What did you do in KSP2 today?

[Mikki]

Docked a new 0.1.5 shuttle to Alpha-II

[cocoscacao]

@Mikki Building space station in an unmarked orbital parking spot? I'll have to write you a ticket for that...

[Mikki]

4 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

@Mikki Building space station in an unmarked orbital parking spot? I'll have to write you a ticket for that...

...errrm, well we are actually waiting for a rocketmotor to lower the orbit, our emergency lights are blinking all day long. 

[Casellina X]

No pictures today. Another mission born from boring meetings. Quick satellite launch at 30Mm (I think) - somewhere between the Mun and Minmus. Originally I wanted to get a probe sent down to whatever that innermost planet is, however as soon as it left SOI I got the No Kerbnet Connection message. So hopefully whatever i just launched will be good enough to provide some coverage. If not then we might wind up with a few stranded Kerbals.

[Heretic391]

Colony Ship for our Dres Station. Problems with random disconnecting parts and of course...performance.  The Kraken likes this one a lot, can't launch it at all.

Mass: 20kt

Parts: 1618

Edited November 10, 2023 by Heretic391

[dansiegel30]

I read through 50k posts about Navballs in another thread.

[Dakota]

40 minutes ago, Heretic391 said:

Colony Ship for our Dres Station. Problems with random disconnecting parts and of course...performance.  The Kraken likes this one a lot, can't launch it at all.

Mass: 20t

Parts: 1618

Incredible work Heretic!

[dansiegel30]

1 hour ago, Heretic391 said:

Colony Ship for our Dres Station. Problems with random disconnecting parts and of course...performance.  The Kraken likes this one a lot, can't launch it at all.

Mass: 20t

Parts: 1618

Maybe wait till 0.2 - heh, that would be impressive (albiet I'm sure at 3fps)

[Mikki]

...20t? I guess you meant 20kt...  I`d really like to see this rising, my record is at 16`000tons to LKO...

[Heretic391]

7 hours ago, Mikki said:

...20t? I guess you meant 20kt...  I`d really like to see this rising, my record is at 16`000tons to LKO...

Ah yes haha forgot the k. 16k is crazy! How did you launch it? Currently takes a few minutes to load the thing then launch is very explosive. 

 

11 hours ago, Dakota said:

Incredible work Heretic!

Thank you! 

10 hours ago, dansiegel30 said:

Maybe wait till 0.2 - heh, that would be impressive (albiet I'm sure at 3fps)

Haha going to be far less than 3 fps as I need to also run this whilst our Dres Station (1k+ parts) orbits Dres. If it keeps failing ill save it for 0.2! Fingers crossed persistence pays off here

[dansiegel30]

42 minutes ago, Heretic391 said:

Haha going to be far less than 3 fps as I need to also run this whilst our Dres Station (1k+ parts) orbits Dres. If it keeps failing ill save it for 0.2! Fingers crossed persistence pays off here

Yeah, thats the one thing about performance that scares me - not the parts of the ship in your view (with today's parts, anything at over 200 parts is fairly a monstrosity), but the dozens of craft you will eventually have deployed throughout the Kerbol system.  It seems that the cpu usage to handle craft several Gm away is a bit silly.  I would hope that to changed, else having multiple space stations and running parallel missions won't be possible for most players.

[Mikki]

17 hours ago, Heretic391 said:

Ah yes haha forgot the k. 16k is crazy! How did you launch it? snip...

...54 Clydesdale solid rocket boosters... take a look here... One went lost after liftoff....

"Alpha-II" launch"

@Heretic391 Try to load the craft with "unbreakable joints" on to the pad, then disable "unbreakable joints" again and launch, it should work better.

I don`t think its cheating in the current pre alpha state of KSP2. Its like KSP1 load-in easying or what it was like...

Edited November 11, 2023 by Mikki
stuff and a typo, stuff, and more typos

[Bej Kerman]

18 hours ago, Heretic391 said:

Colony Ship for our Dres Station. Problems with random disconnecting parts and of course...performance.  The Kraken likes this one a lot, can't launch it at all.

Mass: 20kt

Parts: 1618

Hm. Might need more clamps.

[Mikki]

9 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Hm. Might need more clamps.

Needs moar boosters, less strain on CPU maybe

[Heretic391]

5 hours ago, Mikki said:

...54 Clydesdale solid rocket boosters... take a look here... One went lost after liftoff....

"Alpha-II" launch"

@Heretic391 Try to load the craft with "unbreakable joints" on to the pad, then disable "unbreakable joints" again and launch, it should work better.

