Galane

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27748767@N08/9476408517/ That gets up to around 800 meters. I took off the top tank, deployed gear before launch and it hit about 502 meters. Bounced pretty hard on landing but nothing exploded.

Something most space games don't show correctly is how rocket exhaust plumes spread out sideways as atmospheric pressure drops during ascent. In the vacuum of space, the exhaust spreads very wide, nearly at a right angle to the edge of the nozzle. That's why it's so difficult to design a rocket nozzle that works well over a broad range of altitude. One made to work best in space is 'choked down' near the ground and one made to work well near the ground loses a lot of efficiency at high altitude or in space.

Rendering the remnants of the struts makes your GPU have more work to do. Automatically deleting them, no matter which way they're placed onto the rocket, would help with less capable computers and with more complex rockets.

Nice stations, but they're replicas of real ones. The challenge is for replication of fictional ones from films.

We spend so much time and effort in KSP to go high, I decided to set my sights a lot lower. ;-) You've probably heard of HALO and HAHO parachute jumps. High Altitude Low Opening and High Altitude High Opening. Both give the jumper a lot of time to think about what they'll be doing after they land. LALO gives you mere seconds to launch and deploy the chute and gear before landing, but you can get a lot of flights into a short amount of time. Tonight I was dinking around assembling tiny, low flying rockets and trying to land them under a parachute. First I tried a single Oscar B with an OKTO2 on top and three of those smallest radial mount engines, all topped by a drogue chute. Even though I could deploy the chute the instant the fuel was gone, it nearly always destroys some of the vehicle on touchdown. Finally got a reliable assembly with these parts. Went with the larger engines to kick up a bit more altitude, nearly 1,000 meters. I may try taking out one or two of the tanks to reduce the maximum altitude. Where do the legs go? On one side of each engine! The parachute comes >thisclose< to yanking the rocket apart when it deploys. 3 Mark 55 3 Oscar B 1 OKTO2 1 Mk16 3 LT-1 Could try going back to the drogue, single tank and wee little engines and adding the smallest landing legs. Those got the above collection down but sacrificed themselves in a cloud of vaporized whatever it is they're made of. I'd like to be able to bring one down intact from only 500 meters. I'd like to see what other people come up with and how low an altitude they can safely land from. Manned or unmanned. Everything that goes up must come down together.

How about get a 3 Kerbal pod into a circular orbit then safely back. Start with 100 points. Minus 2 points for every Rockomax 24-77 engine used.

Very nice. Some RCS would help a bit.

I wouldn't be surprised if this engine gets drastically cut back in power in the future. It's like being able to launch one of the old Soyuz rockets using only the 12 small engines and not installing the 20 large engines.

When used in mass quantities, the Rockomax 24-77 engine is proving to the experimenters at Alan Aerospace Recycling & Packaging (AARP) to be both powerful and frugal with fuel. Challenge: Using only the Rockomax 24-77 for main thrust, put *something* into orbit. Don't have to bring it back down. Use as many of the engine as it takes. How much further can this little engine go? To the Mun? The other planets? Show off your rocket building skills. I just read the mission report of a single stage ship that went to the Mun and back *twice* without refueling, so at this point I'm ready to believe almost anything is possible in KSP.

There is a way to do longer burn times with solid rockets. Make an end burner instead of a core burner. In model rockets those are the two main styles of engines. Core burners have a molded in hole that goes almost all the way through the fuel. End burners don't, they light at the bottom and burn towards the top. Core burners are used in booster stages for their powerful and fast burn. End burners are used for upper stages to gain altitude with their lower thrust and slower burn. What'd be a problem with large end burning solid fuel rockets is the casing would have to withstand high temperatures for a longer time while the fuel burns. Not much of a problem with core burners because the unburned fuel shields the casing and once the fire reaches the casing it goes out. Another issue with large end burners would be the constantly changing balance as the fuel burns up the rocket. Having your center of gravity rapidly moving towards the nose as the fuel burns, then moving backwards at some point during the burn would cause some interesting issues. 'Course in KSP the CG changes with staging never seem to bother things.

I tried using four small hardpoints on a rocket made of stacked Oscar B tanks. They sorta worked like fins but of course gave no additional control. Controllable fins a bit larger than those would be ideal, an active version and a passive rolleron version.

If someone can find the 11 page paper from the late 70's that I referenced, then I expect we can discover how an SRB can be shut off after being lit. One method I can think of is a separate section at the top that when lit produces an exhaust gas which 'poisons' the burning surface of the fuel below, perhaps in combination with the fuels exhaust gas, to create a coating that won't burn. There are some burn resistant plastics which will only char a bit and won't sustain a flame. Aside from being able to be stopped before burnout, the more useful aspect of an SRB would be a thrust vectoring nozzle, which has been implemented on a production scale with submarine launched missiles. I'd settle for ASRBs with just thrust vectoring capability as an added feature. More sizes would also be nice. The two available tend to often be too large or too small.

