paul_c

I'm giving it a couple of months at least, for Cyberpunk 2077. That's if I ever buy it - not sure its worth spending £50 on a game. £20 is fair enough.....£50 possibly not.

It does the same for me. It doesn't help either, docking/undocking components (with more wheels), when you want a slightly different steering configuration for each combination of vehicles etc...

I am fairly new to this so don't fully understand advanced orbital mechanic stuff, but I know the basics. I think its fair to say: * With the limited tools in stock KSP, its difficult to do a precision orbital insertion except for the case (where the minor body is on a 0deg inclination) of 0deg or 180deg, by 'aiming for its equator' by minimising Pe by burning normal/antinormal * If the sub-body is on an inclined orbit, then the above would insert you into a matching inclined orbit * There is a trade-off between efficiency of doing a future inclination setting far away (ie in the major body's SOI, before the orbital insertion) and the (by definition, because its a minor body to the other) lesser dV needed in a sub-body's SOI Personally I like these kinds of challenges and would love to do a scenario where you MUST absolutely minimise dV and rocket cost, and squeak into a planned/contracted orbit with the minimal fuel etc. However KSP's career thing doesn't really work like that or encourage it, because 1) just adding say another 100dV is cheap; 2) future contracts of "move the satellite...." mean it makes sense to have spare fuel. In the real world, I guess you'd have spare fuel for a lifetime of stationkeeping from perturbences (which don't occur in KSP) and an end-of-life de-orbit or raise to graveyard orbit (which I've not been asked for in KSP's career...)

Many thanks for the answer.....however that's the answer for how to put the ship at a particular inclination/LAN of a Kerbin orbit. I was after the way to do an orbital insertion (to say, Mun or Minmus - but could equally apply for interplanetory) to a precise inclination (which isn't 0 or 180) and LAN.

A rocket shouldn't tip over in a true gravity turn because the gravity turn, in theory, applies the thrust through the centre of the mass. Its one gradual smooth turn once its been initiated. However with the WASD controls applying 0%-100%-0%-100% of turn, its a limitation of KSP. But its worth remembering it ought to be smooth. As a VERY rough guide, I've had success with trying to "hit": 30deg at 15,000m 45deg at 25,000m 60deg at 35,000m

If its a geostationary transfer orbit, it needs more delta V and more fuel. Similar for a heavier satellite. But if the satellite isn't so heavy, or the orbital requirement not so great, effectively they have "excess" payload capacity, which translates to enough space/capacity for a bit more fuel. So they can choose to put a bit more fuel on, to get the stage 1 boosters back to land, rather than drone ship - since the cost of that fuel outweighs the cost of transporting that booster + barge back home. The barges go quite far "out" into the Atlantic to get underneath the stage 1s. Think, in KSP when you're launching a rocket, a few minutes in you're on a sub-orbital trajectory with a big curve covering maybe 1/8-1/4 of the planet.

AAhhhh I forgot to add the question. That's the theory for how to get it more/less on 0deg or 180deg inclination.....but how would you set yourself up for, example 30deg inclination? And how would you hit that 30deg with a precise Longitude of Ascending node - I guess you'd need to figure out the current 'lunar day of the month' (ie to know the longitude angle you'll be coming towards the Mun at), then factor in your travel time to know precisely the arrival and subsequent orbit you'll be put in?

I've done many trips to Minmus (and some to Mun, Duna, Ike, Jool) and one thing which I've not developed the knack for, is precisely inserting my spacecraft into a planned orbit. Currently they are somewhat random. I can get an intersection, then tweak it to a low value, but its still a bit unpredictable...until my last attempt. I tried this (for the Mun): 1. Fly as close as possible to 0deg inclination (for the Mun) LKO (for Minmus, its a bit more involved) 2. The burn from Kerbin orbit is typically done so the apoapsis is ~45deg ahead of where Mun currently is. So, start there and use the maneouvre planning tool to burn prograde so the Ap touches the orbit of Mun. You should achieve an intersection - ie Mun approach, Pe, escape all light up in different colours. Highlight the Pe 3. Then tweak the 'ejection angle' (its not really an ejection.....because you're not leaving the SOI of Kerbin, just intersecting another thing orbiting it) to minimise the Pe. If you got the burn length right, you should have a big amount of angles where there is no Pe, ie you would hit the Mun. So, choose the angle in the middle of the range. It is important (see later) to get this 'no Pe, strike the Mun' condition. 4. Then reduce the burn time until you no longer strike the Mun, instead aim for ~10,000m. This is a good target altitude consisting of ~7500m terrain clearance and another ~2500m to give a bit more "flight time" when slowing from a low orbit to prepare for landing without striking that terrain at high (horizontal) speed (during the slowdown you'll lose a bit of altitude because the burn takes time). By reducing, you'll arrive behind the Mun, it will swing you round anticlockwise (as viewed from above) and put you into a prograde orbit 5. Half way towards the Mun, do another maneouvre plan. This time adjust only the normal/antinormal (pink triangle icons) to influence the Pe to a lowest achievable amount. What this does is puts you "onto the equator" of the Mun, ie makes your eventual inclination (nearer) 0deg. Then optionally, I did this, just as a tryout: 6. Try tiny amounts of prograde burn to confirm it takes you closer (ie lowers Pe). 7. Burn prograde/retro as appropriate to lower Pe to nothing (ie striking Mun), but keep burning and burning until Pe appears again. Instead of arriving "late" and being behind the Mun, you arrive "at the same time" (hit it), or "before" (in front of it) and its enough to influence your eventual orbit into a retrograde one. (8. I should have made tweaks normal/antinormal again to get myself onto the equator, but I didn't) Its difficult to visualise it, I think KSP does the best it can but its difficult to see. I did the above and my resultant orbit was 171deg ie retrograde and nearly equatorial.

