Lexif

The light curve image doesn't seem to load currently. I guess it's still too early for naked eye sightings? We might have good weather tomorrow morning, which is rare in November. The Moon seems OK, too, so I thought I might try to take a picture of it. But I'm not confident, it tends to be foggy here in the morning and the comet is now very low above the horizon. I might have to wait until it returns on the evening sky. About the Mars flyby: The observation calender on the Ison Campaign Group site shows extensive observations by MRO and Mars Express about 6 weeks ago. I was able to find some disappointing images from MRO, but nothing from Mars Express yet. I also learned from the calendar that MESSENGER will observe ISON from Mercury, and of course SOHO and the STEREO probes also got their eyes on it. I think it's mindblowing that we are able to observe a comet from 3 different planets and from earth orbit on the opposite side of the sun (STEREO) as it passes by.

Yeah, this should be in the thread starter: I guess your shield just overheated faster than it could dissipate the heat by ablating, though I'm not sure this is working as designed?

Do you get destroyed by the deceleration or do you burn up? (What does the post-flight log say?) Generally, if you reenter steeper, forces become limiting, and if you reenter shallower, overhearing sets the limit. You have to find the right balance.Edit: Ferram4 says he's working on the pod aerodynamics. Last point: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-22-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-9-7-Aerodynamics-Fixes-For-Planes-Rockets?p=759385&viewfull=1#post759385

Drag also should not depend on mass. But that's exactly where the aerodynamic model of KSP goes wrong, as in KSP drag is proportional to mass (everything else being equal). Try dropping full and empty, otherwise identical, fuel tanks. So your test is valid. Get well soon!

Did you maybe confuse it with the ESA/ASTRIUM-provided service module? I was under the impression that that's just a deal that buys Europe seats for some of their astronauts...are you Americans not all about free markets and capitalism? Just kidding...

It doesn't matter as Kerbin is, unlike earth, a perfect sphere when it comes to gravity.

Just click on the part in the research tree and it will ask you if you want to research it, I think.

And the Stardust sample return capsule encountered and survived a maximum of 38 g! Seriously, those comparisons are pretty arbitary. In reality, it's just a matter of designing your vessel for the expected forces. That's why I like the limit for Kerbals -- if they are like humans, there's only so much you can do to make them tolerate more force, providing some kind of reasonable hard limit.

SRV Ron, as your tanks empty from top to bottom, your center of mass moves back. Your payload and upper stage are very light, so your center of mass will move behind your center of drag. When this happens, your rocket wants to fly backwards if drag is properly implemented (FAR). The solution is to add control surfaces at the tail end, move your center of mass up (maybe even ballast at the top), and decrease drag on the nose (fairing). Maybe also change your staging. Try looking at the lift and center of mass indicators in the VAB.

I didn't yet test the new version, but maybe what I so far used with the old version helps: I have a design for a lander to return science stuff from the moon with a small capsule with two radial parachutes. Below that is a small material science lab, with a girder mounted below. I attach the legs to the girder so that they deploy below and outward past the small heat shield at the end of the girder. There are two goo containers on it pointing inwards into the girder. (No part clipping cheat, I just turn them around in the VAB.) I only tested it in Kerbin orbit, but I plan to radially mount two small tanks to the girder that will be dropped before reentry. They will feed a small engine below the heat shield that I don't expect to survive reentry. The hard part was to balance it out for reentry with FAR so that in reenters heat shield forward. It tends to switch around just below mach 6 just after the heat drops, and the radial acceleration nearly tears it apart.

Might be this one: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/21-x-engineer-redux-stock-pods/

The small capsule has an integrated heat shield, but making the heat shields available when you get the pods is just a one-line config edit. It sounds like you are not reentering steep enough, and because of that you propably go through all your ablative before your final reentry. I only tried it with the large capsule and with FAR, but direct reentry from the Mün is easily doable. Can't say anything about default aerodynamics, so I can't say why your capsule wants to go pointy end first. But with FAR, it feels like it has two stable positions, the right one and parachute first. Maybe make sure you have energy in your capsule so you have the torque available to keep it straight? I lost one Kerbal that way because I forgot to transfer the energy from the service module to the capsule before separation.

