martscht

Hey there, I just wanted to drop a quick bug report: When using this mod, my Map goes all wonky. To clarify, this is what the map-view looks like when loading a vehicle (it loads into the standard vehicle view): Then I switch into one of the camera perspectives using the '-' key and hitting 'M' results in the map-view looking like this: I run three other mods along with this: KerbalEngineerRedux, Procedural Fairings and the Subassembly mod. Also, quiting the game and reloading does not resolve the issue. If this has been mentioned before, sorry about reposting, but it does seem like a big deal.

Oh, didn't see this. Thanks! Guess mods can shut this thread down...

Well, the way I thought about it this wouldn't happen, because the payload wouldn't be IN the fairing, but instead all the parts and the fairing would be ONE single part. Thus, if the stress on the fairing becomes so high that it breaks the part breaks. Therefore all the things within it would break, because they are still one part. The parts contained in the payload would only be loaded when the fairing is decoupled. Yeah, but the game itself is full of potential abuse. For example CoM-shift due to relocating fuel makes it possible to travel without using any fuel (there's a Scott Manley video about this...). Also: the CoM calculation would still be made, but the part (the payload) would only be one single part. So it would basically be the same thing as using a double fuel-tank instead of two singles (here the CoM shift is also only computed for one part, instead of two), which I wouldn't consider "abusing" the systems. Yeah, but 1) you'd be hard pressed to fit 1000 parts under a single fairing (though I'm sure many would try...), 2) the lag spike would be the same "hiccup" you experience on the launchpad, when the entire vessel is loaded - the difference is only, that you don't experience the lag for the entire flight between initial load and fairing decouple, and 3) this lag-spike could be the ingame explanation for creating an event horizon which allows us to travel to other solar systems ;-D!

I know fairings are in the "what-not-to-suggest"-Thread and this is why I post this as a discussion subject - I'm merely interested in whether this is possible in the way KSP is currently set up. So, my basic idea was that when you put a payload fairing around a combination of parts (e.g. a lander) everything that is within that fairing is handled as a single part (i.e. the "payload"). So on initial vessel load all parts would be loaded and then everything in the fairing (e.g. marked by being in the stages above the fairing decouple) would be frozen in that load constellation and handled as one part, making the physics simulation a lot lighter. When the fairing is decoupled the freeze on the parts is lifted and they are then handled as they normally are. Since I don't know much about programming and the code underlying KSP: does anyone out there know whether this possible and feasible? Perhaps this could even be handled in a mod? Anyway, let me know what you guys think about this.

I think this is a really good question. I used to use them to power rovers (back when they rode on the spaceplane landing gear) but ever since wheels have power I haven't used a single ion engine. Sometimes I'd simply strap one on a satellite for orbital corrections and such, but since orbits don't deteriorate in this game, there's really no sense in doing this either. Nowadays I just use the Ant-Engine on my satellites because with 2 miniature fuel tanks that still gives you roughly 2000 m/s. allmappedout basically made the only valid point for using them I can think of...

Hmm... I know it's not that realistic a challenge, but I want to try this. I've done the orbit thing already (though I have no screenshots to prove it) but going for the Mun could be a nice challenge. Just a question beforehand: is the map view allowed before take-off? I was thinking I could time-warp to launch window using map view and then do the rest from IVA-view. Because of the radar altimeter I think landing is actually easier from this view than from the standard view.

I'd guess you could add the orbital period for a vessel (in seconds): 2*pi*sqrt(a³/(G*M)) because this allows you to compute the time required to wait for transfers as (phi[final] - phi[initial]) / ( sqrt(G*M/a[target]³) - sqrt(G*M/a[origin]³) ) and the time required to wait for the correct ejection angle as ejection angle / 360 * period

