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Mister Dilsby

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  1. Mister Dilsby
    I had to look up haphephobia! But no, it's nothing like that--anybody would dislike being poked like a computer keyboard. I don't even want to know where Gus thinks the DEL key is located! I hope not either, since I can't even spell it! @Mikki was kind enough to send me a correction earlier Ore concentration at that spot looks to be 7.25% based on back-calculation of drill production rates. I did not put a surface scanner on the Longboat (oops) so I don't have a direct measurement. Don't worry, the final ship will have a scan rig, plus full science suite and comms. I still might bring a small lander for the two little moons; no harm having a backup, and it'll be fun to fly. Come to think of it there will be a lot of load on the engineering staff--Bill and Clauselle are really the only ones I can take (not that I don't have another engineer, but none are developed characters and I don't want to try introducing another right now...) and I know I'm going to need one of them on board any ship that's doing ISRU--possibly multiple mining/refining operations simultaneously around the Jool system. If windows and timing line up, Clauselle might get a quick ride somewhere so she can level up before the Jool mission launch, she's *** now and I might want her to get to ****.
  2. Mister Dilsby
    If it were ever done, I'd love to see the resource grabber for xenon, and maybe also for liquid fuel and oxidant, be a 'scoop' that operated like the jet air intakes. Imagine 'skimming' the atmospheres of Jool, Eve or Laythe for fuel! Yield rates would have to be based on the concentration of various elements in each atmosphere (with that of Xe being REALLY low) and large power requirements in order to compress and liquefy the resource. Note that liquefaction would conveniently separate the gases, just like IRL
  3. Mister Dilsby
    Sure, the Colonial Marines of Aliens are pretty much the US Marine Corps in space. US Marines actually do yell "ooh rah!", NEVER to be confused with the Army's "hoo ah!" unless you want to have the difference explained to you at length by a man with a very short haircut. Sarge Kerman and the KSMC also uses USMC tropes as source material, but since this is Kerbfleet it's only mildly military. Yes, and they're adorable. You can see I've used them on the side boosters of the Longboat lifter, above the Mk3 slanted adapters. Shall we move on? Yes, it's true. My intent is to carry all the craft you've seen, plus a couple of minor crewed/uncrewed vessels, inside the [REDACTED]. And that, kids, is why the Longboat didn't launch inside a fairing (besides the fact I can't be bothered with those darn things) Chapter 2 will be all about testing and constructing the carrier. I don't expect to have an interlude, we'll get right to it once I have some testing done. That was a good idea--I went with 'wheelheads' And props to @nightingale, the 'sad Mort' face comes from a screengrab of an animation he sent me!
  4. Mister Dilsby
    I wonder if you are aware that the movie you refer to and this comic are both drawing from the same source material? Obviously I wanted to put the Longboat in a cargo bay, and cargo bays interface nicely with Mk3 parts. Also I like the large slanted adapters for aero, looks and extra fuel storage.
  5. Mister Dilsby
    Well, it works out better for that song so I guess I'll have to stick with Lay-thee. (and hope no one here mistakes that for an obscene Shakespearean invitation) As to the song, it may not be one that the non-US readers are familiar with, though anyone who bought a Hohner harmonica as a kid may have learned it from the songbook. Maybe next time we'll send up a red-jacketed Preston Kerman of the R.K.M.P. (Rolling Kerbfleet Munar Patrol.) All looks correct; however the design criteria for me is to come as close to a 100% ISRU reactor load as possible with a net power gain. It actually worked out perfectly well at the second landing site, and here are the numbers: With Bill's 25x engineer bonus each drill is pulling .136 ore/second. This indicates a surface concentration of about 7.25%, pretty decent for the Mun and probably about what I could expect for a good site in the Jool system. Four drills together gets us .544 ore/s, just over the .500 capacity of the reactor in LFO mode. This means that the equipment is pulling 90 e/s all together (4x15 for drills + 30 for the reactor at 100% load). That's the entire output of five large fuel cells, so I am very glad I brought six. Total net output of LFO is 0.78, meaning that the fuel cells are drawing .22 LFO/s to run everything. Not a bad ratio at all! The funny thing is that I need less power if Bill steps out of the vehicle, leaving poor Sarge to try and make sense of all that complicated mining gear. Without Bill's knowhow the drills only pull a total of .02176 ore per second, meaning the reactor is only running at about 4%. That makes the total power draw a mere 62 e/s instead of 90, for which I would only need 3 1/2 of the fuel cells. So contrary to your analysis, it looks like in practice having a high level engineer aboard actually increases the power need! More importantly, of course, it maximizes the drill output rate, to use a higher percentage of the capability of that very massive and expensive reactor module. If I knew I was going to be in a low ore concentration zone i might add even more drills, and then of course even more fuel cells to run them.
