Speeding Mullet

@Claw and I'm sure others would tell you that this is a well known issue. I certainly suffer from it on and off, but very specifically recently with my Buran shuttle it's happened a number of times on de-orbit. Best advice is to follow the guidelines and file a highly detailed report. As this thread suggests, it's actually a pretty rare bug and not easily repeatable, so the more intricate the detail you and others experiencing the same issue provide, the higher the chance that this will go from a "yep we know that one" to "yep we can fix that". Claw feel free to put me back in my box here SM

My computer runs KSP on ultra settings (everything as kerbally maxed as it can be) and 99% of the time doesn't miss a beat. When you start getting over 500 parts you get a small touch of slow down in frame rate but it's not very noticeable, for the most part it absolutely flies! The basics of the spec are as follows: MSI Z97 SLI Krait edition Mobo i5 4690K (not overclocked (yet!)) water-cooled by Kraken x61 - not needed usually but I live in Australia with no aircon, the ambient temp can be over 40 degrees! 4 GB GTX 970 STRIX OC (not overclocked yet) 16 GIG Hyperfury RAM Samsung Evo Pro SSD Lots of other very tasty bits. Assuming you live in USA, not in Australia where PC parts cost roughly double, then you should be able to build a pretty decent PC for $800. Definitely drop down to the i5 and get a much more powerful GPU, buying an i7 and having to settle for a 2 gig card would be a mistake. Also unless you are living in a hot part of the world, or plan on overclocking your CPU to extreme levels, then water-cooling is absolutely pointless. If you live in a cold climate, or your house is air conditioned, or you only plan on mildly overclocking your CPU, then buy a top of the range cpu fan and spend the money saved on a better GPU, or SSD instead of HDD. SM

That's still pretty darned epic though, getting anything that large to Jool is a bit of a mission. None the less, yes many many parts. 832 parts to be precise comprising of: 28 Kerbals 1 Jool impactor Probe 6 satellites 4 Suborbital Hoppers 4 Rovers, each with 2 self controlled science probes 4 Bases 1 Laythe Aircraft 1 Kethane mining dropship to deliver base + rover to the moons 1 Jool orbital station with living quarters 1 Return to Kerbin ship with Science hab 1 Engine module which can be remotely operated (also stays in system) 1 Laythe Lander 1 Tylo Lander 2 RCS Robots I think that's it. So 36 or so individually controllable ships all built into one . I used subassemblies to great effect! SM

Thanks for the pictures, couple of follow ups: What altitude are you de-orbiting from, and what periapsis are you setting? If you are de-orbiting from say 500km, then you don't really wan't your periapsis much under 47km or you will lose control. If you're coming in from 1-200km you can go lower, but you want to try and bleed off as much speed as possible in the upper sections of the atmosphere. Shuttle's slamming into thick atmosphere at speed have a tendency to lose control without amazing balance or lots of SAS/RCS. With that in mind: Definitely install RCS, only the most finely balanced shuttles can de-orbit without it, but you'll need it for orbital operations anyway so may as well put it in now and use the increased stability. Install one large SAS ring at the front of the cargo bay if you haven't already (clip it into the cockpit using the offset tool if you want to hide it). If you are still having issues then post your craft file and I can have a tinker and see if I can help out some more. Thanks SM

@Gojira1000 that video had me in stitches, great work getting that thing to orbit though! I love at 2:12, it looks like Jebs arms are moving to the music. @Vegetal no worries at all! SM

1 m/s = 2.24 mph = 3.6 kph Orbital velocity at 100km = 2246.1 m/s x 3.6 = 8085.96 km/h = 2.2461 km/s +- 15 seconds at 2.2461 km/s = Maximum missed distance of 33.69 km each way. Now let's take a moment to laugh at how massively oversimplified and hence pointless my maths is....... It's certainly within the realm of possibility and obviously the above is an extreeeeemely simplified calculation that takes absolutely nothing into account, but if your profile is +- 15 seconds, and your going for an orbit of 100km, then you will travel possibly outside of your +-5km requirement each and every attempt, regardless how accurate the start of your launch is. Then again the above useless calculation would also show you are easily in the realm of being able to adjust yourself to within a km on the way up to 100km without wasting loads of fuel, so it is a worthwhile exercise on your part trying to figure out a very well defined launch time. Best luck with the accuracy, if you find a reliable way to do it let me know! I'll stick to my Hohmann transfers in the mean time SM

