dc4bs

My top (easily achieved) speed seems to be about 1700 M/s ground speed for Bertha. I can wait and get a little more out of it like maybe 1750 or so but I'm too impatient by then as it accelerates SO slowly after 1700. I figure 1700 is quite reasonable so I just nose up when I reach it at whatever altitude I'm at. Then the early part of my final climb to orbit is still 100% air breathing accelerating up at about 40-45 degrees. When the first flameout happens at about 28 Km I switch modes on 3/5th of the Sabers and start the 6 nukes. 2nd flameout is usually somewhere near 37 Km and the remaining 2 Saber Ms under the wings are switched over to rocket power. MECO is around 50 Km. Then I coast and setup for circularizing on the nukes only. By climbing steeply, I'm trying to reduce the time running all the big, less efficient engines in rocket mode at full throttle. Everything after that is done on the 6 nukes only. That's how I've been getting to 100 Km orbit consistently with 59-60% Fuel left. ------ EDIT: OK. Just sent Bertha up with the 50 ton payload to see what happens and verify my numbers (using the temporary Saber .part code fix that Hodo posted in the B9 thread). As you can see, I just got to a 100 Km orbit (pre final tweaking) with well over 60% Oxidizer. Iignore the % of Liquid Fuel. I take off with 1,800 extra Liquid Fuel for the ascent and landing back at KSC so even if I burned up ALL of the Oxidizer, there would still be a couple hundred fuel left over. With the ship set to only use the Nukes, MechJeb is showing over 900 M Delta-V with only the remaining onboard stores and and over 4,400 Delta-V if I used the contents of the cargo tank fuel as well. Could get that even higher if I transferred the fuel from the cargo to internal tanks and tossed the empty cargo tank overboard. But that sort of defeats the purpose... --------- 1: I added 4 more small scoop intakes... 2: Here's my updated launch profile notes based on this latest test run: (Full throttle all the way from start until MECO) @ 70 (runway altitude) take off and nose up to 40 degrees @ 5000, 35 degrees @ 10000, 30 degrees @ 15000, 25 degrees @ 17500, 20 degrees @ 19000, 15 degrees @ 20000, 10 degrees @ 24000-25000 (When you get to 1700 M/s nose back up to 40-45 degrees. First flameout about 28 Km - change 3/5ths of Sabers to Rocket mode and start the 6 nukes Second flameout around 39-40 Km - change remaining Sabers to rocket and close intakes MECO around 50-51 Km (when apoapsis gets to 100 Km) Setup circle burn (~4 minutes - started ~2 minutes before apoapsis with about 69+% oxidizer - ended ~2 minutes after with 63.5%) ------ So getting up to speed a bit lower giving myself more time to build vertical speed before changing over to rocket power made this trip up my most efficient yet... Your advice has been helpful. ------- After work tomorrow night, I'll try using your profile with the lower angle climb method and see what I can get for fuel remaining when I reach 100 Km orbit. Maybe you're right and it will be even better. Anyway. I gotta go get some sleep now. -------- EDIT 2: So now I'm back on the B9.40c Saber part configs using the updated ExsurgentEngineering.dll I tried the low angle climb method. At 20 Km, 10 degrees. Let it climb till 1st flameout at 1750 M/s. 1st group rocket switched and started nukes. Nosed up to 25 degrees. Switched 2nd group at 2nd flameout. Killed thrust at apoapsis 100 Km. This gave me a 1.4 minute circle burn. Ended up with 59.4% fuel left and a Delta-V of 876 M/s. Because I changed the engine parameters, it's not 100% apples to apples comparison so I'll have to try one more flight with the new .dll and try the steep climb approach again... Ugh. ------- I tried my method and went even a tiny bit more extream... Same ascent profile altitudes & angles as above. At 24 Km & 1700 M/s, bump up to 15 degrees and wait a few sends to let it stabilise. Bump up to 20 and wait, etc.... Repeat up to 45 degrees. About then I was reaching 27-28 KM and first flameout. Switch group1 to rocket mode and start the nukes. Reach 2nd flameout and switch 2nd group over. As soon as predicted apoapsis hit 90 Km, I cut all the Sabers, nosed down to 25 degrees and let it ride the nukes to a predicted apoapsis of 100 Km. Set up the circle burn node and burned another 4 minutes and 45 seconds to a nice 100 Km cirular orbit. All this fiddling got me there with 65% fuel left over! Delta-V 950 M/s. So I'm now convinced the steeper ascent with shorter main engine burn times is the more fuel efficient route. PROVIDED you begin to nose up from low enough to get a good chunk of your vertical acceleration done while still in air-breathing mode. The lower angle, longer main burn with the MUCH shorter circle burn is great for simplicity plus saving time and aggravation on local orbit missions where every unit of fuel is not so mission critical. Unless you are planning to leave Kerbin orbit for some reason (Mun mission, etc), the trickier, steep ascent method is probably not needed. But still good to know!

