BechMeister

I think this is a good showcase on how they've solved it in that game:

In flight of Nova a your prograde, retrograde, normal anti-normal, radial in/out are all visible in space around you. I think that gives you a lot of clairity. You also have a "local" "Anti-local" which shows the relative movement of the target.. but relative speed is, as far as i remember, just always shown in 1 number. Maybe it goes negative.. its been a while since i played it. I love that system in that game.. but I am not sure I feel it has a home in KSP

But deosnt it already show that? Here you can see i am going 26.1 m/s relative to the target? - Is this what you were looking for?

Greetings. Over the last soon 800h I've played/fought KSP2 I have come to grow a list of things I wish were in the game. The Ability to double click on the NAV BALL and the SAS pointing the ship in that direction. I feel I needed this more when the rockets were very wobbly - It could be very difficult to hit the wanted heading and angle going into orbit. Also This may just be because I play at a very low framerate a lot of the time. But when setting up the vehicle for docking. It would be nice to double click on the NAV ball and the ship be like "sure I can point 10­­­° away from target so you can move around it and still be near the target docking port." without me having to manually point the ship. Any way.. small quality of life change for precise maneuvers. Night Vision: Don't get me wrong - I love that the night is actually dark. Right until I have to land a craft. You see I, like I assume a lot of other people, use landmarks to make sure I get the runway lined up or the landing pads. But I cannot see these landmarks when its night. Also on the way down it can be really hard to see where you're going. I placed little drones at the end of the runway and landing pads respectively.. but I would love to be able to toggle night vision at night for landings etc. The ability to show atmospheric bands on the vehicle path. I made a poor example of what I mean here: colour correspond to the atmosphere bands shown on the altitude indicator on the Navball I have a second stage that drops like a stone once its through the dark blue part of the atmosphere ~32-17km - Which means I am most interested in knowing when I'll hit that part of the atmosphere, so I can aim that to be right above target. Other times I fly a glider, and I know that ~32-17km is the atmospheric band where I can extend or shorten the glide in accordance to what I am trying to hit by changing AoA and Bank angle. The actual path is worthless once you hit the atmosphere. For instance I've learned that aiming at those islands will consistently place me close enough to KSC to land at the pads most of the time, and hit the runway everytime. But It would be nice not having to use landmarks. Bodyflaps: I just had a glider that I would glide perfect in atmosphere, but would flip its ass as soon as it had a AoA on more than 0° going through it - Doing a lot of experimentation I decided to create a replica of a body flap. The only items I had that really fit the role, without re-wirering the wings (Oh we will get to that later) was the aerobreaks: By adding 2 Aerobreaks and fiddling with the deploy settings I found the spot were I can re-enter with a AoA of 40° and not having it flip over (25° if your curious). But I find the aerobreaks utterly ugly.. So It would be cool with dedicated body flaps. Like on the Shuttle, Star Rider, X37b etc. The Ability to manually tell wings what way to pitch up/down. Because I thought the Aerobreaks looked ugly, I tried to make the same effect with a wing: How ever - when doing that it ment the game automatically re-wired what the wings were doing. So my main lifting wing would pitch down when I asked it to pitch up etc. When I tried to invert it, it also inverted the roll. Which meant I have to give up testing using the wing as a bodyflap. Since I could not get it to fly staight. I sugguest the devs either: A. Split invert controls into roll and pitch/Jaw - So we can invert Pitch/Jaw without inverting roll. B. Give us full control over the wing, so we can tell it what to do. That you can check how much the planet has rotated before you arrive at your destination. The amount of times I have thought I placed my maneuver node at the right spot. Only to realize that KSC has moved so far while going down to the highest atmosphere and missed the target is infuriating. It would be nice with a tool were you could check "how much have the planet rotated when I arrive here at my path". Have the distance in "Target Mode" show the distance to target. This is a small thing. I often only look at the navball when doing maneuvers for docking. Only look at the actual station and ship to change Pitch and Jaw angles so I hit the port propper. It would just be nice to have all the info on the nav ball. This is my top 6 most wanted features in the game. Thank you for indulging me.

It would be great if the MK2 Clamp-o-tron and Clamp-O-tron inline/shielded has been fixed. I could see my old bug repport was archived. But to my knowledge the bug stil persisted last i played. (I have yet to play after the update)

200 Δv seems fine - I always aim at having about 300 Δv. Then Im sure I wont bounce off the atmosphere. I make sure my craft is empty once the final burn has been done though. dry mass vs fueled mass is a big difference. and you glide a lot better if your vehicle weights nothing. I usually aim here: What makes aiming super tricky is how far the planet has rotated before you get bellow 70km. Now you can extend the glide a lot in the 70-40km by holding a pitch 10-20° Angle of Attack. I've sometimes gotten "stuck" bouncing off the Stratosphere (the ~40km mark) until you bleed off enough speed to enter. If you manage that you can really extend the glide. The 30km to 40km is your last chance to extend or shorten the glide. Once your below 30km, depending on your glider.. you only have 20-40km you can travel. If you haven't seen it, I can highly recommend the video about landing a shuttle that Sylvi linked on Tap 3. I made a habit of quicksaving before doing the deorbit burn. See how far I could glide and adjust until I knew where to start the burn to line the runway up propper. I never time my launches x) I just time warp and wait for a good window to arrive: The old method your vehicle orbit time is slower than the target. So at some point you will get a window that is less than 10.000km - although I think I have corrected as big margins as 20.000km. But the new method is always the same... once you have your ~10km orbit bellow target. you just have to wait until your directly beneath it. then burn about 10 Δv to rendesvous with it and then another 10Δv to match the orbit. I might start wait for good windows with this method.. as a bad window can leave you in time loop for a while x) but still.. the consistency in how much Δv you use is nice i think. But my station is only at 100km - I think you can make it easier by just reversing.. method one, you know AP at 200 and PE at a 100 or so? I dont know how well method two is at more than 10km difference in orbit. Aaand I can imagine at 190km the orbit period is quite extensive. I strongly believe in documenting your failures too - it gives you some data to theorycraft with x) Well my large tugs were also the second stage - no reason to not use perfectly good vacuum optimized engines you could also go for a split wing tail - man 1.900 Δv is a lot! You are also a lot higher up though. My station is at 100km It may be easier for you to aim your decent if you start by getting down to a 70-80km orbit and then do the final deorbit burn from there. Makes aiming a lot easier. Yeah. Its hard to gauge from a screenshot. but with your angle of attack at 20° and a speed of 39.5m/s I assume you should be able to land it no problem. My gliders never produce that... I simply go through the atmosphere too gently. Any way.. I can see you also re-entered following your prograde. meaning you get the shortest tour through the atmosphere as possible (except for if you entered at 90° ofcourse). With a Angle of Attack (AoA) on 0° you cant extend the glide. The danger of flipping is also none existent. The shuttle re-entered with a 40° AoA for instance. I find with a AoA on 10-20° you can have trouble re-enter the atmosphere. You can experiment with that. Not at all. But if we are going to make a habit of it. I think a private threat would be a better option. (just to keep the already bloated thread on topic ) I hope my thoughts and comments will help you in your future endeavor - I have contemplated starting a For Science Campaign.. but I think there are enough avenues I can explore just in sandbox mode.. before I need other things to entertain me. btw I took an FPS count last time I was at K.G.01.. its not flashy: So I guess I am also just a very patient person x)

