capi3101

Why ASAS as opposed to SAS?

So the idea is to provide downward force, right? To prevent rollovers... You might try mounting them to the sides. Big question is going to be power; two ion engines are going to require at least 30 RTGs for power. And then you get two kN of downward thrust. You'd probably have better luck by adding a standard SAS module to the rover, widening the wheelbase, locking the steering on the back wheels and driving around with the docking controls. It's a neat idea, I'll grant you that. If you try it, lemme know how it turns out. That is a neat looking rover design, I'll grant you that.

Been too long since I've done force balance equations...fifteen years since engineering physics. A lot of the specifics are going to depend on what engine you use and the final mass of your craft, as well as your launch angle. As far as the delta-V requirement goes, though, it should just be four times the amount needed to get the craft up to the proper apoapsis. You need that much to get your horizontal velocity to where it needs to be, then to zero, then to the same amount, then back to zero. If you launch at 45 degrees along the desired heading, stop your burn when your apoapsis reaches 20,000 + your reference height (i.e. the altitude of your launch site). Note the time to apoapsis when the burn ends. Point your ship at the retrograde marker when you get to the apoapsis and when the time past apoapsis equals the amount of time before apoapsis at which you started your burn, begin your retroburn for landing. That oughta get you close to a safe landing roughly 40k away. That'd be one hop. Once again, though, the specifics are going to depend on the initial mass of the craft. That'll get you an acceleration figure. Of course, since your mass is changing, that acceleration won't be constant either...

Someone will be a jerk and tell you "It's Mun, not Moon" sooner or later, so lemme do that and get it out of the way. Okay. Now that that's done...do you have any pictures or craft files of your Muncraft? It would help us diagnose problems a lot easier. Assuming you're using a rocket (not a spaceplane), the trick is to have sufficient delta-V for the journey. A roundtrip Munshot with landing takes just shy of 8000 m/s of delta-V in aggregate (that's with a good amount of fudge factor built in), with 4500 of that dedicated solely to getting off of Kerbin. For an eight tonne lander, I find a cluster of seven rockets (6 LV-T30s outboard with a centerline LV-T45) gets me up to orbit with gas to spare. Each engine one has two FL-T800 stacks above it. Put the outboard engines on radial decouplers and run fuel lines from their tanks to the central stack; jettison the outboard engines when their tanks run dry. For the launch, go vertical for the first 10 kilometers (10,000 m), then put your rocket on course 090 at 45 degrees. Adjust that down to about 20 degrees when your altitude reaches 25,000, and then switch over to the map view. When the apoapsis hits 100,000m, kill your engines. Setup a maneuver node at apoapsis to put yourself in an orbit somewhere around 100x100 (doesn't have to be perfect), aim in the direction indicated by the node (should be around 090 along the horizon - 0 degrees elevation), and fire when the time comes for the amount of time indicated. That'll get you into orbit. At that point, target Mun and angle your camera so it's about 3:30 or so (100 degrees, with zero degrees at the top of the screen). Put a maneuver node at the 6:00 position and add prograde until you get a Mun intercept. You want your Mun periapsis low; preferably around 20,000. Fiddle with it until you get it where you want it. Then once again aim and burn when the time comes. Chances are your lifter stage will still have enough juice in it that you won't have to jettison it prior to making this burn. If so, use it. If not, use your lander's gas. That'll should get you to Mun. Only other advice I can give you is that if you go for a landing, quicksave first (F5). You will muck it up the first few times you try to land. Accept that and you can have fun with it.

I usually stick on an adapter when I encounter this problem, that way you can mount a ladder at an angle. Game seems to like that better. I would like to know if that's a wholly necessary thing to do. I too have encountered problems with the 90-degree lip; first time I tried to do a Mun rescue mission, I had Seeley piloting to go rescue Jeb, Bob and Bill and was going to get him out for a group photo before sending everybody home. He fell off the damn ladder; ultimately had to jetpack him back up to the CM. Thank goodness that was a place with low gravity...had that been someplace like Tylo or Eve, he would've been killed...

Craft file? I'd like to get to get new Kimbus 2001s for House Sylthkerbin...... Got Werschel and Ludwin back from Mun. Turns out the LEM design had way more LOX capacity than it needed for a simple down and up, and it was just a lander can, an X200-8, 4 large lander legs, an LV-909 plus the docking hardware to begin with (i.e. really light), so it was crazy easy to steer on the lander can's gyros alone. Was able to rendezvous with Elny in the CSM; just parked the LEM five meters away and jetpacked over. Didn't even have to use any of the CSM's delta-V for the rendezvous. Rest of the mission was routine. No soil samples retrieved, of course, but at least the crew got back safely. Had to plant a flag before I left Mun, of course. Planted by Ludwin, it's entitled "Werschel Kermin Wuz Here", with the plaque reading "...and boy does his piloting suck."

Jumped on the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Anniversary bandwagon tonight by firing up a Castle Yankee 7 mission to Mun (basically what I decided to call the Saturn V replica on the wiki in my own game). My mission didn't go so well...the LEM tipped over on landing and in the process of righting it again, its docking port and RCS fuel canister snapped off (you know, the gear that was specifically for the post mission rendezvous). It isn't quite time for Nixon's consolidation speech yet - Werschel's excited about landing so close to a Mun Arch while Ludwin has been watching the rendezvous hardware rolling down a hill at about 9 m/s and scratching his head about the best you can do when you're in a pressure suit - but I'm still debating as to what I want to do next. I could either go ahead with a rendezvous and just not dock (the CSM's still got RCS fuel) or I could fire up the Flying Dutchman 7 (my Munar rescue craft; haven't had to use it in a while) and go get them. Been also considering a modification to asparagus staging. Probably wouldn't be as effective as I'd think.

