celem

Also, like as a design rule of thumb.... If your engine is still running, but you simply fall out of the sky, then you need more or bigger engines running at that point, or to be pushing less weight. If you just run out of fuel to run the lovely shiny engines then you need more fuel. Always remember that everytime you add fuel (or any mass) that isn't burning in the bottom-most stage of your rocket that every stage below it will have to lift it along the way. A rocket where the mid-stages are just fine from an optimal launch can fail if the pad-ignition stage climbs really painfully slowly or ridiculously fast. (theres an optimum speed at various altitudes) Less really is more. The size of the launcher needed to get a payload into orbit increases dramatically both in volume and complexity as the desired payload weight increases. Practice on nothing more than a pod, tiny fuel tank and tiny engine (to bring the guy home when you WIN) Usually for a new-player. If they are failing to hit orbit then I would say 'smaller' rather than 'bigger'. As in smaller payload before bigger launcher.

I dont know if this has altered in 0.23 with the ability to move science by EVA. Certainly in previous versions I've had 15+ bits of data stacked up in various pod types/cans. Since this now appears to be a strategy I would imagine that there is enough room for anything you likely want to transfer. But, as said, I dont have a number...

Its certainly giving me lots to do. Where I thought I would be planning mega mining bases... well I'm redesigning just about every sci-payload I ever made instead. And the ever trusty Kethane means Im still planning mega-bases. Win/Win right? I sympathise with people struggling with 0.22 and earlier designs, the way most have been handling science involved some degree of usage of the old transmission and reset logic. I still do the orbit round Kerbin biome mission and Munar biome draining that folks mentioned, it just means different designs to get it done. The rebuild of my 'Munar Hopper' which is designed to make 4-5 landings on Mun in a single mission, means it now actually touches down with 6 materials bays, but leaves with none. Those of us who didnt transmit much if at all (I'm an RT2 fan, I dont transmit sci beyond crew report generally) should be finding that some things got easier; As the Hopper jumps between biomes it drops the used bays and pods on the surface. Plus, now that i'm not returning a stack of materials bays and goo pods I dont need the Munar Hopper to be a powered Kerbin landing, I EVA all the sci into the pod and return that alone on a chute. All said; I guess I'll take it, not what I had in mind, but works for me.

Yeah, done that. Especially when re-purposing an existing design; I dont always check everything. Incidentally, you shouldnt lose any EVA data by not being able to transmit it. Those you stack up in the pod for the return, it's just crew report you really need the antenna for.

I've successfully knocked small panels and antennas off hatches. normally when trying to 'push' a craft anyway. Thats gonna be your best bet, build a "catcher's mitt" and shunt the stranded jeb into an aerobrake trajectory. Before you begin the pushing (which is tricky and prohibits any kind of time-warping), see if you can snap that antenna off. set it to transmit something first so that it telescopes out.

I just fiddled around with those on Eve using someones .23 file. Locking legs before landing worked like you want it to, but they are a little more susceptable to shock now so I had to brake a bit more. It also helped a lot on the brief base assembly I tried on Mun

Yeah big congrats, milestone reached. You even docked off-axis which is just a tiny bit trickier again. Now, if i remember my own progress correctly, you face the awesome joy of designing apollo-style CM-Lander missions. Was a great few days in the VAB for me. edit: though by your sig maybe you wanna iron out your landing/takeoff woes first XD

