capi3101

How exactly does one calculate interplanetary TWR? I'm just curious; my understanding of TWR is that it's somewhat based on local gravity. At 100 km above Kerbin's surface, that should be about 7.21 m/s^2 if I've done the math right. Is it calculated the same way as on Kerbin's surface? If so, the TWR for my ship is 0.499; for Tylo, it would be 0.197.

I play the game mostly vanilla (I use Subassembly Loader and that's it mod-wise). Docking's largely a matter of being patient and equipping your ships with a LOT of RCS endurance/capability. I recommend the Gemini 6A and 7 tutorial on the wiki for those playing vanilla who want to learn the basics.

I usually use five LV-Ns. With 3 X-32 fuel tanks, 4 FL-R1s and an 18.5 tonne paylod, it gives me an acceleration of about 3.59 m/s^2 and about 5256 m/s of delta-V, enough to get me to Duna/Ike and Eve/Gilly and back; the design of the ship is such that I can add additional fuel modules to hit some of the other targets - in theory the design can make it out to Tylo though the initial acceleration would only be about 1.52 m/s^2; I haven't tried to go to Jool just yet. Still need to read up on overheating...

If you've got a manned pod, go IVA before you begin making your braking burns and set the camera so that you're looking at your radar altimeter. Every so often, check that gauge to see how close you are to the deck; it'll give you a good estimate of how much further down you have to go (e.g. if your altimeter says 3500 and the radar altimeter says you're 1500 above the deck, you know the deck's somewhere around 2000). Then it's just a matter of watching your speed. Until you get good at it, begin a braking burn at about 8000 meters; you're trying to get your velocity down to about zero. Be sure to follow the retrograde marker. Start cutting back on the throttle to about 2/3 when you're at <100 m/s and to 1/3 when you get to <50. Throttle it to about the second or third notch to maintain your speed when the retrograde marker is about to go vertical. Deploy your landing legs and touch down at less than ten m/s or you'll definitely break something. Make sure your lander is squat and wide, or make sure it's got plenty of RCS blocks situated so you can upright the thing. And practice, practice, practice. Hit F5 before you begin, recite the Sheppard's prayer, try to land, curse and hold down F9 to try again when you screw it up. And trust me, no one gets it right on the first try. Cheer loud enough to wake your neighbors when you get it right.

Yeah, I think that's one of the more annoying known bugs with 0.19. I've experienced the same problem my own self of late. Only way around it in the vanilla game is to zoom in really close to the target and click its path (not the target itself). Even then that might not work if you've got space crap floating around on a path in the same general vicinity.

"Stage Only" shows the resources that are associated specifically with the current stage that's active. So say the current stage is that stack decoupler you just activated to drop your ascent stage into the ocean; that "stage" has no fuel or electricity associated with it, so it wouldn't show anything. Basically, if you've got your fuel in the same part of the rocket as your engines and your engines are running, it should show the amount of fuel specifically left for them to use. It can be used for the same purpose as the graphical display on the staging control screen (and it should actually correlate exactly to it).

Build 'em squat and wide; if you've got a lander that's shaped like a beer can, you can expect it to tip over and slide like one (especially if you land on a hillside). Try widening the base a bit - attaching FL-T200s is a good way to do this; your landing gear should attach to them. Only other thing I can tell you is to make sure you've killed all your horizontal velocity when you finally touch down. RCS can be a last resort if you tip over; I've been able to complete many missions because I was able to use RCS to re-upright the lander. (Pretty sure that's what you're talking about; I hope I've answered the question. If not, ignore me.)

I'd try out the Gemini 6A and 7 tutorial from the wiki; that's how I learned how to do docking. Only other advice I can give you is to take it slow. Consider adding lights near your docking ports if, like me, you constantly wind up having to do docking procedures in planetary shadow... Really, docking sounds scarier than it is. I've done it a couple dozen times now; I've only botched it badly once (and that wasn't on the first go, believe it or not).

Thanks, y'all; you've definitely answered all my questions here. My big issue was figuring out if I could use action groups to activate/deactivate docking ports; sounds like that's a big "yes".

