Developing Duna (pic heavy) - ^_^ with Part 11 ^_^

[Geschosskopf]

Good to have you back with us, @Brotoro!  And as usual, a whole collection of shiny new pieces of amazing vehicle design.  I look forward to more.

BTW, if you look on KerbalStuff, there are mods that bring the old parts back in working fashion.  But you seem to have adopted to the new versions.

[DMSP]

It's been so long!

Awesome for this to be back, and welcome back, Brototo.

[Brotoro]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Good to have you back with us, @Brotoro!  And as usual, a whole collection of shiny new pieces of amazing vehicle design.  I look forward to more.

BTW, if you look on KerbalStuff, there are mods that bring the old parts back in working fashion.  But you seem to have adopted to the new versions.

KerbalStuff be dead.

But I got the Kerbal Historical Institute 3.4 package from Curse and put in the old Mk1 Cockpit...

The old ships are now workable in 1.0.5.  Huzzah!

Thank you, sir!

Umm... Does this new board allow me to give you rep?  (I feel like such a n00b trying to use this new setup.)

Edited February 18, 2016 by Brotoro

[loch.ness]

27 minutes ago, Brotoro said:

KerbalStuff be dead.

But I got the Kerbal Historical Institute 3.4 package from Curse and put in the old Mk1 Cockpit...

The old ships are now workable in 1.0.5.  Huzzah!

Thank you, sir!

Umm... Does this new board allow me to give you rep?  (I feel like such a n00b trying to use this new setup.)

Welcome back.  I had the same question about Rep when I came back to the new board.

 

The "Like" button is the new rep for the new forum.  I think you have a max "likes" of ~ 25/day.  It no longer sends nice messages with the Rep which is a shame but its still there.

[Mister Dilsby]

Welcome back! The whole "0.90 kerbals dealing with a 1.05 world" is very amusing, love the in-world descriptions of how the physics changed for the LV-N (of course the oxidant was for coolant! What else could it have been for?) and other parts  

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, Brotoro said:

KerbalStuff be dead.

But I got the Kerbal Historical Institute 3.4 package from Curse and put in the old Mk1 Cockpit...

The old ships are now workable in 1.0.5.  Huzzah!

Thank you, sir!

Umm... Does this new board allow me to give you rep?  (I feel like such a n00b trying to use this new setup.)

Bummer about KerbalStuff.  I liked it much more than Curse.

Anyway, while this new forum has some nifty tricks, it lost some stuff from the old version that I miss greatly.  And I've been using it since it showed up and still don't know how to do various things.  But c'est la vie.

Anyway, glad you got your old cockpit back.  I was worried there were some Kerbals trapped because of it

 

[Wolfos31]

So happy to have a new Brotoro mission report to read! Welcome back! 

Got a good laugh out of the flight crew's reactions to the new physics. 

[mattssheep4]

Are you planning on posting any more before 1.1 or will you just wait it out? By the way, I tell all my friends who play ksp about your mission site and reread them myself pretty often 

[Scotius]

Brotoro, you are back! Kuzzter, Parkaboy and others did an awesome job spinning tales about their incredible missions. But your epic series is still something unique.

[Brotoro]

2 hours ago, mattssheep4 said:

Are you planning on posting any more before 1.1 or will you just wait it out? By the way, I tell all my friends who play ksp about your mission site and reread them myself pretty often 

I haven't been paying attention to the plans for 1.1 for many months now (I expected it to be out already, to tell the truth). Last I knew, I had the impression that 1.1 was going to be the conversion to the new Unity (along with fixing up and standardizing the user interfaces). As long as that is still Squad's plan...and they don't intend to mess with all of the aerodynamics parameters, engine stats, heating, atmospheres, parts functions, etc., yet again...then I would see no reason not to go forward.

But I need to review all the old Dev Notes to get up to speed on this.

[Cydonian Monk]

Welcome back, dude!

@Geschosskopf beat me to the suggestion of the old Historical Institute parts (same pack I use... sorta). I wasn't particularly happy that the Mk3 cockpit changed sizes and was renamed or that the Mk1 was so completely rearranged, though I do like the new versions of each. 

