Duxwing

Ooooh! I remember that it has the highest Turing score: ~>60%. -Duxwing

That option sounds good. It's not a question of accomplishment but completeness: kerbals presumably are open-cycle systems and therefore would require support during long missions. -Duxwing

Should I use TAC Life Support or not, and if I should, then how? Using it has made kerballed interplanetary travel require such masses of food, water, and oxygen that I need Kethane and NFT, completely redesign my mission profiles, and greatly expand my orbital infrastructure to move the enormous masses of life-support needed for kerballed interplanetary travel; for example, a six-Kerbal Dunar mission requires almost seven-thousand kerbal-days of food, water, and oxygen, which together mass over one-hundred-fifty tons. Moving such great, inert payloads as that one is more bothersome than fun. Life-support limitations also inspire and motivate my play: retrieving Kerbals becomes not only important but urgent, and the danger of crew loss keeps the game lively and immersive. -Duxwing

1 - Good 2 - Written like a good scientist. 3 - D'oh! Perhaps we should computationally model the system. 4 - D'oh! Where did you get 1.1kg? I assumed that the assembly massed 1kg. Also, a rule of thumb for rocket design: always round to two sigma. A corollary: all 'good' numbers round down, whereas all 'bad' numbers round up. I follow these rules because the efficiency of failures is banal and because they have taken a lander to Laythe. For example, following these rules (with my former assumptions) yields: 10N = m-dot * 25m/s m-dot = 0.40kg/s I'm confused: where are you getting these numbers? I just learned calculus last year! Before we begin integrating, we must solve a thorny technical problem. because I just realized that thrust and mass independently vary with time: the air pushing the water out the nozzles expands with time, decreasing its own pressure. We can fix thrust by using a Super-Soaker-inspired constant-pressure system--essentially a bladder tank--because the bladder will maintain constant internal pressure by so contracting as the water exits. The thrust-to-weight ratio of the skycrane-egg assembly (SEA) therefore will increase with time just like those of our rockets do in KSP. Without throttling, the SEA therefore will accelerate upward upon rocket... ignition? Fortunately, we can exploit this upward acceleration! As the rockets... burn? so the SEA will decelerate until momentarily hovering. Intuitively, the time when the SEA hovers should always be the same; therefore, igniting the rockets at just the right time could cause the SEA to hover at a height from which the egg could safely fall. The greatest height at which the egg could safely fall varies with the greatest force the egg can endure, which varies with the momentum of the egg just-before impact and in how much time that momentum is lost. We have two variables to consider because we know not how quickly the momentum will be lost. I will assume 0.01 seconds (fifty times worse than a car crash) for the sake of the calculation and safety margin. mv = Ft v = Ft/m v = 16.7 * 0.01 / .070 v = ~1.2m/s Vf^2 = Vi^2 + 2ad Vi is the initial velocity, which we will let equal 1 m/s a is acceleration, which we will let equal 10m/s^2 d is displacement, wherefore we solve Vf is the final velocity, which we will let equal v from the previous calculation Therefore: 1.2^2 = 1^2 + 2*10*d 1.5 = 1 + 20d 0.5 = 20d d = .025 That distance is 2.5 centimeters, making-tiny our margin-for-error: can you do it? Excellent. So cut the funnels as to make their diameter that measurement. -Duxwing

@chris Thanks! Further notes: 1 - When you defined the challenge, you mentioned not autonomy: need the lander now be autonomous? If it need not, then remove the weighty control systems and remotely transmit their commands to the lander. 2 - Instead of using a fifty-meter board with black-and-white stripes, use fifty meters of string with black-and-white marks at each foot. 3 - Better yet, save materials and headache by calculating how much extra 'oomph' a lander built for a fifty meter drop would have at a more-practical height--e.g., six meters--and measure that extra 'oomph' during tests. 4 - Reduce propellant mass by calculating how quickly the egg can safely hit the ground, making your parachute decelerate the egg to that speed, and setting your rocket to simply maintain that speed during the final descent. More on note four: Maintaining descent speed requires some mass of propellant, which we must calculate. Please check my following estimate because it seems flawed. Let the falling assembly mass 1 kilogram. Weight = kilograms * ten meters per second Therefore: the egg weighs 10 newtons Let Thrust equal Weight Thrust = mass flow rate * Vex Therefore: 10N = mass flow rate * Vex Vex = Isp * g Isp = 65.1 sec Therefore Vex = 651 m/s Therefore: 10N = mass flow rate * 651 m/s Therefore: mass flow rate = .015kg/s Propellant mass = mass flow rate * burn time Burn time = descent speed * descent length Let descent speed = 1m/s and descent length = 2m Therefore: propellant mass = .015 * 1 * 2 = .030kg I therefore estimate that you will need thirty grams of water for your final descent--slightly more if you want the sky-crane to lift-away. -Duxwing