Yes, I agree with your points. Keep it simple. Focus on the challenge to have a com network available when your probe needs input. And make it so that you have to design your craft in a way that there's an incentive to use the smaller antennas, either to keep power demands low or because larger antennas are hard to package and heavy. I would like the integration with sending scientifical data a lot, though. For me, the new research mechanism is the logical point for RT to tie into the game. It seems to me that in historical real-life space exploration pre-programmed control of probes was available pretty early on, and transmitting your data back to earth was more of a motivation to make networks of relay stations and satellites. It also just seems to be the logical point to tie RT into the current state of the game, expanding on a mechanism that is already in the game now. Though I agree with Dexter, don't rush that. The most important point is to get the connectivity working. It might also be important to get the list of parts needed stable early on to lessen the pain when upgrades come along. The rest can follow and people will most likely be able to continue to use the networks they built with your first new version, so an expansion of the features will propably be painless for the user.

I like it a lot so far. Looking back onto past versions (not just the last), the game feels much more polished now. To me, it gets really obvious that a lot of ground work was done to develop the game into the right direction. Sure, career mode sorely needs missions to structure it more for the new player, and money to restrain progress a bit and balance the experience more. But we all know that this will be the focus of the next major updates. Also, the science stuff adds so much of that specific Kerbal flavour... I think that was much needed as there wasn't that much focus on improving that "branding" in the last updates. Also, the new KSC experience seems much improved now compared to the last version. I really like how they worked out a lot of the kinks that break immersion: a lighted runway was much needed, all the new roads that now have bridges etc. above pipes and other obstacles... This makes me look back at the state of the current demo (0.18) -- there should really be a new demo after the next upgrade or so, the whole game feels much different (in a good way) now. I also like how they only added biome maps to the Mün and Kerbin so far... it seems like a smart decision to get that out to us and to wait for feedback instead of doing it all at once and redoing it again when problems become apparent.

Of course you could, but I had a probe on Eeloo before I even had a Kerbal on another planet. So putting a command station in Jool orbit wouldn't have fit into my space program.

No, if a part is destroyed because of the g-force limits, it should show up as such in the post-flight log.

Haha, yeah, you're right. But I didn't look at my Mach number when i got the parachutes out -- I actually don't know what Mach 1 is at 6 km with far. Also, looking at my screenshots, for my reentry maximum g was about when the heat died down and my shield was ablated. The more I think about it, I usually just wait until I think that my decceleration is somewhat lacking and half-deploy the chutes at that point to help. (Or when I'm starting to panic... ) Never had any problems with that. Edited to say: I guess it's better to get the chutes out earlier, at least for the simple "capsule reentry at high speed", their half-deployed drag is not that high, and the drag will help to lessen the shock of them fully deploying. But the drogue parachute is a good alternative if that isn't enough, as jrandom says. This radial drogue mod is quite the improvement for that.

Yes, I deployed the chutes when I went somewhat below 600 m/s and that slowed me down enough to survive full deployment at 500 m (or 1000 m above sea level in my case). The parachutes won't burn off once the thermal effects are gone, there's no reason to wait to get below Mach 1.

So I tried your setup, Birrhan. Nothing was destroyed. First, about the craft. After flying, I just had a look at the CoL-indicator in the VAB. I balanced the masses, but the CoL is pretty far set off to the side by the RTG. With just shield/pod/radial parachutes/docking port, the CoL is just a tiny bit higher than the CoM, and centered. With this combo, the CoL travels pretty far up (which should be good, right?), but also to the side. Here is a pic: Then, I didn't drain the tank, but mass wasn't the problem. I had a look and my old standard ship with an SAS below the docking port and three radial parachutes, and it comes in at 6180 kg, about 700 kg more than this capsule setup. So, how did it go? I went for a 5200 km x 12 km orbit. The capsule wanted to roll over, but the internal SAS was able to keep it below 15° deflection. I lost all of the ablative at about 13 km, like you, but the temp on the shield never went above 1090° because at that point peak heating was over. Maximum deceleration was about 6.2 g, but that didn't do damage. I pulled the two chutes out at about 5 km (I landed at about 500m above the sea), doing maybe 400--500 m/s. Didn't get the exact numbers, but at 6.2 km I was doing 554 m/s, and shortly after the chutes half-deployed, I was at 4.2 km doing 370 m/s. At 550 m above ground, before full deployment, I got 160 m/s. The only groaning sounds came when the chutes fully came out. An after flight inspection by Hadster Kerman, my dumbest Kerbal (and therefore, most qualified test pilot) revealed "critical damage" to the RTG and "severe damage" for the batteries. The parachutes and the pod showed moderate damage at most. Here is an imgur-album with some snapshots. (How do I embed the album so nicely, as some people seem to be able to do?) http://imgur.com/a/bBDl4

