paul_c

Station 3/10 complete: Let's "mop up" the remaining Mun science. Not a bad encounter! For "SW Crater" a big inclination change is needed. It makes sense to do it while at a big eccentric orbit, high up. After meticulous calculations to take into account the tidal-locking, position of the Sun, Mun and Kerbin to give an accurate approach: I waited until daylight/full Mun and my calculations seem to be 180deg out: No worries I'll just do a night approach, on instruments: Except I'd missed....quite badly. That's "Lowlands" biome! Fortunately I've not been there before so I gathered the science etc. That's better! I did the inclination change in the same orbit as the landing will be, to assuredly hit the right spot (its a big spot too): Phew! Right biome! And another module to the station, now 4/10 complete:

Another update. For Minmus, instead of sending 8 separate rockets, we will build a space station! It is modular, the base rocket underneath is familiar and very similar. From left to right: fuel module; science module; main part; remote/probe module. The main part will receive 4x science, 4x fuel and the remote/probe, constructed in LKO. Then it will travel to Minmus, possibly expending the outer fuel tanks along the way. Once safely in orbit there, the remote/probe will undock and re-dock with a science module (and possibly fuel too). Then it will descend to the surface of Minmus, gather 2x biomes of science and return to the station, where it offloads its science results and ejects the spent science/fuel modules. Rinse and repeat for 6 surface biomes (+ near and far Minmus space) and then the remote/probe will gather as many useful fuel modules as possible then this time, detach the "get you home" pack with heatshield and chutes. Then it will re-enter and split off its fuel tank too, leaving (hopefully if I've planned it right!) the science, controller, etc to safely return to Kerbin. The beginning of a new era.....the main module is on its way to space: Safely in LKO: Yikes! Pointy end up, flamy end down! Except the nose isn't very pointy on my caveman rockets; and the engines have been shutdown because they're not helping! The problem was the 0.625m components in the middle, induced a severe case of "wobbly rocket" so it went out of control and several engine off-ons didn't help either. Fortunately I had enough science points to buy some struts and the problem is solved. 2nd try with the Science Module was much more successful, reaching 3.0m from the Main Module. Spot the obvious mistake?? The engine looks awfully similar to the docking port, and I forgot to turn it round! I remembered, too late, and it did a nice thwack and sent the main module spinning away at 1.5+ m/s. Another try and the situation was once again under control, fortunately no damage done. With minutes of daylight to spare, we have a 2/10 complete space station:

I figured that science return is 8+12+10+25 for temp/pressure/goo/science jr. With no EVA ability, crew report is +5 which isn't that much. Also it means if you muddle up the fuel, all is not lost because you can leave the probe on the Mun, scoop up the "science from surface of Mun" contracts and these pay about £2500 +1 science point (a typical rocket of mine is about £13000 all in). A replacement astronaut is about £500,000 which is earnable but would take about a month!

The mind boggles! Delete the entire rocket (keep the payload), do the last stage and show a screenshot. As a ROUGH guideline I would recommend the staging like this (doesn't matter what the payload is): First stage: 1000m/s, TWR ~1.3-1.5 Second stage: 2000m/s, TWR 1.2 Third stage: 1000-1500m/s TWR 0.5 This gives plenty to get to orbit, do some orbital adjustments for rendezvous and a bit of margin too. For now, concentrate on getting 3 stages nicely flyable.

I don't know what a "first stage engine plate" is but KSP doesn't need them. Just attach side boosters using the radial decoupler and get it ever-so-slightly above the middle, so it ejects them clear of the vehicle. If you're JUST using them for more force, its not going to make any difference on 44t. They do, marginally, in eg Minmus orbit. At an advanced level you can decouple at the right time in the right direction (eg during a small satellite launch) to get a little benefit rather than an inconvenience. But for now, forget about them, they're just adding complexity in the staging etc. This will also be why your fairing is exploding - if you decouple something within the fairing, it will destroy it. Take time to get the exact details of staging right in the VAB so its easy to do it once its flying.

I admire your bravery sending live Kerbals there! I chickened out when I realised I could send probes there with not too much extra infrastructure for the relay network. I already lost Jeb in a weird training incident, if Val cops it and I need her its game over! I've already had 2 rockets go splat into the Mun, due to bad piloting skills.

