Rendezvous

[Anonymous49]

2 minutes ago, James M said:

Your problem is two-fold.

1) Drag is mostly at the back, which is good, but there wont be enough after staging the boosters because

2) The load becomes completely uneven after booster separation and flips the vehicle. This is VERY COMMON with all shuttles and usually is compensated by high gimbal engines. (The more rotational torque you place at a longer length, the more force will be applied. AKA using your engines as levers.) The only other alternative that I know of are canards by the front cockpit, but that really only will help on descent to keep the nose up. 

how to solve it

[James M]

Solutions Include:

More rear wings (Think Delta Plane but bigger)

More Gimbal on engines (Vector engines have 10 degrees and Mastadon and Bobcat have 5 degrees.) Just remember the engine also has to have enough thrust to propel the craft both through ascent and into orbit. 

[Anonymous49]

Just now, James M said:

Solutions Include:

More rear wings (Think Delta Plane but bigger)

More Gimbal on engines (Vector engines have 10 degrees and Mastadon and Bobcat have 5 degrees.) Just remember the engine also has to have enough thrust to propel the craft both through ascent and into orbit. 

uh i don't have these

[James M]

Just now, Anonymous49 said:

uh i don't have these

This is why you see so few early game SSTO Spaceplanes. 

[Anonymous49]

2 minutes ago, James M said:

This is why you see so few early game SSTO Spaceplanes. 

but i need it to fly my small payloads

[James M]

Just now, Anonymous49 said:

but i need it to fly my small payloads

Do you though? How much mass is your payload? Using TWR calculations, you could most certainly develop a cheaper, possibly reusable, rocket to achieve the same goal. The only difference would be how to incorporate your kerbals into the payload as well.

[Anonymous49]

Just now, James M said:

Do you though? How much mass is your payload? Using TWR calculations, you could most certainly develop a cheaper, possibly reusable, rocket to achieve the same goal. The only difference would be how to incorporate your kerbals into the payload as well.

20 satellites

each contain 2 relay antenna, a okto, 2 presmat barometer, 4 z-100,  2 retractable solarpanels

if i cannot use Explorer 1b, any other rocket, can fit 20 of my satellite, cheaper than 200k, orbital

[Anonymous49]

my satellite https://kerbalx.com/Anonymous49/Cubesat-2

my shuttle https://kerbalx.com/Anonymous49/Explorer-1B

[James M]

So 20 x 330kg (0.36 tons) = 7.2 tons payload weight

A rocket with a skipper first stage or a cluster of ~4 swivels should be about right. Of course this also depends on how much fuel you intend to bring in your second stage. You could always strap a pair or two of thumpers on to compensate. 

 

i didn't actually do TWR mathematics there btw so I could be wrong. I was just going purely off experience there. 

Edited January 22, 2021 by James M

[Anonymous49]

The main reason why I wanted to make this shuttle is not only to ship a lot of those sats and being efficent, but also bring a lot of tourists to orbit

the crewed one is here https://kerbalx.com/Anonymous49/Explorer-1A, it could bring 13 kerbals into lko

[James M]

3 minutes ago, Anonymous49 said:

The main reason why I wanted to make this shuttle is not only to ship a lot of those sats and being efficent, but also bring a lot of tourists to orbit

the crewed one is here https://kerbalx.com/Anonymous49/Explorer-1A, it could bring 13 kerbals into lko

It's understandable, but efficiency also requires consistency. Hard to be consistent when you only have half the tools you need to complete the job. 

[Anonymous49]

2 minutes ago, James M said:

It's understandable, but efficiency also requires consistency. Hard to be consistent when you only have half the tools you need to complete the job. 

?

[Anonymous49]

plus i wanted to mod the pollux booster but i cannot find the file

[James M]

57 minutes ago, Anonymous49 said:

?

Say you launch a rocket 10 times and only 5 times it succeeds at making it to orbit. This would be less efficient than say launching 10 times and orbiting 10 times. 

Edited January 22, 2021 by James M

[Anonymous49]

i know i know

[Curveball Anders]

12 hours ago, James M said:

Yes. but also No. Why are you playing ksp if you have no interest in orbital mechanics or even somewhat realistic rocket physics? Might as well go play a different space game like Eve online or something. (No offense to the other space games. I play them all.) 

What I meant was that I have no interest what so ever of repeating the same manual flight operations and maneuvers over and over again.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Curveball Anders
speeling

[paul_c]

That design of rocket/spaceship has a number of additional challenges to flying it. Its not (rotationally) symmetric, and it has wings which will generate lift sideways on ascent. Did you check the centre of thrust goes through the centre of mass?? I've never done a (working) spaceplane so I'll leave it to others to comment on those details, instead I've concentrated on "normal" design rockets. They're hard enough without the extra considerations.

Additionally, the satellites appear to be unpowered (no fuel or propulsion). Satellites have these, so they can be lauched at a low orbit then reach a higher/different one, or change their orbit (or maintain it in the real world). I suppose in theory its possible to launch multiple unpowered satellites into orbit by putting the launch vehicle into the right orbit, but in practice there's a good reason why the satellite has a little engine and fuel on it.

[Spricigo]

7 hours ago, Anonymous49 said:

20 satellites

Why that many?  

You don't need an individual craft for each contract, and you don't need that many to relay signal around Kerbin.

