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michaelhester07

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Posts posted by michaelhester07

  1. 1 hour ago, SpaceCommunism said:

     

    is there any good guidelines for reducing drag and being able to execute these sorts of turns? I often do a similar maneuver to these two you quoted and would really like to use a more efficient route, but suffer from severe drag forces that always want to tip my rocket over from even the most slightly out of center petrograde before the 20km mark where I often hit 45 until I near whatever my preferred apeostasis is. I knew this was a waste of delta-v but I have no idea how to stop drag from making my craft flip otherwise.
     

    The first 2 I have already tried a lot, the second I am less familiar with in terms of Kerbal rocket design. I might add this is something that happens to me with even very benign stuff like I last launched a hitchhiker with mk1 command + reaction wheel and 3 small comms satellites to setup an omni-LKO sat network.probably wasn't that heavy at all, but it just would not stop with causing drag and I will likely have to launch more satellites to setup the network to cover the other bodies in the SOI. With this 3rd option am I building a number of smaller lift payloads with no central engine or something around my vac stage payload? It just seems like a counter-intuitive ship design (usually the cart goes before the horse), but makes sense on considering I can see how the main problems I am having are probably from loss of drag on the back when I jettison spent fuel containers and boosters. How far forward does thrust need to be? Just ahead of the COG of the non-atmospheric payload?

    The design I finally settled on for launching the large farm unit from civpop was a gantry that put the rocket bells just above the top of the farm sphere.   I had ended up welding it to reduce part count but it was able to fly without welding.   I'd imagine about 1/8th of the ship's length ahead of the "center of drag".  Basically the part that drags the most goes at the back.  The center of mass as you fly will eventually end up behind the center of thrust so that you maintain stability when the engines are fired up.

    Think about how you would drag a class E asteroid into kerbin orbit.  It works the same way when launching the heavy non atmospheric payload.

  2. Got back into ksp in a big way and patched my civ pop mod from it's current state of shambles.   Currently in the process of colonizing Minmus.  There are two active bases on the moon now in this one area where water, ore, substrate, and metal ore combined together.

    The hexbase design (featured on the second to last slide) is done so that the center of the base is open, allowing placement of survey stakes for building large ships while still having things within detectable range of the survey site.

  3. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ag2O0IQABwNUgxbFdlc29wZkk/view?usp=sharing

     

    I couldn't let my old mod languish while it didn't work.  The google drive link goes to a combination of two patches for Civ Popoulation to bring it back to working condition while giving the current maintainers a codebase to fix it with.  The zip file has the following

    • Biodome examples for how to build a part you can pass through (classic designs)
    • Updated original code base (tested in ksp64 bit) for the population regulator: now references moduleResourceConverter and uses the PreProcess() override to perform calculations
    • Rebalanced configs for civilian houses returning to the original comsumption values
    • Laser drill with Electrolysis module to allow in situ oxygen generation (hydrogen is not captured in the drill)
  4. I researched the issues I had outside of the code base and came up with a patch to fix those.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_ag2O0IQABwQ3RYaGN6M3VCWmM

    Extract the zip and copy the folders into your Netherdyne Aerospace folder after installing civ-pop

    Changes I included:

    • Biodome Sphere and Biodome bases:  I replaced the colliders by splitting each face out and extruding it slightly in blender. Each face was then separated into a separate blender object before importing into Unity 5.  Once there, each object gets its own convex hull collider while removing the meshRender component.  The result is being able to traverse inside the biodome again.  As an additional bonus the biodome can now be planted directly on the ground without it going through.
    • The Park biodome base (and other bases with texture) had a similar operation done to the walls and floor.  These colliders match the location of the walls so that it looks proper but still allows traverse inside.
    • The drill now has an electrolysis module as a way to produce oxygen in-situ.  This consumes your water.  Hydrogen from that process is vented instead of stored (but that can be changed in the config file).  3 water -> 1 oxygen i assumed was the correct output rate.

    @GGumby  I can send you the assets I used for the patch if you want them.

  5. I came back to playing this within the past week or so and noted things that changed from the original, some mod breaking and some immersion breaking.  I didn't see the population speed change but I'll look at it soon.

    • The biomass conversion part is removed.  This is kinda breaking.  The original resource chain allow one to harvest CO2 from the drill as it converted the substrate into Biomass (the fertilizer), thereby allowing the farm scrubber to convert that to O2.  Without that part there is no way to generate oxygen in-situ so you could never grow a colony without bringing your own oxygen.
    • Immersion breaking:  All the biosphere parts seem to have the default convex hull collider.  I had done the colliders in the original such that it would be possible to walk around inside of a biodome and to get into/out of a structure inside of one.  This required more complex collider designs to the point where I thought about having individual triangle cylinder colliders on each of the faces of the biosphere.  While it wouldn't be possible to roll around one on the surface of a planet it would be possible to drive around inside of the dome and make that circus thing with the motorcycles in it.  Also immersion breaking is the collider on the park pieces as you can't attach things directly to the surface.  The ring part should be possible to pass through as well.

    It's been a while since I handed this project off and i've been watching and lurking the whole time.  I don't expect to pick it back up as I'm busy in projects outside KSP.  That said I'd like to see the immersion brought back and if the consumption rate issue is there see that fixed.  Other than that thanks for maintaining the mod as far as you have, both to RabidNinjaWombat and GGumby.