Oh I can tell you my frame rate is not great either. This is very much a "do a maneuver - drink coffee - come back and do next maneuver" game for me. I think my pain tolerance is like 15 fps - but since I added the escape shuttles I believe my station is like 5 fps or something. It's been a while since I've had a FPS counter. I game on a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop: CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 TI RAM: Ram: 16,0 GB Something that can ease the suffering: I often time warp when I'm on the KSC menu. you know, were you can pick the VAB, Launch site etc. As then you can time warp fast without it lagging a lot, which some times makes timewarp feel like it's slower than actual time. (Mostly when KSC is in the dark - I hate landing at night as I can't see my aiming landmarks) Also I have gotten precise enough that I match target orbit sub 100m from target. (its also easy when its only 23m/s that needs to be canceled out). Then there is less fiddling with RCS thrusters. I just have to be mindful of the size of the station as its XXX distance from the target center, not the parts that stick out x). I once had an approach that was 30m, i'm pretty sure I scraped some paint of the glider hitting the fuel tank array So No closer than 50m on the approach now. You can fine tune the rendezvous point A LOT using the RCS thrusters right after your intercept burn has been complete: As you can see here the rendezvous point is almost 2/3 on the other side of the Kerbin. If you hover your mouse over the "Target & Intersect [2]" (as shown here on the screenshot) you can fine tune the intercept point with the RCS thrusters - I usually just manipulate H, N, J ,K ,L and I in accordance of what button press produce a lower "distance from target" number. I dont know if this can help you... But I find that the closer I am to my station once all relative speed has been killed. the faster you get to the docking port you need to connect to... and the less patient you have to be, spending time in lag x) Maybe, or you just need to "aim better". You can figure out how "bad" your glider glides by testing it on the runway. I always do a lot of testing to figure how well it glides. Thas what I have this winged behemoth engine for: Its just an engine that gets the glider up to a few KM altitude so I can see how well it glides. The glider is all emptied of the fuel it wont have on return (I usually just test the dry mass to be sure, but if you know you have methalox or Monopropellant as ballast to balance the craft, just use that) Then I test at what pitch angle the craft stalls in. My best gliders had a pitch angle of ÷10° from the horizon.. and my worst (the Heavy Tanker, which obviously glides like excrements) wont pitch beyond ÷80° I also found it help full to make the little aiming drones on the run way and landing pad - just so i can set it as a target and see if I can point prograde at it. May I ask how much Δv you spend on your deorbit burn? Maybe you just reenter at a too shallow angle. Any way - before making the wings bigger I would test its stall speed and angle over the runway. Making the wings bigger can really create some challenges of getting the glider up into space - especially if you do like me were you put the most dragious part on top of the rocket xD (but to me it was better than balancing a shuttle style rocket) Dont worry. I still play Morrowind from time to time.. and the graphics there has not aged like wine - I can handle it I use a program that is called "ShareX" - When ever you take a screenshot it upload it to imigur and provides a link for it. If you upload that link to your forum post it automatically imbeds the picture into the post.

