immelman

Here is the return vehicle for my landing craft, its a modified Gemini capsule using a Apollo LM descent engine

I'm looking at a "what might have been" involving no Apollo cancellation and this using them to explore the Solar system. Here is a two man crew lander and return for 50 days on Mars. Pretty happy with it, since the module will fit on top of an S-II.

I would like to update the conical heat shield pack by oblivion aerospace to work with RSS/RO. Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction where to start doing this? Probably going to have to make sure it works properly with FAR as well to ensure it works as a lifting body in addition to ensuring it works with the heating model.

Its been a long while since I played Kerbal! With the clear instructions I had, RSS, RO and RSSVE, were all installed and ready to go in a fraction of the time it took last time I did this manually I've just taken the included FASA Saturn 5 on a trip to the Moon and had a real blast, thank you to all the people who have worked on this awesome group of mods! My return looked so gorgeous that I had to take a screen shot and share it, thanks again!

Eve sea level and back, no ISRU. Hardest thing was getting the fuel tankers into Eve orbit without too much fuel loss:

Now I'm even more interested Applying kOS automation has changed how I approach mission planning, especially since it encourages you to dive deeper into the math involved. I'd like to work out a model for the in game aerodynamic forces. Could you able to describe anything about these?

This is awesome, thank you! Would you be able to go into more detail about the atmospheric modelling? Would this be anything that could be applied to FAR as well?

I'm finding that the amount of electric charge does not seem to be correct. With only 64k and remote tech installed as mods (and Kopenicus updated to the latest version via CKAN), the charge at Kerbin is 1/3 the expected. I suppose I could just boost the charge received by the panels by 300% to compensate. But wondered if anyone had a more elegant solution to something that seems to be related to solar emission curves? Ed. Sorry I take this all back, I've just tried without any mods and got the same behavior. I'm re-installing, since I must have borked my install in some way.

Seen this as well, a Kerbal solution is to use the APS to rotate the spacecraft before the ullage burn, this coupled with the very low thrust is enough to ullage. Otherwise make an modified J-2 for the final stage that does not need ullage.

Thank you for the latest update in the marvelous mod! The plume expansions look fantastic and integrating engine ignitor was a very good idea!

This is a fascinating and informative mission. I've read Steven Baxter's Voyage, which includes a Venus flyby, looking at your data this is primarily to reduce mission time? This also really brings home just how hard this would be, getting parachutes to work at such high velocities or using rockets (with the weight penalties and having them fire in a supersonic jetstream). Regarding high velocity Mars EDL, here is a very interesting paper on the subject you may want to check out: http://www.4frontierscorp.com/dev/assets/Braun_Paper_on_Mars_EDL.pdf It pointed me into using an adapted conical heat shield for a lifting body re-entry. Real life has curtailed my RO Mars mission (as well as all my Kerballing), reading this has really encouraged me to get it going again!

Since Realism Overhaul will not be updated for a while, I'm going to fly my Mars mission in 0.9 Anyway here is my Saturn C8 craft file if its is any use to you. Procedural fairings and FASA should be the only prerequisites: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gbomoesc63m2sot/Saturn%20C8.craft?dl=0 First step: Launching a Skylab using a Saturn 5 and then an Apollo on a Saturn 1B to dock (going to use this to fuel up the transfer stages). With it being such a long time before the transfer window the trickiest thing is going to get the inclination right.

For "Hard Mode" my thoughts: Deadly Reentry should be harder, since in stock you can reenter just using an engine bell, unprotected ships should explode Kerbal joint reinforcement really helps with wobbly rocket syndrome, recommended. FAR allows lifting body aerodynamics, very useful for a Duna landing and for Kerbin reentry with Deadly reentry. Universal storage, this has configs for TAC life support as well as config entries for Methane if you want to try a Zubrin type mission.

In the end I went to making a linux partition to play Realism Overhaul in KSP, it was the only way to manage the memory usage of all the mods needed. The DTSloader sure makes the game start much quicker and saves some RAM. In addition I delete almost all the fairings and fuel tanks (since I use proceedural). Regarding landing sites, I've wondered about making a "featureless" Mars with only a small section in great detail using NASA topo to generate a height map. Specifically for the landing area, not only save RAM but also to make it more interesting, should be possible? Thats going to have to wait a couple of weeks though

The heavy launch vehicle is all my own work, I got the proposed dimensions from Encyclopedia Astronomica: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnc8.htm If you haven't take a look, its fascinating seeing what might have been using the Saturn platform!

If you want to save your RAM go for 8k textures for just and Earth and Mars and lowest for all the other bodies. I like your Apollo, but to save time you can use the FASA Apollo, it looks great! Putting together a Mars mission on RO really brings home just how hard this all will be. For fun I'm using mostly Apollo era tech, if you have ever read Baxter's Voyage then ChrisPBacon's Ares mission shows just how huge these can get to... Can I enter into this? Not having the patience to use eight Saturn 5 launches to orbit and fuel my mission I am going with the proposed Saturn C-8 variant, can get 200T to a 200k orbit, even then I will need at least four of them. And Here is the orbital stack so far, why yes that is a Saturn SII and two Saturn IVB's for TMI, Mars insertion and Mars escape Hardest thing is a realistic MEV, interesting paper in the challenges:http://www.4frontierscorp.com/dev/assets/Braun_Paper_on_Mars_EDL.pdf You can break this down into three problems: 1. Slowing down in Mars atmosphere, using rockets lower down means being able to ignite then in a Mach4+ jetstream. 2. Parachutes, for a lander mass of 20-40 T it's not very likely you can just use parachutes at more than Mach 1, in reality they would be ripped off. 3. If you want to use a lifting body, the heatshield/ aeroshield needs to be more than 20m...

Now that is a very well planned mission! Very nice.

Nice, how much was the total mission mass compared to what you landed?

That looks gorgeous, can I ask, how long did you take putting that together?

Heat shield is 10m, I wish I had the skills to make a folding heat shield! For the lander mass from what I have read this should really be 20m or more. Sure:

After reading through a paper on Mars EDL (http://www.4frontierscorp.com/dev/assets/Braun_Paper_on_Mars_EDL.pdf) I thought I should revisit using an aeroshell for re-entry. I also have adapted LostOblivion's conical heat shields for RO so I can create a lifting body My lander is at the upper end of what is possible (at 30 T) But it sure does work! Here is the lander starting re-entry, using a mass offset it has a V*L/D of 600+ After using S turns velocity is under 500 m/s or MACH 2 before the Drogue is deployed (and about MACH 1.25 for main chute) And slows down to 75 m/s before the main parachute is ditched: And the lander has enough fuel to get back to orbit!

The FASA F-1 Works well with real plume, so the launches are spectacular. I like the Soviet engine pack for first stage engines, there are some great choices.

Landing on Mars is hard! Great NASA talk about it: Problems: - Purely using engines for descent will result in a huge payload to initially lift to orbit. - Slowing down in Mars before deploying parachutes using engines probably wont work in reality since you have to light your motors in a MACH 3+ jet stream. - Got to keep peak G forces down since the crew will have spent almost a year in low G. - Supersonic parachutes on large masses. I like your lifting body I lot, especially the ability to control your pitch!

Someone should get the Seadragon mod RO compatible: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91043-Seadragon-for-24-2-official-release That would solve large masses to orbit, It would have to be an ocean launch to be realistic though...