Hit the V key to change the camera mode. Most folks prefer chase mode for docking maneuvers. Didn't know that trick until just the other day my own self. Other that that, this is all I can offer... Close to Rendezvous General Procedure: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40653-How-to-synchronize-an-orbit-with-another-ship?p=522873&viewfull=1#post522873 Actual Docking General Procedure: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40645-Help-With-Rendezvous?p=522811&viewfull=1#post522811

256x160, and they need to be .png files. OP, I'd recommend picking up GIMP. It's a good freeware image manipulator program that has a fair amount of functionality. And for the befuddled......http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28293-Show-off-your-flags-MEGATHREAD

I'd think it likely; I don't know if they ever worked out all the problems that Subassembly had switching over from 0.19 to 0.20...

No, that's not the case. The way delta-V is calculated, it's dependent on two things: the potential change of mass and the specific impulse of the engine involved. Any time you burn a rocket, you're throwing mass out the fiery end; SRBs are no different. They're just pretty lousy about it, to be honest. I don't think I'm explaining this very well...okay, so let's say you've got a two tonne payload and you want to throw that into space with a couple of the big BACC SRBs (you can't actually do this, but let's just go through the math real quick). When an BACC is fully fueled, it weighs 7.875 tonnes; when it's empty, it weighs 1.5 tonnes. You've got two of them and a two tonne payload, so fully fueled your rocket weighs 17.75 tonnes, and empty it weighs 5 tonnes on the nose. With me so far? SRBs have a specific impulse of 230s in atmosphere. Now we do the hard math: the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation - deltaV = ln (M-full / M-empty) * 9.81 * Isp, where ln is a natural logarithm (find the button on your calculator), M-full is the full mass, M-empty is the empty mass, and Isp is the specific impulse. So we have deltaV = ln (17.75 /5) * 9.81 * 230 = 2858.61 m/s. Long and the short of it: any fueled rocket gives you delta-V. Provided you light it of course.

Today I did jack; didn't even try to crunch any numbers. Just tried to pass my knowledge along to the newbs. Had a notion for something I could try with the Evil Eye 7 or the Damnation 7, but that was about it.

There's a good list of the stock parts on the wiki.

d'ooooh!!!!!

Hmm. Okay, this is a shot in the dark, but WTH...quicksave first if you want to try this. I'd suggest waiting until your surface position is about midway along the dark side of Mun. Thrust retrograde - 270 at 45 degrees. Escape velocity for Mun is 807.08 m/s. That should put you in a Kerbin orbit. From there's it's the standard fare...lower your periapsis into the atmosphere for aerobreaking. Total delta-V for a Mun launch and return to Kerbin without return to Munar orbit is 1,500 m/s; if the probe's got at least that much, it should make it back no problem.

You're very welcome. The 450k works reasonably well in most situations - largely it's dependent on the altitude of the target's orbit in the vicinity of KSC but it can be closer to 400k when the target's higher up and about 500k when it's in a very low orbit. You also have to watch how you fly...one time, I got up there, got the orbital insertion burn set up, saw the target zip by at 2,250 m/s passing within six kilometers of my craft......

Hadn't thought of that...kinduva smack your head sort of moment. Gonna have to try it next time I do a docking maneuver.

Stack decouplers or stack separators are what you want to use (prefer decouplers; separators tend to generate debris). Put that on the bell first and the game will generate a fairing for it; then you can stick whatever else you'd like underneath. Even if you don't stick anything underneath, the fairing still gets generated - then it's just a matter of setting up your staging so that all the decouplers fire at the same time.

It does it in orbit too...you just have to have the target craft targeted. You can double click on the target in staging mode too once you're close enough.

Lock the steering on your back wheels, pack a SAS module with it and make sure it's on when you're driving around, and drive with the docking controls (can't stress that one enough).

Played around with the Evil Eye 7...got it up to over 10,000 m/s of delta-V. Launched it from KSC and made it into orbit without staging, but it was pretty hairy...a pretty low orbit too. Map decided not to show me where my apoapsis was, so I had to guess at it. Next time I'm taking up the KER flight computer with me; that guessing crap is for the birds. On the plus side, it will only take two Barn Burner missions to refuel the thing once it is in orbit. Also put a Hellrider 7 rover on Mun. Before I do that again, I'm adding RCS to my skycrane. Damn thing spins like crazy and steers like a sloth; wound up in a polar Munar orbit on intercept. Dropped the rover at 20 m/s going sideways right before the crane lithobraked. It tumbled around for a good thirty seconds; blew off the ladder, busted a tire and landed upside down. Good thing the Hellrider had a self-righting correction system installed. Even with the busted tire I was able to get it up to 17 m/s afterwards. Probably going to send a mission out to Mun soon so that my Kerbonauts can use it. Tonight I'm going to see if I can get the Evil Eye up past 11,000 delta-V. If I can, it'll be go for Eve next chance I get (and yes, I know you need 12,000 for Eve...).

H. Seldon, doctor of psychohistory - the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. Recognized it off the bat. The flag...not so much.

1) It's 4550 m/s for a 100k orbit. 2) It's Kerbin. Kerbals live on Kerbin, which orbits Kerbol, and all (most?) of the Kerbals are of the family Kermin.

Yeah, for the rocket equation, that's always going to be 9.81 regardless of where you are. Mun, Kerbin, Duna...makes no difference. Where different gravity values come into play is when you're trying to figure out your thrust-to-weight ratios for your various stages - a rocket that has a TWR of 1.6 on Kerbin will have a much higher TWR on the Mun, and insanely high TWR on Gilly, an insufficiently low value on Eve and so forth.

Can also select them by scrolling over their images on the flight view, options for EVA and IVA are there.