

I just built a spaceplane for testing and noticed that it has a lot of drag, so turned on the indicators. It sure looks to me that the rover is dragging but I don't know how this is so. Even the wheels have red on them. Am I seeing this wrong?

I use this little gizmo. I have been on Steam for many years and all my screenies are there except for a few on Imgur. This doodad lets me access and add to those screenies while continuing to play KSP. In other words, it lets me continue with no changes.

Yes. I found that a light MK3 can land on the Mun with 4 NERVs but the heavier ones need 5. Rapiers use too much fuel and are hard to control.

You still have a lot of work left to do. I still don't think you can go to the Mun and back with Rapiers only. This one did go to the Mun and Minmus, complete repair rover contracts, and return.

20 tons is a lot of cargo. What are you trying to do? Go to the Mun to recover ore and bring it back to Kerbin? The hardest part of that is landing as it needs a really soft landing or the ore tanks tear loose and all the ore disappears. Lots and lots of wing helps there. I am using triplanes now. An ore carrier is actually easy to do because it takes off empty so it pretty light. This saves on fuel too. Do you have a refueling solution on the Mun? That will help too. Also, getting the fuel tanks laid out so the CoM stays pretty stationary is very important. The cargo bay should be exactly at the CoM too. I never get it correct so my MK3s take off very nose heavy and land a little tail heavy.

This is not about KSP but about Take Two, who have a well deserved reputation for being your typical sociopathic corporation. They are now making YOU the product that they sell to others. You are now a commodity to be bought and sold. That is how those launchers are used elsewhere and there is no reason to think that T2 is any different. That launcher is now disabled on my rig.

This is the logical result when the consumer becomes the product being sold.

Around 6 years ago California was getting 50% of their energy from Green Energy in the spring when the dams were all full of snow melt. One bright day last summer Green Energy made 100% of the state's energy. California shut down its last coal fired plant well over a decade ago. Hopefully even methane will be phased out as well as ther are year round sources of Green Energy.

It was different for me. My ship found a hole and was damaged as was the rover that came with it. 3 crew and a 2 seat rover............ Two actually managed to get out to "flat" ground on their own and then had to wait for rescue. Then another rover had to go in and rescue the last crew and then wait for enough seats to get everyone home. It was all early tech.

The USA too, almost. West Virginia only has less than 800 coal miners still employed. Coal no longer can compete with Green Energy and the old coal fired power plants are being closed down.

Me neither. The rescue missions were epic!

Uh ohh. I just checked if CKAN wanted to update and it did. Now if I click on anything it locks up and is unresponsive. And yes I have all 3 of those mods installed as dependencies from other stuff.

Getting up there is the easy part. Getting back down in one piece is the hard part. The spaceplane has to be designed so that the CoM stays about the same when both full and empty. This thing did it a long time ago. It has 2 Panthers and 3 reliant (?). Once the Minmus base is built the whole system opens up as most fuel is burned just getting into orbit. The big S wings and strakes carry fuel too and the strakes are the most efficient fuel tanks there are with the 1.25m fuel tanks being 2nd. So using them doesn't hurt anything. This one has 6 big S wings and a bunch of strakes and just delivered a rover to Bop. It refueled at Minmus base and then went straight to Bop.

Yes fuel is always the problem. It is possible to build MK3 based spaceplanes that can make the round trip, but I found it best to set up a base to refuel them there. This is a gas truck moving in to refuel a spaceplane. As for engines, I use NERV and Rapier engines. If you do not have Rapiers, then Whiplash and a rocket tuned for vacuum use will work.

History says otherwise. There has never been a peaceful time in human history. It would be great to see a peaceful transition to other energy sources, but based on history that is a faery tale.

Hehe. A few days ago I rescued Samwise Kerman from low Kerbin orbit.

And what are they doing? Fighting over it, and how did they get whittled down to just a few scattered survivors? By fighting over it.

That one looks familiar. Methinks it got stuck in the ground and I had to knock it free and then it moved.