Duke MelTdoWn

PS: the collection above is for high tech stuff. Ships for fresh career games are in this collection: Meltdown's Minimalist Career Ships https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995073286

PS: the collection above is for high tech stuff. Ships for fresh career games are in this collection: Meltdown's Minimalist Career Ships https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995073286

My approach to career games is to try to fly the launcher back to KSC to recover most of it for 100%. Over the years, I have created a collection of reusable rockets, cargo and passenger planes for different payload sizes. Launch and reentry procedures for each vessel can be found in the workshop description (I work these out in Sandbox). Meltdown's Reusable Launchers Steam collection: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2995059664 Rockets Tiny Reusable Launcher - 2 tons to Mun or Minmus Light Reusable Launcher - 15 tons to Low Kerbin Orbit (LKO) Medium Reusable Launcher - 25 tons to LKO Heavy Reusable Launcher - 80 tons to LKO Very Heavy Reusable Launcher - 180 tons to LKO Extremely Heavy Reusable Launcher - 255 tons to LKO Passenger Planes Gisl - 2 crew / 2950 m/s (external seats) Naga III - 2 crew / 4600 m/s (external seats, two stage) Naga VI - 4 crew / 1800 m/s (external seats) Chonker - 16 crew / 1750 m/s (external seats) Silverfish - 4 crew / 1650 m/s MunAir - 8 crew / 1570 m/s JoolAir - 8 crew / 5027 m/s (two stage) Teardrop - 4 crew / 3480 m/s (aero exploits) Sancus - 8 crew / 6050 m/s (aero exploits) Valkyrie - 4 crew / 4360 m/s (two stage) Valhalla - 4 crew / 6400 m/s (three stage) Cargo Planes Gler - 2 tons to Mun (narrow fairing) Skyfly IX - 10 tons to Duna (MK2 bay) Super Guppy II - 20 tons to Jool (MK3 bay) Super Guppy III - 74 tons to LKO (MK3 bay) Bumblebee - 15 tons to LKO (wide fairing) Wasp - 40 tons to LKO (wide fairing) My current favorite is 'Wasp', 40 tons to orbit is plenty and the fairing is large enough to transport Mun Landers and station modules. And it is much easier to get back to KSC in a plane. What is your approach to reusable launchers?

Now that I have built so many new Mun Shuttles for the Design Competition, I have updated my collection of reusable launchers on steam with the improved SSTOs: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2995059664 While going through the list I saw that I had a gap for payloads in the 250 ton class. I reworked the launcher of 'Gargantua' Mining System and removed all the stuff you don't need if the launcher will not serve as orbital fuel depot (docking ports, RCS, ...). I also had forgotten that MK3 Rocket Fuel Fuselage Long exists :O This reduced the part count considerably. The parachutes are now also nicely balanced, and I reworked the reentry procedure (see workshop link). Even though my Launchers are touted as reusable, most employ some solid fuel boosters. If you include fuel costs and consider that you might not hit KSC perfectly on reentry, the overall launch can be cheaper this way. Launch costs (fuel + 2 Clydesdale) for this puppy are about 110k. The MK3 parts, with their high impact tolerance, ensure that the launcher comes down in one piece. 'Extremely Heavy Reusable Launcher' 3x Mammoth, 2x Clydesdale Payload capacity: 255 tons to LKO Delta-v: ~200 m/s left after insertion of 255 ton payload into 75x75 km Kerbin orbit TWR: 1.17 at Kerbin sea level (with 255 ton payload) Launch Mass: 1234 tons (without payload) Price: 352,413 Recovery value: ~241,000 (at 100%) Docking: 1x Clamp-O-Tron Sr. port, no RCS Parts: 104 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3461683377

No, as long as you can dock with the Mun Station using RCS, you don't need to carry monopropellant. I changed the requirement to read: "Docking: at least one docking port and RCS control (including an appropriate amount of RCS fuel) are required." "Appropriate amount of RCS fuel" means enough fuel to dock with the Mun Station and have reserves. The shuttles I posted here run with 20 Monoprop for 4 RV-1X thrusters, which is probably enough for 4 docking operations.

