sgt_flyer

I've checked the 'ad' about your aeroscraft - well, let's say that while it could be useful in freight cargo (in some cases - but you'll still need a big flat spot to land it) The problem is trying to sell that to military I mean, the thing's rigid's shell has to be extremely thin if you want to be able to have any heavy payload - which means it would be extremely fragile - and a huuge slow moving target. (Even if you have active missile countermeasures like the phalanx - it's not going to stop 23mm anti-air fire) so the army would have to send a lot of stuff in advance to secure the flightpath and the landing zone for miles - which negates a bit the usefullness of the thing - because you'll need to also use and maintain other means of transportation at the same time you are operating it - because you need to deploy forward troops before sending in this airship. Current Military cargo planes have all something in common : they can climb to high altitudes very fast - and have much higher speeds and manoeuverability than the blimp, so their flares & chaff countermeasures are generally enough (and low cost compared to a CIWS) to protect them against incoming fire. Also, using hydrogen as the lifting gas poses a lot of problems - the first being that it's inflammable when mixed with air - and the molecule is so small that it can slowly leak through any known material - and even can cause damages to the material's molecular structure (check hydrogen embrittlement)

Heh a good chunk of my tricks is scattered in the open source construction techniques thread anyway - for the rest, like my microhinges, have their own thread overall, people should feel free to try and disassemble my .crafts if they want to see how i built those (wouldn't have released the .crafts f i did not want that anyway ^^) For the rest, i'm always avaible for PM's regarding my building techniques, if i can help answering questions people have about them After that - when i'm working on replicas, i always take quite some time doing technical, ref sheets and pics searches of the spacecrafts/rockets i want to replicate (and try to stay 'true' to the concepts behind those )

Yeh, ejector seats are hard to make. (Especially if you try to equilibrate the kerbal's weight and the separatron's thrust ) (I know, had to make one for my vostok replica too ) Here's the thread, if you want to borrow some of the building ideas i've used in it http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/111963-0-90-Vostok

You can see ksp 'learning curve' as a series of big tall steps you'll start with getting to orbit, then orbital manoeuvers, then orbital rendez-vous, then launch windows, etc once you get the 'how' one of these steps work, you won't forget it (and once you managed to be able to do those steps easily, you'll try to do harder challenges - be it in mission complexity, VAB designs, etc) Once understood, the basic concepts behind spacecraft are somehow simple - it just needs to clic into place for you One of the things the game has which helps a lot, is the manoeuver tool - which has been a great help since his implementation, has imroved nicely over time. One tip about it : clic and drag the middle ring around your current orbit

There was once a challenge in ksp+remotetech about draim's tetrahedral constellation It shows quite nicely how complicated it is http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33711-Scenario-Tetrahedral-Satellite-Configuration-4-sat-full-surface-coverage

Mmh, i read the article, the clicbait title is a bit misleading nasa did not confirm or infirm anything about a new space station - they just said that they are currently focusing their work on ISS till 2024, and did not say wether or not they would participate to a new one. (He only said that he hopes the private sector will be the one to work towards a new LEO space station )

There was once a series of building challenges in the challenge subforum aimed at recreating better versions of the stock demonstration .crafts those were specifically meant through the challenge rules to 'show' various simple concepts about KSP rocket / plane designing

Well, all the wings and control surfaces used to make it would pretty much have to be replaced for starts (on the k-29, the 2.5m bomb bay was pretty much entirely made thanks to the fact that we could surface attach control surfaces to other control surfaces - which is not the case anymore with the new plane parts) So, outside of using tons of mod parts (which i almost don't use) it's going to be hard to fully rebuild in 0.90 Now, i'm waiting for 1.0 to see if there's something to be made with the new parts

Russian designs look strange, but at the time they were designed and given they didn't know if engines could be started inflight - the concepts behind it are extremely clever