Just downloaded your craft file. Few issues here: 1) Your front landing gear is very slightly not straight, which is causing the left hand turn - I replaced it with one landing gear in the exact centre and it tracks true. 2) Your rear landing gear is way to far behind the centre of mass for the thing to pitch up off the runway, you need to bring them forwards, I did this for you. 3) Your centre of thrust is too high compared to the COL and COM, which causes the plane to pitch down when you go off the runway. The engines are also too weak for the job really. I changed them. I changed it for you to the point that it will fly, where you go from here is up to you. Certainly your bombs need to be rearranged, most of them crash into the place on the way out craft file Thanks SM

When your ship reaches Jool and is still this big:

Excellent news. No, no followers, They really only sent it to the Mun to get rid of it. SM

IMHO you should go for the i5 4690K and a much bigger graphics card with the money saved. You will notice a massive difference between a 2gb and a 4gb graphics card compared to the difference between the i5 and i7. Unless money isn't an issue, in which case get an i7 and a mahoosive graphics card My best advice - My opinion is one of many millions you can read and at some point you have to trust yourself to get it right. I got seriously twisted up in circles when building my new PC, and spent a huge amount of time researching what is good and what is not. There's a couple of amazing websites where you can spec up your potential build and then invite feedback from people who genuinely know what is going to be the best option for your budget, and they can be a great source of truth if you need reassurance in your decisions, maximizing your rig power to cost potential for you etc. Good luck with the build! SM

I know you are trying to achieve something very specific, and I can't answer that better than has already been answered, but an alternative is obviously to get into LKO @ say 80km, then Hohmann transfer up to target @ 100km using maneuver nodes. I've never been able to time launches very well so that's how I tend to go about it. Otherwise if I am trying to do the above I do a test launch, see how close I am, the relaunch, adjusting. The trial and error method in other words. 5thHorseman and Vanamonde, both well respected, prescribe to "trial and error", and "best nearly then adjust" in this thread so I don't think you are going to get a definitive way of hitting within 5km every single launch, especially with a space plane when your route to orbit is going to vary quite a lot depending on your launch profile. I think just focusing on cleanly getting to orbit, then Hohmann transfer to target efficiently might even use less fuel than a constantly adjusted flight profile to hit target at apoapsis at exactly the right moment. SM

Simply copy the letters/numbers after the last slash of the Imgur link, press the "i" button in the post editor (top right) and paste the jumble right in there. So for example: http://imgur.com/a/0zHHJ - you'd take the 0zHHJ bit, click on the "i" and paste, and heypresto: Good luck! SM

My threads (and others) appear to remain on zero views. SM

Emergency re-entry pods in case it goes Kraken-tastic. SM

I believe with the new aerodynamics squat and wide is now out, and tall and thin is in. Having said that, I recognise that squat and wide is better for lander stability so I would say: Either adjust your ascent profile to start your gravity turn later, or adjust the design of the lander. You really shouldn't need 6 SAS modules in something that small, so you probably have a COM issue. One solution could be: Get rid of those SAS modules - you don't need that many. Put one under the 1 man pod if you need the extra torque Use smaller decouplers to narrow the craft profile a little, and also you'd probably want those out-rigging tanks lower than the central tank, even if by a small amount, to create something more "pointy" asparagus to the middle tank with fuel lines so you can stage the large tanks sooner, decreasing your profile further. Someone with more Laythe experience than I will probably give you a more detailed answer, but this is a good start... SM

There's a few common reasons: COM vs COL not correctly balanced Incorrectly set up aerodynamics Re-entry too steep, or AoA not ideal Lack of control authority (SAS/RCS) Pictures would help massively in diagnosing your specific issue. SM

For me, just lots of forum browsing and searching, looking at and learning from other people's ideas. SM

If you turn the LY05 landing gear upside down it makes for a very good way of rolling your payloads out of your cargo bay with no explosions. Very useful for airdrops: SM

That's very cool! To embed an album copy the jumble of letter after the last slash in the link (in your imgur album's case EVPlp) then click on the "i" in the post editor here (top right icon) and paste the jumble of letters in. Hey presto you are gtg! SM