  6. Mister Dilsby
    Yow that's big.
  7. Mister Dilsby
    Very nice! This is one of the best "from the beginning" threads that I've seen. I think the news report format works very well here capturing the newness of the program, the wonder and danger of everyone trying to go to space for the first time. That and your focus on the uniqueness of your particular version of our familiar Kerbonauts makes these early missions (which, let's face it, we've all run dozens of times) MUCH more interesting.
  8. Mister Dilsby
    Thanks! Let's see how it lands Am very pleased to say that everything from launch to this point was without a single F5/F9. Isn't it just the greatest feeling to throw an untested concept into a huge rocket, roll it to the pad and stick a Munar landing on the first go? Woo hoo! Next up you'll see the rest of Kerbfleet's version of the US Marines' Hymn, and an answer to @fourfa's excellent analysis. Spoiler: I have a five-star engineer aboard, and actually I DO want that much power!
  9. Mister Dilsby
    I thought of using 'marines' in Kerbfleet some time ago and am finally getting around to it--there's a reference buried way back in the EO0 thread I think. I always intended them to be rover drivers, which I suppose could include Engineers as well as pilots, since you really don't need SAS on the surface but you do often need wheel repair! Kerbal occupation actually gets assigned based on name. (Would be interesting if someone could determine the formula used) So when I edited the .sfs file to create Sarge Kerman for the courtroom scene, that name just happened to make him a Pilot. Glad it worked out that way--makes sense for him to be able to drive his rover from the ship to the 'beach' as it were.
  10. Mister Dilsby
    Here you go then, I had a little more time today than I thought: Yup, there it is. Those two aerospikes are the only engines. If Sarge is going to drive it on the surface, he'll have to use RCS motors. Four drills and six large fuel cells, 30 tons ore capacity and should be able to lift all of it back to orbit. That shielded docking port on top is mostly to give a "Control From Here" point. Should be a fun descent, especially since Sarge doesn't know how to do a retrograde hold yet. Fortunately he's got the best engineer in the Fleet aboard to balance fuel tanks on the fly. Ooh-rah!
  11. Mister Dilsby
    All things are possible when you throw n-body physics out the window Hoping someone builds this in Kopernicus, would be a fun system to play around in.
  12. Mister Dilsby
    Oh, right, I forgot you could do that for reals! OK, go for it
  13. Mister Dilsby
    Hm. If you want free funds without using the debug menu, just leave a probe with a transmitter on the surface and in orbit of your moons and accept "get data from..." contracts whenever they come up.
  14. Mister Dilsby
    Well that's the nice thing about Hanukkah, if I miss you the first time I get seven more tries Wonder if I should tell a story about them only having enough charge in the batteries to run the drills for one sol, but when they time warped to 1000x they were able to keep them going for eight? Whoops, I don't think I called it that. It might look like a sword, but if you gave such an implement to a Kerbfleet kerb he'd wonder "why would anyone make a cake knife this long?" "Nice" might not be the operative word here It's intended for Vall, but I may end up using it in other places as well depending on how things go. Yeah, we'll get Mort's reaction before too long You can get a better look at Sarge's insignia in Chapter 9 of Eve: Order Zero where he served as bailiff in the trial scenes. It's meant to be sergeant sarjint stripes, of course, but they didn't come out straight when I pasted the image onto the IVA suit texture file. Sleeves are strange. Sarge has the distinction of being the only non-commissioned officer in the comic, so he's going to be saying 'sir' and 'ma'am' a lot.
  15. Mister Dilsby
    So yeah, this will be something of an expensive test Sorry but you'll have to wait until later to see what's in the 'package' -- hey, if the next page comes in time for your local sundown, you can consider it a Hanukkah present!
  16. Mister Dilsby
    Well, I have a certain intent which a clever reader could deduce from Bill's craft manifest, what the landers include, and what they don't I've made some mock ups but nothing ready to show yet. In any case, when we do go it'll be under stock rocket power, no black holes, no ALT-h Ha! You remember everything, don't you @starhawk! I actually did have a certain in-game anomaly in mind when I wrote that, we'll see if that gets un-redacted Gameplay update: live flight testing (that is, in the main KF save) in progress of Longboat Mk2. Looks really good so far, hope to have a few pages within a few days. After that the focus will be on capital ship components.