I think this is only true if you're unwilling to math your way to other planets. I don't use an information panel for interplanetary transfer, because I think all you need is given by the game. For example, my mission to Duna (without information panels) looked like this: Build a rocket good enough to get three Kerbs there and back. Warp until dawn of the 58th day (or the 285th or the 513th or... well, you get the idea). Launch aforementioned rocket. Get a circular orbit at 125 km. Wait until you are at Kerbin prograde. Warp/wait exactly 20 minutes and 1 second. Transfer. Encounter. Land. Using this mission profile and only stock parts I have not missed a Duna encounter. Sure, I've scattered the parts of my rockets across the Duna surface, I've run out of fuel and was stranded on Duna, I've lost Kerbs who insisted on EVA-ing with just a few minutes until atmosphere and so on. But the information the vanilla game provides is sufficient for exact mission planning. Though I will admit it's less comfortable when you have to write it down, rather than just looking at the extra window on your screen and say "ah, it's time to launch that rocket to Duna". But without information mods it is in no way a foregone conclusion that you're gonna be winging it. I didn't wanna rant here. I just wanted to show that getting more information is not always the solution when you haven't yet exhausted the information you already have.

I think it's a Scott Manley Quote:

I had to vote for the third option, but after some (okay, a lot of) work I managed to get to Duna. I think I avoided the frustration of the .16 to .17 transition somewhat by not trying to go to Duna first. For some reason most people will make Duna their first target of interplanetary flight. IMO that's a bad idea... I think of it like this: I'm driving on the freeway and throw a tic-tac at the guy sleeping in the passenger seat (going to the Mun). Now if I go to Jool it's like throwing the tic-tac out the window and hitting the back of an open pick-up-truck. Going to Duna is more like hitting the open window of a guy constantly changing lanes and accelerating and breaking in his Ford Fiesta. So to me it was sort of natural going for the easier target first and then gradually increasing the difficulty level.

I don't know if this is a problem that is specific to this mod, but when I'm in IVA-view and right-click to pan the view the Space-Engineer Window vanishes and I can't get it back. The last time this happened the only way I could help myself was a complete "re-install". Now it's happened again... any ideas on how I can get it back?

Hmm, in this Update it's been Mun, Minmus, Vall and Laythe (via Jool-Aerocapture). I also had a crash-landing on Duna (my Kerbals survived). To me getting to Duna is extremely frustrating because of it's slightly eccentrical orbit in combination with its miniature-size SOI... of course I could just get close and chase it down with time-acceleration, but I want my missions to be direct transfers. Waiting for 200 ingame-days while in no-man's-land just seems off to me (as does launching multiple crafts to maximize success probability or using MechJeb). Jool, on the other hand is fairly easy. Huge SOI, circular orbit, large margin for error. I'll try Eve next, but the launch window opens so late (somewhere around day 150 or something) that I've kept busy with other missions.

Sure, you can can calculate the wait time as (phi2 - phi1) / (omega2 - omega1) phi represents angles (with phi1 being the initial angle and phi2 being the final angle, i.e. the phase angle Olex's calculator gives you) in radians. Omega is calculated by sqrt(mu / a^3) where mu is the gravitational parameter and a is the semimajor axis. Again Omega1 is computed for your origin (i.e. Kerbin) and Omega2 is for your goal. The Period is computed as 2*pi/(omega2-omega1) (and is returned in seconds). Though there seem to be some problems in my calculation (perhaps my initial angles were off), because the angles aren't quite aligned at the time I predicted (I checked with the Kerbal Engineer Mod)...

With 119.5 km I got a straight transfer to Laythe: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21522-Replicate-the-Jupiter-aerobreak-from-2010-the-year-we-made-contact%21?p=278467#post278467 And with a PE of 21.875 at Laythe I got aerocaptured there.

And a quick update: Using a periapsis slightly lower and a less inclined approach to Jool than last time. This time I went with 119.5 km. And... got a (somewhat) direct transfer to Laythe! After a bit of correcting to lower the periapsis into Laythe's atmo the approach looked kind of weird. But I'll take it. And did someone say "double-aerocapture"? Yep. That's what happened. And it's time for a beach-party! Edit: Somehow I'm experiencing some heavy lag on Laythe. I don't know why... even when just Evaing around...