The U.S.A. has secretly been metric since about 1920. In machining, if you need a reference length to check your work against, you can build it up with high precision using gauge blocks. These are an invention of the Swede Carl Edvard Johansson and a big hit. Johansson opened his first U.S. plant in 1918 and started to work with Henry Ford in 1923. When Johansson began to offer gauge blocks in inch sizes in 1912, the U.S. inch was defined as 25.4000508 mm at 68° F and the U.K. inch as 25.399977 mm at 62° F. Carl had no patience for this nonsense, so he set his one "inch" blocks to be exactly 25.4 mm at 20° C. Because he was the world market leader, others followed suit, and by 1933 this "industrial inch" has become the standard in tool rooms around the world.

Smart to land it sideways! Landers that topple over give me nightmares.

We had a discussion about Vectors vs. Darts some weeks ago, in this thread: I was also bringing Darts into play. One point I have overlooked is Thrust per Frontal Area. Vectors scores much higher here. I guess you could do some drag-less tricks with engine plates if you insist on using Darts. If you use normal mounting techniques, your drag will be higher on Darts than on Vectors, because you need to conjure up additional open nodes to place them.

The trick is to go into EVA construction mode. Drag/Drop the jetpack from EVA inventory (left side of screen) on the ground - not from right click inventory of the Kerbal. Same procedure to pick it up again. Good that that happened to your engineer and not your scientist. ___ Edit: oops, did not see that you had to hike 4 km, sorry for the late reply. Maybe time to deploy a rover to Minmus, makes life so much easier ...

Sounds great! You can also enter the overkill SSTO you are working on just to see how it scores. If you give me the stats when you are done I can score it for you.

I hope so and thanks! I guess I like flying just to orbit in sandbox, that's why I test so many shuttles

Mun Shuttle Design Competition Another day, another shuttle. I repurposed a cheap 'Naga' Sat Repair plane for crew transport. 4 passengers, 15 tons, 1800 m/s left in orbit, costs 30k. High TWR makes this fun to fly. This traded in the second engine in front for a docking port, so it does not require a flip maneuver on its way to orbit, unlike the other Nagas (e.g. 'Naga III'). I had to add a tail fin because I found some yaw instability during reentry tests. Short Takeoff and Landing at Island Airfield work fine, after I doubled up the front landing gear. This time no Kerbals were harmed during development, unlike the 'Chonker' project. So it pays off to adapt an existing design. 'Naga VI' Crew Shuttle Stats https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3460399128 'Naga VI' scored 21 points, same as 'Chonker' with 16 seats. I guess it is a good thing that the scoring is mostly invariant regarding the number of passengers. Nobody around who wants to enter their cool shuttle into the competition?

'Falhofnir' scored well, so I repurposed a cheap 'Naga' Sat Repair plane for crew transport. This one traded its second engine at front for a docking port, so it does not need a flip maneuver on its way to orbit, unlike the other Nagas (e.g. 'Naga III'). 'Naga VI' AG 1x Rapier Launch mass: 14.7 tons (without passengers) Price: 29,698 Crew capacity: 4 (external seats only) Delta-V: ~ 1800 m/s left after insertion into 75x75 km Kerbin Orbit (with 4 passengers) TWR: ~ 1.8 in Low Kerbin Orbit (with 4 passengers) Cargo capacity: 1x 180 L Docking: 1x Clamp-O-Tron, 1x Junior port, RCS Parts: 48 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3460399128 Fully Reusable: 2 points (return from LKO to KSC) Mun Lander: no STOL: 2 points (Takeoff and Landing Island Airfield) Jumbo Jet: 1 point First Class: no Extra Luggage: no Easy Docking: 2 points (Clamp-O-Tron in front) Long Range: 3 points High Thrust: 2 points Good Value: 4 points Light: 4 points Simple: no Low Tech: no Stock: 1 point // evil floating point hack: no Total: 21 points

We are only talking about rockets, right? A spaceplane might use more delta-v by staying in the atmosphere unnecessarily long, but the overall build will be much lighter and use less fuel overall. So the theoretically best route might not be the cheapest in game ...

One of the best inventions ever are telescoping grip strips to stabilize landers on slanted terrain. Requires robotics from Breaking Ground DLC.