The biggest soak of time is dealing with the cranky editor in the VAB - it slows you down frustratingly. Just for an experiment, last night I built a very simple multiple stage thing. At the top were 4 components: controller, fuel tank, engine, separator. Then I 'stacked' several 3-component stages (engine/fuel tank/separator ring). Repeat this until you get ~7000m/s delta V. The engine can be the smallest, lowest TWR, it doesn't matter too much. Then do a 1st stage of about 3500m/s delta V using a couple of big fuel tanks and a big engine, to get a reasonable LKO. You'll want some solar power and an aerial at the top too. Then launch it and park it in LKO, I am guessing inclination 0deg for ease. Then look up the 'transfer window', time-warp to align the planets and play around with the maneouvre planning tool until there's some kind of intercept, then time warp and burn. Once the main burn is done, play around again with the maneouvre tool to tweak it better. Then do the same at just leaving Kerbin's SOI, then about 1/4 the way there, then 1/2 way there (time warp to the next one each time). I think by the 1/2 way there, you should have gotten the Jool Pe to about 250km or so. Of course, that's the basics of getting to Jool (or any other planet) but the fun and skill is knowing what to take and what not to. For example, do you take a pilot so that you can be confident you can control the ship if/when it goes behind Jool (it probably will on the entry retro burn!!!) What science do you include? What about batteries, aerial(s) and transmitting power for the science stuff, or are you happy to do partial transmissions and recharge? Do you want to neatly make your stages coincide with parts of the flight, like LKO, inter-planetary burning, orbital insertion? If you took a Kerbal, do you want to get back too? If so you'll need to think of the dV needed, staging, chute, heatshield etc.....which has to be at the top...so it influence all other stages. What about taking a Science Lab module to earn (much) more science? What about the scientists, 1 or 2? What about getting them back? etc. For me, planning out that element is just as much fun as the actual getting there and the views.

I don't see why its illegal. Its an internal transaction within the wider group.

Given how it crashed, that's pretty good survival of a part that they'll probably want to take a good look at. I would have thought, for next time, activate the landing legs based on altitude AGL rather than speed, so that even more stuff survives if a similar anomoly with the final approach speed occurs. (Much) later on, I'd imagine they'll look at variable-height landing legs, to cope with uneven terrain. If they can do a hoverslam landing, they can do a hover or slowdown to give enough time to do some kind of radar survey of the ground below and set the legs, or possibly even translate sideways to find a flatter landing area. They'll need to do that, surely, for Moon or Mars landings? Fun stuff ahead.....

Brilliant flight, Elon did really well even with the WASD controls and didn't muddle them up once, including the flipover and just before the landing! I think he forgot to press SPACE bar at some point moments before though. But seriously, without knowing the exact profile of the engines firing/shutting down/restarting, all we can do is guess at the detailed planned flight path, and the corresponding engine and control inputs planned to execute the plan. It looks like they clearly planned to shut engines down at different times, and we saw that clearly working; and the sideways translation and attitude changes without much gain/loss in altitude. We don't know - and I suspect they didn't either, until yesterday - what the various hot gases, or exhausts, will do in the airflow when doing these not-seen-before-by-a-rocket maneouvers and whether they'll have a negative influence on other portions of the flight. My concern is the fuel flow during the landing phase is a new thing to get to grips with, and it was designed into the rocket using separate tanks (which it did switch over to) but the pressure/flowrates didn't work out as expected. Not easy to simulate without actually putting another rocket through a flight. Hopefully there's just a tweak or two needed (I hope Elon put the yellow pipes in with the arrows facing the right way) but it might need a more thorough redesign???