Payload capacity is whatever fits in the bay. The sample cargo (subassembly) is included. It's a 49.5 ton autonomous fuel tank. The tank only has RCS for maneuvering. It requires a tug or something if you want to move it beyond station keeping or docking. If you can stuff something heavier in the cargo bay, I'm sure it could handle it with ease. Just might not have quite so much fuel once it reaches orbit. With the 49.5 ton cargo, it's possible to reach 100 km orbit with about 60% of non-cargo fuel left for whatever. As I said above, I've put one of these fuel taker cargoes (full) into orbit around Mun and returned to the KSC runway non-stop (no refueling). At this point, I'm kind of on hold till B9 is updated for .23 and then we'll see if there's any change in performance on the Sabers once they are working properly again... EDIT: Oh, and by the way, that entire station I put into orbit using this ship can be disassembled and returned to KSC safely... Well, all but the giant dish antenna as that cannot be closed again once deployed. That would have to be deorbited to burn up on it's own.

That sounds VERY similar to what mine does. Get up to 1700+ M/s at around 26-27 Km and then a short, full power burn up to 100 Km. Circularize and all other orbital maneuvers done with 6x nukes. Anything less than 4 nukes on this craft just takes WAY too long and using 6 cut that by another 50% so the circle burn takes only 4 minutes or so instead of the 6 or more with 4 or less nukes.

That is also dependent on the number of intakes you have... Sure I could add more intakes but I already went from 14 to 28 engines (+ adapters, etc.). I'm trying to keep part counts as low as possible. Also, if I added more intakes, it would not be a direct comparison between Rapiers and the Saber/nuke combination drive system. It would be nice to have 2 Rapier sizes to work with like the Sabers.

Yep. I just finished some test flights running this ship with 28 Rapiers instead of the 6 nukes, 4 large sabers and 4 small sabers... PROS: 1: It frees up 3 hot key slots due to the Rapiers auto switching ability. CONS: 1: While it does work, it is a bit heavier (about 10 tons) and has a bit less total thrust. It reaches the end of the runway at about 180 M/s instead of the 220-230 M/s I get with the Sabers. 2: It seems to use a bit more fuel getting into orbit. 3: It's harder to tell exactly what's going on with thrust, etc as MechJeb does not yet know how to read the Rapiers yet. The Rapiers use more intake air so you have to build up speed at a lower altitude. They auto-switch at 22 Km with the air intake setup currently on this craft. Then you have to climb further on 100% rocket power. The saber/nuke combo can make 26-27 Km before having to switch 3/5ths over to rocket. The last 2/5ths can make 40+ Km before having to switch saving some fuel and a bunch of oxidizer going up. Overall, I think the Saber/nuke combo is more fuel efficient. Maybe with a bit more practice I can get the numbers better but so far I have not been able to make a 100 Km orbit with more than 49-50% non-cargo fuel on the Rapiers. I can make 100 Km with 60% non-cargo fuel left with the Saber Nuke combo pretty easily. PS: I had some variants I was experimenting with in the Earth size Kerbal mod so I won't be rebuilding from scratch after all. On Kerth, I got an SSTO to the point of needing less than 2 Km more Delta-V to make orbit. Needed less than 1 minute more burn time at full thrust when it ran out of fuel. Kerth is a bear to get into orbit around.

Well, the point was to be able to use only B9 and stock parts for the core of the ship. Then have some optional extra bells and whistles (buran arm, av lights, quatum struts, etc...). So no procedural wings on this one. Well, at least for now.

