Pbhead

Frack kerbin. I need to deorbit my LV-Ns so i can easilly recollect all the blutonium, which is now easily collectible on kerbin's surface.

I can see the ant being useful to provide a moment to keep a non-symmetrical ship flying straight... Like a RCS port that is automatically on and in equal proportion to your main engine. It would take a long of engineering though.

34. recount all of these things so you actually are on the correct number. (next post should be number 35.) (lazerman, I dont think either is possible, because, correct me if i am wrong, but starting either at kerbin sea level for solar escape, or eve sea level for eve orbit... there will eventually be an altitude where wings no longer provide enough lift for you to keep going up, and a speed which gives too much drag for you to go faster.)

Define long time. The world burns 93 million barrels of oil a day... and we have been doing that for a long time, and can do it for at least another 40 years minimum (based on proven oil reserves.. but we have been saying we have 20-40 years left of oil for 120 years or so). I am not sure how that translates into the kerbal jet fuel tanks. There is enough thorium in the US alone to power the US for 700 years. I am not sure how that translates into LV-N usage... Now, kerbal is a much smaller planet than earth. but its also alot denser... and, we are not powering a world here, just a few rockets.

What I am a little worried about is the tech tree, and how that will work with this mining thing. because that tech tree said it would require resources. Which means, in order to build rockets, you need to be mining. Which means, There better eventually be ways to set up things to be automatic. Otherwise, if you have to mine and transfer resources manually... It will be like telling your SCVS/probes/drones to manually go out the the mineral patch. Then once it gets there, tell it to mine, then onces it is done mining, you gotta tell it to come back, and then once it is back, you gotta tell it to unload, and then you got to tell it to go back to the mineral patch. for every single worker. every time you want 5 minerals.

Thanks for the awesome reply Shanaia. I still want numbers, (lift/weight ratios, engine/weight ratios) but your post has given me some good ideas. I really like how you use lifting surfaces as covers over the fuel tanks and engines and such.

At one big jet engine per ten tons of weight you should throw out all your lifting surfaces, and just launch vertical..

So trying to build space planes, and it always seems that no matter how much wing I put on, I dont put on enough wing, until I make it a biplane or triplane. What is the angle of attack you all use for takeoff, (how do you achieve that angle of attack without messing up cog to much... whole pile of cubic struts?) how many turbojet engines/weight, and how many "lift units" per weight do your planes end up having? (Because the space plane tutorials in the sticky are really kinda pathetic.)

which... is a suicide burn. but a fantastic way to describe a suicide burn.

ya. i know its mostly hotair, its still great though. Thanks for the complements, and they are most certainly monstrosities. Even more so on the launch pad! I think I posted the eve lander in the VAB on the forums somewhere, yes. Link That is a little old, The final one that launched had 24 more orange tanks and a billion more struts. or so. Here are the craft files, if you are as nuts as I am. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36550973/eve%20drive%20unit%20mk%202.craft https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36550973/eve%20lander%203.craft Interesting that you turned the lights off at night time. i found them helpful for that part. That was a fantastic video, thanks for streaming it!

well. i know what i am doing for the next two hours! This is hilarious and great btw. Very impressed you managed to get it in two hours, it took me a lot longer than that for me to fail multiple times. When I pressed the quicksave I had here actually had the ships closer, but when i reloaded the quicksave (after running out of rcs), it seems that the ships decided to move to their positions in that screen shot. The legs are for landing on eve. There are action groups... but nothing that has to do with RCS. biggest one is the giant ladder staircase which is hotkeyed to 5. this is great. contining to watch. rtgs are less laggy than panels? interesting, and probably worth the weight. ah haha. i am sorry you dont like me. D: ya. definitely going to add more RCS ports on all future designs.

