Assembling stations in orbit around Kerbin and Mun; a Krakenous affair

[Kerbalsaurus]

For the transit, I suggest turning off SAS and putting the probe core on hibernation mode. You save a lot of power that way.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Kerbalsaurus
New page! Congrats!

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

6 minutes ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

For the transit, I suggest turning off SAS and putting the probe core on hibernation mode. You save a lot of power that way.

Thank you! But I have not found hibernation mode in the part menu of the probes on KSP2... but at least SAS will help!
Do you know where the setting to turn on hibernation mode is?
And I will add WAY more batteries and some solar panels or nuclear reactor things as well haha, this might help a lot!

[Kerbalsaurus]

20 minutes ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Thank you! But I have not found hibernation mode in the part menu of the probes on KSP2... but at least SAS will help!
Do you know where the setting to turn on hibernation mode is?
And I will add WAY more batteries and some solar panels or nuclear reactor things as well haha, this might help a lot!

It should be in the right click menu. Maybe try clicking a few drop menus?

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

8 minutes ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

It should be in the right click menu. Maybe try clicking a few drop menus?

Right clicking on the stations now takes years  and I am not got at looking for things, so I will probably look for it in the VAB. 
Or is it only available in-flight...?

[Kerbalsaurus]

1 minute ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Right clicking on the stations now takes years  and I am not got at looking for things, so I will probably look for it in the VAB. 
Or is it only available in-flight...?

It's available in both, but I wouldn't suggest launching a rocket with it on. You can't use qewasd to move around the spacecraft. Action groups can help.  Maybe set it to something like AG5 to "Toggle Hibernation". Press it in flight when your transit begins, and once you're about 3 minutes out from your maneuver burn into Munar Orbit, turn it off again. Simple as that.

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Maybe set it to something like AG5 to "Toggle Hibernation". Press it in flight when your transit begins, (...)

Ok, I didn't even think about action groups! I will do this for my next launch, possibly the truss assembly and the reaction wheel module! Time will tell 

[Kerbalsaurus]

2 minutes ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Ok, I didn't even think about action groups! I will do this for my next launch, possibly the truss assembly and the reaction wheel module! Time will tell 

Good luck!

[BechMeister]

On 6/3/2023 at 8:11 PM, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

On 6/3/2023 at 8:11 PM, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

 

Your way of using the cargo bay doors and lights never seizes to amaze me. It looks really good! Also damn.. fully animated gifs now... I have tried to record gifs myself with my screen capture tool - but it keeps failing the upload because they are too big. 

Your blog design is really looking good now. How do you get the images and text to fit so snugly? looks like something that is tedious and takes a lot of time x)

It was very "fun" to hear about your troubles of electric charge etc. I too in the past have had issues with test vehicles who ran out of charge.. I had a few of my gliders in the past run out of charge while waiting for a good line up to KSC - the internal batteries are just not that good... where i had to spend my precious Δv on burning in a random direction to get enough charge to point prograde and do the de-orbit burn with the now tiny amount of left over Δv xD

I always find i either design a vehicle with too much electric charge.. or to little.. never seem to hit the sweet spot.

Any way... It worries me a little that you had such bad luck with your multiple launches. Because.. this is where i am at right now:


Yes this is the 8 hydrogen tanks enroute to K.G.02

This is the 8 tanks now in lunar orbit..

and this is me desperately making sure vehicles dont miss their maneuver nodes.

Any way.. As always looks good! Looking forward to the next update.

 

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

38 minutes ago, BechMeister said:

Your way of using the cargo bay doors and lights never seizes to amaze me. It looks really good! Also damn.. fully animated gifs now... I have tried to record gifs myself with my screen capture tool - but it keeps failing the upload because they are too big. 

Thank you! I've had great success with Clipchamp, which is Microsofts own free video editing software. You are able to export up to 15 second GIFs from it, and they fit on the forums! For screen capture I just use GeForce experience, and leave the computer while capturing to do other stuff... I think I have like 40 gigs of 1440p recordings of stations orbiting the Mun and Kerbin! 