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ - Re-Re-Re-Designing Multi-fuel Glider - The new and rebalanced Multi-Fuel Glider as well as its 5 prototype predecessors. Foreword: So, it took a little bit of fiddling around, crying and cursing before the glider was rebalanced. The new cheat tool is surprisingly helpful to quickly test re-entry etc. If you dont know how to "Summon" it, its Alt + F8. Any way - After applying my brain and logic, I figured out how to fix the design. Since there are only one mission tasks in this update - Fixing the Multifuel glider - I decided to skip the Mission Task + lessons learned; lessons identified section and just go directly to the challenge. The Challenge: Image showing the center point of the old glider. So, what is the issue you may ask. I was dumbfound by this strange conundrum. The center of Mass is clearly in front of the center of drag. So by all accounts there should not be any issues? The first few attempts at fixing the issue was centered around the idea of pushing the center of drag further back, by moving the front canards to the middle of the vehicle. Not only did it not resolve the issue about flipping upon re-entry. it also made the vehicle fly like a rock. It struggled getting a pitch angle higher than ÷45° Which means a one in a life chance to flare up, bleed up all speed and slam into the runway pavement. Any way - It made me ponder a great deal. And I came to the conclusion. That the issue is not the center of drag. but the center of mass. The glider flips in the space between 30km and 40km, where the density of the atmosphere is between 0.001 and 0.006 kg/m³ - and the drag.. Looking at the glider as having no wings, the only logical explanation was that since the center of mass was beyond the center point of the craft. It would always fly with the most "massious" (is that a word..? it is now...) part in the front. Like how the capsule works. The problem I had to solve was this: Make sure the center of Mass is in front of the center of the vehicle. Easy right..? no.. not really. Finding the solution: There were two factors that made this a tough challenge: 1. While in vacuum - the center of mass had to be on or in front of center of the ship 2. While in atmosphere - The center of drag had to be closely behind the center of mass to make the vehicle steerable. Solution to issue 1: with the new science update we finally got some decent "weights" you can add to the ship. I added 3xGSCM -01 "Science JR"( 1t each) inside the nose cone. I swapped the MK2 Clamp-O-Tron out with the docking array I designed for the revamped escape shuttle (added another ~1t) . Lastly I added 2xsmall reaction wheels (under the clamp-o-tron) doubled the reaction wheel torque and pushed the Center of Mass in front of the center of the vehicle. This new nose solved problem 1. But not Problem 2. It would re-enter perfect, but was un-flyable once it got to the thicker parts of the atmosphere... due to the Center of mass and Center of Drag being too far a part. So the craft would nose dive into the ground. The wings are really heavy and I had to shift them forward as well. I managed to get center of mass in front of the center of the craft while keeping the center of drag close enough to the center of mass, how ever... The vehicle had become too heavy for the small wings. I was in a evil spiral - As the wings get bigger to give lift - they added mass - this added mass meant I had to add more mass to the nose to balance the craft - meaning I had to make the wings bigger. Not to mention that I had to be able to fly it into space on my 1st stage... I reduced the 3x GSCM-01 to 2x. and the front assembly ended up looking like this: note: MK2 clamp-o-tron for mass reference This left me with a flyable craft. How ever I could not push the Center of Mass further front without the Center of Drag overtaking it. Something else had to be done. Other Tweeks: All though the glider flew well now ("well enough" - being a lot heavier meant it flew more like the real shuttle than the glider it was before). It would not re-enter in a controlled fashion. I was ready to give up on the craft... Until i noticed something, looking at real life examples for inspiration. The Salvation: I had to add more control surfaces to the ass that could press the nose down when it wanted to flip around. I looked at existing space planes and noticed that the X37b has it, The Space Shuttle had it.. The Venture Star would have had it (had US congress not killed the program) ESA Sky Rider and S.U.S.I.E. will have it... The body flap. I decided to try add two Aerobreaks to the hind of the glider. set them deploy and then I tweaked the deployment rate from 0° to, what would be needed, while on the way down. When I could see that the SAS was fighting to keep the nose down, I increased the deployment rate of the breaks. Until the point were the SAS was stable. It turned out to be 25° as seen here: Multi-fuel glider version 3 on re-entry. I did not really like the look of the two Aerobreakes.. I wish you could change their shape like the wings. Or the game actually added a dedicated body flap. I tried to build a body flap using a wing like this: An attempt at using a tiny wing as a body flap. How ever. The problem is that when you add wings behind another wing, it changes what way it pitches up and down. I tried to reverse the middle wing... but the problem is that then Roll is fighting the SAS.. I tried to put the drone upside down, and then just fly with the ground up. But it did not fix the issue. So Aerobreakes it is.. As long as we dont have dedicated body flaps and or can separate pitch and roll on the invert option, Aero breaks it will be. Conclusion and Certification: From left to right: 1. Certified Multi-fuel glider v.III 2. Prototype III with wing body flap. 3. protype III with canards and without body flap. 4. prototype II with docking array from escape glider 5. Prototype I with weight in nose 6. Old Multi-Fuel glider v.II Last thing on the list was to take the new Multi-fuel glider and complete a refuel mission at KSC. Since this post is already long enough I've added that part to the spoiler sections bellow: Certification of Methalox Glider: Certification of Hydrogen Glider: Moving Forward: Now that the gliders has been fixed again, again, again.. I can go back to refueling K.G.01 with Hydrogen. We will see if any more setbacks present themselves before the end is here. Stay Tuned for more!