ok. so everyone knows, more boosters, more struts. but really, this ends up with ships with really high part counts. I am curious on what you all have found to be the optimal methods of placing your struts such that: 1. your ship doesnt blow up 2. your part count is not double or trippled from what it was pre-struts. Does strut placement direction matter? is it better to place the base of the struts from the engine to the payload, or from the payload to the engine? Is it better for lag purposes to strut from the initial stages to the final stages? does the game stop keeping track of a strut if the base of the strut is now off the rocket? Is more struts always better? I have found that sometimes, placing more struts actually causes the rocket to blow up more frequently, perhaps because by making one area of the rocket stiffer, force was redirected to a less stiff location? Something I have found useful, is placing struts between my tanks. literally. move the camera so that the camera is in one tank, place the strut on the top of the other tank, zoom out, and place the strut on the "top" of the second tank, which, cant reach the top of the second tank, and we end up with a super small strut connecting the very middle of the two tanks. Anyway. How do you all strut? we really should assemble some sort of guide.

Wow, and congratulations! Your points calculate out to be 776.5 And i dont see any damaged bits. so seriously. wow. Do you have any hints or tips on how you did it?

Oh, thats. ah. hmm. Ok. very sorry. I have updated the file. removed all the other flights, so it should be good now.

SO. here is a challenge thread. The goal is simple: Dock two ships/parts/stations/separate things which are DAMN HARD to dock. This will be updated as time passes with new challenges that either or come up with, or you come up with. So if you have an idea, or a challenge, you can PM me, or post in this thread, and we can work it into this OP. Your score will be based upon how much mono you have left at docking, normalized to 500 points based upon how much fuel there originally was, with a 500 point bonus for actually docking. (example: 750 fuel, 250 used, score: 833.) . Higher is obviously better, with 1000 points being no-fuel-used-how-the-hell and 500 points being running-on-fumes-but-got-it! Damage or excessive main engine fuel lost fuel is sub-optimal, and score will be reduced by 25% for superficial damage, (damaged solar panels and the like), or a 50% reduction for damage which would cause mission failure. Not docking will result in a score of zero. Docking challenge 1: Commander: We have a problem. Our EVE lander, the most overly engineered ship in the fleet barely made it into orbit. On the final ascent stage, someone seemed to have licked one of the orange flavored rockomax fuel tanks. We did not catch this, because is was so high up on the launch pad, that it was a little hard to reach. We think that the frozen tongue matter left up there by tasting said fuel tank somehow caused a structural weakness. The result: While our incredibly brave kerbalnaut began the final maneuvers to enter into a parking orbit, the tank exploded, causing the ship to become unbalanced, in an horrific spin, and in an orbit which would cause cause the craft to reenter the atmosphere. Fortunately, our fast thinking kerbalnaut was able to jettison the stricken stage, and use the fuel of the first stage of the lander to get the still-spinning ship into a stable orbit by burst-firing the engines when the ship was aimed pro-grade. However, this used up far to much fuel for the mission to still be successful without refueling. It is currently sitting in an orbit with an apogee of approximately 125k meters, and a perigee of 71k meters. and has since been wrestled out of its spin. Our engineers came up with a solution. The drive unit which was planned to be attached was also launched with a few extra fuel tanks, such that the extra fuel may be reused to top off the lander. The kerbalnauts sent up with the engine section have managed to get the ships within paint scratching distance, but here lies the problem: After multiple failed docking attempts, our brave heroes have been unable to get the ships to dock. We imagine it is due to the constant screaming, and nothing to do with the RCS system designed for when the ships were docked together, without 8 extra orange fuel tanks, and not as separate units. Nevertheless, we need these ships docked to rescue the mission! The ships still have about half their RCS fuel tanks left, but the lander has much smaller reserves than the drive unit. but we think you are up to the task! Here is the situation: Here is the file: FILE: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36550973/quicksave.sfs (simply start a new game, place that file into the saves folder, and then press F9 from an f9able location (put a probe core out onto the launch pad). ) Notes: these ships are completely stock, version .20. The ships in question are eve lander and drive unit. Hint: if you can manage to get just one of the docking ports docked, you can refuel the lander, and then jettison the refueling stage, which should make the drive section much more manageable to dock properly. Another possibility: docking becomes a little easier the higher, and more circular the orbits, if you want to take the time, you can take both ships up to better orbits, which should be totally fine as long as there remains about 50,000 oxidizer in total. I probably wont notice if you launch a third ship with extra fuel, and honestly even if I did, I think that would be pretty smooth of you. Requirements: Please post a screenshot of Resources remaining, and the save file of the docked ships. Anything else you would like to post for posterity sake, is fine as well. My own attempts: so close. Good luck! You will need it! Note: Initial fuel in save file: 1159. Leader board: 1. Soranno: 776.5 2. 3. 4. Losers Couch: 1. Pbhead score: 0 2. 3. The OMG LAG WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?! board: 1. 2. 3. Yes this is totally a thinly disguised way to get you guys to dock my ships for me. shhhh...

