capi3101

http://www.kerbalmaps.com Call up Mün and turn on anomalies It's the one at 0.7027 : 22.7470, towards the south side of the Northwest Crater. In the five months since my last post, it's become one of my favored Münar landing sites... The terrain around it is hell, just a heads-up. Just so you know, the admins have a tendency to squash thread necromancy; they prefer you start up a new one if you've got a gameplay question (even if it's a question that's been answered before). Not a problem really, but I figured you should know.

Five kilograms per unit is the correct density for both the liquid fuel and the oxidizer; to find their combined mass, add the two together and divide by 200. For all liquid fuel tanks except for the Oscar-B and Round 8, the ratio of liquid fuel to oxidizer is 9:11. So what you do is take your current mass, stick it in the rocket equation as your total mass. Subtract your calculated fuel mass from your current mass - the difference is your dry mass. Solve as normal for your current engine combo. How about it - what is your rocket's current mass (from the map screen), its current liquid fuel and oxidizer levels, and what kind of engines is it using? EDIT: Kashua's right - it's five kilograms per unit. My bad...will fix that real quick so I can confuse the folks who post on this thread in the future.

a) veering off to left and right Usually that's a sign that either your landing gear isn't on exactly perpendicular or you've got too much of a load on them. Check it again and consider adding additional wheels/struts. Or big rudders... spinning all over the place after taking off Set SAS on once you're heading down the runway. If that doesn't help, you might check the position of your center of lift; ideally you want it slightly behind the center of mass and at least in line with it horizontally (for more stability, you might want it slightly above the center of mass - though I can't say one way or the other what that'll do for your steering). c) not taking off until the end of runway. Put the back wheels relatively close to the center of mass longitudinally; that should help with that. Of course, if you're also having problems with tail strikes, going the distance on the runway is not necessarily a bad thing. Just make sure you don't hit those big spotlights on the end without an ejection system installed. Now, so far I've had a successful one-man SSTO with a single turbojet and two 48-7S's, and that's about it. I haven't tried to go anywhere with that, but the design had two FL-T400 tanks and about 2,000 m/s of delta-V, so Mün and Minmus flybys would be in the realm of possibilities for it. If you want to use nukes, I might suggest moving their fuel tanks forward far enough that the engine bells align with the turbojet exhaust. That'll move your center of mass forward a bit and probably stress those back wheels some more; not sure what other negative effects that might have, but it would reduce the chance of tail strike.

Decided it was time to get back to rocketry. Built a new version of the Storax Anacostia lifter, swapping out the four -909 quad on the transfer stage with a single LV-T30 (based on maths that said it would yield greater delta-V, which I was not able to confirm) and the ungainly original booster with a Zenith. Not enough struts between booster and payload; rocket came apart shortly before the third staging event. Decided to switch over to my 0.23 career save. Did a Munar flyby for science, got Tier 3 completely opened at this point.

I might have to rebuild it and see how it behaves. The ability to make major steering changes mid-transfer burn shouldn't be an issue unless you're doing it wrong.

Hmm...well, wuddya know. I've got a spreadsheet that compares engines for combinations that produce the highest level of delta-V; three LV-909s are better than a single LV-T45 in that regard. But not four, as it turns out. With the Storax Anacostia setup, do you think there'd be enough pod torque provided by the Mk1-2 Command Pod to make an LV-T30 instead of the LV-T45 worth the trouble? Same Isp, lower mass (=more delta-V), slightly moar thrust...

Very true, and IIRC that was the reason why I wanted the four -909s. I just didn't set it up to separate the last booster from the engine cluster correctly (this was in the early days of 0.21, before I learned the decoupler/docking ports trick and the fact you needed both). Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I said "I should've used a Poodle" this morning. Lack of coffee, perhaps.

Same Isp as the LV-909s and the setup's simpler, with comparable total thrust. Ideally, though, the OP would use LV-Ns; there's not much reason not to.

There's a challenge in progress going over this very topic. Here's my entry: So eminently doable - and easier than this if you're not constrained by the restraints of a challenge. A word of caution - don't set up your engines the way I did when I went to separate the third stage; I should've just used a Poodle instead.

Why not a mobile lab unit with a cupola? Just a thought.

Errrr........

Try http://ksp.freeiz.com/ In short, chutes don't interfere with the operation of one another, so feel free to load up. Only thing I'll warn you about is to make sure you place them high enough on what you're trying to land that it doesn't want to flip over (had that happen on a Duna rover lander once) and to be very, very sure the part you stick them on is well-attached to the rest of the craft (couldn't tell you how many times I've had pieces of my ships break off when the chutes open).

Try http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28248-Is-asparagus-the-best-staging-system-%28might-contain-science%29?p=346702&viewfull=1#post346702 for general guidelines on building asparagus. In general, you want to work Tsiolkovsky backwards - with asparagus, you have the decouplers and all the engines that have mass, you add that to your payload mass (this "dead mass" gets added to both mass values in the equation) and calculate the total atmospheric Isp of the engines. You also use the 9:1 wet-to-dry mass ratio for most of the liquid fuel tanks in the game (say M=9Mo) so you get your final value in terms of dry mass. Multiply the final result by 9 to get how much fuel you need, and then divvy it out evenly among all your asparagus stages.