 

[paul_c]

On 1/22/2021 at 12:01 AM, Anonymous49 said:

well yes i ain't skipping stuff, tubes are actually meant to put a lot of batteries while the other side is an entrance. Would you rather risk your kerbal to death and waste a lot of monoprop to get back or put them inside a temporary battery bay. I know it's dangerous to put them into tubes as they might glitch out or at least for now but then it's definitely  safer then letting your kerbal float away

 

it's a crew cabin

the pilot only sits in the command pod, the rest stay inside the cabins, cabins have hatches on their ends and i covered the hatch with a tube so kerbals would get in there

 

On 1/22/2021 at 12:06 AM, paul_c said:

They don't float away (that much). I had a situation today where I did a 3 Kerbal rescue with a 3-crew vehicle (and only one hatch), because of the order I'd picked them up I needed to leave a Kerbal "floating away" while putting another into the vehicle. He drifted 10-20m at most, and was a non-issue to get back in. Once you're more familiar with the keyboard controls for RCS jetpack and [ ]  to switch between Kerbals/vessels it becomes much easier and quicker.

The same situation occurred again today, here is a screenshot:

This is how far the pilot had drifted once I'd done the swap:

Yes they 'drift' once let go but at a slow rate. No need for big control inputs and easy/controllable to get back into the spaceship with minimal jetpack mono. Or, if you're really cautious, you can plan for the pilot to go in last so you never need to do an EVA swap.

On the scale of complexity I'd put from easiest to hardest:

Do an EVA spacewalk
Rendezvous (a skill needed for a 'rescue Kerbal from orbit' contract)
'Rescue Kerbal from orbit' (once you've done a rendezvous above, the Kerbal needs to travel maybe 200m-2km thru space on jetpack, depending on how good the rendezvous was
Docking
Docking without RCS

Edited January 23, 2021 by paul_c

[Anonymous49]

12 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Why that many?  

You don't need an individual craft for each contract, and you don't need that many to relay signal around Kerbin.

 

because i wanted to transport a lot of data to science labs

my goal was actually 1000

[paul_c]

Science labs don't need data transporting by a rocket. They don't actually receive data, they receive input from attached scientific instruments and TRANSMIT science once they have processed the experiments/data. Or are you confused on the terminology or thinking of something else?

[Anonymous49]

48 minutes ago, paul_c said:

Science labs don't need data transporting by a rocket. They don't actually receive data, they receive input from attached scientific instruments and TRANSMIT science once they have processed the experiments/data. Or are you confused on the terminology or thinking of something else?

my plan is to have 1000 satellites, then I get a lot of data from every one of them then give it to a large science lab, also isn’t it cool to have 1000 satellites?

and the input is from those satellites

[lemon cup]

1 hour ago, Anonymous49 said:

my plan is to have 1000 satellites, then I get a lot of data from every one of them then give it to a large science lab, also isn’t it cool to have 1000 satellites?

and the input is from those satellites

There is nothing wrong with putting up huge satellite constellations for the thrill and challenge, I’ve seen people try to recreate stuff like Starlink for instance, and it turns out looking very cool. Also it’s a game and you don’t need to worry about each vessel you create serving a purpose, that’s why people do things like build rocket cars to break the land speed record, or get payloads to orbit using only decouplers - just for the heck of it because it’s fun.

Though It is true that the science part won’t work out like you’re hoping. There is only a few types of unmanned experiments you can perform in Low Kerbin Orbit (where your satellites will be) and once you’ve processed each type of experiment one time in a lab, the same data can never be processed again, even if it comes from a different craft.

[Anonymous49]

3 hours ago, lemon cup said:

There is nothing wrong with putting up huge satellite constellations for the thrill and challenge, I’ve seen people try to recreate stuff like Starlink for instance, and it turns out looking very cool. Also it’s a game and you don’t need to worry about each vessel you create serving a purpose, that’s why people do things like build rocket cars to break the land speed record, or get payloads to orbit using only decouplers - just for the heck of it because it’s fun.

Though It is true that the science part won’t work out like you’re hoping. There is only a few types of unmanned experiments you can perform in Low Kerbin Orbit (where your satellites will be) and once you’ve processed each type of experiment one time in a lab, the same data can never be processed again, even if it comes from a different craft.

no science but i do have data so i can turn that into science in a mobile processing lab

[paul_c]

Science labs are fun and a good way to earn a lot of science quickly. However its a bit unfortunate  the terminology of "data" is a bit misleading. There's 2 kinds of data, think of it as "data for transmission" and "data for experiments".

Every scientific instrument, including EVA reports and crew reports, generates "data for transmission" each time it logs a result. This can be transmitted bac to KSC, if you have an aerial and a path back home with enough (transmitting and electrical) power to reach home. When it arrives, you earn (a proportion of*) the science value. Essentially this is once-only per biome and situation, but some science can be run a further 1/2/3 times for a bit more science (not much more though).

A scientific instrument can also supply "data for experiments" to a science lab. The science lab (with a lot of electricity, time and scientists on board doing research) can convert this into "science", then transmit that science back home (if it has comms). Now, this is the important bit. To be able to supply "data for experiments" the two things (as far as I know....) need to be physically linked together. It could be instruments attached to the outside of a science lab, or something on the other end of the spaceship, possibly attached by a docking port etc. It can even be a Kerbal holding that experimental data and physically transferring it. But I'm unaware of any way for a remote instrument to transmit TO A SCIENCE LAB, I've only seen them transmit their data back to KSC.

*Note that for some scientific instruments, transmitting back home only earns a fraction of the science. For example surface samples. To get the full benefit, you need to return them home - either the instrument or the capsule/container its in. While others eg crew report/EVA report earn 100% so there is no further gain from returning it home.