zeppelinmage

I finished my space station.

Presenting: Farscape One. This is my first station, and I'm rather proud of it. 30-some-odd hours worth of work, it took 8 launches and 13 docking maneuvers to complete. (Though the jumbo orange fuel tanks are currently empty.) The station is completely stock. It has habitation space for 16 Kerbals (4 hitchhikers), and two science labs. There are 20 Gigantor solar panels providing power, and communications maintained through 2 dishes and 4 aerials. On the bottom I installed a refueling boom for future interplanetary missions. There are also enough escape pods for 18 Kerbals in case of an emergency. Some numbers: Kerbal population: 20 Total (dry) tonnage: 154t Fueled tonnage: 505t Part count: 668 Orbit: ~500km circular. Capacities: Kerbals: 41 (4x hitchhikers, 3x cupolas, 2x labs, 6x 3-man escape pods) Fuel: 326t RCS: 6310L Electricity: 30650 units FPS on my little under-powered laptop comes in at 2-4. An overhead shot: Angled perspective shot: Side-on, better view with the sun: Close-up, looking down the refueling boom: Better shot of the top end with comms and solar panels: Close-up of a habitation module: While building this, I learned quite a few things. Notably, what rockets can handle lifting. Also, I now have an appreciation for the Clamp-o-Tron Seniors, which I'll definitely use more of on Farscape Two. I've also become quite proficient at docking, having to do it 13 times.

After many attempts (and failures), I finally got the fuel sections on my space station. Now to man it. Here's my 18-Kerbal Rocket Bus, en route to the station. The pods are actually "escape vehicles" in case of a needed evacuation. All six will detach from the "bus" and dock with the station. Right now the bus is orbiting Kerbin about halfway to the station. Tomorrow I'll bring it up and get my station fully manned.

Thanks, all. The separating LV-N issue has been rectified. Though I still couldn't get the rocket to work right. Mostly it was asparagus issues though. Right now I've re-thought the whole deal and am just launching completely empty tanks on fewer drive motors. Keeping it (relatively) simple. Marking this "Answered" since my initial concern has been met.

Thanks for all the advice. =) I ended up re-engineering the lifter some. I found out I really didn't need all that orbital fuel - cutting back on it actually increased my Delta-V. Good suggestion. I added cubic octagonal struts and that does seem to help. Yeah, some of the struts from below were hooking into the LV-Ns. I moved them so now they're only connected to tanks. No, they don't need to be full; I just thought it would be more efficient. =) I've now cut back on the fuel weight. I'll add some struts between them. As Kashua mentioned, there isn't any space for clamps to hook in there. I usually do connect another set of clamps higer up, but it just doesn't work with my asparagus rockets. Also, adding one underneath isn't an option, since there's motors there. ...now to see if she'll fly.

Part of my station build requires 2 packs of orange fuel tanks. I have the lifter built, and ready to go. Expecting the need, I've strutted the hell out of it. Here she is on the launch pad. Thing is, once physics kicks in, the entire center stack settles, despite the insane amont of struts I have connected to it. That settling is enough to break off the LV-N nuke engines: And the inevitable occurs: Any tips on what to do (other than MOAR STRUTS)? Should I re-think my design? (The central "orbital" stage is going to be beefy anyway, having to move 5 full orange tanks around.)

Let's see... I added habitation modules to my station (new pic when it's complete. )... then one of my interplanetary windows opened up. I've had probes in parking orbits for weeks, so I was excited to finally send one on its way. Well, when I began the burn, the probe began tumbling wildly. Come to find out, the goo container unbalanced it severely. All my probes were useless. So, now I'm in the process of rebuilding the probes (I should have done so anyway as I have more instrumentation now) and lifting them back to orbit. With the window open, I sent my first interplanetary probe. ...to Dres.

Aha, it was the cupola's fault. If I was paying attention to the drag coefficients, I would have mounted the modules in reverse. I'll definitely focus my burn towards prograde in my next launches. (I still have three more to do to complete my station.) Thanks!

The grey stage is my "orbital" stage. There's an orange tank below it. I found a solution - I switched out the mainsails for 4x LV-T45s. I think the mainsail gimbals were overloading or something. The LVs seem to work better. (Maybe because there's literally four times the number?) That said, I would like to know how you all get these heavy lifters to work with mainsails.

Okay, that didn't work. I tried feathering the controls, with control surfaces on the lower stage... and nope. Still spins out of control at the slightest movement.

It's going on my station, so I want to avoid any extraneous control surfaces. I'll try smaller steps for sure though.

I'll take a VAB shot of it after I complete the mission, if it would help.

Thanks, wasn't sure exactly where to put it. I've had it paused while in flight while I bounce back and forth, so here's an action pic: The payload is two habitation modules for my station, those have the RCS. This is after popping my first asparagus stage, so there's an additional asparagus layer to go. This is what it looked like at the gravity turn.

That would scare the @#!$ out of me in real life!

...okay, more like a 360-degree pitch-over. It seems whenever I build a heavy rocket, especially ones that require asparagus staging, I have problems with my gravity turn. Namely, stopping it. I'll get to 10km, then begin the pitch. But I try to slow/stop it, but the rocket keeps going. I usually end up killing my engines and just let it completely turn over. Then I can stop it at my desired pitch angle and restart my engines. Generally I can completely recover the flight, but it's a bit of a pain. Does this happen to y'all? And what do you usually do to remedy it? I have reaction wheels in the rocket - a large-diameter one roughly in the center. My engines are Mainsails, and my payload has RCS.