In the old version (1), you could adjust the speed of light in a config file. I don't know about v2. I increased it a lot because there was just no way to land a probe on, say, Eeloo, and needing a signal connection provided enough of a challenge to me.

Is that - Pod w. shield & docking port - RTG, roundified monoprop tank and small battery stuck near the top, balanced(!) - 2 radial parachutes? Because that is 5,5 t for me, but I'm not sure if Ioncross Crew Support adds some mass to the pod. I'm going to try it this evening and tell you the result. But if you flip over, it surely is because of the crap that's stuck to the pod. With only a shield, a docking port and three parachutes, it's aerodynamically stable with the shield forward, FAR takes care of that. I don't even use SAS once I'm feeling the drag. Edit: If you're burning up, a lower PE will help. If you're experiencing g-force destruction, a higher PE is needed.

The real elephant in the room for this project is: How do you get companies to invest a publicity budget close to the GDP of a not-so-small nation into a project that is so likely to end in a desaster? Who would want to associate themselves with this project to this extent? It's crazy. There's just no way this is going to work out.

Of course Mars One is a scam -- or if it's not a scam, it's terribly misguided. I don't even talk about all the space exploration stuff. I say it's doomed to fail as a commerical product. Who would want to sign on as the sponsor of a one way mission to Mars? You can sell the reality TV show that will be the selection process for the candidates, and that's the best that the people that signed up for this can hope for. The part where they get missions in support of the program rolling might also be quite juicy, but if you do the calculations, how are the going to return the money? By then, I'm sure that they count on having some kind of political support, where governments are going to chip in if they are going to fail, but I don't see it happening. Every government that supports this will have to deal with the political fallout when people will die and they will feel pressured to send a rescue mission, but those governments will gain none of the propaganda glory that comes with starting it themselves, they just risk being seen as not doing enough. So why would they chip in? This might do space exploration a huge disservice as it could put governments into a position to say that going to Mars is just not worth it, because someone messed it up and ruined the public perception of it. And in the end, the whole thing will be called off at the astronaut selection stage because that kind of show is just too boring as a TV program, let's face it. And if it becomes a success at that stage, rivaling shows might pop up that do something similar, but cheaper, like selecting candidates to set up a colony in Antarctica. It would get you the same social dynamics, but with costs several order of magnitudes less that the Mars One program. Which takes me to my personal problem with those that propose colonisation of other planets... I just can't take any program serious that's not trying to establish an independant colony on earth as a test. If you propose a program to go to Mars that doesn't include a proving run where people spend the same time in a closed off environment on earth or in earth orbit, you are doing it wrong. People here naturally focus on space. But what about first establishing an autonomous colony in LEO, Antarctica, on Mount Everest or in the oceans? If it's so easy, it should be no problem. But actually, there's not even a single successfull attempt to really colonize the parts of earth that don't support human life. If you can survive in Antarctica, at the top of an 8000 m high mountain, or at the bottom of the ocean for a few years without help from the outside, we can talk. I'm sure the vistas there will be just as nice as on Mars.

I agree with Dappa. Also, would you really build a dish like this? Wouldn't you save the weight of the support beam structure if the clamshell is build the other way around? I must say I would really miss the golden dish, it looked just right on Voyager-type probes.

Normally, you should be able to just point your dish at Kerbin once you are out of its SOI. There needs to be a dish in Kerbin's SOI that is pointed at your ship and in range. I never tried manned ships outside of Kerbin's SOI, though, only probes.