kelmv

So today I finished my commstat network around Kerbin for RemoteTech. In my previous 3 attempts at this things fell apart at sat #3 (Named Atropos, of all things) when I found out I A) Didn't have the battery power needed to get through the Orbital Darkness Time with a live sat, or I forgot some important antenna, or C) The commsats lacked the dV to adjust orbit properly, and so I ended up with some dead area in my network, which isn't good. However, things seemed to work this time, and now Atropos (the 3rd Greek fate and the one who cuts the thread (fitting, huh?)) is now in orbit along with her sisters in a cozy 1,900km orbit with enough everything. PROTIP: When making sure you are going to be in range for omnidirectional anntennas, make sure to account for the 600km radius of Kerbin. It turns out that that is terribly important. Here we see Atropos awaiting launch. I hope this one works right... LIFTOFF!!! Isn't this exciting? At least I know how this thing handles during ascent. Starting our turn. So far, so good... The hard part is done. So far the hardest part has been looking for beauty shots of a really simple rocket. Oh boy. Now, what was that angle again? Oh right, I never did figure it out... This looks good. Let's kick that apoapsis up without the periapsis getting too high. Let's not litter LKO like we keep doing. Ah, here we go. The positioning stage seperates from the final lifter, and it has already turned around to assume the position Atropos has seperated and deployed, happy in her orbit with her little booster drifting off behind her. As you can see, My Little Booster has plenty of dV left. I'd cut it down some, but honestly, I like extra dV. It means that I can screw up. That pink dot is Atropos, running a lovely 16.5km away. Good work, Little Booster Last shot of Atropos in orbit and positioned. The three make a lovely little triangle in orbit, which is how it should be. Now I just need some commsats in polar orbit, and we'll be entirely set.

Dropping boosters always makes me a little panicy. Even the slightest problem and suddenly your main engine is gone, there is a booster flying past the command capsule (and is likely to collide with said capsule later in the flight), the staging button is stuck, and Bill is happy as can be (for about .25 seconds)

Anytime Bill smiles, I start checking everything. I know no other fear than Bill's smile. It's like he's being praised by some rocket-hating demon that told him to do something... Is Bill a Kraken worshipper?

I'm not very good at building SSTOs, and I'm still trying to adjust to the new aerodynamics system, so I'm trying to figure things out as I'm going since there seems to be a distinct lack of useful info on the wiki about it all.

Hello folks. So, I have made an attempt at making something kind of like the SR-71. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it does work (just don't even think about physical time acceleration). I didn't see a thread about them specifically (who wouldn't want to make one after seeing the mk1 airplane parts?), so I finally managed to build, launch, and land one. In the images there are some RemoteTech parts on the craft, but I removed them for posting. The .craft file is here: https://bpaste.net/show/c4135b6c0a35 A few (crappy) beauty shots. Obviously I'm not a very good photographer. Frankly, flying this thing is so annoying (it gets easier with practice, as it turns out) so trying to get a pretty angle and all that is kind of hard, and it was nearing dusk, so Kerbol wasn't working with me, either.

Having read through this again, I'd love to see this animated...

I've been working on building an SSTO. The only one that worked was doing 1.7km/s at around 80km, and that is after the flaps, intakes, and a few parts exploded because of overheating. I really need a guide on how to get to LKO w/o having parts exploding all over the place. The speed is entirely doable (68,982kg being pushed by 8 Rapiers works wonders), but that damnable heating...

I just downloaded 0.9 and started up a new game. However, when I was going through and grabbing the easy science (in this case, making a small hop off the launch pad to grab some data) and I staged my little rocket, I popped the 'chute almost instantly (I think the height I was at was ~650m). However, the 'chute just disappears (the icon turns red like it was ripped off) even when I make sure that I stage is when I'm moving at <10m/s. What the hell is going on here?

Three men walk into a bar. The fourth one ducks. Not so much a joke, but with all of the Chem-related jokes I'll toss this in: Little Timmy was a chemist but little Timmy is no more for what little Timmy thought was H2O was H2SO4

Floor 823: This floor was designed by M. C. Esher. Spend an hour walking along walls before continuing.