Just my luck I uploaded this the very day .23 was released and broke it. My problem is that .23 no longer gives you any clue as to what parts are missing or bad. Only that the craft has one or more locked or invalid parts... Well, in Sandbox mode, there should be no locked parts so I have to track down what the invalid parts are and deal with them. I may just have to rebuild the ship from scratch as I have it "mostly" memorized from rebuilding/tweaking it so much to get to the version I did release above...

So I've been working on this SSTO for quite a while and I've finally settled on this design. 198.3 tons fully fueled but with an empty cargo hold. Empty landing weight with only 500 fuel on board is about 90 tons Max cargo seems to be 49.5 tons or so but that has been a space limitation of the cargo hold, NOT a weight issue. stretching the hold longer could get more cargo into orbit but may weaken the overall structure too much... Download link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/big-bertha-ssto/ Main thread for this craft: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/62078-Big-Bertha-SSTO With a light load or empty cargo hold, it will lift off at 180-190 M/s. Fully loaded, it has to go off the end of the runway much like the Dodo above.

So I've been working on this SSTO for quite a while and I've finally settled on this design... There were some issues with B9, etc with v.23 but those mostly seem to be ironed out now. This is now the 1.1 v.23 compatible craft. Download link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/big-bertha-ssto/ NOTE: You can either surface mount a MechJeb box or just add the MechJeb module to the B9 S2_cockpit part.cfg file. Bertha 1.1_v23: Requires all the "MUST HAVE" mods listed below. Also included is the Autonomous Fuel Tank subassembly with flashing yellow beacon lights. The only clipping on this craft is the wings. Not really any better way I know of to get the lift I needed without it. I have placed full Autonomous Fuel Tank cargos in Munar orbit and returned to kerbin for a safe landing at KSC using one of these SSTOs. The specific craft I used was a slightly modified version of the standard Bertha. I replaced the S2 crew tank with an S2(x2) cargo bay that housed a very small Munar lander inside. After delivering the tank I successfully piloted the lander down to the Munar surface and planted a flag. Then I realized that I had failed to include solar panels on the lander so even though it had plenty of fuel, it ran out of electric power and crashed when I attempted to ascend back to the mother ship... Mods used: ---------- MUST HAVE: ---------- B9 Aerospace - the bulk of the craft is made out of B9 parts... NOTE: You MUST update ExsurgentEngineering.dll to the current v.23 compatible version after installing B9 or the Sabers will NOT work! F.A.R. - Ferram Aerospace Research - This craft will NOT even get off the runway without it! KSPX - Fuel tank used from this mod for the Cargo module. Aviation Lights - just because it's seriously cool looking to have them on during flight operations. Quantum Struts - Required to bring empty tanks, etc. back down from orbit safely but optional if you just end the flights of empty fuel tanks from the tracking station or use a tug to deorbit them to burn up/crash. NOTE: You will need to manually add regular struts to each cargo you load without them. Optional: -------- MechJeb - You can fly this craft without it but it is not trivial! Hand flying those LONG orbital burns on the nukes gets boring fast. TAC Fuel Balancer - Flying this SSTO without it is a SERIOUS headache though you could mostly remedy that by adding a number of fuel lines. But I wanted this ship to look as clean as possible and tried to keep the part count as low as I could. Known to be compatible with: ---------------------------- K.J.R. - Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - Shifts the weak spots around but it flies about the same with or without so having or not having K.J.R. really doesn't seem to matter much for this craft. Docking Port Alignment - Makes loading/docking empty tanks for return to kerbin so much simpler!

Hmmm.... I know I did something like this in orbit once. I have become paranoid about starting engines on ships attached to space stations. Lost a couple stations that way when I hit shift instead of alt to move fuel between tanks... So now every time something docs with a station the very first thing I do is make sure ALL engines are disabled before doing ANYTHING else. As we all know, with Kerbals it's always Safety First! So I enabled a tugs reverse engines, gave it just a little throttle and quickly un-docked it to watch it slowly back itself away from the station. Once it was clear, I switched to it and took manual control again. The other interesting thing to do is setup MechJeb to auto rendezvous with a target (station, etc.) and then switch to that target ("[") before the final retro burn. Then you can watch your ship approach and match orbits from your station.

