Mün rescue contracts with capsules

[webkilla]

Ok... So, after unlocking actuators and that lovely claw, I now get rescue contracts that wants you to tug the capsule back home as well.

Ok, the pay is good... why not?

 

However, I am a bit unsure on how to make the best capsule retrieval system.

Currently I'm working on a design that looks a bit like this: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/352771022147960329/32A79DC794089021626C34549AD8A3798BDE199A/
 - it has a fairing covering it for launch... I just removed it for the screenshot

The booster-covered bottom part is all launch rig. This thing can get to the mün easily, and land too... well, with regular payloads, science wads and landers.

Here's with the crane out: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/352771022147987306/6B8A77CDC48F762AF7FAA33085CE10EB196DD677/

The only challenge is landing next to the pod - but honestly, that's not so hard. It's on a level surface.

 

With this compacted crane load, designed to reach down and grab the capsule I'm supposed to rescue... well... I've yet to successfully get this into orbit. It keeps breaking for some reason when I launch it. I've used struts to stabilize it. They lock on from the base of the crane to the claw, and keep it fairly steady, but apparently not enough. The crane itself has a long enough reach, but... I dunno.

 

I dread to think how this should be done without mods like infernal robotics - the claw doesn't let you stack stuff on top of it, so mounting it under a land so you can fly over, grab and fly off just doesn't seem viable, unless you make a skycrane meant to fly upside down - and I really don't like that idea.

 

Thoughts? How do you lot retrieve capsules from surfaces?

 

[Snark]

Well, one way to do it is to use a different mod-- instead of putting together an articulated claw that grabs it, use Kerbal Attachment System and send out an engineer to install a docking port on top of the capsule.  It snaps to the attachment node easily, so it's nicely symmetric.  Then just bring a contraption that can connect with that.

Even that much is a hassle, though.  My usual solution is just "don't ever accept a contract for retrieving the capsule too" and make money on other contracts that aren't so much of a pain in the posterior. 

[Reactordrone]

This was how I picked up a Mk 2 lander can recently. I landed a regular lander to pick up the Kerbal and assess the scene then sent a specialised retriever.

 

 

Land nearby, drive over the top of the part and retract the gear. Take off, ditch the landing gear and return home.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Reactordrone

[webkilla]

Ya a rover solution... I've considered that - but... I dunno - that screams drag when launching. But ok, i'll keep it in mind.

And Snark - I didn't choose to go to the mün because it was easy, I chose to recover pods because it is hard!

Edited January 8, 2016 by webkilla

[Snark]

55 minutes ago, webkilla said:

And Snark - I didn't choose to go to the mün because it was easy, I chose to recover pods because it is hard!

Yah, I totally get that.    I like hard, too-- it's just that for me, there are two kinds of hard:  "fun" hard and "irritating" hard.

"Fun" hard is when something is hard because it should be, i.e. solving a difficult engineering challenge that would actually be a difficult thing to do IRL, too.

For me, the line where it crosses over into "frustrating" hard is when something is hard in the game because of the game's limitations, when IRL it would be trivially simple to do; it breaks the immersion for me, and suddenly I'm just playing a computer game instead of FLYING ROCKET SHIPS YAY.  In other words, "artificial" difficulty due to how the game is implemented.

Trying to rescue a capsule falls into that category for me-- the fact that the game makes it hard to connect and fly away with it, and requires building these crazy Rube Goldberg contraptions that don't look anything like what we would build a real life rocket to do.  For example, @Reactordrone's solution above.  It's ingenious, and a great way to work around the game's limitations, but it irritates me to build something like that because nobody would ever do that if it weren't for the fact that a lack of parts in the game makes it harder than it should be.

So I tend to skip those contracts and look for things that are more interestingly difficult to me.

In any case:  different folks like different challenges, and best of luck with your future... ah... acquisitions! 

[webkilla]

thank you

ATM my main issue with getting this done successfully seems to be item limitations - I don't have access to all the possible parts, and only have access to 2.5 rockets and whatnot.

I'm taking this as an interesting design challenge - plus with the amount of money the contract is offering, then the budget for the missing is quite large (200K or so)

[Plusck]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

Yah, I totally get that.    I like hard, too-- it's just that for me, there are two kinds of hard:  "fun" hard and "irritating" hard.

"Fun" hard is when something is hard because it should be, i.e. solving a difficult engineering challenge that would actually be a difficult thing to do IRL, too.

