maccollo

Thanks The parts are from my "Spice Launch System" mod. When they are done I might use it to a manned mission to Mars, one that isn't silly and ludicrous. I don't think I can top the Venus video though. Keep up the good work on this mod! RSS is just not the same without it.

32 bit ksp on windows 7.

Got this the 1.04 version working a few days ago, and I just can't enjoy RSS propperly without this mod.

I began to work on this mod to allow myself to simulate the best launch capacity that is likely to exist in the near future, so I'm definitely adding the dark knight boosters since there's a reasonable chance that those will be made. If they wont get made that the most probable reason is that the SLS program was cancelled. Adding in USA functionality shouldn't take to much work, so I will most likely be doing that as well, but I'm not going to be modelling any payloads, so I will have to see what Orion mods are available.

If you are going to Moho then forget about regular transfer windows. Instead just wait until Kerbin is in opposition to Moho's periapsis. Launch at midday with a heading of something like 110 degrees instead of 90, that's is 20 degrees south of eastwards. Then just perform your escape burn. When you reach periapsis around kerbol Moho probably wont be there, but you should be able to perform a burn that gives you an encounter one or two orbits later.

If you drop the propellant load on the core stage you also lower the deltaV significantly. The ascent is slightly more efficient but it doesn't make up for the loss in deltaV. The core TWR isn't super high, but it is manageable. The real limit for massive payloads to LEO is the EUS. This can be mitigated by launching it half empty, but I recall the SLS program manager said that if they're launching to LEO they would launch with the EUS completely empty, which puts the max payload at about 90 tonnes. Anyway, I decided the throw in a couple more missing parts, and I'm again running into problems. I got the decoupler in, and it is super weak and struts are completely ineffective. I put one right at the top where the thrust beam is located, and it does absolutely nothing at all :/ Edit* Managed to fix it. Apparently the mass of the parent part has a huge impact on the strength of the conection. If I attach it to the hydrogen tank, the most massive part of the stack, the conection is nice and stiff, and I can launch at 4x time acceleration with no problem. This isn't where the seperation ring is supposed to be attached, so I just offset the surface attach node so that it could appear to be attached to the bottom of the stack while actually being attached to the hydrogen tank.

Finally, after much wrestling with the part configs, I got my SLS parts to work properly.

@TheShadow1138 Worked like magic! Thanks! After I implemented it everything else kind of broke down when I updated to the most recent version of real fuels, so I spent an entire day trying to figure out the configs. Now it works though, and besides some minor components that must be borrowed it can now throw things. Here I launched a space station to the moon. altough after I finished the TLI burn I realized that I forgot to use a pressurized tank for the lunar orbit injection burn, so... No spice flowed to the moon this day. Anyway, as you can see, TWR isn't exactly abundant in this launch system. After booster separation it has to fight gravity really, really hard. The whole flight to LEO takes 17 minutes for TLI payloads like this. @_Augustus_ Oh certainly, but I don't have time to focus on that ATM. first and foremost I wanted to finish all the parts. With my temporary victory against the part configs I'm gonna go back to texturing the parts that are already in, but if someone makes a scaled down config for stock I'd gladly stick in OP Here's the current state of if anyone wants to play around with it, maybe try to throw a lander to Europa! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22015656/SpiceLaunchSystem.rar

The interstage is part of the EUS tank. I figured out why it disappeared though, it's a setting in the RO main config with regards to the moduleJettison function. When I commented out that section the interstage remains visible after staging. I didn't set up a thrust transform for the fairings. Is that necessary for all decouplers?