I just got one going back from this page. -Duxwing

This problem sounds like an engineering nightmare... Try keeping things simple. 400psi water rockets are best because they involve no fire and little possible shrapnel. Use store-bought parts to keep things simple. Below are my recommended construction steps: 1 - Buy a cheap micro-controller that can activate a solenoid valve, the parachute, and a spark-gap at hand-calculated times. 2 - Buy a power supply sufficient for the micro-controller and its tasks; e.g., a capacitor. 3 - Connect your power supply to your micro-controller and your micro-controller to your solenoid valve. 4 - Connect your solenoid valve to your pressure vessel. 5 - Buy some Gorilla Glue and some PVC pipe the diameter of your solenoid. 6 - Gorilla Glue the PVC pipe to the solenoid. 7 - Buy three household funnels. 8 - With the PVC pointing downward, drill three holes into the PVC holes at forty-five degree angles to the ground at one-hundred-twenty degree angles to each other; i.e., they form an equilateral triangle when viewed from above. 9 - Buy a PVC pipe-cap. 10 - Gorilla glue the pipe-cap to the end of the pipe, making the funnels the water's only outlets. 11 - Buy some Styrofoam. 12 - So gorilla glue the Styrofoam to the pipe-cap as to allow the egg, when horizontal, to touch the ground before the nozzles. 13 - Buy some Scotch Tape. 14 - Scotch Tape each egg to the Styrofoam. 15 - Attach your parachute to your pressure vessel and put your spark-gap on your tape. 16 - At T = 0 , the contraption will drop via its parachute until T = x, when it will be near the ground. At T = x, the micro-controller cuts the parachute and opens the solenoid valve, causing water to rush through the nozzles, soft-landing the egg at T = y. At T = y, the spark gap will melt the tape, freeing the egg and so increasing the sky-crane's TWR as to cause the sky-crane to fly away, leaving the egg unharmed. -Duxwing

Oh, of course: I wasn't disputing that putting many tons of hardware on a shoddy booster is a terrible idea. I was just disproving that whoever realizes that terrible idea should not worry about one's enemy's getting said hardware should the booster fail. I agree with everything but the littering fines' significance: any well-funded war department should be able to pay them. -Duxwing

And hence the absence of a security risk for launching a spy satellite via a BDB. -Duxwing

What if you're in East Germany? -Duxwing

A technical note: spy satellites falling into enemy territory would smash into the ground. -Duxwing

Dear Ferram, How can I reduce the Mach Tuck of my 3-Kerbal LKO transport? Relevant Mods: -Procedural Dynamics -Advanced Jet Engine -Duxwing

Proper occlusion is feasible because Jool occludes Laythe about every two Kerbinar days. -Duxwing

And I'm agreeing with you. -Duxwing

Huzzah! These 64 bits are glorious! -Duxwing

I will test this alternative arrangement for cost-effectiveness relative to standard asparagus. -Duxwing

And that's what I'm talking about. -Duxwing

"action" is too vague to be argued about. I agree that SQUAD probably could not sue the website for copyright infringement; whereas I disagree that SQUAD cannot protect its business by simply avoiding people harassing its customers. -Duxwing

Kerbal Space Center scene transitions synchronize the quickload and its backup, preventing mistakes' undoing. -Duxwing

My fairings will not properly separate from one of my boosters, necessitating their removal by cheaty time-warp ghosting. My ejection strength is 1 and my rotation power minimized: what should I do? -Duxwing

The Pwings loaded into memory (PartCatalog assures me) and not into the part catalog: how can I make them load? -Duxwing

After some thought, the harassment can be understood: surveys of KSP forum-goers indicate that we are almost only young, nerdy, introverted guys. Interacting with ourselves long enough via this forum, which aids and abets our natural tendencies and stifles misbehavior, we may eventually believe our tendencies normal and environment safe. We may therefore also not expect those tendencies to cause some of us to misbehave, and hence our shock at the sexual-frustration-driven harassment. -Duxwing

No, Patrick, mayonnaise is not a gender. @lajo O_O Terrifying! -Duxwing

But that's merely Kerbal: to be Whackjovian, it must lift that Asparagus launcher to orbit. -Duxwing

TAC-LS FAR DRE Sufficient skill can replace everything else. -Duxwing