The ones in the launch pad ? Or the service tower ? For the service tower arms, i've simply used torque wheels to control the whole SRBs + the arms attached on it. (Each 'arm' of one side of the tower is in fact part of the same object once decoupled - and the whole is free to roll 90° inside the roll cages created by i-beams at various heights) - it was meant as a simplification to limit the overral part count a more complex mecanism would have required (either through making them turn with engine thrusts, or using landing legs) this is easier, andcomes with the added bonus of providing torque wheels to the tower, helping it's stability when climbing / going down the runway The tower is a separate .craft 354 parts anyway - so you can test it as you wish, but the mecanism is really simple For the launch pad itself, the i-Beams first fall in their current angle when decoupled, until the lower part of the I-Beam hits a 'basket' at the bottom of the support structure. At this point, i have counterweights attached to the falling i-Beams, which makes the i-beam naturally fold inside the recess of the launch pad.

just fresh from completion - stock Lunokhod (if it's ok to count rovers among these replicas ) (and yes, the solar panel starts folded thanks microhinges ^^) full mission thread (with the Proton-K rocket and the Ye-8 lander) : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/114114-Muna-17-mission

Hello, here's a stock recreation of luna 17 and lunokhod Munokhod tests in KSC Full Mission album : Here are the files (to be used with the space plane hangar /runway) : Proton-K with the luna17 payload (953 parts) http://www./download/d9aznzwa6wcz78m/Muna_17.craft Proton mobile service tower (354 parts) http://www./download/3zka47zk9d778an/Proton_mobile_service_tower.craft Pre-launch operations (if you want to use the mobile service tower - optionnal): load the service tower on the runway, and carefully drive it off the runway, before loading the rocket. once the rocket is loaded, switch to the service tower, and drive it back up on the runway, and try to line up the service tower with the rocket's launch pad. (shadows are useful there ) stage the service tower to free the service tower's arms. switch to each of the two set of arms, and use your roll keys to open them. (you can use T to 'hold' the position of the arms.) drive carefully to place the service tower around the rocket (up to nearly touching it with the tower's platforms), then switch to the arms to close them around the rocket (again with the roll control) to prepare for the launch, simply do the previous steps in reverse : open the tower's arms with the roll control, move the tower away from the rocket, and close back the tower's arm. Launch sequence : crank up the throttle to the max, then hit space to lift-off all of the pads systems are automatic and start at the same time as the rocket's lift-off (smoke generators and launch arms retractation) i usually like to start my pitchover between 5000m and 6000m - not a lot of time before the 1st stage burns out. once the first stage is empty, stage once to both separate and activate the 2nd stage engines, and stage a second time to drop the interstage fairing. (this one part is hard to get infos on some people says it detaches after, others something else - and the russians launch videos are particulary unhelpful on this point ) continue your g-turn (i generally aim for 45° above the horizon at 20 / 25km, and 30° at 30 / 35km) once the 2nd stage is empty, stage once to separate and activate the 3rd stage verniers for separation, and stage a second time to active the 3rd stage main engine. stage a third time shortly after to eject the payload fairing. i usually try to get an apoapsis around 100km and a periapsis around 20km with the 3rd stage before staging it (so both the stage and the blok D fairings would fall back) - if you burn out earlier, the blok D has a bit of reserve fuel to allow you to continue the mission. circularise / correct your orbital angle relatively to the mün with the blok D. (there's no reaction wheels at this point use both the gimbals and the RCS to control the attitude ) make your mün transfer (i pick use the standard one here (around 837m/s of dV from a 100km LKO) , no need for a Free return trajectory) - i aim for a 30km / 35km mün periapsis - then separate the blok D from the ye-8 lander. Lander operations : fuel is tight from here, so be sure to quicksave several times use RCS / main engine gimbal to control the lander's attitude. (can create some unwanted roll sometimes, especially as the fuel tanks drains), but it can be corrected easily) shortly before arriving at your mün periapsis, make your circularisation burn with the main engine. (should be a roughly a 1mn burn) then, make a manoeuver to lower your mün periapsis to less than 10km around your target landing zone (try to target a flat zone the rover don't like disembarking on steep slopes ). once you near the periapsis, start your landing sequence - kill horizontal velocity while trying to stay under 100m/s of vertical velocity - slow down more and more your vertical speed as you approach the ground. (you can control that through both the spacecraft angle and throttle) early during this part, your drop tanks will be empty (check their fuel levels, but there's as much fuel in the drop tanks than in the lander itself), stage once to drop them (at this point, they will impact the mün) once you are near the ground with almost no horizontal velocity and under 10 m/s of vertical velocity, use action group 1 to switch to the two low power engines for the landing. (don't forget to crank your throttle up at this point - the engines are much less powerful than the main engine, but it gives you a much broader throttle control range) Rover operations : for low gravity driving safety reasons, i disabled some of the wheel engines once you landed, stage once to decouple the two ramps. (if you landed on a slight slope, one of the two doors might fall back towards the rover, but it's not a problem - the rover will be able to push them - move the rover slightly away from the ramp, then back towards it to push it in it's correct position) turn on your parking brakes before decoupling the rover from the lander. once the rover is stabilized, move carefully down one of the ramps. - note, there's a control bug with the rover, you might have to click on the probe core and click 'control from here' to restore correct control. the probe core is slightly visible at the front of the rover) once the rover made it on the ground, activate the parking brakes before decoupling a last time to deploy the solar panel. (the separatron hidden inside the rover will both push the solar panel away (it will dock back automatically to the rover) and provide stabilisation to the rover during the solar panel docking (the wobbling of the rover during solar panel docking was enough to flip the rover without the separatron ) finally, click on the rover's small ladder to deploy it to mimmick the rover's antenna - you are free to rove around mün with Munokhod ! and congratulations, KSC's kitchen staff is angry at you, because you stole their pressure cooker to transform it into a rover of course, you're free to disassemble the rocket itself to check how it's made ^^ Have fun !