To get a Kerbal into the set simply walk near it, right click on the command seat and you will see an option to get in the chair. If you talking about "launching" but it has no Kerbals around to get in, you can attach a 2 man command pod (full) using a decoupler and then transfer the kerbals, decouple the 2 man pod, and away you go. For attaching this to a ship your best bet is to use either a small decoupler, or the smallest docking port. SM

I like the sound of this challenge. The destination is obviously easy, but as OP says it's not about that at all. It's about landing something on the Mun that is so outlandish that the average person simply goes . it welcomes hideously bloated launch vehicles, inventive engineering, and lots of fun. Only thing I could suggest for this challenge is possibly a points system based around maximizing the size and/or complexity of the craft, so for example number of bases/rovers etc landed at once, or total mass of lander etc etc. Anyway. Here's a Cathedral landing on the Mun. Excuse me Sir, do you have a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior, Kraken, god of the Kerbol System? SM

Haha yeah fair enough, I built it entirely without mechjeb, so I would have no idea what mj would do to something that wildly off centre, probably get's very confused. You get hunting when you start pushing the payload weight for sure even without mj. I might do some tests on the more reasonable 10-20t payloads and see if I can take some gimbal out of the engines, but I get the feeling it's required due to the Buran not firing engines on the way to space. Depending on what your hauling to space weight-wise you can pretty much just follow the launch profile in the OP, but obviously adjust as you require. If you are hauling really heavy cargo (42t heavy for example) then it does become very challenging, but for anything around 10-20t you should be looking at a hands free launch to space, apart from clicking prograde and staging at the right time, with a little bit of throttle control here and there. SM

OK cool I'll investigate at some point this weekend, thanks for the info. I think the problem is you can't be all things to all applications, so load in the cargo bay vs empty, the need for more powerful RCS on de-orbit, and the amount of fuel in the thing is all going to upset balance, but there has to be a "happy medium" that caters for most things. I always have SAS on during RCS jet maneuvers, so that's probably why I haven't noticed it. Maybe there's something I can do with action groups for varying situations.... SM

Awesome the Hubble challenge was superb, although not for the processor-ly challenged (I am one of the lucky ones)! I'm looking into STS 4-7 tonight, but will be totally overhauling my space station modules so may not get round to posting it until tomorrow or Sunday. The STS Challenge Certified badge is definitely something that I am interested in achieving. I can't lend a hand with designs unfortunately, as while I can design a craft, I cannot design a badge for hit... SM

I just use the standard docking controls wasd, ijkl, hn for docking and it always goes smoothly. Just make sure you set the "control from here' to the docking port! I might investigate the RCS jet placement having said that as this is good feedback, so thanks! Can you clarify under exactly what conditions, or what you were doing when docking, and I'll see if I can make it more user friendly. If I can I will update the craft files. Any other feedback you have would be gratefully received! Good to hear you enjoyed the craft, yes those jets pretty much save every one of missions, I am terrible at re-entry! I just completed another couple of interesting missions with the Buran. First up I did the STS-2 and then STS-3 missions from the Space Transportation System Challenge. achieving commander on both challenges. STS - 2 Mission: I took on the STS-2 Commander - Rank 2 - Reach an orbit of 350+km and deploy your two comsats with spin stabilization (using the provided Sepratrons) to geostationary orbits. Deorbit and land at either at the KSC, the Island Airfield just off of KSC, or at any Kerbal Konstructs airport. It was a pretty complex mission in terms of getting the staging and mission profile right, but de-orbit turned out to be a matter of reentry a couple of times, followed by a third down to the deck. I timed it well but had to kick the jets in for the last couple of km to the runway. The jets on the Buran really came into their own there! As a side note, if the comsats hadn't had solar panels, I definitely would have needed 2 of the photon fuel cell modules I developed last night. I might use them on the Hubble mission as a demonstrator of the technology. I think there's real mileage in that little sub-assembly, so I might also develop it further. STS - 3 Mission: Completed STS-3 with the rank of STS Commander - Rank 3. This was a relatively easy mission compared to the Comsat mission, although there was certainly difficulty in gauging a good re-entry profile from a 26.19 degree inclination and 691km orbit. Building the Kubble on orbit was a great mission, and credit to @xoknight for the payload, it really is a stunning bit of kit! STS 4-6 comes next, so I'm really going to work in improving my own space station modules, and see if I can mimic the usability and incredible detail of Inigma and xoknight's modules, in the hope of becoming "Architect" like them. SM