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splashboom

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Everything posted by splashboom

  1. I had weird behavior for crafts that drained the battery completely (and then recharged) because some options got turned off without warning. Check all the buttons in the craft's menu for anything out of place. This sort of thing should also be in the log ^.
  2. I started with this and sometime after take-off it became this and I flew that around for 10 min. then I tried to splash it down and lost the other engines I went back and took off 2 engines and added struts. Then I flew and landed on the first try Still need to tweak stability though.
  3. I was not seeing it in CKAN because I was looking only at those listed compatible(with 1.12.3). It is however compatible with 1.12.2 and I installed it anyway. I took it for a spin and I am happy to report that I saw no problems so far.
  4. I saw mention of this mod in a 5yr old reddit, but I do not see it in CKAN. (TAC Life SUpport is there though) For background: This mod should allow fuel transfer between ships without having to deal with one tank at a time. I can transfer many to one, but I have 10 tanks and 2 kinds of fuel on each ship, so still cumbersome. Thanks!
  5. 1:32 to get the start menu, 1:56 to load the game save. I have a low budget SDD in a 4yr old computer. Mods: both expansions, MechJeb2 and AFBW
  6. If you are already in Kerbol(Sun) orbit what you want is a Hohmann transfer (google it for details). You have to determine both a place in the orbit and for how long to burn. You may have to wait a long time - months or a few years - before you get to the right place, but you will get the most efficient trajectory - which is usually necessary since fuel is always in short supply. As Vanamonde said, if you post a map view experienced Kerbalists can point out where to place the maneuver.
  7. Very good question. By default they should be off, but for heavy ships approaching a maneuver quickly you need the extra speed in attitude correction.
  8. Here is the wobble - it happens to other ships too, and to this one only when fully loaded. I suspect the solutions involves struts, and I may have been unfair to engine gimbals https://imgur.com/a/I7EepSr
  9. Mucking around with the rocket equation and fuel accounting I get the fractions of fuel loss below. A is a constant depending on the dV required for a one-way(up or down) and on the ISP -- A=1-exp(-dV/(Isp*g0)). I threw away some terms that looked small to me [A/(1-A)]*[1+(2Md/Mw))] when lifting ore [A/(1-A)]*[1-A+(2Md/Mw))] when lifting fuel also Md is the dry mass and Mw is the wet mass. So you want the smallest ratio Md/Mw, and even if it were negligible, the smallest possible loss fraction would be A. In practice it is not negligible, since you need decent TWR for a gravity turn and that has implications on what you need on the craft, plus the ISRU equipment. But Md/Mw of around 1/3 should be feasible - at least in KSP. @king of nowhere I think that is pretty close to what you obtain in your craft. Overall the fraction of loss should be 1.5 to 2 times larger than A. For Mun I get A=.17, and for Minmus A=.05, which might translate into 30% loss for Mun and 10% loss for Minmus. There is some fine tuning to do since the TWR needed on Minmus is more favorable, but that would be a craft that only works there. Coming to the real Moon, lifting ore is not a thing(fuel mass is equivalent to ore mass only in KSP) which is fine. Also the dV required is 5 times smaller than Earth or 2 times smaller than Mars. If I look at A and comparing Earth, Mars and the Moon, I get .9, .5 and .3 respectively. This means that the fuel loss would be nearly 100% Earth and even Mars, and the Mun would have 60% loss. So as far as producing fuel, the moon is pretty much the only self-sufficient option. If only there was water ..
  10. No, that would not work of course. However I blame the gimbaling for the oscillations that sometimes get really out of hand. Are you saying I cannot get rid of those?
  11. @steuben I agree with the general sentiment but .. This is something free and detrimental. I had maneuvers delayed and/or botched because the engine gimbaling got in the way of attitude control. Ideally I was hoping someone would point me to a VAB option I missed which says 'smartify engine', and then links gimbaling to the presence of thrust. If I understand correctly, are you saying that fixing this might have potentially introduced bugs that affect normal gimbaling, resulting in splashing 'a few million worth of hardware'?