     

     

  6. 22 hours ago, SpacedCowboy said:

    Or the opposite situation when there's nothing on the first stage BUT launch clamps! You hit the space bar and,,, ( insert sound here )

    I've done this too.  My first rocket in 1.1.2 had this happen and it crashed so hard on the pad the game crashed.

  7. Before I let mechjeb do it I used to burn up to 10km then start turning, with the nav-ball scale as such:

    15-20km: 15degrees east from vertical

    20-30: 30 degrees east

    30-50km 45 degrees east

    50-60: 80 degrees east

    60+: at prograde until desired orbit altitude.

     

    As for the rocket flipping:  First add Winglets to the bottom.  If that doesn't fix the flip do a fairing over the payload.  If both of that doesn't work, drag the payload into orbit behind a lift structure, making sure your thrust origin is ahead of the payload.  It will naturally fix itself this way (but could be hard to gravity turn).  This is especially needed if you launch biospheres from the civilian population mod.

  8. I don't do this enough. The one thing missing from these checklists though

    • Launch clamps are in the first stage to be activated

     

    Hitting the launch button to only to be reminded of how ridiculously strong the launch clamps are has sent me reverting back to the VAB quite a few times.

  9. Dont forget though. Assuming that you had a solar microwave system around earth, it would be quite a bit cheaper (materials wise, and lifting stuff wise) to microwave beam the power to your moonbase.

    On that line of thinking it may be more advantageous to put a microwave beam system on the moon and beam the energy back to earth. This assumes you can get the laser to reach to the moon. If you can, you can get it to reach back to earth. There is a lot of space on the moon for solar farms and practically none of the issues you get with earth's atmosphere. The only issue is the cost of getting the equipment there. If you can manufacture it from lunar resources then you're golden. The maria may be harboring some metal resources for mirrors. Solar stations would be spread out on the moon to deal with "night time" on the moon.

    I still maintain that nuclear on orbit is not very practical for the purpose of generating electricity for Earth. Since the waste mass is not so large we can store it in places like yucca mountain. Nuclear on orbit is practical for a spaceship or probe that will eventually land somewhere like on the moon. For a ship it's a reliable power source.

  10. Resource gathering and refinement are huge parts of the build process. In the spirit of what you're asking for.

    Say we have 7 billion people all sitting on top of huge deposits of iron, steel, plastic, copper, gold, silicon, and food. We want them to build a modern society. Do they have tools? We'll assume no. Do they have energy? Wood? coal? oil? Nuclear? Sugar? We'll assume an infinite supply of energy, but limited by what they've currently built. We're basically Age of Empires 2 set to deathmatch settings.

    First we need to make a simple hammer. We have sticks, rope, and ingots of steel. Tie them together. we have a hammer. Hammers let us build shovels which will be used to move the iron and steel around.

    Next we need simple carts to move the material. Sticks form the shell, iron and steel form the wheels.

    Able to move material we next need to...

    Know what. I don't really know the steps to go from immense piles of simple resources to what we have in modern technology. There are so many levels of refinement that came together to make the computer I'm now typing this out on. To recount all the steps to go from piles of resources to computers would take more space than this forum has. For how long it would take assuming we have a society with such "wealth" I would imagine around 50 years. This assumes you get all 7 billion working toward building the computer. That is just one part of today's tech. We have cars, central heat/air conditioning, rockets, cities with infrastructure, roads, houses. All of that went through several layers of refinement and spawned technology to further that refinement.

    I don't think any modern event of such happening (like that town earlier in this thread) could accurately describe this as today's developing world can simply buy the refinement and skip ahead in the process. Agriculture town can buy computers and cars and central air. They don't have to develop it.

    This is a fun question but to truly answer it in the spirit that the OP wants would take a lot of typing.

  11. For earth application with space why not user our local cosmic nuclear reactor to power us?

    Do a solar orbital station. It doesn't even have to be solar panels. It can be an unfurled mirror that reflects the sunlight to a polar station. in space it is very practical to harvest sunlight. Place 3 to 4 satellites in geosynch orbit around earth, each reflects light down to a collection station on the south pole. Then you can wire that to wherever you need power. It can be microwave power too if you use PV arrays instead.

    Nuclear power would work out best in locations where solar becomes impractical or prohibitively expensive, like a Lunar equator base. In such a base there would be no sun for 15 days out of a month. We'd try to put a base on the poles so we can use solar power but a resource we need might not be on the poles.

  12. Isn't there also still ... online rentable telescopes? The comparison could be a good entry to a little debate on light pollution as well... With the whole urbanization a lot of kids will be growing up with little to no chance to see much of the sky with their own eyes, which is still the cheapest way to inspire kids. :)

    There is. At the White House event I would think whatever scientist/museum person who is running the thing could get time on any observatory they wanted to for comparisons. "Have your observatory be featured in front of the President!" They could also just go to Night Skies Network and view any of the live streams from observatories there and compare it to a live stream from the one at the NASM on the mall.

    Then again cameras vs eyes is a big difference. You'd have to host the event under an actual dark sky instead of the White House lawn for the impact to be truly noticable. President could crash Big Meadows at the Shenandoah for that.

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