Yup, we are on our way. Trails for Duna and Jool fleet intercepts. The Duna fleet has much nicer grouping since the Jool window was somewhat 'ruined' by a bad positioning of the Mun. I couldnt get a decent ejection angle without having to make up for a gravity brake off it, and adjusting radially to make it a slignshot seemed like hassle, so they got weird ejections and corrected as they climbed out past Mun. Some majorly inefficient burns, but everyone is packing epic spare dV at this point and they are arriving in the order I wanted. Theres also a scanning team heading for Moho, Eeloo and Dres, all 3 will make for various habs after they are done. Eeloo/Dres team to Jool and Moho team back up to Eve. (That Moho team has actually done its scanning and left moho soi. It burned back to Kerbin encounter as you might have noticed, then changed it's mind. It's going to adjust for Eve destination at next periaps... Just felt daft returning kerbals to kerbin) Note the RT2 satellite link to the Duna team, they are in comms the entire way. Jool team is dark, they have comms between fleet elements but are cutoff from KSC. They will deploy a single dish for periodic transmission on arrival around Laythe. The flag already showing out by Duna was 'hacked' there. I got this idea of trying to land by it so I can take screenshots from it's POV at some point, no craft have actually visited Duna yet. You might also note a single craft around Eve. After loading up the Duna/Jool fleets I pushed my entire LKO station, now holding just 12 Kerbals out to high Eve orbit. Replacing the LKO station for the next set of windows, along with designing the phase 2 wave of vessels. Here is the satellite carrier, shot taken just before departure. Single launch, no orbital assembly or refueling. Nose-mounted satellite is deployed already as the link to the keostat ring, this ship makes the journey pointed retrograde. Crewed by 2 kerbals, carrying 5x relays. Relays mount 5mil m omnidirectionals and 400 Gm dishes. Was too lazy to make a custom launcher so it's on something outta my crazy sack, it will brake and circularise at first drop-spot at Duna still running a Mainsail that was lit on the pad and allowing for satellite drops probably had about 11km dV leaving lko. Its probably gonna have a lot of gas left over for the nuke, but thats fine as it's designed to fit to the Duna station in the same fleet and extra options never hurt, theres snr ports and decouplers both sides of the hitch-hiker. (remember that kethane scanner I forgot? Its on this) Why didnt I send one of those to Jool? 5 sats wont be enough, and I didnt want to just send 2 of these. I totally want to build a huge satellite dispenser for jool and it wasnt ready for the window. (its a bit of an monster, this thing is 600 parts on the pad already) Plus it adds spice to have a colony in spotty comms, Laythe is gonna be pioneers for me. New personal rule: No landing of habitats on a surface without a link to KSC (intermittent is acceptable) or an orbital hab with 'Remote Command' (RT gizmo that makes a vessel into a broadcast hub like KSC, needs big probe body and 6+ kerbals in command-capable seats.). Im fine with convoys and orbital habs being 'off-the-grid' provided they have a good enough space:kerbal ratio to sim life support and living space and a high enough population to avoid 'space crazies'. 94 kerbals off kerbin. 67 in flight. A lot of infrastructure en-route. Gonna be space left over in various Habs once they arrive and a number of reusable craft. No major resource installations are currently in transit, though both Jool and Duna teams carry small automated rovers (see minmus refinery shot)

Some shots of my minmus testing grounds. Begun metal extraction, smelting and construction of rocket parts in addition to kethane mining. 2 seperate sites unfortunately. Was mainly to make sure i understood these mods in combo, but its nice having loadsa fuel out at minmus orbit. Toying with an orbital shipyard scenario. Main concern is maintaining the spirit (and difficulty) of the challenge, i dont know how EXPL works when it comes to crewing builds, I still have to physically lift kerbals off kerbin to 'win'. Secondly, any orbital shipyard i would consider using would have to look the part... which means loads of parts. Plus parts on launch from whatever ship im using. Dont know if my rig would handle that even without terrain to render. And I feel this challenge ought not be too easy, orbital yards are game-changing. Anywho, without further waffle. Screenshots. Everything is liftoff capable and landed itself. No sky-cranes currently. minmus kethane refinery - automated rover landed first, then delivered central unit and kethane tanks. Accomodation is out of shot (its just a couple of hitch-hikers for this test installation, but its 250m meters away from the mining for safety reasons.) The drilling unit is missing, see next shot for why. The rover is fully independant however and carries everything needed to slowly produce fuel. minmus ore project - landed all together. The lander with the kethane drills at the back of the shot is not part of this installation, he belongs to the refinery, which you can see is 10.4km away. He hopped over here because the pilot had to EVA and KAS-attach the two unmanned industrial units, he also hooked himself up and used stored kethane to give this base a refueling. He is normally hooked up to the base from the first shot as primary driller, though like the rover, he can independantly produce fuel. The ore project is completely unmanned in normal operation, a shuttle is still in production to collect rocket parts. Early prototype kerbaled-kethane rover on Mun - the drills can only reach the surface if you park it straddling a ridge, which is stupid. Finding out things like this is why i'm testing locally rather than at destination. Otherwise I kinda like this idea. He's got 3 poodles on there which means he can now roam Kerbin's SoI at will, but in an emergency he can blow the 2 end segments.

