annallia

I will try putting a few on each end, but my payloads will not have RCS with the exception of the payload delivering RCS tanks. I hate the look of RCS thrusters and simply don't tolerate them on stations except on the tanks for them. I realize that is making things a little harder on myself but that is why I am here looking for a workaround. I have too many mods as it is. But I will look into it because it sounds interesting. That would be difficult for a multipurpose tug. Not every piece of the station is going to be a long tube type shape, some will be wide. I would have no objections if this was in Kerbal orbit, but the tugs work will be done in Duna orbit where I have no quick way of getting a specially crafted to the part tug quickly (ok no quick way without cheating). I have a half dozen manned and more than a dozen unmanned tug designs for Kerbal, but they are specialized to specific types of payloads. I am trying to design a GP tug that I can use anywhere I am building a station which will eventually be everywhere. I know it will wobble less with a Sr port but that doesn't work well with the functionality of my fleet and the station, most of my ships use standard ports because they simply aren't large enough to use a Sr port. That said has quantum struts been fixed for .21? Last I heard it was causing crashes.

Just a few points of clarification due to my sleep addled brain not making me be clear. When I said that it translated into turning too far, I did not mean I was trying to do something like move the entire ship sideways and it turned, I mean when I am trying to say angle my nose down a few degrees it instead overshoots big time. That said RCS near the new COM isn't feasible for a reusable tug. Some of these parts are going to be light weight, others are going to be quite heavy, some will be short others will be long. Some I will have the option (like the one above) of grabbing on the heavy end so the COM has very little shift (though it is all on one end in that scenario) others I will have to grab on the light end. Breaking them up is an option however there are limits to that option. Those limits being the insane time that it would take, the other being part counts going through the roof.

Keep in mind this is the tug I am currently using, the new one will have a remote core (the large plate one) rather than the cupola module. I have to redesign the tug anyway because I forgot to save the other one so using this one as a reference as they both have similar problems. My early tugs had thrust issues, the ones without thrust issues had fuel issues (no doubt due to my excessive use of engines in them) and the current generations have just the right mix of thrust and fuel usage. Problem is when it comes to docking. Current design when not docked with anything is difficult to control. A small tap on say A translates into spinning nearly 40 degrees before I can counter thrust rather than the 5 or 10 that I wanted. This only happens when trying to turn it, going forward/backward doesn't seem to share this problem neither does maneuvering up/down. Would I be right in assuming that this is because the RCS thrusters are above the COM? The other problem comes when trying to dock a station part, specifically an elongated part. An example of one of the parts (and I have done it with longer parts without a problem in the past...) would be this one: Ignore anything above the hitchhiker cans as that is just the interplanetary stage. This part I docked with, took it to the station, the problem came while trying to dock, having issues maneuvering the part suddenly it is waving all over the place. Was just fine changing its inclination and during the rendezvous with the station but something about the docking controls (yes I tried fine controls too) made it go banana's Now my question becomes three fold. 1) Is this also related to the placement of my RCS ports? 2) Would adding more/ taking away a few ports help? It currently has 6. 3) Is there any reason to believe that adding an SAS module to the tug will help? I got "some" time to work out the kinks. I got 140 some odd days before the next Duna window opens to design, test, and prep the new tug + 3 new station parts.

Don't forget the lights pointed skyward!

I used a similar design for a personnel inter vessel transport system. I hate docking so much I made one just to ferry multiple kerbals between my ship and my station.

As blizzy says walk/drive one of your kerbals somewhere out there to plant a flag. For me I have rovers parked outside my SPH (off the runways) that are in varying stages of testing so I just use them.

Make sure you are using the precision controls rather than snap to angle (the little circle/hex). Some use mods that just look pretty, but mostly it is about patience and getting things just right.