Just a thought... Park one or more rovers near the pad at your desired launch view spot(s). Setup MechJeb to auto-launch/auto-stage the rocket to rendezvous with some orbiting object. Switch to a rover with "[" and/or "]" just before launch. As long as you are in range, MechJeb will continue running in the rocket and should launch it on schedule. Be careful not to switch back into the rocket once it fires as it won't let you switch back out if the engines are running. NOTE: I have not tried this but I THINK it should work. Ugh. Now I have to go try this when I get home tonight...

This happens when you shrink the KSP window during loading. If you do that, sometimes the font used by the game looses letters for some reason. I'm assuming that's what you do because of the long load times you mentioned. If you just start the game and leave it in the foreground (don't shrink the window) and go do something else till it finishes loading, the missing letter problem does not seem to happen.

NOTE: SA = "sub-assembly" It's just that it will not save anything with a ships ROOT part included in it. You must start out with a non-SA / "sacrificial" pod, probe-core or even entire ship... 1: Start a new ship in either construction building. 2: Select a pod or probe-core (whatever is the most useful size or shape so as not to interfere with your final design. 3: Build your SA connected to that core BUT NOT INCLUDING that original core in the design. Your SA needs to include its own internal pod or probe-core in it's design. 4: Pull the entire thing you want to save off that initial, sacrificial core and save it as a SA. Then you have a nice, fully assembled, launch ready satellite, science probe, rover, etc. that you can grab out of the sub-assembly tab and slap onto a launcher or into an ssto cargo bay or whatever any time you need it. NOTE: There seems to be a limitation when using SAs that they will only attach from the point they were originally detached by... EG: a fuel pod with docking ports at top and bottom that was built "hanging" from the bottom of a sacrificial probe core. When you pull it back out, only the "top" port will be active/available to attach to anything. Once attached, THEN the other attachment ports on the SA seem to work. So if you need to be able to attach any particular SA from either end, then you need save it as a regular ship first. Detach the SA and save it. Reload the temporary ship, move the pod from "under" the sacrificial probe-core and attach it to the top. Now detach the SA again and save it a 2nd time. Now you have 2 versions so you can attach one any time by either end.

Thanks for the great laugh I just got out of this picture... That isn't "Cartman Kerman" is it? Stan Kerman: "Cartman, there's a 80 foot satellite dish sticking outta your a**!" Cartman Kerman: "Sure, you guys. What-ever..."

Thanks for the advice! Fuel use in orbit is the biggest problem with my design... I make orbit with about 1/2 my fuel or more left over and it's gone by the time I rendezvous. This idea should let me remove that extra gray fuel tank in the bay allowing for even more cargo. As for strutting the cargo bay, it is strutted internally. I have a tiny strut cube placed in the middle on either side. a strut goes from the end wall to that middle cube on each side and 2 more struts go from the end wall to the internal side wall on each corner for a total of 12 struts inside the bay. There are 4 of those little asterisk looking electrical generators (one tucked into each corner) of the bay as well as 6 of the larger white dome lights placed around the bay. There are a couple struts to each wing if you look close as well. Yo can see some of that stuff in the bay if you look at the 7th picture full size (right click -> view image -> left click to use the magnifier over the cargo bay (the full image size is 1920x1280). Flight profile on Bertha at the moment is full throttle to the end of the runway, climb at about 1/2-2/3 throttle @ 30 degrees or so to about 16-18k. Go to full throttle and start leveling off for a long slow climb to about 24-25k @ 1700 Mps. Gradually nose up to 30-35 degrees and when the first engine flames out, switch the 4 wing engines and the center tail engine over to rocket power (#1). At 2nd flame out, switch the remaining two engines to rocket and close the intakes (#2). Cut power when apogee gets where I want it and toggle the 4 wing engines off (#3) as they are slightly higher than COG and cause issues thrusting in orbit. Circularize. Landing is transfer all remaining fuel as far forward as possible. De-orbit burn. Point ship prograde with wings level at between 0 and -5 degrees. Re-enable the wing engines (#3), open the intakes and change 2 main engines to air-breathing (#2), change remaining engines to air-breathing (#1). Manually disable the 2 outer main engines as the ship is now very overpowered with all engines on and no cargo/little fuel remaining. Re-enter, balance the fuel again and land... (the hardest part).