I have issues finding uses for most of the aerodynamics. Wings and fins especially. Once i have the delta wing and the deluxe fin i never use anything else. Caveat: I dont do much spaceplaning. Register another positive vote for the 55's. Yes its bulky and inefficient, but its a godsend for emergency twr. I often have a pair on my central launcher stack for when all the radials are gone and im circularising hvy payloads on a single mainsail. Its preferrable to a forest of the little ones, for sanity when you do actually need a couple hundred kN. Im also a huge fan of the 'useless' ant engines and similar 'tinys other than 48-7S'. I stick ants to slack tanks to give me a fuel indicator in the staging menu (i hate searching amongst and right-clicking tanks to find the next asparagus drop). Agreed the 48-7S is OP though. A forest of them on cubic struts and you can replace mainsails even. Clustering these is a very powerful tool.

Yeah, i've started including them lately. Mainly because my launches are reaching a complexity (and volatility) that makes recovery without one tricky. Sure they dont do much for runaway rocket eating payload, but im more likely to suffer launcher breakup due to wobbly payload and subsequent harmonic oscillation. Here I found the classic abort (tie all launch engine toggles, pod decoupler and chutes to the 'abort') wasnt enough since the rocket may often be cartwheeling or otherwise tumbling. The ring of little boosters becomes key then. Even if your rocket snapped and engines cant be cut; your pod will beat it's TWR and leave it way behind. When it comes to abort vs revert; I tend to revert instantly if the flight has shown itself to be genuinely uncontrolable. i.e. design fail, was tweaking something and forgot to replace something else leading to imbalance, Breakage on pad-drop etc.. If its random unluck, pilot error or a minor 'not instantly catastrophic' failure/flaw I play it out, recover the crew, then revert anyway. The real test is when you discover a minor design flaw on something already orbiting, lets say a lander where you forgot the sci modules. But you already went to space-centre from the flight so it cant be reverted. All you really want is to fix the flaw and relaunch but you cant revert anymore. Options: A) Carefully and conscientiously deorbit, stage, pop chutes etc, land and recover Cost: time Forget about it, just leave the flawed one orbiting forever, who cares? Cost: nada C) You wanna choose B, but your OCD cant stand seeing the ship all the time on map/radar. Carefully and conscientiously deorbit, then head to the VAB as soon as the trajectory is suborbital and leave em to crater out of sight (and mind). Cost: your soul...you *******

Well yes, its the unbalanced engines. Im at work so cant test-fly it. But from the picture at that link I can see you've angled the shuttle engines to balance against the srb's. Once you drop those the thrust is way off the centre of mass for the shuttle/ET combo. In reality the shuttles engines do a lot of vectoring, true. Once the srbs are gone though your engines would need to actually be tilted the other way to compensate for the off-centre thrust, gimballing only goes so far. Strip the srb's inside the vab, then check CoM and CoT to see its characteristics in that stage. My advice would be to lose the angling of the shuttle engines and instead balance the initial stage of the launch by moving the srb's out of over-all symmetry to offset the thrust/weight of the shuttle (so they sit a little toward the same side as the shuttle, try and bring them closer to your starting CoM). Even with these alterations you are going to be off-centre once the srb's drop, though the neutral shuttle engine angle will allow them to vector modestly to allow for the ET weight. The remaining control needed to maintain vertical flight is probably gonna come down to SAS and RCS along with whatever lift the shuttle control surfaces can still provide (thin air). Dont sweat it. Shuttles are hard. Mainly because as soon as you start adopting realworld designs, you have to deal with the fact that they are, by nature, all unbalanced as sin. That and NASA's own tech doesnt perfectly lineup with ours, nor does ksp work quite like the realworld.