For me, the line where it crosses over into "frustrating" hard is when something is hard in the game because of the game's limitations, when IRL it would be trivially simple to do; it breaks the immersion for me, and suddenly I'm just playing a computer game instead of FLYING ROCKET SHIPS YAY.  In other words, "artificial" difficulty due to how the game is implemented.

Trying to rescue a capsule falls into that category for me-- the fact that the game makes it hard to connect and fly away with it, and requires building these crazy Rube Goldberg contraptions that don't look anything like what we would build a real life rocket to do.  For example, @Reactordrone's solution above.  It's ingenious, and a great way to work around the game's limitations, but it irritates me to build something like that because nobody would ever do that if it weren't for the fact that a lack of parts in the game makes it harder than it should be.

So I tend to skip those contracts and look for things that are more interestingly difficult to me.

In any case:  different folks like different challenges, and best of luck with your future... ah... acquisitions! 

I'm torn between agreeing and disagreeing with this.

To agree: I have regretted the absence of four sorts of things in the stock game that make a lot of designs impossible:

• hinged things: this would immediately make Reactordrone's example into something very similar to what one would do IRL. The basic lander would stay the same, only it would be folded in on itself to fit under a fairing. Once in space, it would be unfolded and locked, and the direction of the hinged joints would automatically give the greatest strength to the direction you're adding the load (i.e. the claw would pull on the hinge, pulling the structure together above it, and the rockets would be moved to the sides to push the joint together too).
• rotating things: opening up the possibility for swivelling nacelles for VTOLs, space station hubs and suchlike.
• extending things: just like solar panels, only with some structural strength (good tensile, but obviously not much shear), making landed outposts much simpler to build.
• EVA-built connectors: i.e. fuel lines and struts that Kerbals can add.

And of course there are mods like KAS and Infernal Robotics which deal with these issues.

To disagree though: it is a game, and IMO the strictness and simplicity of the rules governing a game are not in themselves a limit to its interest. People can spend a lifetime playing chess. Rather it is the choice of rules, and each of those four examples above would easily lead to a multiplication of "Rube Goldberg" solutions to any given problem.

In other words, adding realism and immersion can be a Good Thing for many good reasons (and I don't want to even touch the "procedural parts" debate) but such mechanisms multiply the complexity of the game for the player and for the CPU, and vastly increase the likelihood of unforeseen problems. As the game is now, if it lifts off the pad cleanly then the vast majority of potential structural problems have already been sorted (the Klaw being the obvious exception). With hinges and extenders, a whole world of physics abuses and problems opens up. Being somewhat a purist, I have only recently installed KER and haven't tried any other mods, but the potential for Kraken-like problems with the ones that add structural functionality seems clear.

So I tend to find criticism of the game's limitations (and I repeat, I do not want to touch the procedural parts debate at all, at all) to be unfair. A game cannot pefectly imitate real life: a Slinky is a trivially simple device but is good evidence that we are not living in the Matrix, because can you even imagine the processing power you'd need to model it?

I would really, really like to be able to fold payloads up. Since we can't, we have to improvise. When I see people's clean and aerodynamic solutions to problems I often have a "doh!" moment. When I see things like Reactordrone's solution I feel better about my own (far uglier) contraptions. However, I'm generally forgiving about the game's limitations because the sheer variety of other people's solutions convince me that there is surely another, better way.

TL;DR: I too would like other solutions, but in most cases their addition would add to potential problems. There is almost always an elegant alternative solution with stock parts, but we don't all necessarily come to it on our own! 

[webkilla]

plusck - I know your feel

and indeed - my main gripe with my crane setup right now is that I can't really compress it any more right now.

I've also considered using the mod Quantunstruts  to allow me to affix the crane grabber once I've picked up the capsule. This should drastically reduce wiggle.

That's part of what I actually really like about this particular design challenge: It really pushes the limit of what is possible to do in KSP.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Snark
Link to defunct website removed by moderator

[Evanitis]

I would use a strong VTOL with a Klaw under it.

Stock if I wanted irritating.hard, or 'ThrottleControlledAvionics' driven if I was just looking for fun-hard.

[webkilla]

Ya but getting a skycrane or VTOL shaped lander to the mün is a bit of a pain for me... I don't have access to all the parts just yet in this run - so I'm a tad limited

[Warzouz]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Yah, I totally get that.    I like hard, too-- it's just that for me, there are two kinds of hard:  "fun" hard and "irritating" hard.

True. Several stuff in KSP are artificially hard, due to ill design (claw, fairings, cargo bays, joints, rovers), missing data (heat management, dV calculation, TWR) or more simply bad UI (nodes, context menu).