Given that a pyramid is the most stable structure, always attempt to build your rocket to look like one. That way you have less problems with it tilting when you don't want it to. Once you are high enough, toggle engines on the side you want to drop so that you can turn over. It works really well.

Whenever you build a rocket, always use SRB at the very top to stabilize it. It you want it to be really stable, point then inwards slightly.

In the immortal worlds of some dude somewhere MOAR

I ran into some interesting issues when trying this mod out after downloading it from the Spaceport. 1) Trying out the interstage fairing adaptor without having any fairings on it. I now have a hovering nose cone that a mainsail can't move. EDIT: To clarify, said nosecone was set above the rest of the rocket and wasn't connected using anything other than the apparently magical top node on said adaptor. 2) I also found out that, using the same adaptor, using either of the side fairings (nonejectable parts) that when any real stress is applied (the test vehicle was a command module, small fuel tank, and a mainsail at full power) that they fall apart very easily. I'm not sure if this is by design, but I thought I would share that with you.

May have already been mentioned, but you can put 3-4 of the small batteries with the little green lights around a docking port. They work better than headlights since they surround the port and they won't change any as the angle between your headlamps and ports changes. Plus it is more battery power, so what isn't to love?

Where is the 'drop them in the ocean' option?

I second this. Get that thing to LKO and turn it on. I'd also like a figure on the TWR of that thing.

I don't see why 4 orange tanks would be that hard to lift. I believe 2 is fairly common, so I'd imagine that the issue would revolve around not how hard is it to lift, but can your computer handle the partcount needed to do that.

I'd say KSP targets the same type of playerbase DF, (some) roguelikes, and traditional 'thinking' games such as Chess and Go target; those that aren't afraid to fail, screw up, explode, die due to critical sock shortage, or are scared off by their game needing a working understanding of things like 'timing', 'minecart machineguns', and 'integral calculus'.

While my last few launches involved 4 SRBs strapped to a lightweight core (including the fun effects), I tend to favor a working launch. Frankly, I find the initial launch of ANY rocket to be the most stressful part of any flight and while straping a Mk1 Command module atop a Mainsail w/ infifuel looks cool, when your Mun rocket is wiggling around like an epileptic worm at a disco, you tend to favor the "Whatever Works" approach. That said, I don't think anyone here would look down adding sepratrons to boosters just so they colide together behind the rocket and make pretty fireworks. Or launching your SRBs early and watching them explode ahead of you while your rocket flights right through the middle of the fireball.

This is terribly wasteful, but you can burn on the day side a few times to increase the size of your orbit which should reduce the amount of time you spend eclipsed by Kerbin. That said, Ion drives are nice for small changes; you really need that small Rockomax engine to get out of Kerbin's SoI in any reasonable amount of time. Hell, the ant engine would be better.

KSP docking improved my Vendetta Online docking skills and overall manuevering.

One day I will remember to start taking screenshots of launches. Not so much a "You will not go to space today" issue as a "You won't be going to space ever again". Career mode, unlocked the 2nd tier tech and decided on a Minmus flyby for SCIENCE. Everything goes well (excepts I ended up leaving Kerbin SoI and having to rejoin after a short stint in interstellar space) until I'm coming home. Bill climbs out, pulls all of the science out of the experiments and buckles in for the return trip. Retro burn to slow down (I don't like reentering atmo at 4k/s), bring my periapsis up so I'm not coming it at a 45 degree angle, smash space and see nothing happen. Why is this a problem you ask. Well, the problem is that this spacecraft isn't designed to land with 2 Sci Jr.s, 4 Goos, plus a 200 tank, 909 engine, plus 16 batteries, solar panels, ect.. Well, I imagine you can imagine the 'landing' that occured after the single parachute ripped off (I had hoped the pod would tear off in a last-ditch effort to save the whole thing), and ended up setting a new ocean depth record for my rocket program.

I use the 64 bit KSP and FAR, ScanSat, RemoteTech2, MechJeb, Kethane, and KAS all seem to work

Started a new career save and built a small munar orbiter. Screwed up the transfer, so I burned to return and decided to come straight down. Jeb hit wat doing 3k/s. I still have to learn how to handle FAR