Agreed. Theres no engine in the game 'required' to do anything. Many folks chase nukes and use them as a go-to. Clustering 48-7S is another 'overpowered' combo. The mainsail is only going to be relevant leaving the surface as pointed out. If you are not moving huge loads then smart design will accomplish what you need with other engines. I would suggest trying the docking thing again sometime. It's such a game changer. Especially if you are not using mainsails, as it lets you assemble in orbit craft that are tricky to lift in a single piece without the 'sails. (for all that we say its not needed...it really is the king of 'high tonnes to lko', avoiding it is an exercise in weight management and can lead to escalating part-counts)

You trolling Majiir? You of all people ought to know how Kethane works A few folks have answered this one anyway but seem to have missed or glossed over the main issue. Time Real Time. My Time Even when accelerating time. sure 5 hours becomes a couple of minutes. But 2 hours becomes even less. Nothing happens while the site is off-loaded, we want the process to go as fast as possible when it is loaded; No-one wants to wait a game-day for their fuel tanks to fill. Since you can only generate kethane/fuel while focused on the base, we want that process to happen as fast as possible. If just gathering kethane for export then obviously # drills is the only factor. more is more. If we are actually converting to fuel then the limiting factor is processor output. so more processors. We then add drills until it at least meets the consumption of the processors. Sure we can cut down on drill # by using the bigger drills to feed multiple processors, but they dont fit everywhere, maybe smaller are just more convenient. In practice I have twice as many drills as required to feed my refineries, always, because I also have kethane storage. I also always process on site The upshot of this is that I switch focus to an empty base (no fuel, no kethane), drill and process till the fuel tanks are full, the kethane tanks will also fill. Next time I want to refuel I only have half the process to go through. It takes the same time, but can be conducted without the drilling units being on site (good for me since I use drillers as haulers to move fuel into orbit). re:OP The bases really do just look cool. We are practising for the day when theres some real point to doing it. Theres a further purpose behind it if using certain mod combos. Leveraging Kethane and Extraplanetary Launchpads for instance lets you pretty much recreate KSC wherever you want and launch from anywhere.

I use those wheels almost exclusively. Everytime I go to build a rover I start with a tiny, automated, realistic rover... And end up with what is to all intents and purposes a 200-part tank. They are usually the only wheels that get me the clearance I need. That said, first time I used them on a kethane-equipped rover I discovered they also tend to raise my drills too high. Rovers are something I need to get to grips with, mine are always monstrosities, usually making journeys solo, because they can. (rover @ 50 tonnes that can take itself lko to duna surface and land) I just fail at designing small stuff, by the time they are that large its more part-count efficient not to provide them with external propulsion solutions. I really do want to start using those round 'inflated-looking' wheels. Apart from anything else the monster-ones weigh too much.

Yeah it was one of the few I felt had to be in. It increases the complexity and logistics, but is rewarding when you get it up and running. I also have delays off, I struggle with those big time. For reference, my mod lineup is: Extraplanetary Launchpads Kethane KAS Novapunch2 - some adapters, fairings and so on AlarmClock Engineer PreciseNode As I mentioned, i have mechjeb but dont actually use it as a rule. Im considering a life-support mod currently, as well as examing stuff like greenhouse mod and various 'base' mods.