  17. Mister Dilsby
    I wish I knew This is such an old and great thread, and the sort of challenge that will always be a challenge--sad to think that so much history got borked. I don't know what to tell you Booly, if it's just a question of updating the OP that can certainly be done manually, with some work. I wouldn't even try to re-link all the posts in 84 pages. On a happier note, I orbited a seaplane and managed a safe water landing, have also managed a land-landing. This one's called 'Laythe X5.1' because it's a prototype lander for that moon. Don't worry about updating links for my sake-- I SSTO all the time, just posting for reader amusement
  18. Mister Dilsby
    We don't know the exchange rate of credits to roots. It could be like 6.02e23 tonnes to furlongs^3/hr or something.
  19. Mister Dilsby
    Yes to both, which makes sense to me. The drills are pulling up 1 unit of rock per second, some percentage of which is usable ore. We have to assume that whatever isn't usable gets flung back onto the surface somehow, but anyway the drill has to pull it all up regardless and so you pay the energy to do so. The ISRU takes as its input only usable ore and processes only what it gets; the power required to do that is a linear function of how much ore you give it. The fuel cell, like any electricity generating or storage device, provides power according to the load you put on it. 50% load = 50% power draw.
  20. Mister Dilsby
    Sure, I need to have enough margin to run everything at full load. Suppose I was in a spot with higher ore%, and the drills tripled their production rate of usable ore. Then with the reactor at 60% load the total power draw would have been (30 * 0.6) + 15 for each drill = 54 e/s, requiring three fuel cells at full power. And of course I can turn off the fuel cells entirely and run on battery power, but it wouldn't last very long. I had two 4k batteries aboard plus all the fuel cell capacity and other modules, for a total of about 9500e. At 37 e/s I could have run on battery for just over four minutes and made less than 60 units of LFO at 100% efficiency before having to turn back on the fuel cells.
  21. Mister Dilsby
    So I just did some Longboat testing on the KSC pad. Some things I learned: Almost all my preliminary calculations were right on! 40t (prior to ore loading) was just about the right budget for this craft. Tested with 1x ISRU250, 2x large drills, 4x large fuel cell, 1x large extendible radiator, NO solar. Heating was well under control. Drills ran at full power; ISRU at about 22% with no ore accumulating in the tanks (i.e. the drills were the rate-limiting step) Total power draw was about 37 e/s (I wish it was in Watts, that makes more sense to me... but anyway...) This is consistent with two drills running full out at 15e/s each, with the ISRU at (30 e/s) * (22%) = 6.6 e/s. Fuel cell output matched power draw of equipment; note that the 4 fuel cells can put out 72 e/s total max, so I had them at about 50% capacity. Fuel cells used .0924 total LFO to make that much electric power Net LFO production was measured in the resource window at a total of .13 units/s. This is consistent with the ISRU max output of 1 unit/sec * 21.91% load = .2191 units/sec - .0924 units/sec used by the fuel cells = .1267 units/second. That's about 58% efficiency, not too shabby considering the total mass and it can run in total darkness. In that particular spot I could have made good use of a couple more drills to load up the converter closer to 50%; at most I would have needed another fuel cell or two to power everything. Overall efficiency is highly dependent on ore concentration--in that spot (the KSC pad) each drill was giving .055 units/second, and the drills draw full power regardless of how much they're producing. Of course I'll have no way of knowing what concentrations are like on any potential Joolian landing sites until I get there!
  22. Mister Dilsby
    Some really good information in here. I have some relevant experience in hydrogen and can confirm that @PB666 is pretty much spot on (though when I was working in the field we had a legit prototype that, if scaled, would have made H2 for significantly less than $5/kg... in any case, not less than $2, so the point stands ) Trouble is that, right, it's a PITA to store (we never did try compressing or liquefying it) and just as hard to handle. And then there's what happens if you actually try to run an engine with it and you don't quite know what you're doing... Bottom line is it's really hard to beat liquefied dead dinosaurs for sheer energy density. Batteries are getting cheaper and cheaper, which will allow higher renewables penetration all across the grid, and as more cars go electric the trick will be to have sufficient low or no-carbon electricity generation to keep up with exponentially rising demand.
  23. Mister Dilsby
    That one is definitely Being Looked At.
  24. Mister Dilsby
    Well it definitely won't be Imperial. That's the other guys, and if they can bloak anything that big we're in REAL trouble.
  25. Mister Dilsby
    My prediction for the big reveal:
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