Depends on the target and how fast you want to be able to accelerate. An increasing number of engines will have a negative effect on your delta-V, but only in as much as they add dead-mass to your rocket; the trick is to find an acceptable balance. My own designs incorporate 5 LV-Ns; you get 350 kN of thrust that way, which is a decent amount for interplanetary missions. A round trip to Moho can easily be accomplished with three X200-32 tanks (12 FL-T800s equivalent). If you set it up so all five engines are drawing off of one set of tanks, you should be able to get there and back no problems. That 30/70 ratio they're talking about is the amount of time before and after the maneuver node; I haven't tried that my own self but it does make sense given that you are losing mass in your burn (thus your rate of acceleration is increasing with time) and it jives with my observations that I never seem to wind up where the node predicted either with a 50/50 burn. Might have to do the math on that one.

Alright - so how do you set them up?

You probably could do something with a stack decoupler and some Sepratrons. Probably would want to set that up with an action group, like folks are suggesting; that way you can activate it whenever you need to.

...he's started asking about where some of these other planets are in the Kerbal system. You know, ones that don't exist in the game anywhere but he insists are out there. I figured I share the names and basic characteristics with you guys, in case any of you ever happens to come across any of them. Let's see...first, there's Arde (ar-DEE) and Binbin. Binbin is yellow and Arde is red. There is some confusion as to which one is supposed to be the planet and which is the moon. Then again, he thinks Ike is a planet. It's somewhere past the orbit of Eeloo Then there's Orkinee. It's way far away. Seriously. Like, I drew the rest of the system for him with straight lines between the orbital lanes; Orkinee was past the orbit of Binbin and the line was very long and not straight. So I guess it's seriously far away... There's another planet called Arkin. It's black. That's all I know. He doesn't talk about that one much. Your guess is as good as mine whether or not it has anything to do with Alan Arkin... Anyway, y'all be on the look out for those. (Just thought I'd share that with y'all. Mainly in case the developers are looking for names for any up and coming spheres in the Kerbol system).

I built a lander that looks almost exactly like yours as one of my first designs (I'd put up the .craft file but the forum's been stupid since it got nuked). Trying to remember my design - I think it was what I suggested to you earlier: a set of six outriggers with F-800s/LV-30s, with external fuel ducts attached to the central tank (which used an LV-45). That gave me sufficient fuel to get in orbit and get out to the Mun before decoupling completely from the ascent stages; I usually didn't jettison that part of the stack until after I'd made the initial descent burn for the Mun. If you've got one of those dinky engines (LV-900?) on the lander and 4 F-200 fuel tanks on the lander, you've definitely got enough fuel there to get down to the Mun and return safely. A word of caution: first time you try to land on the Mun, you will botch it. Probably badly. Like death badly. To avoid death, send a Probodobodyne OKTO with 4 PB-NUKs in place of the command pod; same weight as a Mk-I Command Pod, same functionality, no kerbals. Except yours had the big command pod, didn't it? Okay, first tweak: swap that out... Second tweak, you should consider using the LT-1 instead of LT-2 landing legs. You'll save weight and they should still support what you've got. Just took another look at my lander design; I had put the big RT-20 SRBS on the bottom of my LV-30s/LV-45 with stack decouplers. Big no-no there, of course, but it was one of my earliest designs. I do recall it gave me like 700 extra m/s of delta-V...

Got nothing to add that everybody else hasn't said. Those SRBs ain't going to get you very far and then your main tank doesn't have enough fuel to get you the rest of the way. Your lander looks beefy enough to hit the Mun. I'd suggest replacing the SRB outriggers with two F-800 tanks and an LV-30 each, and set an external fuel duct to run from them to the center engine. Use all five engines at liftoff; that Mainsail in the center should get you the rest of the way. If it doesn't, add a third can of gas. If there isn't enough thrust, increase the number of outriggers to six and consider using the larger radial decoupler. And listen to EndlessWaves; his advice is liable to be better than mine.

Okay. Thanks. I did get two craft undocked today; it was occasionally tricky finding the correct port to select.

