birrhan

Since this is a hybrid mod post, I'll post it here and let the mods sort out the mess. The short of it is: I have a somewhat simple rocket using KW Rocketry, and using FAR as the aerodynamics model. Four stage lifter (12 x Globe V SRB, 4 x Titan XX liquid fuel, and 2 stages each of the Titan T1). this is all pushing a payload of 90-110 tons. At 90 tons, I can reliably get payloads into orbit. at 110 tons, one of two things happen: 1) The craft will pitch over (engines get ahead of themselves) at around 20-25km, speed 500-800 m/s. I have adjusted every combination of throttle and gravity turn angle, fin number and placement, as well as RCS thrusters (those high powered ones). Craft here: The inevitable orientation here: It appears that it starts to lose responsiveness as the topmost tank empties. The last image shows just one of my attempts--placing fins further down get ripped off by the launch tower or SRBs, and raising the SRBs off the liquid tanks appears to lead to rapid spinning out. What's killing me is that the behavior is indicative of high drag, but my ship ought to be compatible with FAR (designed for low drag).... so what gives?? 2) Spin out. Begins immediately after launch and quickly accelerates out of control. I'm fairly experienced with the game, what's throwing me for a loop is fixing the problem "legitimately"--using the FAR mod for aerodynamics and maintaining correct orientation without, say, a nose-mounted RCS block. Any number of smaller ships work though, just this one is being buggy.

Relevant image: http://i.imgur.com/HisUTDq.png It has no drag value. No parts do. Like I said, this reeks of a software issue, but I am not a CE, so I don't know where to begin.

I have eschewed separatrons explicitly because (a) without using them I normally can shed spent stages vertically, without issue, and ( every time I do try to use them, it results in the aforementioned unplanned rapid disassembly. So I am requesting pictures of your separatron arrangement, specifically on SRBs. How to?

negative on that approach. Same result. Again, it appears that the heatshield is nonfunctional. Test: 83 x 2 km. retrograde orientation at 32km, v = 2050 m/s. Exploded at 29 km, speed 2000 m/s. The cause appears to be a non-functional heatshield. How do you make the heatshield work? I know it's a DE product, but everyone's using the damned thing, and I appear to be the only one having a problem with it....

I will preface this by saying my math sucks. A lot. Also physics. Also, programming. So I am trying to reconcile FAR with Deadly Reentry, but my problem is that the heatshield does not seem to protect anything from overheating. From a circular orbit (80 x 80 km) I lower Pe to 20-30 km (any higher and I don't decelerate out of an orbit). At 32 km, I'm going about 2300 m/s, and I make my angle of attack 5-10 degrees. Somewhere before 28 km I'm going 1900 m/s and then exploding. I have tried futzing with the drag values, even this "fix": http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32342-0-20-Deadly-Reentry-2-3-reentry-heat-plus-thermal-and-g-force-damage-to-parts?p=528694#post528694 And none of these things has an effect. I should mention that the only thing I'm attempting to land is a 3 person command pod, with 2.5 m heatshield attached. Also, every component of the ship says "isshielded: false", and no part displays temperatures. All of these things suggest a programming glitch, but since there's crossover between both mods, I don't know which. The guy in charge of DE is being quiet until 0.21 comes out, so I was hoping someone here has some ideas or experience with this issue. Specifically, what conditions make for viable reentry? I'm looking everywhere and don't see consistent numbers, and this thread is so long I'm not even sure where to begin. So let's begin here! Thanks.

Negative compadre--field tested, still goes boom. Relevant mods are FAR and Deadly Reentry. Apo 85 km, pero 20 km. angle of attack at 32 km 10 degrees (right on the retrograde marker). See, the problem is that the heat shield, when coupled with FAR, doesn't actually shield anything. It blows up just like any other part. Kind of aggravating. Also, the forums are very very sparse when it comes to workarounds for FAR and Deadly Reentry--anyone here know what's up? is this the only workaround, and has anyone else had it work for them?

Could someone with some experience with the deadly reentry mod, and specifically the 6.25 m shield, explain (a) what the limits are to that shield (temperature, speed), and ( how much dv you can reasonably expect to lose at Jool (or Laythe) by aerobraking.

By "skipping" off the atmo, is it still possible to aerobrake with one or more passes prior to reentry (or even to establish an orbit) using FAR + DE?

It's good to see the servers acting like my rockets. You know, crashing. .... OK, I'll show myself out now.

Easy. No rover sweats or ladders in lieu of capsules. At least maintain the illusion of needing an enclosed capsule to get into space.

Very simple request actually. I find that advance staging (space bar) glitches and doesn't respond every so often. Root causes I've seen are: 1) moving stage order around during flight (or even on the launchpad) 2) looking at it funny 3) alt-tabbing out and back to the game, especially when the part count exceeds 1000 4) ????? So. I trust the devs know about this and are working on a solution. My question is--is there a way to force the game to remember that "space" means "advance" and not "derp"?