I don`t think its cheating in the current pre alpha state of KSP2. Its like KSP1 load-in easying or what it was like...

Ah good point I'll try! Thank you 

[Mikki]

On 11/9/2023 at 8:06 PM, cocoscacao said:

@Mikki Building space station in an unmarked orbital parking spot? I'll have to write you a ticket for that...

@cocoscacao ...Okay, we have moved location as demanded... 

Moving out of the way

Spoiler

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Mikki

[cocoscacao]

@Mikki joking aside, I haven't attempted to launch something of that size (or assemble it in orbit) since the first month of EA. Is that thing stable? Usually crafts like that tear themselves appart. 

[Mikki]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

@Mikki joking aside, I haven't attempted to launch something of that size (or assemble it in orbit) since the first month of EA. Is that thing stable? Usually crafts like that tear themselves appart. 

It is stable, but holding SAS prograde or retrograde is more prone to oscillation than creating a maneuver marker to point at while firing an engine. Timewarp is no problem, i use to step up and down factor by factor which is smooth and causes no phantom forces at all. Turning it around takes up more time than making coffee or tea...

Edited November 12, 2023 by Mikki
typo

[Casellina X]

Now that I'm attempting more extra-Kerbin missions, I'm encountering the Kraken more and more, and it's largely tied to parts becoming misaligned after time warps.

Previously I kept running up against remote probes not having control past the Kerbin SOI. So I decided, as my grandfather used to say, that "I'll fix your little red wagon," and I put a high gain antenna satellite in polar orbit around Kerbin. Unfortunately when I did this, orbit lines were not appearing, so it required some eyeballing and falling back on base knowledge. I struggled to get the deployable 130Gm dish to actually deploy - might be a bug where it doesn't think it can deploy after the fairing has been jettisoned. 

With that in place I decided to send the same design towards the inner system - the aim was maybe Kerbol or Moho, but I think I'm woefully lacking in dV for that. Hindsight and all.

I'm not sure what I'm doing differently (maybe the fins? better fairing design?) but this has been one of the more stable rockets I've put together. No wild flips when attempting the gravity turn.

Troubled fairing jettison.

Solar panels deployed and headed into Kerbol SOI.

So as I started maneuver planning to get closer to Kerbol, I encounter the Kraken. I burn and notice the Navball going wild. At first I thought it could be an RCS/reaction wheel issue, but then I zoomed in and saw this. Engine offset making a proper burn impossible. So this became another deep space relay probe.

Back on Kerbin we relaunched our tried and tested design in the daytime.

This time the fairing deployed perfectly, although I could have sworn I set up the 4x clamshell...

Another shot of our burn out into Kerbol SOI. Actually, this might have been an attempt to get closer again. At any rate, things were looking pretty good, although I was badly off plane with Moho so trying to eyeball an encounter was really kicking my ass. I sort of resigned myself to not being able to make it happen, so I just wanted to get a more circular orbit, and one just about as close as I could get it. I set up my node and see wild Navball behavior again...

... and as you can see, the Kraken really got its tentacles on this one! Frustrating but validation that I'm relatively capable. I already know that my attempts to get to the inner system aren't quite right, but I'm not far off.

[Scarecrow71]

13 minutes ago, Casellina X said:

and it's largely tied to parts becoming misaligned after time warps.

Are you warping to a point, or are you manually warping?  I'm curious about how this happens, and I wonder if different methods of warping have different results.  They shouldn't, but you never know.

[Casellina X]

40 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Are you warping to a point, or are you manually warping?  I'm curious about how this happens, and I wonder if different methods of warping have different results.  They shouldn't, but you never know.

Warping to a point - normally around AP or PE  - and to the maneuver node in these situations. The methods are probably the same however I wonder if the issue is either in the slowdown phase, or if being in map view under warp is a contributing factor. I know that during some slowdowns it will trigger 3 minutes out, maybe even 2 or 3 hours out rather than 40 seconds - which seems the standard for smaller warp to maneuver situations. So then I'm forced to warp again, and it'll gradually step into the 30 or 40 second mark. So maybe the successive warps are causing knock on problems. If it's tied to the map view, maybe it's calculations being thrown off during the final translation of the craft. I don't know if I've seen a misalignment with eyes on the actual craft.

[Antnee]

On 11/12/2023 at 9:17 AM, Casellina X said:

Now that I'm attempting more extra-Kerbin missions, I'm encountering the Kraken more and more, and it's largely tied to parts becoming misaligned after time warps.