Help would be very much appreciated ^^. Here's the whole stack in KSP. Can't view the whole thing when it's vertical so I have to put it on it's side. If it weren't for the fairings smashing the rocket upon separation, and the EUS interstage disappearing, and the particle effects being completely out of wack I could release and update. I'm gonna have to throw in a temporary color texture on all the untextured parts. That white default material hurts my eyes >.< Here are two of the problems I just can't seem to sort out. The interstage mesh correctly displays in the VAB and initially during flight, but as soon as I stage it goes away. The fairing is a bit more critical however. I've been trying to get the impulse direction to point sideways, but whatever I do it seems determined to shoot itself downwards to collide with the rocket at maximum speed, often destroying what it hits :/

I did make some progress actually. I basically have most of the big stuff modelled, although some of it is very crude. I need to make a detailed model of the RS25 though... The thought of doing that is somewhat daunting after the RL10. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22015656/SLSModel.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22015656/SLSModel2.png I tried to implement these parts into the game, but I'm having problems getting things to work properly, I as always do :/

This was the lightest one I managed to make that could take off from sea level. It has a mass of about 60 tonnes at lift off. The landing landing gear are great because they have a very high impact tolerance.

Almost completed upgrading KSC in my 64k career save. Also completed all the exploration contracts. Not sure how much further I'm gonna push this. I mean the exploration contracts are unique and interesting. The rest is just randomly generated crap I only did when I really needed funds, but once I've upgraded everything I wont have a reading to do that any more :/

Delta V requirements are √6.4, or about 2.5 times higher than stock. Getting from Gilly to low Moho orbit is going to take about 8 km/s. With the budget restraints of career mode using the ion engine basically became a necessity once I got the "explore dres" contract. ISRU will be useful, especially if I ever move my manned program out to Jool, but without ion engines there's no way I could even afford to haul the ISRU plant around the solar system.

Getting to the surface of Moho in 64k requires 20 km/s of deltaV from Kerbin orbit, and dropping down from Minmus to a close pass around Kerbin takes 850 m/s. I can see ISRU being extremly useful in stock KSP because it might be possible use it to jump from the surface of one body to another, refuel and repeat. This option is far more limited in 64k. It will be useful once I start base building though.

Explored moho in my 64k career save. The ion engine allowed me to do the contract while still getting 400 000 funds in profit. Ion engines should be worshiped. The long burn times can be somewhat daunting, but there's no way I would have been able to progress further with chemical engines, or even the nuclear engine.

I got it working by editing these lines in the contracts config. TrivialHomeNearbyRange = 2000 SignificantHomeNearbyRange = 4000 ExceptionalHomeNearbyRange = 6000 I just multiplied each one by 100. It supposedly makes surveying contracts tricky or something, but I don't do those so I wouldn't know =P https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus/issues/48

I'm currently playing cereer mode with 64k, and I was actually surprised at how I was actually able to stay afloat with the funds from various contracts. Of course, there are the things I haven't been able to do, especially manned exploration outside of Minmus, but now that I have the ion engine maybe even that is possible. Even a Moho lander is profitable with the ion engine. The ion engine is magic! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22015656/ExploreMoho.png

I haven't downloaded any career mods, so I would think that it's stock... Unless 64k does something sneaky in the background. Anyway, the ion engine definitely payed off, and I am now able to complete the Dres exploration contract while getting a nice return on investment hurray, 4 hour burn!

I thought grinding funds for the final research upgrade in my 6.4 scale career would take forever, but then the game threw me a bone. And just like that I now have the ion engine.

It's possible to achieve a 3.3% payload capacity using a 2 stage launcher, with 1 skipper on the upper stage, and 4 mainsails on the first stage. I don't know how much it was possible to achieve before, but to me this seems fairly appropriate.

Been playing career mode with 6.4k. After arrogantly accepting a contract to explore Dres I've come to the realization that I probably wont advance very quickly until I get the ion engine. So now I'm grinding the 3,3 million funds required to do the final research facility upgrade. Kind of wish I could disable those silly tourist contracts. For the 100th time: No, I'm not going to haul 6 kerbals across the solar system and back

Most people design lunar asent vehicles with extremely high thrust to weight ratio. As a result the difference is negigable. If you try to redo the experiment with a lower TWR you will notice that there is a difference, and vertical ascent will loose.

A solution was presented here. Worked for me https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus/issues/48