I did it for Jool with a periapsis at 121.150 m and ended up with an apoapsis of roughly 46.000 km (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21522-Replicate-the-Jupiter-aerobreak-from-2010-the-year-we-made-contact%21). So I'd guess 119.5 km would be the way to go if you wanted to transfer straight to Laythe (which I will try). I transfered to Vall after corrections. BTW, I also failed miserably with 110 - pretty frustrating after 250 days of interplanetary travel...

I know, I know double post, but I had to post this: Mission Accomplished. It took a total of 274 days, 9 hours and 56 minutes, but I've managed to do it. Here's me after establishing the transfer orbit: At the halfway point of the transfer I corrected for the inclination of Jool's orbit and ended up with a periapsis of 65km. A bit low, but since periapses are recalculated or something after the SOI switch I left it at that, knowing I'd have to correct after the switch anyway. After entering Jool's SOI the estimated periapsis jumped to somewhere above 200 km - which I guessed was gonna be way too high after seeing here (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21251-17-Planet-information) that the atmosphere of Jool is supposed to begin at 130 km. So I corrected and went for a periapsis of 120 km. When I entered Jool's atmosphere (which was more like 138 km than 130 km) everything turned a beautiful green. I actually packed four 'chutes which I tried to deploy upon entering atmo. Didn't work. But I was actually lucky it didn't because after exiting Jool's atmosphere my orbit looked like this: Not exactly beautiful. But I can live with inclination and eccentricity because the atmo-breaking maneuver actually worked! This felt more awesome than my first Mun landing! At the beginning of the mission I had actually set out to land on Laythe after this maneuver, but I thought the fuel I had left wasn't going to be enough for a landing on a moon with pretty much Kerbin's gravity. So I settled for Vall. And after some (I admit, a lot) orbital corrections I managed Vall encounter. Knowing full and well I didn't pack enough fuel for a return Dunbert, Gernand, and Maldan Kermin will have to settle into their new home on Vall. By the way: my vehicle (Chollima 2) was all stock. I didn't use mechjeb. But I did use Kerbal Engineer Redux Version .4.1.1 during construction of the ship.

I'm actually trying to do this for the same reason Hubba! had, except that for me it was the book. Well in 273 (ingame-)days I'll know whether it works the way I've intended.

You are correct. I didn't post fix numbers, because the time you need to wait for injection is dependent upon your parking altitude, but is fairly easy to compute. My standard parking altitude is 125 km. For this orbit around Kerbin the period (i.e. the time it requires to go around a full orbit) is 2064.292 seconds. From Olex's site we know that if we were to go to Jool the ejection angle is 113.86°. Using this info we can compute our wait time from Kerbin prograde as (360-113.86)/360 * period = 1411.402 seconds. Thus we'd have to wait 23 minutes and 31 seconds for the correct ejection angle. Edit: The period is computed by 2 * pi * sqrt( (altitude + 600)^3 / mu ) with mu being 3530.461 for Kerbin

To me it seems like one of the biggest problems in interplanetary travel seems to be determining whether the angle between the departure planet (mostly Kerbin) and the target is correct. Now since the cooperation of Kosmo-not and Olex gave us this beautiful brain-child (http://ksp.olex.biz/) the only thing we actually need to determine is whether the picture shown in the browser is the same as the one seen onscreen in KSP. I know there are some nice tools out there that allow us to measure angles in KSP, but in my opinion this isn't necessary, because all-stock KSP provides everything we need: an exact measure of time. Working under the assumption that all new games of KSP start with the same constellation it is extremely easy to determine when you reach the exact phase angle required for smooth interplanetary sailing. I've written an R-function that can determine the next occurence of a launch window, but basically this is all you need to know: The Eve launch window opens every 170 days, for the first time on day 138. For Jool it opens every 117 days and does so for the first time on day 45. For Duna I've also only come up with a rough approximation so far (because of the slightly elliptical orbit): here the launch window opens every 228 days and is open for the first time on day 56. Now when I say "launch window" here, I actually mean "injection burn window", meaning that it's probably better to already be in your parking orbit, when the moment comes. If rough approximations is all you need, this should do. For a bit more precision: EVE Period: 170 days, 7 hours, 56 minutes, 21 seconds Initial Wait: 137 days, 15 hours, 17 minutes, 54 seconds DUNA Period: 227 days, 19 hours, 24 minutes, 58 seconds Initial Wait: 55 days, 21 hours, 55 minutes, 37 seconds JOOL Period: 117 days, 0 hours, 45 minutes, 4 seconds Initial Wait: 45 days, 20 hours, 44 minutes, 36 seconds I haven't come around to doing Moho yet, because I've been busy visiting the outher planets ;-). Anyway my tactic was to launch a spacestation as my clock (i.e. launch it at the very beginning of the game). Then I was able to see the total time that had passed in the space centre and simply time my launches and injection burns accordingly.