Ok I'll try JPG! PNG is a lossless compression format, I think they're not compressing that much due to the HD screenshot size and the background stars etc....JPG saves a little bit though. I've found Minmus! After a test flight which revealed the shortcomings of the smaller aerial, I've put 2x HG aerials on for reliable comms. I think one would still do it though? Another rocket, off to fulfil 2x Kerbin satellite contracts of around ~5Mm, then onwards to Minmus. I am a caveman with bad eyesight and have failed to encounter Minmus in the "conventional" sense but by raising Pe once I'm at the Ap of 46.4Mm or thereabouts, I can do a 'traditional' rendezvous thing albeit which takes ages and uses more fuel - but its assured to get there. So with a number more contracts, which pay about £10k each, and Minmus encounter/captures, I now have a relay constellation: A tweak here and there....: And with the Ap/Pe chosen as 400km, near-match the inclinations (matching inclination isn't massively important but matching Ap/Pe, thus the orbital period, IS): Next steps? I still have a bit of Mun science which can be completed with 1 rocket per biome; then an additional retrieval and re-entry vehicle. But I have a more ambitious idea for Minmus..... I did consider interplanetary but its just too dicey when Minmus is "safe", although for fun I might try it with the caveman restraints and same hardware, once the challenge is in the bag.

First thing is (and its already been mentioned), you have a bunch of decouplers firing on your first stage. Why? This will just blow apart the rocket on the pad? The only thing that should decouple on launch are the launch stability arms, although you don't really need them for a wide-at-the-base rocket in KSP. Secondly, regarding SRBs. You can do the job of a SRB (ie initial heavy lift of 1st stage from ground to ~10000m) using liquid fuel/engines if you want, but it will just cost more. Look at the "price per thrust" or something like that, once you've added in the fuel tanks etc. Sometimes I've done liquid 1st if its going a bit higher (so I get the controllability). One/some of the larger SRBs can gimbal though but I can't remember which one. Thirdly, as others have mentioned, I've found the best approach is to make a payload, then add a final stage underneath it, then (eg) 2nd stage, then (eg) 1st stage. That way, you can even dedicate/tune each stage for its purpose, for example if the final stage is simply to reposition in a higher orbit, it doesn't need big engines and you can save weight. For every 1kg you save in an upper stage, you save 10 times that (or more, maybe even 20 times) in the lower stages. So you can see how using an engine weighing 130kg is MUCH better than an engine weighing 1.5t. If its flipping/crashing at 2000m there is something fundamentally wrong with the design. So feel free to scrap it and start from the beginning on this one!

Sounds good, the overall aim is "unlock tier 5" and the idea being we never upgrade the buildings/facilities etc. (and have dastardly settings in the higher levels). If there's a Green Monster which helps, and you can find him.....

Back to the Mun.... Another iteration on the design sees the science module combined with the rest of the top stage and the "Spark" engine used, the idea being to eliminate the 1st docking for more fuel: East Crater: Trying and failing miserably to line up inclination with "The Canyons": A few tweaks along the way and I'm on target not to go splat into the walls: The first landing attempt slid down the wall, so a quick abort/take off and another attempt. It eat into my reorbit fuel but I had enough: Flying out of the canyons is always fun: NW Crater: With my reputation now above -850 I can trash it a bit more, for 'free' money:

Sounds like there's some fairly fundamental issues with the rocket, if it can't reach orbit and is falling down so early on. If you're hauling 44t of payload up to LKO, you'll need a fairly big rocket underneath it. I am not familiar with the tech tree unlock levels, I can't remember what is unlocked for each level etc but if you don't have bigger stuff, then it would need either multiple smaller ones - which might be difficult to join together - or an entire rethink. The beauty of rendezvous, docking, building a space station etc is you don't need to take it all up at once - you can 'build' it in space, from smaller more manageable bits. I reckon with the skipper engine but without "mainsail" unlocked, you'll struggle getting over 10t into orbit. Don't forget the lower stage(s) have to lift both the payload and the (enormous quantity of fuel and engines of the) upper stage(s), hence why lower/1st stages are always much bigger than the others.

So you need either a bigger engine, or more engines!

If I were going to space, I'd need a rocket too.......