wow, that's overkill in terms of lifting weight (weell, i'm one to talk, i once made one even bigger, when there wasn't any 3.75m parts )

Among civilian supersonics, the TU-144 which crashed in the bourget during the air show (talk about bad press) and one other catched fire inflight (they managed to land it, but some parts of the plane collapsed after landing, killing some of the crew)

The trunk can be used for two things - shroud small secondary payloads which stay attached to the upper stage, and released afterwards (like a picosat dispenser) - only and only if the upperstage has still enough deltaV left to both do it's secondary mission and deorbit itself afterwards (nasa requires that CRS missions upperstages deorbit themselves after releasing the cargo vehicle) The trunk can also be used to transport vaccuum proof furnitures / things too big to fit in the hatch to ISS (Dragon V1 is already did things like this) In terms of delta-v / thrust, having the trunk attached means it's a bit more dry weight for the spacecraft to carry around. (So less thrust / less dV) - but also much less weight to carry around for your booster, so the first and second stage dV and TWR would increase. Dragon V1 trunk has fairings on it's sides to protect the deployable solar panels, while dragon V2 will have fixed solar cells on one side of the trunk, alongside 4 fins all along the sides of the trunk (these would help stabilising dragonV2 during abort) As a side note,the dragon V2 has 8 superdracos arranged in four pairs, used in case of aborts and normal landings, but also for orbital manoeuvers and deorbitation. The attitude control is still provided with an array of the same small draco thrusters (dragon V1 only use those small dracos to do both orbital manoeuvers, deorbits and attitude control) Wow, guess i spend waaay too much time how spacecraft / rockets work (i use my google-fu to gather lots of references to study before even attempting to replicate something (spaceX and falcon 9 are quite hard in this regard - there really little detailed technical specs to gather about it - spaceX can be quite secretive on some things) Other rockets are much easier to get infos on That said, once you can break down each rockets in the basic concepts behind each element, it helps a lot to speed up KSP's reproductions (as you already know the concept )

