capi3101

...this one's tougher than it sounds.

Oof. That's a problem... I'll have to give this some thought so I can adjust the scoring; I haven't really got the time to do that today. What are the planetary coordinates of this one?

Got 0.21.1 downloaded. Had to look at 0.20 to see how I had my graphics settings set (because let's face it, my best computer is now a Byzantine POS). Launched a new space station core and farted around with another rover design. Tried to acquaint myself with the remodeled KSC. Brought over my best designs from 0.20. Brought over Subassembly and KER from 0.20 but I haven't had a chance to see if they're working nor have I yet checked for updates on the forums regarding their status. Probably won't play today, it being my wedding anniversary and all...

Temstar used to have a quad-port design that worked well...it was just four standard clamp-o-trons connected to the backside of a Rockomax Adapter 2 via BZ-52s, strutted down. It was a really stable design that I used exclusively until they came out with the senior ports (which to be honest, I never really got a chance to try out under thrust in 0.20). That port required Subassembly. With the advent of 0.21, you might be able to try to construct similar with one of the quad adapters. I obviously haven't tried this out myself yet... The trick with the quad-port, as MidwestB indicated, is getting things aligned. That'll be a problem no matter how you go about doing a multi-port docking, but I find that if the target ports are closer in to one another things are easier in general. Being aligned first is important. It helps to have one craft pointed north and the other south when you're docking; then you only have to roll to get things lined up.

...odd that there's no delta-V indicated for Stage 5. Which set of engines is throttled up at that point?

Those standard canards are up too high; you need to move them to the outboard stages below the center of mass (lower tanks). Other things - lose the third FT-800 on the central stack and slap an LV-T45 on the bottom of it, and you should be able to make orbit with what you've got without needing a booster (the canards and the -T45 will give you good steering authority during the launch). Be sure to drag the LV-T45 engine indicator down to the second stage (i.e. set all three engines to fire on launch). Then it's put on a small RCS tank and 4 blocks so you can deorbit the command pod when you're ready; obviously you'll want that above the stack decoupler. You also don't need the Mk-16 XL chute - the standard Mk16 will work just fine; if it's coming off on you and you're losing Kerbals, strut it down. And make sure to not put your stack decoupler and the chute in the same stage. Odd things can happen, like the chute not deploying when you want it to.

They're efficient - there's no arguing that. It's just that most folks don't have the patience for that kind of efficiency...hell, I sometimes get frustrated with the burn times of LV-Ns......

I realize it's common courtesy for the player issuing a challenge to attempt to do it themselves. I'll just say "I'm trying" at the moment and leave it at that...yesterday was rough.

Include a SA......what's this "Inline Reaction Wheel" crap? That's a mouthful... No, seriously. Put a Reaction Wheel on your rover and make sure it's on when you drive. You can make it the core piece of your design; slap some of the large structural panels on the bottom for impact protection. You can then use modular girder segments to build out the rest of your chassis - a stable rover will have a long wheelbase (distance between the front and back wheels) and a long axle track (you want this to be not quite as long as the wheelbase, but out there a bit). When you're out driving, lock the steering on the back wheels, turn SAS on and switch over to the docking controls (or remap the controls for rover steering, whichever floats your boat). Should be able to get up to the maximum speed of the wheels on level grade without flipping. I'd also recommend structural panels or a modular girder adapter on top of your rover. Again, that's for impact protection; structural panels and modular girder segments have an impact tolerance of 80 m/s, which is beyond the speed you're going to be able to travel with any set of stock wheels. Makes a skycrane drop a lot safer too. That way if the rover does roll over, it's still intact - and then the trick becomes righting it again. I usually include two or three 24-77s pointed upwards with toroidal fuel tanks for this purpose. Be careful where you put them, though; they're no good to you if they're the first thing that breaks off when your rover flips. I know of one guy who added ion engines to his rover design to provide downward force. Actually worked, though that's got its own can of worms. Good luck; let us know how it turns out.