  12. Is there a reason why engines gimbal during attitude correction even though they have no thrust? All the work is done by reaction wheels and thrusters. What is worse, the engines moving around induce oscillations which make it hard to maneuver and waste a lot of fuel from reaction thrusters. I would think the default was to shut down gimbaling when the engine has no thrust. I know I can shut it down manually, and even have an action group set for that. However it seems like micromanaging something that should have been built in?
  13. So I replaced the nose cone on my orbital plane with a shielded docking port, and to my surprise I could not get it to optimal speed anymore. Looking at the drag for the two parts: - Nose cone: 0.10 -Shielded docking port: 0.25 Given that this is the tip of the craft, it probably makes a big difference. Why would these numbers be so different? If I look at the shape of the two they are almost interchangeable, and I doubt there is an obstacle to making the shield smooth as a surface .. Anyway, is there a place I can edit the drag of the shielded docking port to fit my notions?
  14. I did get some useful tips(thanks all who posted), and did not think you would get something useful from something I may need to improve . For the record then, I am lifting ore to a converter in orbit, and I am using a single craft for that - in particular carrying the drill around. This frees me from having to return to the same spot always. I would also prefer to stick to a single craft setup, since doing this at scale is more efficient on Minmus. My burns are just fine, except I use the craft to explore sometimes and if I get too low on fuel I just go back up without ore. and .. huh? why would you do that?
  15. That makes sense - I did not try to leave the drill on the surface, would be interesting to do. I am still getting missions to the Mun surface - including mining missions so I would need to keep a rig around anyway. So that is why I need some fuel at the Mun - otherwise I agree that Mun is not a good spot, certainly not to get fuel and use it somewhere else. Looks like I would be better off making a Minmus ISRU operation and distributing fuel from there.
  16. I find that the margins for lifting ore/fuel to the Mun orbit are too thin - I even lose fuel if I mess up. Are there tricks to improve the fuel (or ISRU in general) yield? Minmus is much more generous due to its low orbital speed. Also have a bunch of asteroids from missions that I could mine, but either requires more planning when it comes to fuel that I would need for the Mun specifically. Thanks!
  17. I put a rover in the cargo bay of my space plane(secured with a decoupler. Then I put 2(two) kerbals in the rover seats. I told them to put the seat belt on. By the time I got to orbit one of them had somehow come loose from the seat and drifted outside the plane to a scorching re-entry. (This is what happens to loose stuff in cargo bay). The other one survived and does not want to talk about it. I never put kerbals in the cargo bay again.
  18. Apart from specific reasons - like MechJeb2 installation or even KSP installation - it could be just a case of not enough computer resources(video card, RAM, cpu in no particular order). Did you try on other places like Minmus? would be surprised if this is only on the Mun.
  19. I used the debug menu to set the scrap on level terrain, and it all went 'smooth' from there.
  20. Did you have *both* the same Ap and Pe as usual? Also an rtg might generates its own heat on top of being heavy. Normally would not be much, but at reentry much harder to dissipate. And there were updates lately, but did not hear anything specific to re-entry.
  21. So there was this scrap that I needed to pick up from the surface of Minmus, and it has a mind of its own .. As soon as I get close it remembers it has to tumble downhill, and I have to walk with it until it settles. Worse, if I switch control to it I cannot switch it to anything else - because it is moving - and I have to sit there watching. Or posting in the forums. Is there any trick to avoid such situations? Thanks! .. and it tumbles until it crashes, causing the mission to fail and reputation to drop. Would be really annoying if there wasn't a quicksave at hand huh? Joking aside, this is unplayable territory. Never seen anything that bad in close to 1000 hours of gameplay ..
  22. Oh nice! It was going about 500m/s faster than most other fly-by asteroids I have seen. What do I do with its magicness?
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