Previously I kept running up against remote probes not having control past the Kerbin SOI. So I decided, as my grandfather used to say, that "I'll fix your little red wagon," and I put a high gain antenna satellite in polar orbit around Kerbin. Unfortunately when I did this, orbit lines were not appearing, so it required some eyeballing and falling back on base knowledge. I struggled to get the deployable 130Gm dish to actually deploy - might be a bug where it doesn't think it can deploy after the fairing has been jettisoned. 

With that in place I decided to send the same design towards the inner system - the aim was maybe Kerbol or Moho, but I think I'm woefully lacking in dV for that. Hindsight and all.

I'm not sure what I'm doing differently (maybe the fins? better fairing design?) but this has been one of the more stable rockets I've put together. No wild flips when attempting the gravity turn.

Troubled fairing jettison.

Solar panels deployed and headed into Kerbol SOI.

So as I started maneuver planning to get closer to Kerbol, I encounter the Kraken. I burn and notice the Navball going wild. At first I thought it could be an RCS/reaction wheel issue, but then I zoomed in and saw this. Engine offset making a proper burn impossible. So this became another deep space relay probe.

Back on Kerbin we relaunched our tried and tested design in the daytime.

This time the fairing deployed perfectly, although I could have sworn I set up the 4x clamshell...

Another shot of our burn out into Kerbol SOI. Actually, this might have been an attempt to get closer again. At any rate, things were looking pretty good, although I was badly off plane with Moho so trying to eyeball an encounter was really kicking my ass. I sort of resigned myself to not being able to make it happen, so I just wanted to get a more circular orbit, and one just about as close as I could get it. I set up my node and see wild Navball behavior again...

... and as you can see, the Kraken really got its tentacles on this one! Frustrating but validation that I'm relatively capable. I already know that my attempts to get to the inner system aren't quite right, but I'm not far off.

I've had luck quick saving and reloading once out of warp to realign parts.

[Antnee]

I'm continuing to study SSTO craft and decided to attempt a small satellite retrieval from orbit and back to KSC. I placed a small hub and fuel depot complete with a satellite in orbit and fashioned a medium sized cargo SSTO drone. Ease of landing/maneuvering was the basis of my initial design, as I'm a middling piolet at best and decided for some large wings for ease of gliding and control when I inevitably botch the landing or run out of fuel...

 

A small docking drone is included in the plane, not used on the current mission. I tend to make models as light as possible (number of parts), but even with zero frills the part count is pretty high.

I neglected to screen grab the ascent of the SSTO. It fly's decent for a 60 ton breadstick, not exactly a fighter plane. Orbit achieved with plenty of fuel to raise to the altitude of the hub.  Docking to the hub went smooth as well, the docking bay is a great place to add fore/aft RCS thrusters. 

Fuel balance is critical for success, I tend to balance a little nose heavy. I pinched a small amount of methane from the orbital fuel hub, adding weight to the nose.

Docking the satellite.

Satellite docking complete.

Undocked from the hub and established a lower orbit of around 145 km. I find this to be the sweet spot for this particular craft. Preparing to de-orbit.

De-orbit complete, heading prograde.

Overshot KSC a bit of course, deployed airbrakes to slow down. My first attempt at changing pitch above mach 3 plummeting through the atmosphere resulted in catastrophic vehicle break up on a previous design. Adding the airbrakes allows the plane to slow down at a high altitude and makes descent less troublesome. (for me at least)..  

Now that speed has been stripped away I fire up the rapier engines. 

Dropped down a bit short of course after breaking to compensate for the overshoot... Still have some methane remaining  for a bit of a cruise. I nudge the throttle a bit to maintain speed.

Lined up to the runway as best I can. The handling at low speed is a bit sluggish, but manageable.  

Touchdown!! I was able to ease the plane down for a pretty smooth landing. I deployed two drogue chutes to slow down (possibly not needed). Breaking was a bit troublesome, even after cutting the chutes applying the breaks caused a severe starboard pull. I steered back to center before snapping the pic. Luckily all this frantic action occurred under 100 ms. Phew!!!! 

Success!! SSTO and satellite cargo are safely back at KSC. Balancing the crafts mass/lift ratio on the fly and the efficacy of air brakes are my biggest take away. Hope you enjoyed the flight!!

 

[EugenPru]

I built a new rocket to send to the moon. I finally built it

[Vanamonde]

10 hours ago, EugenPru said:

I built a new rocket to send to the moon. I finally built it

So let's see it.