A Very Basic Space Program | RSS/RO/RP-1

[jimmymcgoochie]

“What would you do in this situation?”

How about using the maneuver planner that’s right there on the screen to fine tune the closest approach down to 200km?

And manually bump up to the first tick of time warp before accelerating further, that seems to reduce the number and severity of those “oops your orbit just completely changed” incidents.

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 71 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[Death Engineering]

On 5/4/2022 at 4:36 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

And manually bump up to the first tick of time warp before accelerating further, that seems to reduce the number and severity of those “oops your orbit just completely changed” incidents.

I totally ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ hate that 'You didn't really want that orbit, did you?  Good, cuz we changed it when you weren't looking.' special feature of KSP.  Can you please elaborate your method for mitigating that? 

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 72 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Kerbalism does tell you how long your battery will last even without a signal, just hover the mouse over the battery icon and it’ll give you the power status. And the first lander’s problem was nothing to do with MechJeb and everything to do with not switching on SAS.

Re. the unbalanced probes, it’s probably engine variance that the RCS has to counteract since there’s no reaction wheel or engine gimbal to do so. (One more reason why ProbesPlus is a must for RP-1, it adds a 500N-class thruster with a scruple of degrees of gimbal that means you don’t need to use RCS during burns. It also has tiny reaction wheels for probes and tiny radiators that can dramatically reduce Cryo boiloff.)

Edited May 19, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 73 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

My normal launch procedure consists of:

1. Activate PVG;
2. Leave it running while I do something else;
3. Come back and hope it’s in the right orbit, not the sea or a big fireball in the sky. (Usually, it is!)

Flying launches by hand is an unnecessary complication, you won’t do it better than the computer and there’s a much higher chance of failure due to pilot error.

And as for that “relay”… Get rid of the RTGs! Solar panels are vastly cheaper and will do the job well enough, plus RTGs increase the cost of the entire craft as well. The avionics was untooled, which slows things down drastically and is usually a no-brainier as the tooling cost is the same as what you save (although the most recent version of RP-1 changed that to make avionics tooling more expensive), plus changing tank types made it even worse; and then there was the massive battery that you didn’t need at all considering the power generation on the probe, which only added unnecessary weight. The main dish was very overpowered for a lunar relay while the omni antenna was a bit underpowered, and could have been set to TL2 to save power as it has much lower idle draw.

Edited May 25, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[seyMonsters]

On 5/25/2022 at 12:44 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Flying launches by hand is an unnecessary complication, you won’t do it better than the computer and there’s a much higher chance of failure due to pilot error.

Ever think people might play games for fun and just to enjoy the process of trying to do better / challenge themselves? Yes PVG might make it consistently good, but where is the fun ;-)

[jimmymcgoochie]

13 hours ago, seyMonsters said:

Ever think people might play games for fun and just to enjoy the process of trying to do better / challenge themselves? Yes PVG might make it consistently good, but where is the fun ;-)

I consider the designing and execution of a mission to be fun, not the routine launching into orbit that has to occur before you go anywhere interesting. Besides, flying it by hand sounds too much like hard work to me .

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 74 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

The reason it keeps skipping ahead of nodes when you click the ‘warp to node’ button is because KAC is overriding the time warp for its node alarm, which is coming too late for the longer interplanetary transfer burns.

”After crew on Mars”? Let’s start with crew near the Moon first, hmm?

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 75 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

On 6/1/2022 at 9:40 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

The reason it keeps skipping ahead of nodes when you click the ‘warp to node’ button is because KAC is overriding the time warp for its node alarm, which is coming too late for the longer interplanetary transfer burns

The ones I’m actually talking about are the mechjeb burns where mechjeb auto warps to burn but seems to overshoot what ‘stock’ predicts as the burn start time.. nothing to do with KAC overriding. I’m quite use to the joy of stock vs KAC fighting for warp control with eachother lol 

[jimmymcgoochie]

1 hour ago, seyMonsters said:

The ones I’m actually talking about are the mechjeb burns where mechjeb auto warps to burn but seems to overshoot what ‘stock’ predicts as the burn start time.. nothing to do with KAC overriding. I’m quite use to the joy of stock vs KAC fighting for warp control with eachother lol 

I believe that difference is down to differences between how the stock and MechJeb calculations work. Assume MechJeb is right, since newer versions of RO have disabled the stock delta-V calculator entirely.

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 76 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

@seyMonsters what you’re getting with the stage that won’t stage is easily resolved- put a blank stage 1 below the stage with the RCS etc. in it and stage them both, the staging system gets confused sometimes when you separate vessels like that but adding an extra empty stage usually solves it.

To my knowledge, RealAntennas and Kerbalism together seem to consider the signal bandwidth per vessel, so in theory multiple probes can use one relay and all will get the full data transfer speed rather than it being divided between them; or at least that’s what I’ve seen.

And as for the upper stage, it’s probably acting oddly because the avionics were set to debris on staging and debris can’t be controlled.

Hire Earl Jones and nickname him “James” 

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 77 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 78 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Phobos-Grunt never made it past LEO due to engine failure IIRC, plus it’s almost impossible to orbit either Phobos or Deimos as Mars’ gravity will drag you away again.

Also: don’t mess with the polar terrain spikes, they can be nasty and destroy you without warning due to phantom terrain. Even in RSS it’s A Bad Idea.

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 79 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 80 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

I think you’re forgetting something…

cough crew training cough

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 81 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

“Why won’t the engines gimbal? Why won’t the RCS fire?”

It sure would be nice if there was a warning that flashed up on the screen whenever you didn’t have enough avionics to control the craft…

[seyMonsters]

A Very Basic Space Program | Episode 82 | KSP RSS/RO/RP-1

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Water calculations don’t always work correctly if the fuel cells are dumping water as the crew drinks water intermittently, but definitely worth keeping an eye on in case they actually do run out of

EVAs available is a stock Kerbalism feature and doesn’t work for RO/RP-1.

If I had that many engines on a service module, I’d be blipping them until they all had ignition failures to cheese ALL THE DATA UNITS in one go.

The RCS issue is a PITCH input, not roll- you may have disengaged MJ pitch control but it still tries to stabilise the pitch; only disabling the actuation toggle for the RCS in the pod will prevent that, or just switch it off since it’s stable enough on its own.

And you completely missed the bravest Engineer on the list too, and she wasn’t too stupid either…