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Brun

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Posts posted by Brun

    Explain: What changed in Shuttle design that made it less effecient than intended?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by Brun

    The Shuttle ended up being very financially inefficient (i.e. it ended up costing more to operate than expected), in addition to technically inefficient, and it's this financial inefficiency that people often talk about when criticizing the shuttle. The biggest reason for the added expense is that the Department of Defense (which helped fund shuttle development and had considerable input on its final design) was expected to make regular use of the shuttle and, by doing so, partially subsidize its operations. When Challenger happened in '86, the shuttle fleet was grounded for over two years. This meant that several DoD payloads that only the shuttle could carry were also grounded, and that frustrated the DoD greatly. There were also other high-profile DoD launch failures around that same time (a Delta and 2 Titan failures, both carrying DoD payload), and combined with Challenger it really made the DoD worry about its ability to reliably deliver payloads to orbit, without long downtime caused by mishaps. So, the DoD bowed out and pursued their own launch vehicles. Without DoD money coming in the cost for all future launches went way up.

    (Not to cast the DoD in a bad light here - they didn't just wait for the first mishap and bail on the shuttle program. The exact situation caused by the Challenger disaster had been something they had feared since the very beginning.)

    EDIT: I know you asked about the shuttle's design specifically, but the operations side of things was also hugely important to the Shuttle's efficiency problems. While it was technically overdesigned for civil and science work, that alone didn't really kill the Shuttle's efficiency, since those tradeoffs were expected to be paid for by carrying DoD payloads. The DoD dropping out of the program is really what hurt it most, more than any single design aspect.

    [1.1.2] KSPRC - Renaissance Compilation: artworks remake [V-0.7 Pre Release 3]

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    It's a bit more complicated than that, Finder (the Mac equivalent of Explorer, NOT Internet Explorer) (used) to give you multiple options when copying and pasting: Replace, Stop, Merge, Keep Both, and Skip, the problem is that in a more recent version of Mac OS X, the Merge option "vanished", so basically I'm screwed (and it's because of Bill Gates). And can we STOP having the ****ING Mac vs. PC fight! It seems like every thread has had this fight at least once, can we please stop.

    While I'm completely unfamiliar with Macs (my specialties are PC and Linux), I do know Macs are UNIX-based and have a (mostly) POSIX-compliant shell language. Is there any way you could use the terminal to do something like:


    cp -Rf KSPRC/* KSP

    Where KSPRC is the extracted KSPRC folder and KSP is your normal KSP directory?

    Is it possible to launch a Kerbal out of the atmoshphere without taking launcher too?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    That definitely complicates things then, for it to work exactly as I hope this way the Kerbal would have to leave the atmosphere at a fairly specific point, retaining the needed velocity, but not too much or to little. I can imagine it would be like finding a needle in a haystack in terms of getting the perfect velocity. Annoyingly, this would also prive the optimal shot though, since the Kerbal would be directly leaving the planet.

    I'm going to have to see what happen's but it definitely is looking like a hard target to hit.

    Indeed, I imagine that there's a very narrow sweet spot you'd have to hit, which might not be possible with the stock decoupler forces, even if you mix and match different decouplers to fine tune your force at launch.

    Career Duna Landing help

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Brun

    I was actually planning to send a giant mothership into orbit around Duna, send the lander down and return to kerbin with the lander alone. I have the equivalent of five FL-T800 on my lander, and I'm fairly confident it can get back to kerbin alone.

    You'd be surprised - regular rockets get significantly less efficient in atmospheres, so you will use up a lot more fuel just due to engine inefficiency on ascent from Duna, not to mention the extra to counteract drag.

    This really would be a lot easier if you could dock with that mothership.

    Is it possible to launch a Kerbal out of the atmoshphere without taking launcher too?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    True, but I may be able to use timewarp to force them to clip under the launch pad and hopefully simulate that same thrust. Not actually sure what my part limit is yet on my PC, but with an i7 2600k I should be within a shot I hope. Otherwise we're talking supercomputer processors.

    My main hope is if it does incur serious FPS problems then the shot should be positioned ready and the Kerbal will be far enough for the debris to not be calculated while recording the shot. I still have the challenge of positioning a ship in an almost perfect geostationary orbit above the launch pad with this method unless there is some other camera control mods om currently unaware of

    I think that by the time you're able to get a Kerbal out of the atmosphere with this technique he'll already be on a interplanetary or even interstellar escape trajectory. In my the tests that didn't result in vanishing debris/Kerbals, the decouplers would accelerate the debris to tens of thousands of m/s (found by viewing the flight status page) but it would very rapidly decay in Kerbin's atmosphere, so they'd really only be going that fast for a fraction of a second. His trick was to get the debris/Kerbal going so fast that the travel distance during that fraction of a second would place it outside of Kerbin's atmosphere.