42 minutes ago, BechMeister said:

Your blog design is really looking good now. How do you get the images and text to fit so snugly? looks like something that is tedious and takes a lot of time x)

Thanks! I just crop all of my screenshots to 4:3 and then set their height to 400 pixels by double-clicking them when writing and editing. For the text I just use shift+enter for line breaks to make it fit snuggly.  and yes, it takes quite a lot of time! 

46 minutes ago, BechMeister said:

Any way... It worries me a little that you had such bad luck with your multiple launches. Because.. this is where i am at right now:

Oh my, I am not trying that again! What if you spend too long time docking?? Good luck with that project anyways! 

[BechMeister]

I have 5/8 tanks that will do rendezvous with the station, spanning 3h19 min from first to last arrival.. and my plan is to park each stage next to K.G.02 with a 0 relative velocity until the last stage has arrived before starting the docking - at least that's the idea i have if you get me xD 

But yeah... with the methalox tanks i decided to dock them to my new large tug drone and move them like that - also providing a chance to test the new large tug drone. The bigger K.G02 tanks just didn't fit on the mount. But yeah... exciting times indeed.

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

Transferring crews
Val doesn't want to pick up Gregmond yet

This will mostly be a slideshow I guess. 

But Val is quite fed up with Gregmond. If you remember from one of the updates earlier, Gregmond snuck onto the first version of KB-2 which was attached by the Kraken. He does not have clearance to go to space yet, and Val is the most experienced Kerbonaut at KSC by far. She is the commander of the stations she inhabits, and is also the commander of the transfer craft. 

Some new bug has happened where Kerbals teleport to the stations... so KB-2 won't be inhabited if the three of the "original four" transit from KB-1 to KB-2! Somehow Bill teleported to KB-2, so they will not be the first Kerbonauts to dock with KB-1. 

I also might be making some design changes to the station. 60 tonnes of monopropellant is probably a little overkill for just one of my station tugs, and I didn't like the look of the reaction wheel core on KB-2... I might still add it to KB-1 instead though, even though that will be a sizeable operation docking it between the large hydrogen balltanks.... 

Well, on to the transit itself. 

I had some issues with my trajectory towards the Mun. After the first version of KSP2 had major trouble with the manouver nodes, I have stuck to not using them that much. To get a Mun intercept, I have resorted to alligning my inclination with the Mun, and just wait until the Mun appears from behind the horizon of Kerbin before burning prograde. Also known as the "Matt Lowne Munar transfer". Probably. 

Well. This works in LKO of 70 km up to about 150 km. It does not work at the 550 km altitude of KB-1. The crew transfer craft got a limited DeltaV of about 1800 m/s, and I burned most of that just tilting my orbit by burning anti-normal to get an intercept with the Mun. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The crew transfer module is finally in transit to intercept the mun.

I really like the look of that radial aerospike engine at the bottom! I may or may not have made a lander in the same style for KB-2.

Some course adjustments...

...retracting solar panels to pass behind the solar array of KB-2...

 

...and docking. Make note of the new monopropellant module here. I felt it was better than having that big, heavy ball of hydrazine
analog at the bottom of KB-2.

I managed to get a Mun intercept, circularize at 1000 km, set up a rendezvous with KB-2 AND reduce my speed to about 10 m/s relative to the station before running out of Methalox.
Luckily navigating around the Mun is pretty cheap, so I could just adjust my course at the 10 m/s speed I was already moving at, and get close to KB-2 that way. 

I also might have run out of battery on the transit vehicle once because I forgot to deploy the solar panels, and reload a save as I forgot I had Kerbonauts on board and not just a probe core. 

I guess that's it!

Right now I'm on a small break from playing KSP2. Getting a bit fed up with the bugs, and how some of my Space Shuttles I built on another save got corrupted.  I'm waiting in anticipation
of the June update, and will probably continue my struggles after it drops! 

Until then, see ya! 