I wanted a way to bring reasonably large objects into space. Maybe refueling missions, busing kerbals to and from work... launching probes, space station segments, whatever. So having never built a space plane before I decided to just go for it and skip small and went straight for trying to loft 2 orange max tanks. After several hours watching my hard work explode in various entertaining ways, I came up with this: While I was able to get it into orbit empty, it was just not gonna happen with 70 tons of tanks inside it. Aside from the fact that it was seriously unstable on reentry (never did get it down safely). So I scaled back a bit and came up with this model which can easily get 40 tons of cargo into orbit: I even got it docked to my ring station which I had thought was reasonably large up until now: It was only after I undocked and tried to reenter that I found this one was also VERY unstable on reentry. So F9 and leave it in orbit for a while as I didn't want to lose Bill and Bob. I experimented some more and launched a number of variants: They all made it to orbit but just couldn't seem to reenter without tumbling. I finally figured out the problem was mounting the wings flat. Once I mounted them lower and angled them up enough things smoothed out greatly on the reentries. TAC fuel balancer also helped by shifting all the remaining fuel weight to the front tanks during reentry and then back to the middle for landing. This is from the last test flight before the rescue attempt: Now I was finally ready to go rescue Bill and Bob. I put a crew tank and 2 science probes in the cargo bay. Why waste a whole trip on just a rescue mission? So I picked up Bill and Bob and sent the old, now un-crewed, SSTO to a crash landing in the ocean. I did take pics of the rescue but it was on the dark side and it's really hard to see anything so I skipped those. My finally working design reentering in all it's glory: And landing back at KSP: NOTE: Bill and Bob don't have their orange suits due to universe replacer. So now I'm thinking maybe if I angle the wings on that 1st design and add a few more engines, maybe I CAN get 80 tons up in one go...

Yep. I LOVE those struts. I found I wasn't using the rest of the parts so my KOSMOS install is just the 3 struts (open lattice, internal crawl tube & internal RCS tanks) along with the small RCS mono-fueled engine (great for escape/utility pods!) and one other part I cant remember right now... Reducing the install to these five parts cut down on initial game load time and part menu overload significantly.