One forum tip you may have already figured out: pasting URLs for images in one by one will auto-populate them as images, no button required. If you paste in a large block of text with image URLs in it, you can press space at the end of each URL to get them to populate as full images. (Unless there's a better way I haven't stumbled on yet.)

Good to hear everything isn't completely, well, FUBARR.... 

[Garibaldi2257]

whoop whoop! brotoro is back!!!!

[Geschosskopf]

8 hours ago, Brotoro said:

But I need to review all the old Dev Notes to get up to speed on this.

Well, the most recent devnotes say they're working on a mechanism to try to somehow make old saves compatible with future changes.  Which I suppose means that more changes are on the way.  For example, the same devnote says the big static solar panels from Asteroid Day are now stock, but have (ominously) been "rebalanced" (which is usually code for "nerfed").

[Brotoro]

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, the most recent devnotes say they're working on a mechanism to try to somehow make old saves compatible with future changes.  Which I suppose means that more changes are on the way.  For example, the same devnote says the big static solar panels from Asteroid Day are now stock, but have (ominously) been "rebalanced" (which is usually code for "nerfed").

I just read that. It appears that they are referring to changes that they are making to the code in wheels and landing legs, and when that gets updated they want to make sure to read the current states of those parts in existing ships (wheel brakes locked? Landing legs down?) are carried over properly into the updated save. I recall well what happened the last time landing legs got updated, and all my landed surface ships ended up falling to the ground with their legs retracted...which took some effort to workaround. I'm happy to see that they are doing it right this time.

I know not of this big static photovoltaic panel being added...but in general, I'm not concerned about new parts being added (in fact: huzzah for new toys!)...I'm mostly concerned about changes to old parts.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Brotoro

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I just want to say I read all this, and it's seriously awesome. I love your ship designs, and it's inspired me to start my own attempt at colonizing Duna. I really like how you combine story and character, and actual mission reports. Shame about 1.0, but you seem to be adapting well. Keep it up

[Kelidoskoped]

1.1 is changing a lot. But it'll probably come out in a few months. Also, if you use Steam, you can downgrade to 1.0.4.

[Brotoro]

Well. 

When I made all the earlier landings on Duna in version 0.90, my technique was to drop the ship into the thin Dunan atmosphere and deploy the chutes at under 5000 meters or so (since I figured any "entry heating" should be done by then)...and then the many parachutes took care of most of the deceleration, with relatively little engine-braking needed for the final touchdown.

But that ain't gonna cut the mustard in version 1.0.5, kiddies! Some of those ships were screaming in at over 500 m/s when they deployed their chutes, and in 1.0.5 this results in instantly destroying the parachutes. Version 1.0.5 is going to require more fuel for landings to slow the ship below a safe parachute deployment speed (whatever that happens to be for the thin Dunan air...I find numbers for Kerbin, but not so much for Duna). The judicious use of drogue chutes will probably save fuel. But I'm not sure if some of the old equipment I have there now (built with no drogues, now-weaker engines, and smaller fuel supplies) can be made to work under the new limitations. But: Challenge accepted!  ...And re-engineered versions of the ships are being readied at KSC for the next launch window.

[Scotius]

Yeah, days of chute spamming are over Nowadays even careles return from high orbit can vaporise your craft. Careful aerobraking, heatshields and a bit of fuel kept for emergency braking is the way to go. BTW - do you know that RoverDude is working on an inflatable heatshield? That should improve things a bit in the future.

[Kelidoskoped]

11 hours ago, Brotoro said:

Well. 

When I made all the earlier landings on Duna in version 0.90, my technique was to drop the ship into the thin Dunan atmosphere and deploy the chutes at under 5000 meters or so (since I figured any "entry heating" should be done by then)...and then the many parachutes took care of most of the deceleration, with relatively little engine-braking needed for the final touchdown.