Sylvi, out.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Sylvi Fisthaug

[BechMeister]

6 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

I also might be making some design changes to the station. 60 tonnes of monopropellant is probably a little overkill for just one of my station tugs, and I didn't like the look of the reaction wheel core on KB-2... I might still add it to KB-1 instead though, even though that will be a sizeable operation docking it between the large hydrogen balltanks.... 

well - you will never run out of monopropellant i guess xD - But its always like this aint it? you think your done.. and then you find a new way to optimize.

 

6 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

I really like the look of that radial aerospike engine at the bottom! I may or may not have made a lander in the same style for KB-2.

yeah i really like the look of the Aerospikes.. I wish we had a bigger one too - maybe modelled after the Venturestars aerospike?

 

6 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

I had some issues with my trajectory towards the Mun. After the first version of KSP2 had major trouble with the manouver nodes

Its a bit funny - I found that the countdown in the previous version of KSP2 was better.. The "new" count down... I alway miss time. My brain just wants to turn the engines on when all dots turn green.. but yeah I can never seem to get the burn time fit with the "line" - maybe its also because its really bad at figuring out how much Δv there is actually in the craft? and therefor how much is needed? Anyway.. I find myself i use the maneuver node to see when and where I should burn. You can make a planned burn that will bring you into the orbit of the mun - and then just drag it along your orbit until you get a transfer... At that point I usually just burn. and only use the maneuver node as a guideline to see how much im off.

Its interesting.. I've had to eyeball it a lot more around the Mun - it seems very "broken" in the low gravity. Luckily a mistake is not as punishing there.. since you can practically make maneuvers with your RCS thrusters alone x)
 

6 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Make note of the new monopropellant module here. I felt it was better than having that big, heavy ball of hydrazine
analog at the bottom of KB-2.

I wonder what the crew must be thinking when they know that behind the walls of the - presumed - tight corridor they walk through is full of fuel xD 

It somehow reminds me when I was deployed to Iraq in 2019 - and the C-17 Globemaster we were flying in had missile tubes on the flatbed, and then us sitting on the seats of the wall. Which ment you could use the missile tubes as a "foot rest" - It was a bizarre experience. Im sure it was perfectly safe though - the flight crew knew what they were doing. Still bizarre though, sitting next to explosives and a rocket engine xD 

- the chrome metal parts does look really good though.

 

6 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Right now I'm on a small break from playing KSP2. Getting a bit fed up with the bugs, and how some of my Space Shuttles I built on another save got corrupted.  I'm waiting in anticipation
of the June update, and will probably continue my struggles after it drops! 

Until then, see ya! 

Sylvi, out.

Well - Enjoy your break! I still have a station to finish.. and two stations to refuel... Luckily I enjoy flying the gliders.. But yeah - running the risk of getting "burned out" building these behemoths x)

- You talked a lot about some small tweaks and fixes - I look forward to see what comes of them.

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

On 6/15/2023 at 8:52 AM, BechMeister said:

well - you will never run out of monopropellant i guess xD - But its always like this aint it? you think your done.. and then you find a new way to optimize.

yeees the stations will never be done! and mooar monopropellant, giev hydrazine now

On 6/15/2023 at 8:52 AM, BechMeister said:

yeah i really like the look of the Aerospikes.. I wish we had a bigger one too - maybe modelled after the Venturestars aerospike?

yah I saw that in a KSP1 partmod from a screenshot! Like elongated square one, looks really cool. 

On 6/15/2023 at 8:52 AM, BechMeister said:

The "new" count down... I alway miss time. My brain just wants to turn the engines on when all dots turn green..

yeah me too! and that time passes slower in-game on low FPS lol, that doesn't make it a lot easier

On 6/15/2023 at 8:52 AM, BechMeister said:

I wonder what the crew must be thinking when they know that behind the walls of the - presumed - tight corridor they walk through is full of fuel xD 

Oooof I have thought of this!! I just imagine it to be a small corridor I regretted not adding more docking ports to the main module, but oh well. Forever optimizing