One suggestion to counter one already given... Instead of changing your ships orbit to get out of the debris field from your launchers, do what I do for my single use tugs (final stage that docks the part to station/ship). Stick a probe core and a battery on the tug. Its light so the added weight wont prevent you from reaching orbit and it will allow you to control that stage so you can de orbit it yourself and get it out of your ship/stations way. That said, if you are building a station, build it in eve orbit, those things can be ridiculously hard to move! If a ship build it in Kerbin orbit since you don't want to fly it all the way to Eve only to realize you forgot a part necessary for the return trip.

mechjeb has issues with things like dropping a deorbit tank. Even if it centers your mass correctly for landing mechjeb has already planned its landing and tries to land as if you still had the tank hence the flipping. Work around for that is when you are fairly high up and already did your deorbit burn turn off mechjeb drop the tank and turn it back on which will make it reset its landing guidance though it may throw you off target a bit (never far). That said when it comes to landing on eve I say chutes. Actually I say chutes, chutes, chutes, and why not? More chutes!

Sorry about that, I see rabid people on both sides of the MJ fence so I get a bit jumpy about it. That said I can, and did use MJ to plot the transfers, and get them all within a few hours which is how it should be at their orbit (moved up to higher orbit) they just required a little fine tuning to make sure they entered Duna's SOI without a course correction mid way (one needed to be changed so it would enter on the right side of Duna...) Just as I said earlier it plotted them for me just fine after a restart. FWIW ejection nodes are ranging from 3 minutes 15 seconds to 4 minutes 12 seconds (core). As I had expected, the core stage is requiring a longer burn as it weighs more and has slightly less thrust due to only having 3 LVN's instead of 4 like the rest.

I don't find them overly useless, just less than useful. The last time I used them it was for my Laythe colony. I used them as a taxi to take kerbals to and from my station in orbit to the surface. This however annoyed me because I would eventually have an imbalance in fuel/oxidizer on my station where it refueled.. As well I could have done the same job with a rocket just not as accurate with my landings. However now that I am using Kethane I may revisit the idea. As far as reusable rocketry goes.. I actually worked out a system (though I don't use it) where all of my boosters land safely on Kerbal. The reason I don't use it are two fold (aside from having no benefit in the game so far) 1) When it atmo if it gets too far away from the ship I am controlling it sometimes poofs, so no real point. 2) My system isn't bug free yet, by bug I don't mean it will break KSP or something, but it may break my rocket.

Few ways he could have done it. Most likely used several pictures taken at slightly different angles and merged them in photoshop/windows live gallery. That said very nicely done XkaOnslaught.

I don't use mechjeb for the burns, if I were going to let mechjeb do it all for me I may as well use hyper edit and just place my station in orbit in all one piece rather than several smaller sections. Instead MJ plots the course, I fine tune it and take over when I get into Duna's SOI. As I have said before, I use it as a nav computer, and occasionally to pilot probes though given that this is not a satellite that I don't care if it crashes but rather a station... I will be at the helm myself. As far as the burns go, I know they can be long, specially with nuke/ion engines but they won't be on this. The only reason these things come in at 50 tons is the weight of their interplanetary stage (where they are now). Once I get to Duna the two that are in fairings only weigh about 4 tons each, the core is a bit heavier.

That could be... Though again from my understanding of how it works it should be independently plotting each course if I go to the tracking station to switch.. At any rate calling this answered, they are all on their way to Duna, think I will work on some other stuff rather than time warping right now.

Say what you will about asparagus being better, there are times where raw power is the answer. At least for me. Then again I say whatever gets the job done is good enough..

I would ask what engines you are using and how big is your craft. I recently tried making something a bit like that. Tried various forms of jet engines to hover but I found their changes in thrust to be hard to keep steady with , they also seemed to require larger crafts (mostly because of the size of their smallest tank). Rockets however the little orange ones did the trick for me. I didn't expect the four little rockets to shoot up so fast so I got kinda high but landed, re took off and was flying around sub 50m until I ran out of fuel.

More like time to practice, it isn't that I don't know how to do it it is that I suck at doing it. I am fine going from planet to moon or the other way around but planet to planet isn't so easy for me to plot. That said I plotted them all myself and I got anywhere from 61 days to 67 days... Certainly better. 6 days between launch windows can easily be accounted for by my crappy interplanetary navigation. Although the odd part, after I got that settled I launched a new tug that will go along with them to Duna (forgot to put a docking port on the other tug oop!). When I calculated its transfer to Duna I gave Mechjeb another try, got 58 days again, I decided to try the other crafts and they all have 58 days and are +/- a few hours of eachother... Very weird.

