Odonian Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) Today I managed to get my "Monotropa" replaceable NPU-2500 magazine cluster into orbit without it simply exploding into an enormous fireball on the launchpad (launching a 1200 ton payload - 8000 on the launchpad - into orbit can be a little tricky). One of these clusters should provide a yet-to-be-developed nuclear-pulse-powered vessel with around 60 Dv for pushing around the 6.5-million ton asteroid I have captured in a very eccentric orbit around Kerbin (it should only take 6 or 7 of these clusters to get it fully circularized! no idea what it will take to get it's inclination to 0º). Edited October 27, 2016 by Odonian clarification Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOfMaar Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) Just now I reinstalled some mods and took another spaceplane design for a spin: another attempt at the Jonny Quest Dragonfly...but without the silly slope in the main wings. Things went pretty smoothly but the good part is when I came down for landing in a forgiving seaside grassland biome. High horizontal speed and ballet skipping over bumps were a breeze. But then a rear wheel brushed a small stone and the plane rolled over and suffered a @CatastrophicFailure of structural integrity. : D That one stone....out of nowhere! *I tag you because it was such fun to see/read your rant about rock scatter being tangible now.* Edited October 27, 2016 by JadeOfMaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TooManyIdeas Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 I've finally landed on the Mun again! Jeb looks happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benji13 Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 35 minutes ago, eloquentJane said: Something tells me that it's probably vaguely illegal to make DIY SRBs without some sort of license. If he's in Australia he could pop up to the Northern Territory. I'm pretty sure homemade fireworks/explosives are legal there. At least during winter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDJ Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) 38 minutes ago, eloquentJane said: Something tells me that it's probably vaguely illegal to make DIY SRBs without some sort of license. I know it is in certain countries. I cannot speak for all countries but in Canada homemade rocket motors (ie experimental rocketry) is illegal according to federal law and Ttansport Canada. I currently hold a L1 High Power CAR licence and do know of Canada regulations. Edited October 27, 2016 by GDJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 5 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said: Just now I reinstalled some mods and took another spaceplane design for a spin: another attempt at the Jonny Quest Dragonfly...but without the silly slope in the main wings. Things went pretty smoothly but the good part is when I came down for landing in a forgiving seaside grassland biome. High horizontal speed and ballet skipping over bumps were a breeze. But then a rear wheel brushed a small stone and the plane rolled over and suffered a @CatastrophicFailure of structural integrity. : D That one stone....out of nowhere! *I tag you because it was such fun to see/read your rant about rock scatter being tangible now.* Whoops, thanks for the reminder. I just installed SVT for 1.2 and I'd almost forgotten I need to pay attention before I start ramming boulders. Well, so much for having MechJeb make the trek across Duna's South Pole unaided. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
septemberWaves Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 @Odonian Only 1200 tonnes? I very much recommend that you install SpaceY and SpaceY Extended. With the new 10m diameter parts in the latter, it would not surprise me if you could launch several of those 1200 tonne payloads on a single three-core rocket. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galileo Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 5 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Whoops, thanks for the reminder. I just installed SVT for 1.2 and I'd almost forgotten I need to pay attention before I start ramming boulders. Well, so much for having MechJeb make the trek across Duna's South Pole unaided. Muahahahahahaha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odonian Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 @eloquentJane I'm a little overwhelmed with parts right now, which is especially troublesome with the flickering UI bug, but I may have to check SpaceY out anyway. Thanks for the recommendation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boganaut Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 I decided not to kill the W key by making Bill hike 24km on Duna. I fought a titanic battle against a lack of symmetry and fuel to hop a rescue ship closer to Bill and his crewmates. Kept the throttle low and even, landing with about 30 units of liquid fuel left within 1km of Jebediah Station. Took a few goes as I had to keep manually pumping fuel around to even up the weight. Otherwise even a moderate amount of thrust easily overwhelmed the reaction wheels ability to stay on course. LPC station released both its re-entry capsules into LKO and migrated slowly to the Mun with a lander attached. Bob said the lab would start to run low on data so something had to be done about it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aluminator Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 Building my enormus VALL-HALLA BASE My JoolianKerbalHotel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
septemberWaves Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 16 minutes ago, Odonian said: @eloquentJane I'm a little overwhelmed with parts right now, which is especially troublesome with the flickering UI bug, but I may have to check SpaceY out anyway. Thanks for the recommendation. I've been able to get over a thousand tonnes to orbit in the past with just a 5-core rocket made with SpaceY's 5m diameter parts (with no asparagus either). I still haven't found a serious use for the 7.5m parts yet (other than testing them out, and designing launch vehicles that never actually got used). The 10m parts are only fuel tanks, a fairing, and some engine mounts, but by adding some of SpaceY's huge engines they'll be terrifyingly powerful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaxxQ Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 1 hour ago, GDJ said: I know it is in certain countries. I cannot speak for all countries but in Canada homemade rocket motors (ie experimental rocketry) is illegal according to federal law and Ttansport Canada. I currently hold a L1 High Power CAR licence and do know of Canada regulations. IIRC, the L1 CAR license is similar to the L1 NAR/TRA Certification required here in the U.S. for high power rocketry. L3 is for the really big stuff, as well as SOME amateur (or experimental, as you put it) rocketry. Not sure what's required after that, but I'm sure it involves a lot of talking to the FAA, FBI, BATF, and probably a few more alphabet agencies. @TheEpicSquared - I've seen people making wind tunnels for testing model rockets, and here's a couple of suggestions: 1. Have the fan pull the air through, instead of pushing it. It helps smooth out the airflow around whatever you're testing. 