[Snark]

4 hours ago, Plusck said:

To disagree though: it is a game, and IMO the strictness and simplicity of the rules governing a game are not in themselves a limit to its interest.
...
In other words, adding realism and immersion can be a Good Thing for many good reasons (and I don't want to even touch the "procedural parts" debate) but such mechanisms multiply the complexity of the game for the player and for the CPU, and vastly increase the likelihood of unforeseen problems.
...
So I tend to find criticism of the game's limitations (and I repeat, I do not want to touch the procedural parts debate at all, at all) to be unfair.
...
TL;DR: I too would like other solutions, but in most cases their addition would add to potential problems.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I'm not criticizing the game's limitations, at all (and I agree with all of your points).  Simply acknowledging that the limitations are there, and that everybody needs to work around them in their own way.

Squad is a tiny indie company with only a small handful of developers.  There's simply no way they can address everything; there are going to be holes, there's no way around it.  The only thing they can do in a situation like that is to triage relentlessly, and prioritize.  Focus effort on the most important stuff first.  It's how software development works.  If your feet are on fire, sure, that's bad... but if your face is on fire, you deal with that first. 

So any criticism that "the game has missing features" is misplaced, IMHO, given the staggering value that this game gives for a paltry US$27.  "It has holes" is simply not a valid criticism.  "It has the wrong holes" could be one, if Squad were focusing on the wrong features.  But I don't think they're doing that-- I think they've done a great job of threading the needle here, and picking the right things to work on.

Sure, there are things I'd like to see them add (like connector ports and pipes for surface bases, or a navball docking alignment indicator, or a smarter burn-time indicator, or better cargo bays, or cargo bays for rockets rather than spaceplanes, and on and on...) ... but there are more important things that they should do first, like decent aero (1.0), reentry heat (1.0), telemetry (1.1), upgrade to Unity 5 (1.1), and so forth.  They're doing other more important stuff first, and they keep handing me all these incredibly fun goodies for free, so I'm happy to wait. 

Infernal Robotics is an example of the kind of feature that I think does not belong in stock, at least not for a very long time.  Not because it's uncool (it's incredibly cool), but because it would be incredibly complex to add and test, and therefore expensive in terms of engineering time, and therefore it's gotta be triaged behind other stuff.  The cost-benefit tradeoff just isn't there yet.

So I'm not complaining at all.  Not "there's a hole and therefore KSP sucks", or even "it's a wrong hole that they should have fixed already."  Just simply acknowledging that the hole is there (for me, anyway), and is unlikely to go away soon, and therefore I prefer to focus my KSP time on other stuff that isn't holed.  If Squad ever gets around to making some change that causes "retrieve this spacecraft from the surface of the Mun" contracts to not be so excruciatingly painful, then I'll be all over it like white on rice. 

[Plusck]

To be honest, I don't know what I can add to that.

To Snark - I think we agree. : D

To Warzouz - UI problems (endless VAB frustration, painful manipulation (or inability to place) manouvre nodes) are my main gripe, but that isn't the subject here. However, I'm not sure that TWR and dv would necessarily be a help in stock, because inexperienced players can rely on the figures and create problems for themselves rather than figure out what should work. But again that isn't the subject here. : D

For the Klaw though, is detestable.

[webkilla]

Ok, I got my crane to the mün! It was a pain to land the thing next to the capsule, but I finally - after I don't know how many attempts (and a mid-mission refueling by draining the nearby probe's lander) - got it ready:

Crane unfolded and ready to try: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/352771393029508345/82F4D874782FD9859DEAFE8E6670F0B8B4750FE7/

Got it: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/352771393029509063/3470278F4F90FCFEE50E84FA5DC9197565E1EC57/

But then... excrements started going wrong.

Apparently, even a 0.6 ton pod is too heavy for the hinges to lift up - even on the mün. The cylinders couldn't retract either.

So to fix this I simply tipped the whole thing over on the side - that seemed to fix things.

 

However, when I began retracting everything, things started going wrong - like, bugging out.

Look at this: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/352771393029515311/9E71878D5B551B841A544C4D3D44ACF17D5D35F5/

Look at the join in the middle. Its looks like the hinges are flipped. The cylinder on the left is also weird (its supposedly retracted)

 

I can't pull it all together. I can unfold it all again - but I can't pull it together. What the hell.

Any suggestions?

 

...at least the mission is paying well enough that I can afford to send two more missions to collect the pod - but I really wanted this to work!