I have felt that it has been less forgiving. trying to put a skipper in serial with a mainsail causes horrible horrible things for me for some reason.

So. basically. Its getting a little hard to work on my rocket to plant a flag at sea level on eve, and (hopefully) return home safely. yep. oh. wait. did you want to see the rocket? ~600 parts before i start some serious strutting if you are curious. and I am not totally sure if I am done adding fuel tanks/ mainsails yet... It doesnt have an interplanetary stage... It (in theory) gets the lander into orbit, and the lander should be able to get off eve, but, getting to eve is not quite possible yet. oops. but thats what the docking ports on top are for. refueling, and a drive unit. note: the sepratrons on the emergency almost-anywhere-back-to-kerbin-abort-button-has-a-purpose system messes up the isp, and thus the delta V on that last stage is not quite right. My favorite part of this rocket is that on the eve ascent, there are 7 mainsails, and when 2 are dropped, three aerospikes above them are turend on, until there is 18 aerospikes, and 1 mainsails firing, then the final mainsail is dropped and replaced with a nuke, before the aerospikes start asparagusing. in theory. So. of course. My question is: What is the highest amount of stages you have put on your rocket?

umm. in the screenshots, i was not decoupling. no spacebar pressed. they were not supposed to be decoupling at all. and infact they are not. nothing is breaking until tanks are doing quite well at being in the the same location at the same time.

well. ya. struts. but. none of the bonds "break" in the way they usually do until after the rockets have flipped upside down. It is just wierd, because usually it takes a second ring of asparagus before things get funky on the launch pad, and usually then it is just failure between rockmaxx 32 and 64, and then collisions which delete a stack. and it is just the inner ring of launch stabalizers, I put more on the outside on the outer rings of asparagus, when i place the outer rings of asparagus. Its just weird is all, but i am still preety newbish here. but i like to minimize struts if at all possible, and i am wondering if this means, even more struts.

Is it just me or do the tt-70 radial decouplers not quite seem to act. as i would expect. I noticed oddities when i swapped up to .2 from my .19 craft files, so i thought id try to rebuild from scratch. and that happened.

something other than a kerbal cannon!! quite impressive! do you have a craft file for that?

ok. so. here is a question. if i were to build a computer to optimally run KSP, what would it look like? lets pretend money is not an object.

Oh hey. i built a horizontal ssto that goes to the mun and back. I also have a huge ssto which carries that first ssto as a payload, hopefully out to laythe and back as soon as my launch window comes up. What are the documentation requirements here?

Saddam wasnt assassinated. he was tried and convicted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein "The execution of Saddam Hussein took place on Saturday 30 December 2006. Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, after being found guilty and convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ite in the town of Dujail in 1982." oh. you meant Gerald Bull ? nvm then.

material scientist here. Let me tell you that hydrogen embrittlement of metals is a HUGE thing we have to deal with and/or be mindful of. And if you dont de-gas all the hydrogen out of molten aluminum before you cast it, it ends up looking like swiss cheese.