Thanks! =) I put together the lifters for the remaining parts, and I managed to cut down on the launches. I'll get the rest up in four. Probably get them up tonight.

Just put up my station's core, ~500km orbit. Dubbed Farscape One. It's going to take about 7 or 8 more launches to get all the pieces up there. EDIT: Managed to get two more modules attached - power generation and the refueling boom. Still to go are the habitation modules and the actual fuel tanks.

I've been having... issues... with my redesigned Mun lander. Most of last night took three failed missions. Either during launch, or landing. I took the hint and moved on to something else... so now I'm designing a space station.

Going back to Mun for Science, and I realized only during descent to land that I had installed my fuel lines incorrectly. Had a big 2.5m tank under the lander that was completely full, but also completely inaccessible. Ran out of available gas ~5000m up and freefell to the surface. RIP Bob and Harfred.

Docking was one of the first things I taught myself. I had the game for a whole week before I gave it a shot. I sent up a "target" (manned pod with no engine), and a "rescue" into a roughly 100km orbit. Simply for practice. My first attempts were complete garbage - couldn't get the orbits lined up at all. Then I watched Scott Manley's . That was immeasurably helpful.My second attempt failed, due to forgetting to extend solar panels and running out of electricity. Revert, try again. Third time was a charm. I followed Mr. Manley's guidelines, and it docked easy-peasy.

I chose my method mainly because I'm still not very good at 0g EVA. It would have been rather time-consuming, not only between docking after every biome, but going EVA afterwards to collect the experiments... For me, it was more efficient to have it all on one lander and just do two flights. (My second go netted 2500 science, btw.) As for today's activity... since my Minmus mission was concluded, I decided to return the science lab (and its associated Kerbals) to Kerbin. The lab would burn, after a rescue mission. First, I hooked the lander to the lab and used what gas I had left to return to Kerbin orbit. Then I sucked the last of the fuel from the lab to the lander (since there wasn't enough to deorbit both), and the lander successfully returned home. Then it was time for the rescue missions. The first one was a three-man capsule. I gave it a pilot, leaving the two-man can empty. (This will be important later.) The rendezvous went as planned, and I hooked in with the ladders aligned. I went to EVA the station crew and realized... I'm a seat short. The station held three - two for the lab, one in the cupola. D'oh! No matter, I'll send up a second unit to recover him. Anyway, I load the kerbals into their can and begin reentry sequence. All goes as I expected until it was time to pop chutes. Due to the docking/undocking, my staging didn't fire when I hit [space]. (There's probably an extra command I haven't learned yet to fix this.) So I popped my drogues manually. There were two, and they fired non-symmetrically. A couple things happened. First, the two-man can fell off my rescue craft. The two trapped kerbals began to freefall. Then, my drogues snapped. Because the lander was heavier, it impacted the two-man capsule, detonating my nuke engines. Two kerbals dead, most of my rescue craft disintegrated. Amazingly, I still had the pilot's can, with one chute attached. Maybe it would land safely? ...nope. Dead on impact. My second rescue went much more successfully. Sent up a robotic probe with an empty seat. Docking was a pain, mainly because the COM shifted badly on me. The docking port was on a "stalk" of RCS fuel and reaction wheels, and it flopped back and forth with every RCS thrust. Took me almost 15 minutes of finagling it to get it to lock. Got my Kerbal to the rescue pod, and began the deorbit burn. This rescue craft I engineered better. The pod itself separated fully from the engines and lab, so once the whole thing broke 30k, I popped the decoupler. The pod splashed down safely 2km from where the lab did. Minmus Exploration: Success Lander return (x2): Success Science lab return: Success Lab techs rescue: Failure (3 KIA) Station pilot rescue: Success

Very nice. I just completed another Minmus exploration mission, hitting more biomes. Once the lander comes back to Kerbin, I expect somewhere near an additional 2k in Science. I chose to bring 4x of each experiment, rather than transmitting them at a loss.

Despite some issues, my Minmus X Exploration Program has been wildly successful. I found out a few things during this mission; 1) The mobile lab doesn't add much, beyond a small transmitting bonus. My lander was still better off simply returning home with all the data. 2) 0.23 nerfed experiment copies hardcore. It used to be I could do the same experiment 4x and get decent science each time. Now, though, it drops to 0 for the third copy, if not the second. 3) I barely had to refuel at all. My lander was over-engineered severely for Minmus. I was able to perform three terrain "hops", and still had plenty of delta-V to return home. 4) In adding instruments, I chose... poorly. I found out that I had not installed the Gravioli Detector as I had planned, but had, in fact, installed the similarly-colored pressure sensor. D'oh! Still, pulled in over 2k in Science. Almost done with the Tech Tree, and I have yet to (purposefully) leave Kerbin SOI.

Confirmed. I just hit the same biome and it returned full value again.

Apparently, it remains "generic". You can re-hit the biome for more science later. I'll have to try it when I do my Minmus landings later on.