Ok a few basics: 1. "The boosters jettison when the Ap is 20km" - in itself not terribly useful. Its an indication of what the 1st stage does, but we need info on the other stages too. 2. The units of delta V are m/s. Its a change of velocity/speed. km is a distance measurement. 3. Staging, be it conventional, onion, asparagus, whatever, does not alter the overall delta V because that is a fixed thing, relating to the rocket design and the amount of fuel in it. If its using normal decouplers for its staging, the KSP VAB editor will make a pretty good go at calculating the delta V properly. If what you're saying is the overall deltaV is 4400m/s, and it cannot reach orbit, something else is wrong. For example, is the staging correct? You're not decoupling full fuel tanks, or not activating engines etc? Maybe one or some of the engines aren't powerful enough (too low TWR) and it can't overcome the gravity etc. Maybe you've used an engine optimised for vacuum; or the vacuum values, in a stage which needs to operate in atmosphere.

What is the delta v of the whole thing?

Makes no sense whatsoever! If something is in orbit, it stays in orbit (unless its Pe is less the 70km etc). Things don't deorbit when boosters go out,

A retro facing docking port is no harder than a forwards one - the icons for targetting and docking appear in the navball for both pointing to/from; and velocity to/from. Trouble reaching orbit....what kind of trouble? What's the delta V of the whole thing? Or is it some other kind of flyability issue?

Were there 1000 747s?

After doing some detailed planning, the engineers have cobbled together this (top stage): I am trying to persuade Val to get in it so we can launch, however she has become very nervous and keeps muttering something about the placement of the heatshield and stack separator???

With various bits of data floating around in Mun orbit, it is time to go and collect some of it. Unlike last time ("Hard" challenge), with the science rate 1/3 in Diamond, it will make sense to go get some and maybe unlock some new goodies. So I'll collect 4 biomes worth. This is the business end of the vehicle. Note how its engineered to meet the 18t limit: On its way: Some data pods had more fuel left than others. So a scheme of one visiting the other, transferring data, then remaining connected to use its fuel up then travelling to rendezvous with the next, etc was done. This one was interesting, this was a previous design which put the science instruments back into orbit, I just wanted the fuel so a bit of shuffling around in space occurred: Eventually after what felt like a hundred dockings, the top of the probe was safely able to make it back: All for a useful amount of science, but still a long way to go to achieve the challenge:

There's obviously a sliding scale between number of distinct tile shapes and gap size. I imagine if they worked out a tolerable gap size, their inventory could be 10-12 variants, rather than thousands like the space shuttle. Of course, too big a gap negates (or renders inaccurate) a lot of the aerodynamics work if its done on a smooth stainless steel shell!

Yeah, that's the way the Pe ends up at 50km!!! Ok it was an accident but at no point should you be out of control of the situation, or in any danger of dropping out of the sky. What if the spaceships that dock to the ISS in real life ended up with both station and craft in a fiery explosion? This is why its worth taking the time to understand the process of what an orbital rendezvous is, and how to dock. KSP makes it easy, much easier than real life - what with the KSC being on the equator, no atmosphere at all above 70km, etc. But still, rendezvous/docking is one of those things where if you follow a "cookbook" rather than random pointing and squirting with a big rocket, it will all fall into place (no pun intended). Or did MechJob burn retro and put it into de-orbit?

So your range of available altitude, if your docking craft is behind and needs to "catch up", is 70-80km. You shouldn't need to go 50km Pe at any point. The similarity of the orbit; and the similarity of the speeds of the craft, are intimately linked. You can approach a station at 80x80 using a 79.9x80 orbit if you want....it will take a while, but it will be at a very controllable speed.

Given the edge of the atmosphere is 70km, If you're doing a rendezvous/docking in LKO then it makes sense to have the station a bit above 70, so you can dip below it to catch it up (orbital mechanics). The nearer things are to 70, the more the additional consideration of not dropping into the atmosphere is! For a beginner, I'd recommend the station to be about 85-90 minimum, so its a non-issue. And, to fully understand and be very deliberate and procedural with all the steps, so that you are in control at all times!

How about making the tiles half as thick each as they need to be; then attaching twice the number in 2 layers? Curved sections will have big(ger) gaps but with all the tiles overlapping it still leaves the 1 tile thickness. For a sufficiently small gap, it would be approachable to engineer the situation to accommodate this with heat transfer thru the structure?