I've used ion engines to boost a very small satellite out to geosynchronous orbit around Kerbin; took a few hours to do. I also know of one guy who used them to provide downward thrust on a rover design successfully. The chief problem with ions is their lousy thrust-to-weight ratio, especially when you consider the mass of the equipment you have to use in order make them work (2 Gigantors, a Xenon Tank and the thruster = 1.07 tonnes). All that and you get a thruster with half the output of an RCS block...a maximum acceleration of 0.5 m/s^2. And that's with no payload.

Built an entry for the Rocket Artillery challenge. Remembered too late that a) I don't do so well with fixed-wing craft and KSP's aerodynamic model is one of the chief gripes people have about it. My initial design flew for about five kilometers; a very stripped down design flew for about fifteen. Definitely not in the medium-range category. Tweaked the Castle Romeo design to allow the third stage to separate. Forgot to put the struts holding it to the payload back into place and didn't realize it until this morning. Now I'll have to build those damn fairings all over again... Tested a new rover design. Making an X200-8 your base chassis = bad idea. Particularly during rollover tests. Launched another Hellrider towards the Neil Armstrong Memorial. Actually set it down without blowing anything up on it (skycrane came down hard, but it's supposed to do that, right?). Stupid thing flipped over twice - first time broke off the ladder and one of the engines it would use for righting itself after a rollover. Second time, the other two self-righting engines blew off. I could see the memorial and knew I was heading in the right direction, but I could've sworn the damn thing was moving away from me at the same rate I was heading towards it... Didn't have time to download 0.21. All in all, a pretty rough day.

You can use stages if you like. You only lose points if things come off that aren't supposed to. Because they have higher impact tolerance and can be repaired if they do break. Yeah, good idea. I can do that too. The original rules said "no navigation aids of any sort", but then you get into the issue of what constitutes a "navigational aid". Somebody who'd found all the anomalies and planted flags nearby would be instantaneously hosed...

Good question. My intent was that the lander itself would make the entire journey (launch, go to the Mun, land, hop, hop, hop, then return to Kerbin); the way I wrote the rules, though, I don't see why you couldn't ferry a lander to Mun. Maybe I should change that... EDIT: I've changed the wording of the "Return to Kerbin" bonus; that about cover it, you think?

The intent of the challenge is to test people's piloting and navigational skills. Any newb could land, get back into an orbit and then go to another surface destination; it takes skill and careful planning to hit a target ballistically. You're absolutely right in saying that going back into orbit would be inefficient. It also wouldn't be very challenging.

Try one of the large ASAS modules for use as a rover body. Place four RTGs diagonal to the direction of travel (i.e. forward), then cubic struts on the ends on them and run struts in between them; you'll wind up with a square frame. Mount your rover wheels to the cubic struts - I'd suggest the big ruggedized ones. Then throw on any other hardware you want - lights, battery packs, and so on. When you go to drive it, turn on SAS, lock the steering on the back wheels and use docking controls. The SAS will counter the lander can's torque (which is considerable) as will docking controls, and you should have a low enough center of gravity and wide enough wheelbase that it won't roll over easily. I'd test this out on Kerbin before you took it to Eve, but I've got a similar design and have had good results with it so far. You could also use an X200-8 tank. You wouldn't have any SAS authority but you could use it as a liquid fuel source if you needed to.

Struts will help. Drogues will help. Other thing you might try is to fire up your descent engines (if you have any) to try and slow down a bit right before the chutes deploy (i.e. right before they fully open and jerk your craft). For Eve, I realize you don't want to fire them for too long; a second or two would probably be sufficient based on your design - Scott Manley does this in his Eve tutorial. Just sayin'.

A month for me. It's not that I didn't want to buy the full game right away, it was that I had to save up some scratch first.

Began a Munshot in order to make an entry in the "Doing it Apollo Style" challenge; aborted the flight when the third stage wouldn't separate. Design flaw with the LEM. Fresh attempt tonight. I also tried to send a Hellrider 7 rover on ahead to the Neil Armstrong Memorial so I'd have a navigational reference for landing (didn't know where it was before yesterday). The skycrane ran out of juice 2000 meters above the surface and lithobraked at over 100 m/s. The ironic thing is that bits of the rover debris landed within three hundred meters of the memorial, so I suppose I do still have a reference...... Designed my first challenge. Haven't read the updates yet; probably folks complaining...