Its like anything else, you build a structure/payload/instruments etc portion, you size the fuel tanks according to the mission profile, then you calculate (or guesstimate) which engine/engines will produce the relevant TWR for that (stage of the) mission. Of course, its an iterative process, because the engine(s) will have a weight, which affects the amount of fuel needed, which affects the fuel tankage, which affects the overall weight. In KSP, I've found it quite intuitive to go through the above process and its part of the fun of the game. Also, if it looks wrong, it normally is wrong in some way or another. So well-flying rockets tend to be not too stumpy, not too thin etc and the engines look about the right size for their job.

The closest planet to Earth is.......Mercury. In fact, Mercury is the closest planet, to every other planet, once its all averaged out (think about it...) The Nasa Mercury program......didn't go to Mercury. The Saturn 5 rocket......didn't go to Saturn.

I thought it was fairly realistic based on the forces exerted on the structure. Basically a too-powerful rocket can cause narrower components above to flex. In the real world, things would break/fail much sooner so you'd not see the extreme bending possible in KSP. Its fairly easy to stick a strut or two on, and they are "infinitely" strong, so what's the issue?

I stuck a thermometer on a Kerbin satellite yonks ago. The average pay for "science data from space around Kerbin" contracts is approx K$16,000. The thermometer cost me K$900 and the cost to keep that satellite in orbit....nothing. I've done 27 of those contracts, so its paid quite well and illustrates its worth just keeping them, if they have any use whatsoever. I don't think there is any performance degradation for the number of satellites (there is for complexity, ie number of parts) so.........

I've never seen a contract which pays less than the necessary parts to complete that contract, so I don't see the need from a recovery $ point of view. In any case, unless it were built for recovery (and if you did, you wasted weight in doing so).....? I just keep the majority there and don't touch them unless a "reposition" contract comes up. If its a relay and its run out of fuel, it stays. If its not a relay, and once its run out (or has too little to be of any use - but sometimes a "reposition" can be done very easily/cheaply!) I tend to terminate them, so a contract doesn't come up to reposition it which would be impossible. Giving them sensible names helps finding them in the future, from the list. I wish it were possible to sort the list(s) though, instead they are in age order, oldest at the top. Debris I'll occasionally have a big clean up.

You mean, he went to the Nevada desert to shoot the pictures and video for the fake moon landing?

I'm not an expert on space travel but getting to the Moon by bicycle is going to take ages!

There's 2 issues here: one that you currently have, is that I think you're missing a controller on the detached part. When you build a vehicle, the first part you lay down is the "root" and that's where the control will be, when other parts are detached. Those detached parts should be renamed with "probe" or "ship" appended to the name, if it has a remote probe or a crew-carrying component on it (or relay if it has a relay antenna). The second problem will be, its not possible to "pause" one part, while you control the other. So you'll need to do something clever with making sure one of the parts can autonomously keep flying itself, or be able to switch between them at the right time. For example if you were to recreate the SpaceX Falcon, jettison the first stage (and then switch to it, or just one of them, to fly it back) you'd have nobody flying the second stage and it would probably overshoot its orbit badly or not make it into orbit. There's also an issue that parts which ought to look after themselves (eg bits parachuting down), below a certain height, don't get modelled properly and can just blow up as mentioned above.

If its a "fly over" assignment, and you already have a suitable vehicle orbiting (eg it has crew on it, if it asks for a crew report), the first thing to do is.....do nothing. Its possible that the orbit you're currently in, will pass over that area anyway, in the due course of time. So its definitely worth stopping and assessing the situation before burning fuel. I didn't know about the nav ball but they are a bit of a PITA to do, especially if you miss one due to the orbit not quite lining up, or another reason. I guess, the skill is to be able to do it with the minimum orbital change needed. Sometimes I've had one and I've been planning a trip nearby anyway, so its quite easy to make a small detour or change of plan to do it.

Well......yes and no. Higher is nicer and simpler to 'drive', but it will inevitably weigh more. And if its the final/upper stage, a 1kg saving in this means many kgs saved in earlier stages.

We are not considering sliding along the surface, but flying - ie clear of the terrain. In KSP you'll blow up if you go too fast on a surface. My original point remains - you NEED TWR>1 to "lift off" then a sufficient TWR to transit from sub-orbital to orbital before returning/hitting the surface again. (Once you ARE orbital, the criteria which sets a minimum TWR is different, so it can be much lower). The "glass smooth" analogy was to eliminate terrain, nothing else......

No, not necessarily "no drag" - its because an orbit, by definition, has a horizontal velocity component that means it does not descend and hit the ground again. Think of leaving Mun/Minmus - you NEED a TWR > 1 otherwise you're just making a barbeque initially. If the planet/moon were glass smooth, no terrain whatsoever, you'd still need TWR>1 to lift off the ground, but the gravity turn element would be very short and then you could get by with TWR<1. You need the lift to overcome the gravity and you need to do that long enough to get the horizontal speed up to orbital.

* Keep the science lab "topped up" with as near to 750 data as possible * Have 2 well-qualified scientists in it