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ H.T.D.01 and H.T.D.02 enroute to K.G.01 Foreword: So. I have been taking it a bit slow refueling K.G.01 - The two H.T.D. were 6 days from their maneuver node, and rather than timewarp I spend the days developing the vehicles for a Minimus Mission - which I will do as my first mission after this. Maybe a permanent Mun settlement too? Who knows. Any way - I was well under way with refueling K.G.01 When I ran into another Issue... a reoccurring issue. The glider is off balance again. I decided to upload the current process on the refueling, before going into re-re-re-redevelopment of the glider. Mission Tasks: A. Return the two Hydrogen Tanks from K.G.02 to K.G.01 B. Refuel K.G.01 with Methalox C. Refuel K.G.02 with Hydrogen Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: A. H.T.D.01 and H.T.D.02 arriving at K.G.01 This step went without issues - I found that its really "easy" to send two at a time by using the "connect the two drones" after each maneuver and "disconnect the two drones" before the next. The added time it takes to connect/disconnect and co-ordinate prograde and burn timer + timing the actual burn and kill relative speed afterwards is worth it. Not only for the aesthetic of seeing the two vehicles flying together. But also making sure that the rendezvous goes smooth. Especially around The Mun it can take weeks to rendezvous with K.G.02 because of the slow orbit... and you can easily end up juggling multiple vehicles rendezvous - as seen when building K.G.02, were some of the first parts to arrive were the last to be connected due to a bad transfer window. It has also, technically, reduces the amount of tours from 4 to 2. The only negative is it uses a lot more monopropellant than if you send them individually. For detailed walkthrough see spoiler section bellow: B. Methalox H.T.V. enroute to K.G.01 to refuel the station. The time had come to the last step before both stations would be fully operational - fueling up K.G.01 How ever when I was going to load the vehicle file of the Heavy Tank Vehicle... It had disappeared? I dont understand how.. I must have accidently deleted it when I cleaned up my work files for vehicles. Luckily this blog aided me immensely in reverse engineering the vehicle quick. All the way from what parts to spacing etc. By looking at the images I had the rocket down again in a 20 min time - and by 2nd refueling mission the wings, grid fins and aerobreaks had been "balanced" on the 2nd stage, so the vehicle would fly nose first through the atmosphere again. While I was doing the refueling missions (I did 1-2 launches pr/afternoon) ESA successfully launched the Axiom 3 mission to ISS. On their Facebook profile they showed this simplified explainer on how dragon reaches ISS: I thought it was very interesting that they would take a 7.5km lower orbit than the target and then burn to intercept it when they were right "beneath it". I have always done an approach were my Apogee is + ~60-80km of the target Apogee and the perigee is +/÷0km to the target perigee - and then I just waited for them to intercept-ish and then correct the last by either burning Radial In or out. It can be very situational how many orbits it takes for this to happen - and depending on how lazy you are, it's a vastly different amount of Δv used for the last correction burn. With the ESA Dragon approach, it is very easy to make sure you spend the same amount of Δv pr. Mission as you remove the last step with fine tuning the rendezvous burning radial In//out. The most interesting things to find out would be this: How much Δv is saved by doing this? and how long time does it take to catch up to/wait for the target to catch up, doing this? As you can see I adopted a ~10km lower orbit than K.G.01 which is currently orbiting at a 98 -102km orbit or so. It resulted in me being 12.5km away from the target when I was directly below it. It actually goes surprisingly fast with catching up to the target. The furthest I was away from K.G.01 this time, was a time were I was on the uppersit side of Kerbin than K.G.01 after I reached my target orbit. It took 1 Kerbin day to catch up to K.G.01 - which means that It will never take more than 2 days to catch up to the station.. presuming that you reach orbit at the worst possible moment. As you can see the vehicle had Δv 1460 Δv left (the number is actually lower, as the craft is counting the cargo of 12t methalox into its Δv amount) The Prograde burn to catch up with K.G.01 is only 10 Δv and some fine tuning with the RCS thrusters as seen here: I dont have exact numbers - but this maneuver, on average, definitely goes faster time warp wise (it is slower to perform as you need to be more precise with managing your PE/AP) and I think I save somewhere close to 200-300 Δv compared to my old method. The refueling went fine with H.T.V. and the last load of methalox would have to be supplied by the Methalox glider. For a detailed mission walkthrough for the H.T.V. See spoiler section bellow: The last bit of the mission required me to use the Methalox gliders of old. I decided to tweek the 1st stage by adding a "Spark" engine to help flip it - as it really speeds up the process on the H.T.V. 1st stage. I also decided to try do stage separation at 1800 Δv and ~1200 m/s rather than 1600Δv of old. It means that the 1st stage has around 350 Δv to land once it's gotten safe back through the atmosphere (burning at ~15% thrust with 3/7 engines to not lose the engine plate) The new design looks like this: Methalox Glider coasting away from the 1st stage performing burn and flip maneuver. This means that the Methalox glider has an extra 200 m/s for free - and saves methalox. that together with the revised docking method gives the glider a total of 300-400 more Δv for the re-entry burn. I had a lot of "trouble" that stemmed from the vehicle only having on average 300Δv to do the de-orbit burn. Only reducing the speed so much that it would bounce off the atmosphere and thus bleed of its speed slowly. This "sucked" as I also wanted to see a hot re-entry... Unfortunately the vehicle still dont produce flames on re-entry.. I think the dev team can turn up the heat a bit - It's "too hard" to get vehicles to burn on re-entry x) Any way with 300 more Δv it is now possible to break the glider enough to the atmosphere clean. How ever! this has revealed that the glider is off balance yet again. The first attempt I re-entered with a AoA at 40° - and it flipped to fly engine first. Then I tried an AoA 30° and then 10°... It kept flipping.. And I dont understand Why! The VAB clearly shows that the Center of mass and Center of Drag is far apart.. and mass is infront of drag!: The vehicle is in perfect balance when flying sub 1000m/s - It can even maintain a ÷20° prograde pointing ÷10° to the horizon and going 51 m/s at 4km altitude without stalling. SO... I have No idea why it's so unstable going through the hot re-entry. Now.. Any sane person would just let it coast from 2000 m/s to 700 m/s by bouncing on the atmosphere.. and then glide easy down to KSC sub 1000 m/s avoiding flips - but not me.. So We are back at it again... Redeveloping the glider. See detailed walkthrough in the spoiler section bellow: Moving Forward: Only the refueling of Hydrogen on K.G.01 is left - and an investigation on why the glider has become unstable on re-entry again. I feel, with how every patch seem to drastically alter how winged vehicles perform, that tweeking and rebuilding the glider will be a continuing reoccurrence. Next post will be on the re-re-re-redevelopment of the glider and the refueling of Hydrogen. Stay tuned for more - on this never ending story.

I try not to land harder than 5 m/s - but it can be really difficult on Kerbin when returning a 1st stage because the throttle control is so finnicky. I some times find that I'll hit sub 5 m/s 30m off the pad.. and then getting it the last meters down it ranges widely between 1-5 m/s. I just find too often that the bendiness of the legs is what causes it to fall? if that make sense.. I have not have issues using the other legs. My preferred leg right now is the medium sized one. I guess its also because landing a tall rocket with a long plumb line is working against the legs. (I have experienced that a rocket that was landed would tumble because the SAS induced swaying that got out of control) I just wish we had some large landing legs with a wider base, or stiffer for landing returning 1st stages like a falcon 9 etc.

Yeah I just think there is something wrong with having to put it off auto and set it to max dampning. Also It can be very difficult to tune it.. to the point were some times it feels like you break your leg off if its dampening. And I talk about landing with sub 10 m/s I just had a rocket bounce at 5 m/s. It just feels off to me. It would also be nice if it could bend a leg to keep its gravity center when on a slope x) Do you have any tips on how to adjust them? because I feel that when ever I make the springs strong the rocket flies off at the smallest touch of the ground. If i makes the springs weak and the dampers tough as nails.. it will fall/collapse under the legs if it does not land exactly level.