2. Fill the intake opening of the tunnel with some sort of tubing, crosshatching, or something along those lines. 4-5cm long sections of paper towel tubes, lots of straws about the same length, vertical and horizontal flat pieces of cardboard set up to look like a screen... Any of those options will also go a long way towards smoothing out the airflow. 3. Since you seem to be making this out of several boxes, try lining the inside with single pieces of foil, wax paper, or something like that (something that comes in a roll from the grocery store). Keep it as smooth as possible. This will help reduce turbulence of the air over your box section joints. 4. If you can, try to have a section (preferably where your test piece is located) pinch down, or get narrower. This will somewhat increase your airflow in that section. 5. Water-thinned india ink applied to your test piece (in very tiny droplets) in the locations you want to look at may work better than trying to add smoke to observe airflow. This only works if the air velocity is high enough. I've done it and seen it done on model rockets, and those get up to a few hundred kph, so it MAY or MAY NOT work in your wind tunnel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iqilipi Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 Learnt a valuable lesson regarding landing gear... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
septemberWaves Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 6 minutes ago, Iqilipi said: Learnt a valuable lesson regarding landing gear... Actually I think there are two lessons here. One is that you should make sure your landing gear is lower than your engine, and the other is that if you land carefully enough on flat enough ground, the landing gear is somewhat obsolete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martian Emigrant Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 2 minutes ago, eloquentJane said: Actually I think there are two lessons here. One is that you should make sure your landing gear is lower than your engine, and the other is that if you land carefully enough on flat enough ground, the landing gear is somewhat obsolete. 10 minutes ago, Iqilipi said: Learnt a valuable lesson regarding landing gear... I never use landing gear legs. The gear with wheels, yes. If you look at the damage in m/s that a gear can take they compare with the engines. Plus you have less parts and weight. ME Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galileo Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) 40 minutes ago, Iqilipi said: Learnt a valuable lesson regarding landing gear... I call those kickstands Edited October 27, 2016 by Galileo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
septemberWaves Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 1 minute ago, Martian Emigrant said: I never use landing gear legs. The gear with wheels, yes. If you look at the damage in m/s that a gear can take they compare with the engines. Plus you have less parts and weight. The impact resistance doesn't make much difference if you're careful enough about your landings, and the mass of landing gear usually doesn't make a hugely significant difference anyway. Plus, a vertical lander with plane wheels attached generally looks kinda ugly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Program Kerbal Space Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) today i used a visual mod and went overboard and took millions of pictures... 50 minutes ago, Iqilipi said: Learnt a valuable lesson regarding landing gear... ok lets go back to the drawing board woops! i forgot the parachute now... welp R.I.P kerbals Edited October 27, 2016 by Program Kerbal Space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martian Emigrant Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 44 minutes ago, Program Kerbal Space said: today i used a visual mod and went overboard and took millions of pictures... ok lets go back to the drawing board woops! i forgot the parachute now... welp R.I.P kerbals Well you don't have to kill them as such. You can get them to Kerbin and do a "Rescue Mission". ME Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Program Kerbal Space Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 Just now, Martian Emigrant said: Well you don't have to kill them as such. You can get them to Kerbin and do a "Rescue Mission". ME idk how to do rescue missions i just well find out other ways to get them to reenter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SingABrightSong Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 Got a Mun gravity assist while performing my first Duna Landing. Unfortunately, I had already done plenty of periapsis kicking, but it was either use Mun's gravity to get to Duna, or use it to return to Kerbin. The payload was one of my Kentipede mobile bases, which went in to aerocapture and ended up suborbital. Landed safely via parachutes, rockets, and lithobraking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatbear Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 first experiments with space shuttle sized crafts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xyrus Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 6 hours ago, ThatHomelessGuy said: From a garden center. It's used in fertilizers. Go into a garden center and tell them you need potassium nitrate or a fertilizer with High Potassium nitrate content. They will take care of you. Garden center = anywhere that sells gardening / farming supplies. Just look for stump remover. Pretty much pure KaNO3. I used to use it to make homemade rocket motors for model rockets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andem Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 Test flight for the M17 Interceptor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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