Greetings, all. First challenge. I'm pretty sure this hasn't been done before, but someone will no doubt inform me (harshly, no doubt) if I'm mistaken. This notion came to me today after a post in the How-To forum a few days ago wherein someone asked how much delta-v would be required to do two 40 kilometer "hops" with a lander (i.e. to fly forty kilometers over the Munar surface without going back into orbit first). That, and after taking a look at kerbalmaps.com earlier today (great tool by the way if, like me, you haven't found where all the easter eggs are and really can't be bothered enough to try and find them). So, the challenge is this: design a lander that can: A) Visit as many anomalies on Mun as possible in a single mission. By "visiting", I mean "put a lander within five kilometers of the anomaly on the first try." Do this without achieving orbit in-between anomaly visits and without refueling at any point during the mission. C) Return to Kerbin afterwards, again without refueling. Participants are not allowed to use rover wheels or landing gear on their designs; lander legs are fine. No use of the debug console is allowed as well. Points for the challenge are as follows: Landing Accuracy Each unique Mun anomaly visited : 20 points (has to be Mun; other bodies do not count. To count as "visited", the lander must land within five kilometers of an anomaly on one try). Landing within 3 kilometers of an anomaly: +10 points Landing within 1 kilometer of an anomaly: +20 points Landing within 100 meters of an anomaly: +30 points Special Case: the Anomaly at -82.2063x102.9305 Landing within 5 kilometers: +15 points Landing within 3 kilometers: +30 points Bonus Points No parts broken off the lander at any point during the mission: 25 points Launch the lander and then successfully return it to Kerbin under its own power (i.e. no ferries): 25 points Stock parts only: 25 points Manual control only (i.e. no autopilots): 25 points Entrants should report the total amount of fuel expended in their attempt and number of anomalies visited; this data will be used to break ties. Pics or it didn't happen. Maximum score is 500 points. Good luck. CURRENT LEADERS: None

Ah. Well then...

They ever get subassembly working again? I had some serious issues with it when 0.20 first came out...biggest thing is that it wouldn't let me save new subassemblies.

1750 delta-V is what you need to get back into orbit from Duna according to the wiki's delta-V map. I agree with most of the other folks here; landing on top of a stationary craft on the surface is possible, but you'd have to have some mad piloting skills to pull it off. Depending on the design, though, you might try tipping it over and trying to refuel it with something like a rover. Just a thought. Only other option is to send a rescue ship. How much delta-V does your lander have fully fueled?

Decided I was going to try for the Duna Apollo Style challenge. Redesigned my existing Castle Yankee 7 Munar rocket for the task - calling it the "Castle Romeo 7". Had fun testing out the abort tower. Confirmed it needed all three stages to get into orbit but still left the third stage with plenty of fuel for the transfer. Launched a pair of satellites off the sides of the SM. Next step will be to test out the MM with a Munar landing; it's got four rovers slung on its underside. I need to test out landing and deployment. If all's good, I'll be headed to Duna ASAP. Probably while I'm at it I should go ahead and do the Mun challenge. I mean, I've already got a rocket capable of doing most of that crap now...

My understanding of the whole ASAS vs SAS function is that ASAS provides no torque of its own, that it's good for controlling heading, whereas SAS provides torque to stop rotation. ASAS has no power to stop rotation on its own. So if the point of adding it is to help prevent rollover, SAS would be the better option; in my experience, pod torque causes rollover, particularly if the rover's being controlled in staging mode instead of docking mode. You'd save a bit of weight too.

I usually direct new folks to the Historical Missions section of the wiki. They include notes on how to build basic stuff. Senshi's Basic Rocket Design is another good one for just starting out. Really, we need to see what you've built so far so we can diagnose problems. Some screenshots (F1) would be useful, or the .craft files if you can post them.