Gonna ignore 0.23 Science stuff is awesome, looking forward to labs and transferring experiments next time I get around to starting a new career, but nothing I actually need right this moment since like everyone else my designs are based on not being able to move science, so I dont. Otherwise nothing i'm interested enough in to actually update anytime soon. The single greatest draw for me is actually: the science library showing what has been gathered. If I restart my career it will be for that feature alone.

Resources. They are pushing career to try and give a goal-driven alternative to the sandbox. Some gamers just dont do sandbox, im one, i run out of ideas without having challenges/milestones to complete. (yes, mods and challenge forum rock, but it should be built-in as many players wont ever reach the forums). A fully-fledged resource system gives no end of tasks to complete, surveying, handling extraction/processing and logistics. Resources provide the biggest playability boost for me. I would also say that the resource mods available, while great, are too shallow for the level of realism ksp provides thus far. I want a more in-depth production chain than ore->metal->parts / kethane-> fuel, done. Multiplayer in my eyes caters to 2 crowds. Those who want the minecraft style sandbox, playing alongside and interacting with their friends creations, and people who play militarised KSP. Im not much up for either and feel increased depth to the SP game is more deserving of attention. Replayability tends to skyrocket with MP however, I wouldnt want to exclude it

The LKO station, currently holding 30 souls. Theres a weird decoupler left-over on one end since I put it on back-to-front. There was originally a mechjeb on the head for liftoff, though it emerged that mechjeb couldnt launch it anyway so it got replaced with a 3 man capsule to pilot it up. Infact its all being done without mechjeb, since launch is all i ever use him for and he is unable to fly any of the rockets i've designed for this challenge thus far. (He's too aggressive with the throttle when trying to hug terminal velocity and tends to shake the craft to pieces) Then spent several hours rendezvousing a series of ssto shuttles to bring up the passengers. Will ultimately design a transfer stage able to push the entire thing into position as a single piece when it's done with it's duties in LKO. Once it becomes a Hab proper rather than a transit point then the occupancy will be dialled back to give living space.

Did a bit more on this last night before bed. Will post some shots again later tonight. Got a keostationary satellite network up which lets me use probe ships within Kerbin's SoI, each carries a long-ranged dish (like the ones on the Duna station). This is awesome since it lets me start ditching spent launchers. Already well on the way to a decent Kessler Syndrome. (mainly capsules, some 20-odd of them, that were ditched after carrying passengers to LKO) I put another few vessels into parking orbit. First transfer window is Moho which im gonna skip for now, it's a serious voyage that I traditionally have 0 luck with. Duna and Jool are next up, only days apart, so i'm building both flotillas at the same time. Station/Hab from the first shots is headed to Low Duna Orbit. It's accompanied by a manned sat-carrier with enough unmanned sats to build a complete coverage network round Duna, along with a kethane mapper to send to Ike. The relay sats are designed to sit a bit below synchronous orbit, but theres enough to daisy-chain the signal anyway, they carry dishes so this should let me link the Kerbin system to the Duna system. The pilot of the satellite carrier will join the habitants of the Hab once his job is complete. There is also now an extraplanetary launchpad in LKO, it's probably headed to Duna/Ike with the first waves of ships, to await in orbit there until resources have been identified and a colony-site selected. The approaching Jool window also offers a great opportunity to begin with our plans for Laythe. As the most emminantly suited to colonisation we have big plans for this world. Slated for this first departure window are a Hab (similar to the Duna one above, but with extra dV in the transfer stage), 2x Surface base components (mainly habitation and power) and a manned kethane scanner sat. The KSC boffins havent yet cracked a way to deliver a full RT2 network to Laythe as they plan to do with Duna, hence the manned satellite for Laythe, pilot will join the Hab population when his job is done. I'm doing Laythe first since I feel happy delivering Kerbals there with minimal facilities. Since they have a breathable atmosphere I dont need to add loads of space to simulate life-support. They just need shelter and power. Surface bases elsewhere are going to hold fewer kerbals/physical 'seat' than this one. Meanwhile all is not quiet in the Kerbin system itself. We launched a large lko space-station to act as a departure point, this lets us dodge adding capsules to future launches to carry the Kerbonauts through the atmosphere, the craft instead launch with only their primary pilot or under drone control and fill up on refugees at the station. Several 'bus-class' ssto shuttles have been pressed into service ferrying kerbals up to the station as fast as we can push them through the astronaut training complex. It's spam-in-a-can on the station, with 75% of seats taken, but nobody is going to be there for more than a week, so they can deal with it for now. I also want all my emigrants to be in contact with KSC through the RT2 mod, cant abandon people to madness. Laythe surface bases will initially be only in periodic contact as I do not have a network solution for the Jool system. We also did some trial-run landings, deploying several experimental base modules to both the Mun and Minmus. The evac plan calls for no kerbals inside Kerbin's SoI, so these will be abandoned/relocated before the event. 62 Kerbals off planet 2 on the Mun, 3 on Minmus, 30 in the LKO departure station, the rest are relaxing in Hitchhiker compartments on various ships in parking orbit, awaiting their windows. Nobody has left Kerbin's SoI yet. 45 days in 1 fatality (shuttle pilot returning from bus-route to LKO station, flat-spin on re-entry, mk I model without abort system installed, design-flaw corrected + abort installed)