NOTE: originally posted July 29th in the "Show off your awesome KSP pictures!" thread. I was quite proud of these early stations... Something is different with physics in .21 and I have been entirely unable to get the last one relaunched though. That one ALWAYS breaks up during launch. So I've gone back to assembling multiple smaller parts in orbit. So anyway, I thought this series of pics & story fit in this thread better than the general pics thread. Enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I found KSP through Steam so I have only experienced V0.20.* so far. Once I figured most of the basic stuff out I started a program to build "A" space station as a stepping stone / refueling depot to get ships even further out. And then got a bit carried away... My initial design using ioncross O2 scrubber and "pass-through docking/escape pods" using regular engines. But I didn't really like the idea of kerbals somehow "magically" being able to crawl through the engines to get in/out of the stations but I hadn't come up with anything better yet... Station "A" 1st half in orbit with launch tug: 2nd 1/2 of the station is a mirror of the 1st with a simple ioncross O2 tank instead of the scrubber in the 2nd half. Station "A" with 2nd half mated: Then I downloaded KOSMOS and fell in love with the station struts and the monofuel engines I eventually deleted all of the KOSMOS mod except for the 3 versions of the struts (only used the crawl tubes) and the mono-fuel engine parts for the escape pods. KOSMOS has a LOT of parts that I was not using, made the game take a lot longer to load on startup and cluttered up the parts lists in the VAB. Station "B" 1st half on the pad: This design pushed the docking ports further out and got rid of the need for regular fuel tanks for the escape pods as well. The escape pods became a crew module and an RCS tank with radially mounted mono-engines. This gives the station MUCH more RCS if needed during docking maneuvers, etc. Still pushing it but much more believable as a "pass-through" docking port then design "A". Also added 4 quantum struts around the nose of each docking pod. Station "B" 1st half on the way up: Station "B" 1st half circularizing: Station "B" 1st half parked near station "A": With station "B" now well in progress, decided to move station "A" from 100 Km orbit to 150 Km: And then sent up a tanker to refuel all station "A" tanks to 100% and also leave an additional RCS fuel pack as "A" had VERY little RCS in it's design. Station "B" completed with lights off and on: Around this time I was tired of the stations being wobbly in the middle so I finally said, "Heck, it can't be THAT hard..." and just lofted an entire station with room for 25 Kerbals plus 4 pre-docked space probes around the middle and 8x 3-Kerbal pass-through "lifeboat"/docking pods. I dunno the total tonnage but it was a LOT to get into orbit in one lift!!! Total kerbals that can fit in station "C" = 49 + 8 (1 in each crawl tube) but the station is only safety rated for 24 kerbals as that's the number of lifeboat seats... Early launch attempts had MANY structural failures and other mishaps and, of course, a number of rather large explosions when things didn't quite go according to plan. More space tape was needed among other things... Station "C" on the launchpad: Going up: Circularizing: And not QUITE having enough fuel... After a bit more reworking of the lifter and the launch program sequence the final launch worked as follows: Using MechJeb 2.0 and FAR: Final stack on the launch pad was well over 750 parts... The 24 main SRBs, plus stage separators, plus support struts, etc. was easily 80-90 parts alone that dropped off at about 10 Km up. Throttle set to no more than 20M/s acceleration in the MechJeb ascent module (more thrust caused parts to break off) Used FAR to watch Mach numbers. Launched with 24 SRBs wrapped around an asparagus core of 7 mainsails. Once speed reached about Mach 0.95, MechJeb was throttled back further to 10-11 M/s until the SRBs expired at about 11 Km up. Once the SRBs were staged off (all in one group) MechJeb was throttled back up to 20 M/s The 1st asparagus stage finished and is dropped off about 10-15 seconds later. at 15 Km, the gravity turn commenced and after a bit the 2nd asparagus stage was dropped. Then shutdown and coast up to the circularizing burn. At that point 2 more small SRBs were fired to help circularize the launch. With all of that, I STILL managed to run out of fuel but at least had made an 85x240 Km wonky orbit so it would not crash again. Sent up a nuke powered tug to fix the orbit issues: And commenced several 10-20 minute burns to get the station nicely orbiting at 100x100Km. So that was it for version 20... I'm having all kinds of issues with the VAB in 21.1 - Once I get that ironed out I'll get back to building and launching improbable things into orbit. -dc4bs

Looks like coordinates and rotation based from the root node. I dealt with similar looking numbers coding moving parts in "Second Life" several years ago (Delorian gull-wing car doors, etc...). I never did use math to do it though. I would edit the part to each position I wanted and then query it's location relative to root as the scripting code had commands built in to do that. Then simply paste those numbers "as is" into the final code used to move the part to position "xyz", etc... EG: During car code initialization, call "close door" to make sure it was in the right place, then call either function as needed. function open door -> move part "A" to position "XYZ(2)" with rotation "ABC(2)" function close door -> move part "A" to position "XYZ(1)" with rotation "ABC(1)" I have no idea if it will work in KSP as it did in SL but you could try this: 1:Copy your current save game folder somewhere safe in case this all blows up in your face... 2: Place an exact copy of the incorrect station section (except with the lights moved to the correct locations) on the launchpad. 3: Edit the save file and copy the location/rotation info for the lights from this new version. 4: Undock the section of the station that has these lights on it so it has the same root node as the template that you placed on the pad. 5: Rename the undocked section as needed to make it easy to find. 7: Edit the file and update the light coordinates with the new location/rotation numbers from the version on the pad. 8: If the lights are located correctly back in game then re-dock the corrected section. If you don't want to or can't undock the affected section as it would become debris, it MIGHT also work if you could duplicate the entire station in the VAB ensuring you start with the correct root node. put that on the pad and get the light locations from that. I think that has less chance of success though as there could be slight rotation/position flaws due to docking ports not lining up EXACTLY in your orbiting station as they would coming pre-assembled from the VAB... But it still MIGHT be "close enough". NOTE: ignore the parent id's, uids, etc. as they might be different. ONLY copy the position/rotation strings over. EDIT: if the lights are on the original, 1st station (primary root) section, you could probably skip the undock/redock steps above... I'm VERY interested in finding out if this idea works!