You're speaking kerbal now, so that's a good start. I had a lot of help from video tutorials on YouTube. Also a LOT of help on the forums. Best of luck--the successes make each failure worth it.

That is what I would have guessed. Replace the decoupler with a mated pair of Sr Docking ports. Bonus--you'll have to redraw all the struts between the lifter and payload, and now you should need much MUCH less. Only disadvantage is you'll have to manually "decouple".

May be too late for this trip, but in the future, if you know you're heading in the wrong direction, you can adjust normal/antinormal and incline/decline (the blue and purple arrows on your nodes) to approach in the opposite direction. Just after entering Jool's SOI you can do this for ~50 dv. The cost gets much higher the closer to a body you get (in line with everyone's comments about changing direction at a high apoapsis).

Yeah, it's quite insufficient for Tylo. For starters, you need TWR >1 to slow down before you kersplat, and you need that thrust acting on enough W to yield 6000+ dv--which is a lot of W, and all the more using heavy LV-Ns. I have tried this and would not recommend it--even when TWR > 1, your deceleration burn is over 4 minutes, and from an altitude of 60 km you only have ~3 min to kill rotational velocity, otherwise you land via unplanned rapid deceleration. It may well be possible, but would have to be pretty tightly designed. I have yet to see one.

Well, it looks like you're using KSPX or KW Rocketry parts, and what I've found (especially with the 3.75 m parts) is that those engines provide almost twice the force of a mainsail, acting on parts that weight up to 3x an orange tank. That's a lot of horsepower acting on a lot of mass, and your poor payload is getting pushed around like whoa. Two things will help: 1) Get rid of your current 7x boosters, and instead mount them 6x radially around your payload; keep the payload engine off until your second stage. 2) I normally cringe when people say "moar struts", because stock parts need 3-5 struts at most--a tripod to mount radially, and two more if you're stacking stuff on top of it (to prevent vertical clipping)--that said, KW/KSPX requires a lot more struts for the forces involved. One of those mods will have super-strength struts--use them. Or else treble (3x) your normal struts. Your boosters will also require 6-10 decoupling rockets because your fuel tanks are very heavy, even when empty, and they get off center and collide into stuff really easily once decoupled. Best of luck. I also recommend using Kerbal Engineer Redux in the VAB, just get your TWR over 1.2 or so and your ascent stage(s) dv over 4500 and you're golden.

http://i.imgur.com/JZMcuGo.jpg

Yeah, I've done it a couple of times--it was a beast. The dv needed for descent and ascent from all moons is about 12,500 dv. Transiting b/w moons is another 8150 dv. I think the challenge is making the lander small enough that it can be moved and refueled by one transit/refueling vessel. Transiting, landing, and taking off from the other moons means you can't really stage the thing until Tylo. Oh, and I never fly less than 3 kerbals. Sending them solo brings the Space Madness, and if you're already at 2, why not 3? I like the added twist of mapping each moon, and bringing a rover too. There's a lot of ways to do it, I just wanted to know if it had been done before.

I've seen a lot of Jool moon tour threads, but none that I recall have sent just 1 stock lander to all 5 moons in one trip--I've searched the forums, and found a couple of grand tours (using kethane) and a couple of multi-lander threads. Does anyone recall seeing any stories of 1 stock lander on all 5 moons in a single launch?

What it's meant for and what it's used for are two different things: there seems to be a fair number of exploits using seats to minimize lander payload size. Adding in a module with torque--a lander can, for example--would fix your problem, but then you wouldn't need seats.

yeah, its #2 for me: Civ 5: 740 hours KSP: 440 hours I might have a problem saying no to the next turn. Or the next launch.

You're not going to do it without engineer. I encourage you to use mods that generate data only--you're still using your skill set, just with more data. Frankly, I'm pretty sure an Eve lander pushes the limits of what is actually feasible to build. If you want help, but don't want to cheat, give us your model craft, or a picture. All this talk about dv and TWR and tonnage is useless to you without engineer, so we'd need something tangible from you.

Not yet--I need a transfer vehicle rendezvous. The advice I've gathered so far about Eve is this: 11500 dv to get to orbit from sea level or 9000 dv to get to orbit from the high plateaus around 6000 m high. In both cases your TWR should be about 1.5 for all stages. I have been using Kerbal Engineer religiously to hammer down those numbers. The current version has 11,200 dv and all stages have TWR of 1.4 (except the third to last stage, a very brief one at 1.1). I think she weighs 410 tons now. I think that's reasonable.

UPDATE: Great success!! It required (a) using 16 LV45's, ( using 9 orange tanks with associated 2.5 m engines from KSPX, and © generous RCS usage. Result was this (2000 liters fuel remaining of 29,500 initially): thanks to everyone, in particular Fractal_UK, for their help.

Well, it's definitely symmetric. And I misspoke, I meant COT. I'm impressed with how much you were able to reverse engineer. Well, I'm putting this on the back burner for a while. You were right, the core stage makes a beautiful light weight lander.