I use them all the time as its the only landinglegs in game that are long enough that easily extend beyond the engines. But I find them utterly annoying... even if you manage your decent really careful, half the time I find they just propel the rocket into the air again and have it land on its side, and if you have but the tiniest side wasy movement the rocket will fall.. not to mention if you land on anything but perfectly leveled ground it will also fall.. I wish we had another set of large legs that had a wider stance on the ground. or were somewhat better at compensating the craft and keep it level to its weight line.. is it just me who are annoyed by these legs?

I have had similar issues - I have resolved it by making a costume action on the docking port that says "undock" and then press it. Then It also fixes the state - if you want a solution you can use without closing the game. It is a problem that is especially present on the inline/shielded ports... were the port will forget what state its in if you reload or load a game where an inline port is docked to a standard port. Usually making so vehicle clips away or into each other on time warp and or that they will move individually when making changes in orientation with SAS on. - I have never seen this happen with 2 standard clamp-o-trons before. Btw I love how you added the top mounted "pulling engines" to the button most vehicle.

It is words like these is whats keep me going with this project - Its the motivation that allows me to "waste" an entire evening on a development dead end, and then write a lengthy post about it! So thank you for the kind words. "Blogging" like this often feels like you are sending up smoke signals without knowing if any one is watching x) Of course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it... But it is very nice to hear that the level of details I go into is appreciated (especially as I've often feared that I am overstaying my welcome) So thank you for taking the time to read my blog Dont worry! This form is going to be a main stay for my projects I think - I will update this thread when its relevant. I foresee an update when radiators are implemented to the game. But the overall goal of this Mission was establishing K.G.01 and 02 - making them operational and design the needed infrastructure to run them. And the only thing that's left is fueling K.G.01 up again. I was suggested by @GalileOh-No to do the Duna Mastery challenge, which I will be doing after a small trip to Minimus so I can square of all bodies in the Kerbin SOI. That being said my small minimus mission vehicle has grow to a ridicules size - I've had a lot of fun in the VAB making truly huge vehicles, not taking my PCs performance into account... More akin to a Interplanetary vehicle - probably capable of a Jool's Moons Mission. So I will probably make a new scaled down version for the Minimus Mission (More on that in its own relevant thread). I can see The Duna Mastery have its own thread in the style of this one. But again, thank you for the kind words! It fuels me with motivation to continue crunching problems, creating synergy etc.

Thank you! It was just what I needed. Then I just need to know why something dont show any Δv

I've seen a few Youtubers saying that with the Fore Science! Update you can set the Engineers Report and Trip planner to show stats for other bodies than Kerbin? But I cant seem to figure out how? I am making a vehicle that will fly from the mun to Mun orbit... and I would like to calculate its TWR on the Mun.. as well its Δv in vacuum. Did I missunderstand what the youtuber ment?