I just started up a save for this too. Have a few crazy plans, probably end up putting so much into orbit that i cant physically manage the windows, but...meh. All kerbals launching through an atmosphere must be in pressurised capsules is one of my rules for this one. And I have RT2 in so im gonna have to set up satellite networks if I want to use probes. Crazy project are go! edit: Space hab into LKO. It's carrying 5 Kerbals for now, they rode up in the capsules on the docking ports. The crew EVA from the capsules once in orbit. Jeb takes the first shift at the helm (I need 1 kerbal in the cupola to have vessel control due to RT) while the others settle into their new home to await the interplanetary burn to come Ditching the command capsules frees up the 2 docking ports. Mission control realises that while they have an ore detector, there is no kethane scanner on-board. Plans are slated to expand the station here in LKO and correct a couple of oversights, before continuing on with various support craft to accompany the mission. When asked where they were heading first the boffins at KSC simply scratched their heads. "We havent decided yet, wherever lines up soon and sounds good I guess." 5x Kerbals 4 Hitchikers 1 Cupola Big Ore Detector RCS and ports RT2 Dish and omni-directional. Theres about 6.5k dV behind it, but I dont wanna send em miles alone so probably in orbit around Duna/Eve as it's the first run. Unfortunately I forgot to include a docking port and RT-dish on the unmanned nuke stage so I wont be able to bring it back to refuel. Would be smart since these are big launches in 1 piece.

Im happy with very low twr interplanetary legs provided that theres an atmosphere on the destination. Aerobraking can save you several thousand braking dV and takes a fraction of the (real) time. Otherwise I try and stay above 0.5 in space, just so that im not stuck with the long burns. There are some situations where you only have 15 minutes inside the SOI and need to brake heavy, or you need to perform a swift radial burn for better trajectory. Being stuck with a single nuke pushing 50+ tonnes at those moments can really screw your gameplan.

Yeah, we could sit and spew out some angles and altitudes. For instance my current station is at 125km, I tend to launch off the pad when the station is about 12-15 degrees behind KSC, which leads to direct rendezvous off the pad. Your exact angles are gonna depend on the TWR of your various ascent stages (how long it takes to reach required altitude) and the altitude of the station itself. As KvickFlygarn87 (oh look, another swede) says, do a couple of dry runs and before you know it, dock direct off launch will be something you do without even thinking about it.

the mod to put the ship instantly where you want it is called 'Hyperedit'. Search here on the forums will probably hit that.

perhaps its the way this game models manouever nodes or something. But i always forget we dont insta-accelerate, he's quite right, you are climbing up the gravity well anyway the moment you pass periaps