Mechjeb shouldn't be operational on the other two since I am going to the space center to switch vessels (same orbit, close to eachother but far enough apart [] doesn't work, easier than trying to pick out the right craft ont he orbit map) I will give plotting it manually another go, though I do suck at that which is why I use mechjeb for it... Edit- Thomas that isn't the issue, the issue is the gaps between launches which there shouldn't be. If you have 3 ships in the same orbit with the same destination there shouldn't be a significant gap in their launch windows.

Trying to set up a station in orbit of Duna, I have three ships like this in orbit of Kerbin, all 278-281km Problem is their window times are all different. The first ship I launched has a 58 day and change window, second has 148 days, third has 92 days. Now I am all good with a bit of staggering but how is this changing so much over just a minute or so? Using MechJeb to plot the course and they all look to be similar but for some reason I have over almost 100 days between the first and second craft.

Closest thing I had in recent memory to being accidentally brilliant was when I was designing the extra large sky crane for my fleet of kethane rovers. After a few tests (mainsails mounted underneath rovers to lift them then drop when they run out of fuel at about 15k) I came to realize I was doing things backwards. I was designing a skycrane that would be launched into orbit separate from the rover, dock with the rover, put on a tug and pushed out to Duna where it would hopefully be able to land. What I had realized was with minimal alterations to the design I could get my launches down to 5 (one for each rover+ refuel) and skip the docking and tugs entirely. Instead of building a small skycrane that could safely land the 40-90 ton rovers, I should build big ones that could launch the rovers! I built large sky cranes, stuck mainsail engines on them with a few nuclear engines and launched them into low orbit. Built my refueler using KAS to transfer the fuel. Disabled the mainsails and used nukes to fly them to Duna. And this is where the brilliant part comes in. I only launched a single fuel tank for the refuel, it was enough to get the 4 to Duna with the fumes they had left from reaching orbit but mostly because the tank on my converter rover (which was a normal fuel tank) had sucked up most of the fuel in the refueler, and was still full. I connected all of the rovers as they were intended to be on the ground and siphoned the fuel out of the converter. From there it was just setting them on a trajectory in the general area of where I wanted to land, jettisoning the nuclear engines and landing with mainsails, once on the ground undock them from the skycrane and using the probe core inside each crane fly it away and crash it somewhere... Before I had this idea I was planning on 3 launches per rover making it 12 launches and 8 dockings total. Instead I managed with just 5 launches and 0 docks.

If you are intending to land it on minmus you can put it together in space and land it. I had a fairly large base out in one of the salt flats there that I did that with. Tried repeating it on the Mun but couldn't find a suitable area.

Cool looking, I assume the boom is a piston? Also keep in mind that different gravity can affect how well your crane preforms. Just because it is stable lifting 15 tons on Kerbin doesn't mean it wont tip on say Duna.

I can see you are using KAS, could use the detatchable nodes to connect the two. Though depending on how many winches you have it could require a second rover...

I more than likely wouldn't buy it. Not because of some hatred of expansion packs or DLC mind you, I just don't really stick with games that have expansions long enough, though I do tend to return to them for a bit here and there. Sims are the perfect example of this. I have the sims 3, as well as a half dozen expansions to it, the expansions were a complete waste of money on my part because they really just added new versions of the same old stuff with a few new things to do. Even now when I decide I want to play it again I don't go through and install World Adventures or Night Life or Ambitions again, I just play off the base game for a few weeks and drop it again. With that said, the only way to get me to actually buy an expansion for KSP was if it incorporated a good number of the mods that I like into the game, and if I were no longer able to use those mods. As it is now I say why buy the expansion when I could just download NovaPunch? I am also with Dispatcher who would not be fond of the idea of buying an expansion pack because I started playing a month after the cutoff.. That said I would buy an expansion if it were cheap ($5-$10) and added one thing, another solar system that I could reach that had some form of non-kerbal life on it. That to me would possibly be worth it.

I generally just build the core stage and then check my TWR (mechjeb or kerbal engineer) and start adding stages until it gets where I want it to be. That said you need approximately 9 kN to lift 1 ton (real world not sure how that translates to game) so if you were trying to lift something that was say 10 tons (including fuel/engine weight) you would need at minimum a 90kN engine. However that really does little for getting it orbital... that is just so you can get it off the ground.