Try the Squad Texture Reduction Mod from the Spaceport. I too play the game with a Byzantine PC (slightly more memory than you, less processor speed, way worse graphics chipset) and it's improved the game's performance considerably. Some other advice - this is not my spiel originally; don't recall whose it is: Finally if push comes to shove, try aiming your camera so the ground is out of view completely as early on as you can manage. That seems to help improve performance.

Still wasting time with spaceplanes.

Ah! Ka-ching!!! Okay...that bit confused me; what was written in the line didn't match what was there in the code: You have 0, 20, 50, 70 instead of 0, 25, 85, 70. Gotcha.

Glad I gave maccollo reputation or I wouldn't have found his post on the topic of getting to Moho again... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61478-Oh-bugger-Injection-burn-at-Moho?p=835667&viewfull=1#post835667 Kashua's post two down from maccollo's is worth considering. The sat in my signature took ~8000 m/s for a one-way trip. I've had some real issues with Protractor over the last few versions of KSP. It's still useful for determining ejection angles for the most part - phase angles not so much.

Would be very much interested in seeing your code...Java, right? I use Python myself when the coding mood strikes me. Caught the meaning behind most of the parameters...you've got the lifting parts and quantities, followed by mass...and the next four numbers I'm not sure about. If I get the gist of what your code has calculated, though, I should have sufficient thrust for takeoff as things are (though just barely). That makes me suspect the two inboard engines even more... I will make the changes you've suggested to the Auk III design and let you know how it goes.

You're talking about the Auk I, right? I got my takeoff issue solved with that one. I figured I'd have more spaceplane questions to ask, though, which is why I left the thread listed as "unanswered". Thank you anyway. Regarding the Auk I, though, I used a single turbofan because it did the job; it got me up to orbital velocity before flaming out in the mesosphere (around 35,000 or so). I avoided the double turbofan so I wouldn't have to worry about flat spins, and with the jet doing the bulk of the work all I needed was a little extra thrust for keeping the Ap where I wanted it, circularization and deorbiting; the twin 48-7S handled that easily. They don't even have to light until I'm well up into the atmosphere. The design has a reaction wheel - I use those instead of Inilne Stabilizers (ASAS) because of the lower mass - and that does help with banking a great deal. Doing this sandbox; seemed to be the best way to do things since I'm just experimenting. The Auk III now, that's an attempt to do something useful. It's just not doing anything useful yet.

1) Not much way around that at the moment besides zooming in really close and paying attention to how much time is indicated when you click to set the node, unfortunately. 2) Try http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/11322-Different-Conic-drawing-modes . There's a line in your main game configuration file that refers to the conic mode; you'll have to open it with notepad or whatever equivalent you've got and change the appropriate line (which eludes me at the moment; somebody help me out here). 3) All struts in the game are massless; this is a function of how they've been set up in their configuration file. It is possible to over-strut things and actually make them less stable; you'll have to talk to folks with experience on that topic. 4) Well, there is a way to do that from the Main Menu (I think; never tried myself). Meantime there's http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Controls 5) Yep. 6) No.

Alright. My entry, such as it is: Okay. So because everything was exploding at the same time, I'm going off the flight log in the last frame. 1:56 was bomb release, 1:58 was the abort activation and the plane hit the VAB at 1:59. I'm seeing three TR-2C impacts in the log. Two hit the Mission Control building and one struck the ground. Since I can't tell where the ground one impacted, I'm going to count it as SPH/VAB grounds for 2 points only (instead of Mission Control Grounds for 10). Couldn't say what happened to the other five weapons; they may have impacted with one another, so no score there. So I break down my scoring as follows: 2 Confirmed Mission Control Hits: 40 Points 1 Confirmed VAB/SPH Grounds Hits: 2 points 8 Weapons: x1 One Run: x2 TOTAL SCORE: 84 POINTS I am willing to make another run if necessary - it's hard to get the scoring screenies and pull out of the attack run at the same time... Looking at the log I'm amazed Thomemy survived.

Next question then: about how much lift do you need per tonne of mass? I couldn't get this thing to climb for love or money... I'm pretty sure I've got enough thrust there, and she'll pitch up okay but she still goes in the drink every time. EDIT: I'm pretty sure all five of the Turbofans are lighting up, but lemme make sure about the two inboard. It would explain a great many things if I had only three operational engines instead of five, wouldn't it?

Moar fun with spaceplanes. Also did some EVA reports over Kerbal for my career game; didn't have as much time as I'd have liked on that.

What kind of control issues is it giving you? I'm kind of new to spaceplanes my own self; that said I have made it to orbit and back in a spaceplane at this point. Taking a guess I'd say you don't have enough in terms of control surfaces for pitch. Your center of lift may also just a hair too far forward compared to your center of mass; ideally you want it behind the center of mass but still sticking through the ball. A pic of your three centers from the side would also be useful in diagnosing problems as well. Raising the center of lift slightly above the center of mass would should make your craft more stable. Might suggest http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures for general principles, especially if this is your first foray.

Well, I was curious to see if coordinating the turn would make changing my heading any easier. Using rudder alone doesn't do the trick (precession effects, I'll wager) but neither does banking.