TEL Trek [Stock]

[Moesly_Armlis]

This is the tale of a Transporter Erector Launcher KU-9 trekking across Kerbin and beyond. This all got started when Bill was challenged to build a rocket on a mountain top. Then the idea grew and not only should rockets be built everywhere but transported and then launched everywhere.

TEL KU-8 Test

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TEL KU-9 Test

Drove 34 km to mountain, climbed to altitude of 2500 metre and launched rocket with 3000 kg payload into LKO with polar orbit available.

There have been many failures designing a stock crafted TEL and this vehicle has passed testing. A road trip is now being planned.

Launch a rocket from five locations on Kerbin.

They are easter egg locations so should be easy to guess the other locations.

Number One: Mountain Side

Number Two : Cold

Number Three :Nostalgia

Number Four :Hot

Number Five : ??

The first one is located on the west side of the mountain range. The second location will test the vehicle endurance and range. The third location is to remember where we have been and to see where we are going. The fourth location is an interesting swelter. The fifth is [redacted] and can [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] only, unlike the [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted].

This TEL seems to be rugged enough to reach the first location and the range will be tested during the trip to the next location. Estimated range based on this test could yield 5000 km. The jet engine is only needed for climbing steep terrain and for night time travel and the rocket engine is used for extra thrust to overcome ridges. There are docking ports so refuel and rocket refit is an option.

The road trip is starting tonight. The first location will be similar to the testing area that is depicted in the video.

[Moesly_Armlis]

Well the odds were against me this time. Just as I am planning this road trip the machine overheats and shuts down. I never thoroughly inspected and maintained the machine. The machine is a laptop that I have had for more than seven years. Never needed to open it up before but now I have had to reassemble it three times.

The first time opening revealed much debris accumulated inside the radiator portion of the heatpipe. It would take more than a vacuum to remove that much debris. Afterwards I manually removed the rest with a swab. With everything clean the laptop restarted and ran for some time (20 minutes) then it again shut down due to overheating. The fan for the heatsink would progressively increase RPM and then the system shuts down.

Now to further disassemble the heatsink assembly and remove it from the CPU/GPU which revealed the thermal pad is dried up. So I cleaned and replaced with some thermal grease I use with the solid state lighting assembly. This resulted in about the same 20 minutes then shut down.

I further went through the process and redid the thermal grease application and the same results. The heatsink fan increases RPM and then the system shuts down. Everything on the laptop is warm but no where near as hot it has been in the past.

The option is to order some THERMAFLOW T777 phase change thermal interface pads but I am starting to gather evidence that the heatpipe might have gone sour and no longer is conducting the heat.

That is the bad news. A broken computer and this older workstation computer that I write this with can play KSP but with a Radeon X850Pro the render is off and only 2 GB system RAM it struggles with high part counts. Maybe I will look for some cheap PC3200 and increase to 4GB.

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Over the last year I really do not play any other games other than KSP and some FTL (just recently completed my first hard level with the Kestral) so the laptop worked just well for me.

The good news is that I am now forced to shop for a new desktop.

This road trip is on hiatus until upgrades are completed.