It's quite nice although, isn't the trunk supposed to be empty (both for dragon V1 and V2, space manoeuvers are made by the capsule's engines - the trunk only carries vacuum capable payload, and the spacecraft's solar panels)

it takes a bit of practice, but after some trys, you start to eyeball it - afterwards, it's simply physics (geometry, counterweights if needed, etc ) as for designing the hinge itself, it was when i made tests with those grid fins tried to create a hinge small enough to fit along the sides of a fairing . when i remembered revancorana's RTG + multi oxstats based hinge, it told me that the oxstats physical mesh was active despite it's physicsless flag - so i tried to find a part small enough - which was the LV1-R (the thinnest possible surface attachable part ! onto which you can attach other things) - the cubic strut is less long, but fatter and more square ^^) the rest is just thinking with geometry, with the LV1-R as the center of rotation - and an extensive use of the offset + rotation tool (remember to read my post on the open source thread - the technique can work with quite a lot of things, not only node connections (works even for creating gaps between launch clamps and the rocket, when you want to 'hide' clamps for your own custom mock up launch pad) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43086-Open-Source-Construction-Techniques-for-Craft-Aesthetics?p=1709894&viewfull=1#post1709894)

I'll surely toy with the new parts and new aero (notably the fairings) to see what kind of crazy contraptions / replica Design techniques we can come up with

The tower is around 350 parts The rocket + payload around 930...

@Majorjim, genius, i don't know, but thanks but mad, almost certainly Luna-17 mission ready ! now with the mobile service tower... (the mobile tower is a separate craft it was rolled off the runway before loading the rocket, then veeery carefully rolled back into place )

Looks like the small white structural harpoint for the X

I generally start my pitchovers of only a few degrees from vertical (less than 5) very early - sometimes as low as 2000m. Under the higher twr of the 1st stage, the prograde marker only slowly deviates. Once i got to the lower TWRs of upper stages, the gravity turn increases in speed much faster (note, don't forget a nosecone on top - that helps a lot for allowing the rocket to follow the prograde marker ). One of the main problems, is using too much control autorithy in most KSP rockets - try at least once the BTSM mod, it'll teach you great things about KSP stock control authority (and it also have a realistic ISP response, like we'll have in 1.0 - so it's also a good training for that

916 parts of madness (or soviet engineering ? - guess it's a little bit of both ) - the rocket + payload on their own is 701 parts Luna 17 standing on the pad... - yes i know i still need to rework the staging just wanted to see the finished thing standing on the pad guess this monster incorporates quite almost all of my latest building techniques (and some old ones too) ^^

WIP proton launch pad used only the first stage of my proton with a lot of ballast to speed up the design there are 6 FLT-100 fuel tanks + aerospikes hidden in the middle of the pad's structure, used as smoke generators for the launch (with hidden stability enhancers... thanks to the offset tool, i don't need those to 'cling' to the sides of the rocket anymore - i can offset them enough to fully hide then inside the pad's structure, to place my own mock up support systems ^^) full launch pad - post launch. the 6 i-beams with antenna's at the end start angled at mid height of the pad, extending to the bottom of the proton. when decoupled, they fall until their end reaches a small 'basket' made of ox-stats - during the fall, the small rcs fuel tanks serve as guides - once the thing hit the basket, the RCS tanks serve as counterweights, folding the I-beams inside the recess all in all, these small animated things are only 12 parts each simply gravity based physics ! only thing i did not made, was closing back the protective doors of the real thing around the clamps once they are folded - that would have made the part count skyrocket

There was a proposal to launch a satellite in an orbit retrograde to the debris orbit, and which would release a cloud of gases when the debris come near - the gases friction would slow down the debris to deorbit them, whike satellites caught in it would need to use a bit their thrusters (obviously, the gases disperse very quickly, and they need to use stuff that will not affect science instruments)