But that ain't gonna cut the mustard in version 1.0.5, kiddies! Some of those ships were screaming in at over 500 m/s when they deployed their chutes, and in 1.0.5 this results in instantly destroying the parachutes. Version 1.0.5 is going to require more fuel for landings to slow the ship below a safe parachute deployment speed (whatever that happens to be for the thin Dunan air...I find numbers for Kerbin, but not so much for Duna). The judicious use of drogue chutes will probably save fuel. But I'm not sure if some of the old equipment I have there now (built with no drogues, now-weaker engines, and smaller fuel supplies) can be made to work under the new limitations. But: Challenge accepted!  ...And re-engineered versions of the ships are being readied at KSC for the next launch window.

250m/s killed my 10 chutes on an incredibly light craft. They were radials, however.

Great new Fido. Want to do a head-to-head against my MUG'T (Medium Utility Ground Truck)? Winner of the head on collision gets cookies! Jeb.

just a thought. You need more protection!! If you hit something..

Edited February 22, 2016 by Kelidoskoped

[Geschosskopf]

13 hours ago, Brotoro said:

But that ain't gonna cut the mustard in version 1.0.5, kiddies! Some of those ships were screaming in at over 500 m/s when they deployed their chutes, and in 1.0.5 this results in instantly destroying the parachutes. Version 1.0.5 is going to require more fuel for landings to slow the ship below a safe parachute deployment speed (whatever that happens to be for the thin Dunan air...I find numbers for Kerbin, but not so much for Duna). The judicious use of drogue chutes will probably save fuel. But I'm not sure if some of the old equipment I have there now (built with no drogues, now-weaker engines, and smaller fuel supplies) can be made to work under the new limitations. But: Challenge accepted!  ...And re-engineered versions of the ships are being readied at KSC for the next launch window.

Yeah, this is a known bug.  The chute mechanics do things to chutes on Duna as if it was Kerbin's atmosphere, in terms of deployment pressure and safe velocities.  I think @Claw might have one of his Stock Bug Fix Modules for this.

[GreenWolf]

Good to have you back! Your KSP mission reports are some of my favorite, and (in my opinion) easily amongst the best mission reports on the forums.

In regards to your question in the OP, you can get a direct link to a post by clicking on the triangle with an open side located in the upper right corner of each post. It gives you a direct link for sharing and such. Embedding it as a hotlink in the forums is pretty easy. Just use the chain icon in the toolbar when editing the post. It'll give you a dialogue box that you can stick the direct link in as well as the text you want it to display.

[Brotoro]

18 hours ago, GreenWolf said:

Good to have you back! Your KSP mission reports are some of my favorite, and (in my opinion) easily amongst the best mission reports on the forums.

In regards to your question in the OP, you can get a direct link to a post by clicking on the triangle with an open side located in the upper right corner of each post. It gives you a direct link for sharing and such. Embedding it as a hotlink in the forums is pretty easy. Just use the chain icon in the toolbar when editing the post. It'll give you a dialogue box that you can stick the direct link in as well as the text you want it to display.

Yeah, I had noticed that icon... But it gives me a link that includes the name of the thread. The name of this thread changes each time I post a new episode (since I change the name to include the most recent episode number). Does that cause the link to break in the future when the thread is renamed, or does the software auto update that?

[GreenWolf]

The link will keep working, even if the name changes. I believe (although I'm not certain of this) that it uses the leading number before the thread name in the link to figure out which thread it is, with the rest of the name just being a human readable thing to help us know where links lead. As far as I can tell, this number does not change between thread title changes.

Regardless of how it does it, links will still lead to the proper posts even if the thread title changes.

[Cydonian Monk]

To link directly to posts you need the topic number, the dash, and ANY letter after the dash. Weird, yes, and probably a bug. There may be a thread about this over in the Kerbal Network.

So: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/100086-Z&do=findComment&comment=2425926 works but: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/100086&do=findComment&comment=2425926 doesn't. 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Cydonian Monk
Also, mobile formatting is horridly broken.

[Brotoro]

Arrrrggghhh! I had forgotten how frustrating the constant crashes are. I see people with dozens and dozens of mods, but KSP chokes and dies for me so quickly with less than a dozen. 

Seven payloads...seven tugs...back to work.