Kuldan

Hmm, good question.. in my trials, I actually figured that I do a 100% powered Landing on Duna since I have that D-V in my IPTS (Interplanetary Transfer Stage) to slow the Lander to about 300m/s before I have to drop it and switch over to the lander engines, which is plenty to do a 100% powered descent..so my lander actually doesn't even have a parachute at the moment.

Hey guys, I usually don't post about my flying since a lot of people here have more interesting stories to tell, but I recently flew a very nice mission: Three launches, all timed so they would arrive around the same time at Duna using a 100% stock interplanetary stage using NERVA (plus NovaPunch 5M stuff for launching): 1x Duna Lander Vehicle, dropping a 3-Kerbal Pod Lander to the Surface (Only launching with 2 Kerbals, one got left at the launchpad..) 1x Duna Rover Vehicle, dropping a 1-Kerbal Pod Rover to the Surface 1x Duna Crew Return Vehicle, 3-Kerbal Pod + 5-Crew tank for the return trip (waiting in Orbit) Using my favorite Mods, I used the Protractor to time my launch window for Kerbal parking Orbit (about 0.10° off to allow for all three launches to happen), had Mechjeb do the Ascent to Orbit (Would lag out my machine if doing manual..), then did the transfer burns manually (well, what is it - point prograde and burn until there Had three nice orbital insertions about 3 days apart, which gave me enough time to do the orbital insertions for each ship.. Landed the lander, landed the rover about 500m from it (well, close enough and did my thing, until a nice launch window showed itself for a return to Kerbin - left the Rover on the planet, it's Pilot transferred to the Lander Capsule for Ascent .. went back to Orbit, and had about half a tank of fuel left.. so we did a neccessary plane change to accomodate the orbit of our return vehicle, and then I played catchup using the (much better fuelled) return vehicle employing the ORDA computer for measurements (but doing the RDV manually), and finally docked both ships using ERKLE (works better than ORDA right now) just relying on ORDA Attitude control. then did an EVA-Personell transfer to the crewtank (will be possible with menus in the new ORDA..can't wait!), dropped the Lander in Orbit (could theoretically be re-used if refilled using ORDA refuel Mod), and went on my way home.. and safely landed my six Kerbals using four radially mounted parachutes and a small Lander Engine for the extra smoothness on Landing. No pictures yet, since I didn't think the mission would actually work, and therefore didn't take any.. but I will add pictures of my launchers later today when I return home.

Heh Salvager, no hard feelings.. I kinda thought it fits in off topic m ore, but the footprint would be bigger on general, especially with the kerbal at war sticky.. well, fair enough though, glad you guys enjoy the link .. I really hope this project comes to fruition

.. there is JUST the Game you guys might be interested in: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts Want to deorbit an Asteroid and drop it on Jeb? Go on, thats actually a viable strategy as far as the trailer is concerned.. (I know, it needs a mod with little green men..other than that, perfect

Can you PLEASE do something about the wobblyness of the Airshell? due to the attachement node above the skycrane and the rubber band physics we have, as soon as any rocket I can come up with launches, it starts oscilating the shell over the attachement node and trough the bottom plate..which as time progresses leads to the shell ripping off the descent engines of the skycrane, mission lost.. alternatively, could you fix the shell body so you can attach struts to it to stabilise?

I know, this is kinda something for the Off Topic Forum, but this Comic is inspirational so I guess more people should see it..and it kinda sums up how I feel about the huge Task that Harvester and all the others have laden upon themselves in creating a game of this scope:

Yes,even Mechjeb was not able to keep it going steady..until I actually put the only engine on that stage to be a gimbaling one, and include RCS.. as for the Rocket, I\'m too lazy to boot up my gaming PC now, but it was a stock parts center stage with 5 Fuel Tanks and one LFE-30, surrounded by four four-fuel-tank stages with one LFE-45 each, fuel crossfeed from the outer to the inner tanks (so when I decoupled, the 5 tanks in the middle were still full) - as soon as I decoupled, the craft spiraled out of control.. I also tried a 3M Design including a Nosecap once, and that had even more spiraling issues because of no gimbaling engines at all in the design.. flying the beast felt like crazy. And even after I modified the design with a LFE-45 for the center stage too (so it can gimbal to compensante for tumbling) it was very hard to keep it steady.. and even after being left only with the skycrane system, it was extremely hard to fly straight. just for example, I tried launching with the skycrane only.. which should give me a solid nice upwards thrust motion, no? It did a backflip even before I fully cleared the launch tower.. Update: I just did a manual fly in orbit, and as soon as I powered up the engine, the craft spiraled out of control.. since this time I didn\'t compensate for it, it actually TORE OFF THE ENGINE due to shear forces.. pictures of the flight: First picture, launch with Mechjeb (tends to crash in the tower if I fly it manually) Second picture, directly after Stage Separation..so far so 'good', even though it is not very good on keeping the inclination I want.. Third picture, after Mechjeb 'gave up' (200km apo, -50km periapsis.. yeah..) I manually powered up the engine, and up to this point, was going in a straight line. 10 seconds later, I was wildly tumbling (the ship was doing about 10+ rpm at the time of the screenshot) and about 5 seconds later, the engine tore off.

Yeah, the Rover/Skycrane is fantastic, but: it took me TWO HOURS to actually get a design to the Mun, because it is so unbalanced for some reason (built from the Prometheus Skycrane .craft) that as soon as I am left with only a core stage behind the Rover, it is spinning out of control like crazy - same happens when I try to land the Skycrane, it is not balanced at all, I have to manually correct for tilting and wobbling all over the place so hard that I crashed it the first three times.. can you please look into these balancing issues?

Yeah, if you can get the Arm to work with the camera plugin (and make it moveable, so you can actually look around with the mast) and give the antennae something to do this will enable great science missions on Murs and beyond.. keep at it P.S. Skycrane would be awesome. for now I deploy it with the cuttlefish..

Funny thing I noticed when playing around - while upping the Tanks to 3 gets you Orbital, if you stay with the original configuration and ditch the Decoupler (not neccessary if you 'crash-land' on Land) the best you can get (at least the best I could get, starplayer had about double that) was 650km.. but if I would ditch the parachute also and keep everything else the same, I upped my flight from ~650km to almost 8.000km.. that was almost orbital, and I think I might have made it with a little more care in my flying (or at least a suborbital trajectory that\'s as close to orbital as there is..) so, the drag/weight of the parachute was enough to get this baby down considerably.. and I think that\'s not that right, since the drag is only 0.1 .. maybe it should be even lower for that part, since it\'s just a conically finishing of the MK1 Pod.. I kinda expect the pod without the chute addon to be even less aerodynamic? Well, what do you guys think, am I onto something here, or is it more like 'meh, get your physics straight dude'

Well, I had a very nice Flight right about now.. About 636km.