    Filling The Moholes with Asteroids

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Guys, apparently many of you do not understand how notoriously difficult even regular mission to Moho can be. This planet is a d*** :( Any maneuver so deep in Kerbol's gravity well costs a lot of fuel. I start to feel moderately safe only if my ship carries about 10 000 dV. Good luck packing so much dV on a asteroid tug.

    Best way to do it would probably be to get clever with Eve gravity assists.

    Career Duna Landing help

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    The main thing you'll have to account for after that is having the delta-v to transfer back to Kerbin, though again, considering you can aerobrake and reenter at your destination, this still ends up being a relatively cheap expense on the delta-v budget by comparison.

    He can also (theoretically) get gravity assists in both directions (from Ike and Mun), and maximize those by thrusting at his Ike-ar/Munar periapses. He could shave off 2km/s (500 m/s for each gravity assist) if he managed to catch both Ike and Mun in the right place, but that's getting very very lucky.

    Is it possible to launch a Kerbal out of the atmoshphere without taking launcher too?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Now that is the sort of idea I was initially toying with. Hmmmm, perhaps using timewarp I could replicate the clipping effect to cause the bug to occur again. I'm going to have to give it a shot tomorrow since I'm out of reach of my main computer now, but unless they adjusted the physics behavior when below the surface I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work. Danny seems to be using similar bugs with decouplers as recently as .23 so here's to hoping!

    You won't need to use timewarp to get the decouplers to clip. They'll happily clip each other in the VAB, no devcheats necessary. The real issue is getting enough of them slapped together without melting your CPU.

    Career Duna Landing help

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Landing on Eve can, and usually is much easier, even with the gravity. This is because it has an atmosphere thick enough for 'chutes to actually work in. On Duna your choices are add infinity + 1 parachutes, a powered landing, or a combination of parachutes and powered landing.

    I definitely wouldn't recommend going to Eve. He's specifically planning a return mission and given that a return from Eve is pretty much the single most challenging thing you can do in KSP it's probably not a good thing to attempt with only half the tech tree unlocked.

    Is it possible to launch a Kerbal out of the atmoshphere without taking launcher too?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Brun

    So, not sure if you've seen this:

    I've been unable to reproduce that since he made the video. It could be that Squad fixed or otherwise made this undoable in subsequent versions of KSP, or that my computer just doesn't handle these things properly (my Kerbals mysteriously disappear when I launch).

    EDIT: Note that's not me in the video, just one I found :P.

    Career Duna Landing help

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted · Edited by Brun

    If you really try to scrape up every little bit of science on Mun and Minmus, you should be able to unlock most of the tech tree without leaving the Kerbin system - or so I've heard. I definitely didn't do it that way on my latest career save, so I'm unable to say for sure if that's possible.

    I don't have a stock ship that can make that trip, but I can tell you now that having the nuclear engines will make your life considerably easier, particularly in the "room for error" department.

    EDIT: Also I'm assuming you plan to adopt a Mothership+Lander model for this mission, since that's probably the easiest way to go for interplanetary missions like this. If you're uncomfortable with rendezvous and docking, you'll need to make a relatively powerful lifter that can carry both your mothership and your lander into Kerbin's orbit in one launch.

    EDIT 2: Actually, if you went Mothership+Lander you'd still need to do a rendezvous and dock (on the return leg). So you're talking a pretty massive craft, especially since nukes are pretty worthless for atmospheric flight.

    [1.1.2] KSPRC - Renaissance Compilation: artworks remake [V-0.7 Pre Release 3]

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted

    OK. I will try to rework that. Should be a subtle glow only barely visible in daytime, caused by the light reflection in the surface. But seems like the DOE black sky effect in surfaces reduces the effecto to a grey gradient... Should be fixed in the next update.

    I'll try to do a bit more poking around on my end as well. This wasn't exactly on a clean install although I mostly use part packs (the only visual enhancement mods I use were already on your list :D). When I get home tomorrow I'll grab a clean install and verify that I'm still seeing it there.

    [1.1.2] KSPRC - Renaissance Compilation: artworks remake [V-0.7 Pre Release 3]

    in KSP1 Mod Releases

    Posted · Edited by Brun

    Anyone else getting weird "atmospheres" over bodies that definitely don't have atmospheres? I think it has to do with DOE, but I'm not sure. This may have to do with what Motokid was saying, that "blue haze" that snaps in, except it's grey on bodies like Mun or Ike. Very noticeable in both map view and from the body's surface.

    EDIT: Pretty sure it's not DOE, but it's something. Give me a bit and I can post a screenshot.

    EDIT 2: Screenshots below. The first is a flag I have on the Mun's surface, the second is a map shot. Note that the first picture is a full on day-side (i.e. in full sunlight) shot.

    EDIT 2, part deux: Switched to imgur link.

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