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ - K.G.02 Fueled up and Ready - K.G.02 - fully operational and with its new heat shield installed. Foreword: So I wanted this to have been the last mission update on this blog. But to much, I had to document, had happened. With the introduction of re-entry heat a few more lessons learned; lessons Identified presented themselves. The Kraken also reared its ugly face.. or its been doing it for a while, I just got fed up with putting up with its shenanigans. Which meant K.G.02 had to get a facelift.. and I had to make my most KSP'ed rocket to date. More on that bellow. Mission Tasks: A. Iterating the H.T.V. and refueling K.G.01 C. Refueling K.G.02 D. Refitting K.G.02 with a new heat shield. Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: A. The H.T.V. v1.1 successfully landed at KSC - notice the 3 big grid fins has been replaced with 3 wings Problem 1: Hitting the mark: I had a lot of trouble figuring out where to aim my decent point to successfully land the H.T.V. on the pad. Taking Kerbins rotation into account, the time it takes to get to the ground, as well as the bleed of speed going through the atmosphere.. made it really hard to nail the very precise point I had to be to be able to line up the pad. Right now the H.T.V. will be through the hot re-entry at ~15.000 km altitude. Which means that there is not a lot of time to do the final maneuver that aims it to the pad... and as if that is not bad enough, the fact that it steers like a brick, means that you need to be close to right above the pad to be able to hit it. All in all it means it's practically impossible to hit the right spot. Of the 8 launches it took to refuel K.G.01 with Hydrogen - only 1 landed at the pad. And I feel that was more luck than skill. I had to find a way to quickly bleed the horizontal speed once it was through the dangerous part of re-entry. - the answer became fitting the vehicle with aerobrakes. I found out that if I aim about here: I will bleed out of the hot part of re-entry right above KSC - by reserving some Δv to extend or shorten the prograde I can aim for the back end of the big island east of KSC once I hit the 70km mark. making sure I consistently have the right path etc. The H.T.V. only needs 300Δv to land - 400Δv to land comfortably with my skills. Once through the dangerous part of Re-Entry the aerobreaks can engage: Methalox H.T.V. v.1.2 breaking to line up the run way. The image above roughly shows the break out point. From here its all about breaking the vehicle down to 200-300 m/s and then flip the ass - I've found that If i flip it too soon, it will tumble and you spend a lot of altitude getting it back under control you could have spent aiming. The final iteration of tht H.T.V. also had the stabilizer wings replaced with control surfaces - to enable it easier to "glide" towards the pad. Problem 2: "Huston we have a problem - My engines are gone" Picture of the 1st stage of the refuel gliders - and all its engines dropping to the ground. The second problem I ran into was that the engine plate on the 1st stage of the refueling gliders could only handle re-entry speeds at sub ~700 m/s. I was very worried that this would mean a total redevelopment of the 1st stage. Fortunately I have become so good at getting it back to KSC that I found I could afford to burn the engines and keep the vehicle at around 700 m/s the Result was this much heat: 1st stage of the glider succesfully getting through the thinner atmosphere. As you can see, I have still plenty of Δv to land the vehicle - and the engines to do it Se detailed slide show of Mission Task in Spoiler below: B. Two H.T.D.s each pushing 20t hydrogen into a lunar insertion orbit. The next part was pretty "simple" Continue the fueling up of K.G.02. Since I had 2 H.T.D.s this time I decided to try launch them simultaneously. It demanded an unnecessarily load of work to do this. Even if a vehicle as 0 m/s relative motion to each other - they can still drift several kilometers away over the wait time. The first time I did not realize I could connect the two vehicles while they were coasting. (significantly reducing the workload) Second and final load I connected the two vehicles every time they had done their burns. Although I know it makes sense - It has hard for my brain to wrap around why the Δv is almost halved when the two vehicles are connected - compared to them being separate The rocket equation is wild. Any way - I cannot figure out if it was worth the extra hassle. On one side its nice that they arrive at K.G.02 at the same time - I remember building the station that It could be really situational how quick things could arrive at the station. Since if you have a bad insertion window you need to orbit the moon a few times before you get a good rendezvous... but that takes month around the mun. SO I avoid that hassle... but I have to time the maneuvers - kill relative speed after each and connect the vehicles again to avoid drift - also took time to do. That being said - man it looks good.. but it puts a lot of Sci-Fi epics in contrast. It must be hella lot of work for fleet ships to stay in formation in real life. xD Se detailed slide show of Mission Task in Spoiler below: C. The problem that had to be solved. So - K.G.02s solar panel array was prone to Kraken attacks. It would start to vibrate until the point where it would break itself a part. I could manage it by hitting Timewarp for a second.. but It happened so often that I would have to reload a previous save multiple times because the station had broke apart while I looked away: I decided that I would have no more of it and looked at alternatives - The only item that was able to build the shape I needed without having a bazilian parts were wings. So.. this is also my first alternatives use of wings as well as my first ridicules rocket. Behold this monstrosity: The stand-up guy of a rocket needed to get the new heatshield into orbit - I so look forward to be able to build stuff like this in space. Since the heatshield had the structural integrity of a wet tissue paper, and the drag of a drag coefficient of a pavillion at a Childs' birthday party, It meant that I would have to drag it into space instead of pushing it (Tensile strength vs compression) - I also had to launch it at 45° E as soon as it cleared the tower - because once it had gained speed, you could not do maneuvers without it breaking apart... The heatshield fighting its way through the atmosphere - powered by 4 massive solid rocket boosters. As you can see this maneuver made for a quite hot tour over the karman line. While in the atmosphere the rocket was powered by the 4 biggest solid rocket boosters I could find. The biggest challenge was completed - getting it into space. After it was just gently installing it on K.G.02 - Since it was quite big the T.T.Ds had a lot of "trouble" rotating it to the right angle. It was easier to rotate K.G.02 to fit the correct orientation. The result was this: K.G.02 with the new heat shield installed. K.G.02s Hydrogen tanks are now shielded from Kerbols rays propper - so propper that I actually wish I had installed a few flod lights to it. It's very dark in the shadow now. But maybe that can be remedied in the future once we need to install radiators to our vehicles and stations. Se detailed slide show of Mission Task in Spoiler below: Moving Forward: Last thing to do now is just refueling K.G.01 again and it is finally over. Then I will upload the craft files to all the vehicles, station parts etc. Its weird to think that it's soon over. But I feel like I have also build more like 3½-4 stations rather than 2 stations at this point... as well as developing each service vehicle 3 or 4 times before getting it right. I have learned a lot with this journey.. and I am looking forward to break free of Kerbin.. Maybe i'll take a tour to Minimus first just to square off Kerbin SOI. Any way! See you next time, hopefully for the last time x)

I mean the second stage uses 64t methalox to get the 10t hydrogen into orbit and land the 2nd stage again xD So it is heavier than 10t - I think its hard to make vehicles that can launch big loads of hydrogen as its density is so low. I have launched heavier payloads - but never with a reusable craft - also I am more drawn to making "realistic" vehicles rather than crazy big ones. I enjoy figuring out in how many packages I need to ship something. I have not tried science yet. I am still finishing up this station (SO CLOSE!!) - and then Ill start visit other bodies in KSP2 with the stations I just made. Any way welcome back to KSP2!