Basically they're what everybody else has said; a rocket that can hit orbit intact. They're tricky as hell to build and do anything useful with them but they'd almost definitely be reusable, which is why they're a pretty big deal. Check out the Wikipedia article. Mine is a little satellite launcher; basically the payload is a Stayputnik, 4 Communitrons and a PB-NUK. Whole thing is attached by stack decoupler to the rest of the rocket. It gets to orbit, launches, de-orbits and lands intact (most of the time). It has a tendency to tip over when I hit the gravity turn; still haven't figured out how to correct that little flaw. And yet I have successfully gotten about half a dozen satellites into orbit with it.

It's one of those two things: zoom out more if you've got the full game. If you're just playing the demo, the only possible target is the Mun.

You need to make sure you have a powered control unit on both ends - a probe or manned pod; if one part of the ship doesn't have such a unit after you separate the two ends, the game will consider the uncontrolled part debris. Make sure the power modules are on the same part of the ship as the control module, otherwise it will power down almost as soon as you separate them. To seperate two parts and re-link them later, both will need to have Clamp-O-Trons of the same size.

Hey all. The topic's action groups: what can you do with them and how do you go about assigning them in the VAB? I already know you can assign their activation to the number keys. What all do you guys use them for? Mainly just fishing for ideas here.

Ah...that's your ship/part/idea (probably) I swiped......thanks. Functionally the Olympus booster is what I wound up building once I got the quad-port attached; the other differences appear to be mostly cosmetic. Mine looks clunkier. The booster units for one should function for the other; definitely will have to take yet another look at the Olympus. I will mentioned that I did finally figure out a solution for getting my Dystopia 7 booster attached; the TR-XL Stack Seperator did the trick. Aside from leaving another piece of space crap in orbit, I'm happy with that solution. So quick question - how's the best way of going about undocking one of those quad ports? I've had some issues with that.

There is a fuel tank attached to the thruster module; the service module is specifically for the purpose of extending the craft's range (math says I should be able to do a full round trip to Tylo with four service modules attached as I've designed it). Forgot to mention that - the thruster/service module combos are designed as round-trip transfer stages, which is the main reason why they're so heavy. The thruster stage is meant to be re-usable; just undock and deorbit spent service modules, dock fresh ones and off you go.

Hey all, So, I'm getting ready to do my third reiteration of my interplanetary ship design. It's basically three modules docked together in space - a main thruster module, a supply module (the one that carries most of the gas; more that one of these gets me further), and a lander. The first design was a nice, light design; used only a single docking port, so it wobbled like crazy and I couldn't steer it. Second design was beefier - too beefy as it turned out; my computer couldn't crunch all the parts without serious lag. So this time around I'm going back to my first design but replacing the docking ports with the heavy 4 Clamp-o-tron docking port design I've seen floating around here on occasion. This has given me a new problem: I am having problems attaching my existing booster to the redesigned modules. Particularly the service module - it's got these docking ports on both ends. Has anybody worked with that design and successfully got a booster attached to one of those ports, or can anyone help me design a booster that will get the whole load up into space? It has to be able to lift at least 45 tonnes to a 100k orbit and has to be able to de-orbit itself afterwards. Brownie points if you can get it attached reliably attached to the ports in such a way that it'll come off again. I have tried adding small stack decouplers to the ports and adding a corresponding docking port to the booster part; in the first case the booster wouldn't attach and in the second the docking ports refused to undock. Thoughts?

Pretty much what Deadpangod3 said. Now, if your issue is getting it away fast enough, you can combine using the sepratrons with the decouplers; point them up if you're using a stack decoupler and point them towards the main tank if you're using radials (or at a 45 degree angle upwards if you're uncomfortable with that notion). Either way, set them to fire when you hit the decouplers; they'll give you some additional boost to the decoupling action.

Ah...okay. That's right - EAS-4s are massless despite the values listed for them in 0.19. I didn't think BZ-52s were, though - makes me wonder if I'm just seeing things. Well, that's a fair sight better than what I calculated, isn't it... Definitely need the part; my alternative interplanetary design didn't wobble, it had so many parts it made the game lag. This will give me a good compromise.