Hehe... You just made me think of this.. KIRK: What does V'Ger want with the Creator? ILIA PROBE: To join with him. SPOCK: Join with the Creator? ...How? ILIA PROBE: V'Ger and the Creator will become one. SPOCK: And who is the Creator? ILIA PROBE: The Creator is that which created V'Ger.

I found KSP through Steam so I have only experienced V0.20.* so far. Once I figured most of the basic stuff out I started a program to build "A" space station as a stepping stone / refueling depot to get ships even further out. And then got a bit carried away... My initial design using ioncross O2 scrubber and "pass-through docking/escape pods" using regular engines. But I didn't really like the idea of kerbals somehow "magically" being able to crawl through the engines to get in/out of the stations but I hadn't come up with anything better yet... Station "A" 1st half in orbit with launch tug: 2nd 1/2 of the station is a mirror of the 1st with a simple ioncross O2 tank instead of the scrubber in the 2nd half. Station "A" with 2nd half mated: Then I downloaded KOSMOS and fell in love with the station struts and the monofuel engines I eventually deleted all of the KOSMOS mod except for the 3 versions of the struts (only used the crawl tubes) and the mono-fuel engine parts for the escape pods. KOSMOS has a LOT of parts that I was not using, made the game take a lot longer to load on startup and cluttered up the parts lists in the VAB. Station "B" 1st half on the pad: This design pushed the docking ports further out and got rid of the need for regular fuel tanks for the escape pods as well. The escape pods became a crew module and an RCS tank with radially mounted mono-engines. This gives the station MUCH more RCS if needed during docking maneuvers, etc. Still pushing it but much more believable as a "pass-through" docking port then design "A". Also added 4 quantum struts around the nose of each docking pod. Station "B" 1st half on the way up: Station "B" 1st half circularizing: Station "B" 1st half parked near station "A": With station "B" now well in progress, decided to move station "A" from 100 Km orbit to 150 Km: And then sent up a tanker to refuel all station "A" tanks to 100% and also leave an additional RCS fuel pack as "A" had VERY little RCS in it's design. Station "B" completed with lights off and on: Around this time I was tired of the stations being wobbly in the middle so I finally said, "Heck, it can't be THAT hard..." and just lofted an entire station with room for 25 Kerbals plus 4 pre-docked space probes around the middle and 8x 3-Kerbal pass-through "lifeboat"/docking pods. I dunno the total tonnage but it was a LOT to get into orbit in one lift!!! Total kerbals that can fit in station "C" = 49 + 8 (1 in each crawl tube) but the station is only safety rated for 24 kerbals as that's the number of lifeboat seats... Early launch attempts had MANY structural failures and other mishaps and, of course, a number of rather large explosions when things didn't quite go according to plan. More space tape was needed among other things... Station "C" on the launchpad: Going up: Circularizing: And not QUITE having enough fuel... After a bit more reworking of the lifter and the launch program sequence the final launch worked as follows: Using MechJeb 2.0 and FAR: Final stack on the launch pad was well over 750 parts... The 24 main SRBs, plus stage separators, plus support struts, etc. was easily 80-90 parts alone that dropped off at about 10 Km up. Throttle set to no more than 20M/s acceleration in the MechJeb ascent module (more thrust caused parts to break off) Used FAR to watch Mach numbers. Launched with 24 SRBs wrapped around an asparagus core of 7 mainsails. Once speed reached about Mach 0.95, MechJeb was throttled back further to 10-11 M/s until the SRBs expired at about 11 Km up. Once the SRBs were staged off (all in one group) MechJeb was throttled back up to 20 M/s The 1st asparagus stage finished and is dropped off about 10-15 seconds later. at 15 Km, the gravity turn commenced and after a bit the 2nd asparagus stage was dropped. Then shutdown and coast up to the circularizing burn. At that point 2 more small SRBs were fired to help circularize the launch. With all of that, I STILL managed to run out of fuel but at least had made an 85x240 Km wonky orbit so it would not crash again. Sent up a nuke powered tug to fix the orbit issues: And commenced several 10-20 minute burns to get the station nicely orbiting at 100x100Km. So that was it for version 20... I'm having all kinds of issues with the VAB in 21.1 - Once I get that ironed out I'll get back to building and launching improbable things into orbit. -dc4bs