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ - Designing Heavy Tanker Vehicle - The certification launch of the new Heavy Tanker Vehicle. Foreword: Boy do I have an update for you guys. So I wanted to get both K.G.01 and K.G02 fully fueled before For Science landed. How ever - I was too late. Finding a more efficient vehicle for refueling took a lot of development time and resulted in many dead ends. Until I figured super sizing it all was going to be the way forward! Bellow you can read about how my first XL rocket came to be. Mission Tasks: A. Refuel K.G.01 B. Develop new Heavy refueling vehicle. Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified. A. The still glowing engines of the Hydrogen glider - as it slides into the pitch black shadow of Kerbin. I was well underway to refuel K.G.01 - It took 8 launches to fill 1 tank with Hydrogen. Which would mean 32 launches in total. I do like flying my little gliders - I suspect the Hydrogen glider is lighter than the Methalox glider - or the center of mass is better distributed. It usually has 100-200 more Δv than the Methalox glider upon mission end. Which means a more steep re-entry. It is a lot easier to line up the runway when you dont need to guestimate its position 1/3 of an orbit back - but you can do it 1/4 or less. How ever - Lets address the elephant in the room: 32 launches for Hydrogen. On top of that.. the Methalox come.. to enable refueling K.G.02. And with 1 digit frames pr. second around K.G.01 - It meant each launch took for ever to complete... Not because it was complex. But because the final maneuvering with RCS thrusters easily could take 30 min because everything was going in slowmotion - and the stations/sas had been wobbly ever since 0.1.4. Something else had to be made. The tours had to be reduced. Which is the perfect segway into the B section of this blog. But first! Detailed Mission Walkthrough In spoiler section: B. This endeavour would end up taking the entire week to get right. I was going down 2 paths - The first ended up being a development dead end. Prototype Heavy Tanker Vehicle A: Test run of Prototype H.T.Va I started by trying to design around the 8t hydrogen tank (size L) - it would fit with the launch rocket - I also discovered that I can land the rocket with 1400 Δv now that I have gotten better, rather than the 1800Δv I needed when I started. I tried multiple engine configs - 1 vacuum optimized engine and 3 atmospheric for landing. Or 3 vacuum optimized engines of different kinds and 1 atmospheric for landing. But No matter what I did it would never have enough Δv to get to orbit, refuel, de-orbit and land. It would always fall short of having enough Δv to land.. I therefore decided to try turn it into a glider: I really dont like the esthetic of the transition from L to M parts. Not only did I find this iteration extremely ugly - but no matter what engine config I gave it. It was to heavy for the 1st stage to get it enough speed before seperation to even get to orbit. It was a development dead end. It also glided like a brick. You would need to approach KSC at ÷45° - which would give you 160 m/s - just enough to flare up and land without exploding.. but a maneuver that demanded perfect timing. For a time I was contemplating giving up and just going ahead with the 24 missing hydrogen launches... But - reading that Starship will have a payload capacity of 100-150t! (which is insane!) and Arianne Groups S.U.S.I.E. will have a payload capacity of 7t (easier to emulate) - I decided I had to be able to do better than 2.5t Hydrogen 4t Methalox. There was nothing else to do than go XL! Which also allowed me to use the much more esthetic pleasing XL cone. Prototype Heavy Tanker Vehicle B: Proof of concept launch of Prototype H.T.Vb. I did a proof of concept run with the first heavy iteration of the Heavy Tanker vehicle. I decided to use 2x 48-7S "Spark" engines to flip the 1st stage, rather than reaction wheels and RCS - since there are no XL reaction wheels?! - Any way - besides the action group shenanigans I had to do to be able to turn off the main engines and the flip engines on - and reverse. It works great! The 1st stage has 3x medium RE-M3 "Mainsail" - providing the main thrust, and 4x S4 KS-25 "Vector" giving the vehicle gimble. An action group has been made that turns off all engines but 3x KS-25 for landing. The first vehicle had 2.200 Δv when stack separation occurred - which meant that I reduced it from 2x S4-51200 fuel tanks - to 1x S4-51200 and 1x S4-12800 tank. I tried to fly the prototype to 1800 Δv and could not get it back to KSC. I then discovered that what's important is "not" the Δv left. But it seems the angle and speed is what decides if you can get back or not. If I engine cut at 1000 m/s ~30km altitude and 45° (same spot stage separation occurs with the M.R.G.Vs) - you will have enough Δv to get back. It is very interesting. When the M.R.G.V.s stack separate and returns. Their Δv value is on 1800 - when the H.T.Vb separates - its on 2.300 vΔ Second stage Prototype H.T.Vb en-route to K.G.01 with 10t Hydrogen. The second stage consist of a payload of 10t Hydrogen and is fueled by a single S4-12800 methalox tank totaling at 64t Methalox. Powered by 3x S4 KS-25 "Vector" engines it gives it a total of 2728 Δv - more than enough to get into orbit, rendezvous with K.G.01, de-orbit and land at KSC. When the decision came to place the docking port I was figuring out how much fuel the rocket would have at the point of contact with K.G.01 - So I could place the port center of mass. One of the more annoying things with the M.R.G.Vs is that the port is not placed center of mass. Which makes docking a bit more annoying... I realised that I did not need to place the port on the side of the rocket. With the XL engine plate. there was both room for the docking port and the engines - and now no matter the fuel level.. the docking port will always be on the center of mass on that axis. Protype H.T.Vb docked at K.G.01 transferring its fuel load. The docking was pretty tough - the RCS thrusters was not placed optimally.. also In patch 0.1.4 I often had RCS thrusters that wouldn't work - control surfaces that wouldn't work.. and some times even landing gears that refused to extend. After shedding 10t the vehicle ended up with 1373 Δv. When doing the de-orbit burn I made sure to give myself ~400 Δv for a soft landing back at KCS. Protype H.T.Vb landing some odd 10km from KSC I landed the vehicle successful - there were some control issues on the way down - but without re-entry heat I didn't know if it would be an issue. I would find out soon! Now I just have to figure out where to aim to get to the right spot above KSC so I can re-enter nose first and then flip to land. With the proof of concept complete - It was time to make the final adjustments, give it a sleek paint over: The final version, and fully certified H.T.V. - 2nd stage and 1st stage. I would still have one single design blunder to correct. Because I did not think about re-entry characteristics I placed the Methalox tank at the bottom of the stack, and the Hydrogen tank on top. Which was all well and good until I had to re-enter. Even with all the control surfaces deployed - there was not enough drag to have it not flip its unprotected rear to the friction of re-entry. In the end the docking port would be the achilles heel: Notice the heat level of the exposed docking port. Even if the vehicle made it through the fiery part - the heat still build up to the point were the port would cause total vehicle failure. It was an easy fix though - flip the tanks around and it could re-enter nose first even with the control surfaces retracted. - Mission was completed! Now instead of 32 launches to refuel the 4 Hydrogen tanks - 8 is enough... and with the now improved performance I should get that done in no time! For detailed mission walkthrough See spoiler section bellow: Moving Forward: With the new vehicle designed - and the number of tours reduced. I suspect fueling up K.G.02 will take no time now. Giving me just enough time to get used to heat mechanics before going on to duna and beyond!

Am I the only one who cant load and edit old vehicles in the VAB without them breaking in odd ways? Engines missing.. when ever i try to edit it the parts just disappear.. if I reload the vehicle It only half loads and is stuck in the floor? I can use the vehicles If I just load them in directly on the pad. but no editing? That being said - My frame rate around my space station has increased a lot.. It has moved back to the orbit I put it in! - the drift has disappeared... and the target prograde - retrograde is stable! the station was not spinning when I loaded it in.. the atmosphere is beautiful! The SAS is smooth! The grid fins are easy to stear! - what improvements team. what improvements!