For me it's sort of a cycle. I start off with the vanilla parts, then find a mod on the forums and think "this is awesome". Install it and start playing with it. Then I find another mod, then another, then another. At some point I go beserk and some tiny voice in my head screams "what's with all these parts and mods?" Then I completely uninstall KSP and start from scratch with only vanilla parts. Right now I just restarted the cycle and am currently using the fixed camera mod and the crewtank for rescue missions.

This thing is great. Up until now I've been using my own R-script to calculate delta V and such which was kind of annoying because I'd have to switch between programs during construction. Just one quick question: On onion-like rockets (i.e. when the the inner boosters feed of the fuel of outer stages and start using their "own" fuel only after the outer stage is decoupled) the delta V provided by inner boosters is increased after the outer stage is decoupled (I think so at least). Can this be taken into account here? This was also the point at which my calculations started getting messy, but I was close to an automated solution for this using the R-script. I wouldn't have to worry about this anymore if it were implemented here, though, so that'd be great!

I didn't quite get, whether you have any request concerning the ship (like whether it needs to be a spaceplane or something), but I attached my simplest rocket. It's not fuel-efficient, it's not pretty and it has other various shortcomings, but you can do pretty much anything with it. I use it when I don't want to spend an hour designing a rocket for a specific purpose with a reasonable amount of delta V - so I've pretty much tested everything with it simply by exchanging to topmost stage (except for sundiving). Also: the solid thrusters aren't really necessary, but they give me an insane amount of fuel for ironing out all those (smaller and larger) piloting mistakes I make in orbit. Just a quick guide on how to get to Minmus easily: 1) Ignite and wait for the solid rockets burn out. There might be some roll while the SRBs are still on, but don't panic, that'll stop once you've gotten rid of them. 2) At about 10km start tilting towards 90 degrees. You should pretty much hit the horizon on the navball when you're at about 50 - 60 km. 3) Burn towards the horizon at 90 degrees until the first liquid stage runs out. Kill the throttle (because the central engine will still be running) and coast to apoapsis (which should be somewhere around 200 km after this maneuver). 4) Circularize. 5) Tilt your orbit to match the inclination of Minmus' orbit. 6) When Minmus is somewhere around 7 or 8 o'cklock raise your apoapsis until you get a Minmus encounter. 7) Wait. 8) Choose a landing site (if it's your first landing preferrably on of the things that look like an ocean) and land. 9) At this point you should still have your second liquid stage (the one you started circularization with). You can use it to brake an begin the descent. At about 500 m you can toss it and use the lander the rest of the way. 10) When you return to Kerbin there should still be like half a tank of fuel left. You won't be able to make a powered landing, but a parachute's good enough for me. Like I said simply exchanging the top stage makes this my multipurpose tool. I've done several Mun and Minmus landings, used it as a rover, rendezvous(...ed?) with my space station and escaped and returned to Kerbin. Let me know if this works for you.

Just a quick question: does the Mk-3 Cockpit count in the category Mk-1-Pod (it weighs the same)... because then I'd probably have a fully reusable entry weighing in at 24.735 tons (I know, I'd still not beat the entry by Apotheosist, but that dear sir simply cannot be beat when it comes to minimalism).

My Kerbs havin' fun with Minmus gravity