There's a distinct lack of smaller fins for smaller rockets in the KSP parts bin. A small, steerable fin would be useful for rockets launching the Mark 1 pod or similar sized payloads. A method of "free" stability enhancement, long used on air to air missiles (AIM 9 Sidewinder, 1956 to present), is the rolleron. It uses no electricity, requires no computer or any sort of active control. How they work is a finned wheel is mounted inside a freely hinged, angled flap on each fin. As the missile flies, the airflow sets the wheels spinning very fast. The flap hinge angles are set so that gyroscopic precession moves the flaps to counteract any roll around the axis and also help damp oscillations induced by maneuvers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolleron The rollers and flaps wouldn't need to be modeled and animated in KSP, just the effect of them.

The space shuttle's SRBs were built of stacked metal rings with the fuel cast inside. That's the design feature that destroyed Challenger because soon after launch the hot gasses were right against the outer casing, trying to burn through the joints. A review of all prior launches showed several puffs of escaping gasses and IIRC at least one other instance of escaping flame. Fortunately all prior incidents of joint failure were aimed away from the big fuel tank. Until the destruction of Challenger I thought the SRB fuel was cast all at once inside a tube made of rings bolted together. My thoughts when I learned how the fuel was done were something along the lines of "What a <censored> stupid, idiotic design. It's a wonder one didn't blow up sooner!". Seems like a perfect design for the Kerbals... In theory those SRBs could be built with differing numbers of segments. I bet they'd be safer if the fuel was offset some so it would be recessed at one end and sticking out at the other so the seams in the fuel wouldn't align with or be so close to the joints. The unburned fuel would shield the joints until close to burnout.

That twin engine is like a smaller version of the àÃâ€-180, àðúõтýыù Ãâ€Ã²Ã¸Ã³Ã°Ñ‚õûь-180 or RD-180, which is an upscaled variant of the four chamber RD-170.

The Kerbals' solid rockets are behind the technology curve of what humans had circa 1960. The Polaris submarine launched missile was a two stage solid rocket with thrust vectoring and an abort system that could extinguish the burning fuel, at least in the first stage. I haven't found a direct online reference for the Polaris shutdown capability but I remember it from an old book on submarines my grade school library had in the late 1970's. IIRC it covered submarine technology from the Turtle through the Nautilus and the first SSBN ships to carry the Polaris, the George Washington class. Could be that ability was only used during early tests. It would be heavier and more complex than a simple explosive charge to break up the missile. What would it take to put out a large SRB, or even a small one? Certainly wouldn't be able to be ignited again. Adding thrust vectoring would increase cost and weight. And then there's this... http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA020461 (Have not found how to get the complete file.) Accession Number : ADA020461 Title : Shutting Down the Solid Fuel Rocket Engine, Corporate Author : FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY DIV WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB OHIO Personal Author(s) : Andreev,Todor Report Date : 07 JAN 1976 Pagination or Media Count : 11 Abstract : Up to now there are two ways known for shutting down a solid rocket engine, or stopping the thrust; extinguishing the burning fuel, and neutralization of the thrust (reversing the thrust). These two methods can be applied separately or combined. Descriptors : *SHUTDOWNS, *THRUST CONTROL, *SOLID PROPELLANT ROCKET ENGINES, TRANSLATIONS, THRUST, BULGARIA, EXTINGUISHING, THRUST REVERSAL. Subject Categories : Solid Propellant Rocket Engines Distribution Statement : APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

Very nice SRB only flight!

SelectRoot worked! (Once I figured out where to copy it.) So this can be changed to Answered.

If I delete the avionics package I can't attach anything to the rest of the rocket. I can stick a Mark 1 to the bottom of the NCS, stick the rocket to the Mark 1, delete the NCS and avionics then can't stick anything to the rocket. I'll try that root plugin.

Can you build a rocket using only stock solid fuel engines that can get into a stable orbit, then deorbit and land a manned pod safely? I've built one that can easily go high enough to get into some sort of an orbit. Of course no fine control to make it a pretty orbit. To deorbit would require decoupling a stage with a solid fuel engine without lighting it, turning around, then lighting it.

I've been fiddling around with an all solid fueled unmanned rocket. Got it setup able to go high enough it could put a payload into orbit so I added a liquid fueled stage on top. Now I want to swap out the Avionics Package on top of a NCS Adapter for a Mark 1 pod with a parachute. Problem is I started this build with the Avionics Package. I can swap out the NCS Adapter for the Mark 1 but I can't get rid of the Avionics Package to put a parachute on top of the pod. Is there a way to change the first part in the build from the Avionics Package to the Mark 1?