This was good intel - I decided to send the two H.T.Ds into a parking orbit that intersects K.G.01 - Framerate already got a lot better! That docking ports etc. kills framerate is not something I think I will be going to address... Part of what I enjoy is figuring out how to build things piecemeal. Not to throw any shade.. but I've always disliked the huge impossible rockets people use to get impossible crafts into space xD - Hopefully with the colony feature, which I recall will have a space station builder too. We can build crafts in space so we dont need to make crazy impossible rockets to get complex things into space.. like the giant spherical hydrogen tanks. Well You do have ample of time to consider your options with 15 fps though xD - There has been a few times were I approached a station too fast.. and had enough time to figure what way to deflect to avoid hitting the station xD But yeah! I've come far since I started.. I still wish we had the same docking information as in Flight of Nova: or at the very least I wish that when we go to "target" mode on the HUD - that it would show distance to target, not the ground... there is a lot of quality of life changes I would like.. Like a HUD for flying over the planet at night that could show the outline of shorelines etc.. or at leas the runways. The ability to double click on the navball and have the SAS turn towards that area... maybe I should pile my suggestions into a new post.

There was actually a lot of the hud elements surrounding docking I was really missing in KSP2 - It has a free demo you can test it out in x) - Cheers

With the fear of cluttering your Mission Report, I have one final remark. Have you checked out the small indie game Flight of Nova? It might be for you, as it somewhat bridges KSP with flight simulators x)

Yeah - I am not too good at "leaving the house". I spend most of my time in my own bubble... but your visit was what prompted me to check out what you were doing x) Oh yeah I am racing to fuel up my stations - so when patch comes I'm ready to do something meaningful with branching out of Kerbin SOI. I am currently playing at sub 1 digits FPS when I get near my stations. But I guess that's what I get for playing on a laptop NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 TI, i7-9750H CPU and 16gb of ram. It was a pretty good gaming laptop back in 2019. But its age is definitely showing.

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ - Replacing All INLINE/SHIELDED Clamp-O-Tron on K.G.01 - K.G.01 is having its two crew docking arrays changed for the updated version. Foreword: So - I dared to ask Anth if he thought the Clamp-O-Tron Inline/shielded bug would be fixed soon™. Or if I would be better served by replacing the modules using the ports. The latter was the reply. So I set out to redesign the crew docking port for the M.K.L.O and Emergency Escape Giders. Because there were no good docking spot for the H.T.Ds I decided to including docking space for them too. Any way... Without Further Ado: Mission Tasks: A. design new docking port without Inline/shielded clamp-o-trons - that can dock the M.K.L.Os, E.E.Gs and the H.T.D. B. Design a E.E.G. (Emergency Escape Glider) that does not use the Inline/Shielded clamp-o-trons. C. Install E.E.Gs and M.K.L.Os Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: A. The new docking array for crewed flight - ready for instalment. Recipe for the rebuild part: - 2x TVR-300L small to large tri-adapter - 6x SP-S12 (small structural panel) - 1x TVR-200L small to large bi-adapter - 3x SF-125 (the plane cylinder) - 1x BZ-52 - radial attachment point. - 1x Clamp-o-Tron Sr. - 2x Clamp-o-Tron Comments on the build: So - I really wish we had some triangle shapes. I often think that the docking ports look "ugly" when they stick out of parts that are round and I didnt wanna use the box adapter, since I would need to have a small docking port on one side and a medium on the other - I figured a triangle shape would look the best. I made it by attaching two small plates in the gaps between the 3 cylinders. I then attacked the medium port to the bi-adapter and that to one side of the 2 plates - pushed it in. On the other side the small docking port was fit to the radial attachement point et voilà! - I now had a new docking module - but with 10 parts more than the original part. B: The new escape glider with out the Mk2 clamp-o-tron. Previous I had trouble finding an elegant way to fit a Clamp-o-Tron to the small MK2 cargo bay. Since you could not attach it to a cylinder without it sticking out when closed... and the transition from the Phoenix cockpit to a small plate looked ugly, I had not attempted to make it work before. But as we say in my native language "Distress teaches the naked women to spin" - I dont know if it translates well... I decided that the cone from small to Micro would make a good transition into the small square plate. with the Clamp-o-Tron on. I then fitted 2 Stratus-V Cylindrified monopropellant tanks - as I really like the look they give on the MK2 clamp-o-tron. I put 4 small spot lights. They give a lot less light than the projectors... which is bit of a bummer. But I no longer need to see the docking port to dock. so its fine. Last was a few batteries and the thing was ready... 12 parts more than before. C. K.G.01 back to its former glory. As suspected - My PC did not like the added parts count. Its really gone down to a slug.. I think K.G.01 is in the 1-digits FPS. It seems when ever the devs improve performance I upgrade and reach the limit of my pc again. I have refueled 1/4 hydrogen tanks. Thats 8 launches with the Hydrogen Glider. there are 3 hydrogen tanks to go. meaning 24 launches to go... With this frame rate I may "cheat" and fly up a big load of fuel so I can launch the second half of the Hydrogen tanks. The station is also all but dry of Methalox. So that needs to be refueled too. Besides that there was no big issues to the build and installment of the parts. See spoiler section for in-depth build montage: With 2 HTDs and 2 EEGs installed I figured it was as good as time as any to test them in a station re-alignment role. With the relative lightness of the station (now that there was only fuel in 1/4 hydrogen tanks and the internal fuel tanks of the vehicles) - it had ~1200 Δv between the 10 engines. I disabled the 8 small engines on the struts for fuel canisters - figured they will work in a pinch if the H.T.D.s are not present. I could fly with all engines 100% and the station would not snatch - flex a bit. But nothing dangerous. K.G.01 correcting its orbit at - 50% thrust. I dont know what it is - but the 5 concentrated jets of the Aerospikes looks really pleasing. Moving Forward: K.G.01 is still in the process of being refueled. I dont mind doing the 8 launches / fuel tank it takes to fill a single Hydrogen tank. But docking the glider to K.G.01 with 5 FPS makes even the simplest of maneuver a slug. So I may cheat and fly a giant hydrogen and methalox tank to K.G.01 - so its not the refueling part that will kill the program... and then In my head cannon it will just be refueled sustainable with the 1st stages and gliders returning to finish the job. Stay tuned for more!