What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

@Klapaucius

Your craft angers me o_o

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[Geschosskopf]

On 6/21/2019 at 2:19 PM, katateochi said:

 

At 3000+ tons, I think this is the biggest potato I've ever captured. I've got it into a highly elliptical orbit, but it's going to take quite a few more orbits to gradually shunt it into a nice circular orbit around Kerbin.  Fully fuelled, without an asteroid attached, the AstroHopper can put out over 3000m/s dV, with this thing attached it can do 38m/s dV. So it's case of mine and slight shunt then repeat. 

Congrats on your record catch, even with the disconcerting facial features

 

On 6/21/2019 at 5:25 PM, Cavscout74 said:

Well I had some excitement this morning.  During launch of a routine crew rotation to my Mun base, roughly halfway through the radial boosters fuel, my daughter's cat (who likes watching KSP & has wrecked missions in the past) wandered across my lap, stopped, looked at the screen then reached out & smacked the space bar. 

If I had a dollar for every cat-induced mission failure I've had, I'd rich.  This is not just in KSP but in practically every game I've ever had going back decades.  I feel your pain.

My worst such event was over 20 years (and several cats) ago.  I was playing a highly organized MMO PvP flightsim historical scenario weeks in the making with a few hundred other folks.  In the middle of an intense dogfight, my cat at that time brought in a bird she'd caught, which was still alive.  She came in my office door and let it go.  The wounded bird flew across my line of sight between me and my monitor.  I thought it was an enemy plane in such close proximity that it could horizontal scissors right onto my tail.  So I turned after it in self-defense, breaking off from the real enemy plane I was then chasing.  And I promptly crashed into the hillside I knew was there but which the proximity of the bird had caused me to forget.  So game over for me and weeks of organizational prep work down the drain.

But yeah, I can't even count the number of cat-induced staging events, or disastrous changes in attitude, or inopportune shutting off of SAS, or simply the inability to move my wired mouse when needed due to the cat lying on the cable.  Still, only worthless Kerbals were harmed in those instances, rather than my own self

[KerikBalm]

*edit* tested if I couldmod in and then scan underwater features. I can

 

Well, last night I minimized my deployable sub. No longer does it carry Kerbals, or other science experiments except the scanning arm. Its mass was halved. I then tested out its deployment from a tilt rotor.

It worked well, next test is to try to make underwater features, and scan them

One the way out:

The payload:

And I could deploy and recover it>

and off it goes again>

 

Edited June 23, 2019 by KerikBalm

[Guest]

Project Evil is on its first (simulated) trial on Eve. 

This is hard. The limiting factor is again the mechanical strength of the rotors; if I run them at full power they will quickly buckle. Taking off required a lot of finesse: a bit of collective, then gradually adjusting throttle until it lifted off, then finding the balance between collective and throttle that just kept the rotor from buckling. As I'm writing this, she is climbing towards the skies of Eve at about 6 m/s. I have been able to apply more torque as the air gets thinner. We will see how she fares... I will update this post on how the mission went.

Update 1: We are at 10 km, rotors now running at full power, 100 rpm, collective at 5.7 degrees, climbing at 10.9 m/s.

Update 2: At 41 minutes mission time, we passed 20 km. Collective 5.8, climb 9.5 m/s, rotors running at full power at 135 rpm.

Update 3: At 1 hour mission time, we are at 29 km. Collective 3.7, climb has slowed to 4.7 m/s, rotors running at 240 rpm. Will we reach the target altitude of 30 km?

Update 4: Mission time is 1:05:34 and the altimeter reads exactly 30 km. Climb has slowed to under 3 m/s. Fuel gauge reads 2527/2862. Time to start the attempt to reach orbit.

Update 5: We discovered some structural weaknesses in the craft as well as some things not to do when piloting, but the simulation permitted us to address them (quicksaves + bit of autostrut). After that, orbital insertion was performed successfully! The lifter stage did not quite manage to lift the Ap out of the atmosphere -- it ended up at 82 km -- but the orbiter reached orbit (Pe 94 km, Ap 170 km) with 174 m/s left in the tank. The lifter survived the descent into the atmosphere, but is descending nose-first. Rotors are autorotating and at 7 km it is descending at a sedate 5 m/s or so. 

Update 6: It was not possible to bring the craft upright. Pilot error on touchdown caused it to be harder than needed which caused some avoidable damage; however even a perfect nose-down touchdown would certainly have caused the loss of some rotor blades at a minimum as the craft topples over. The craft as currently designed is not able to return intact.

Conclusion:

The mission was a qualified success:

1 - Take-off: SUCCESS
2 - Climb to stratosphere on rotor power: SUCCESS
3 - Orbital insertion: SUCCESS
4 - Return to lower atmosphere: SUCCESS
5 - Controlled descent: PARTIAL SUCCESS - Autorotation can sufficiently slow down the craft, however, it is not possible to bring the craft upright
5 - Landing: FAIL

Lessons learned:

- We need to strengthen the craft structurally. The power section is not sufficiently well anchored to the body and causes major instability.
- We might want to change the stage fuel balance. The orbiter reached orbit easily from a ballistic arc with an Ap of 82 km. A lifter with less dV and an orbiter with a little more would result in an overall lighter craft, which would be able to climb higher and faster on rotors, partially offsetting the dV loss. The result might be more efficient as well as more robust and easier to fly.
- Adding a parachute to the nose of the lifter would allow us to bring it tail down as well as guaranteeing a safe landing. 

The mission proved that the concept is workable. It revealed some engineering problems but these should be relatively simple to resolve, and suggested a way to build a more efficient and easier to handle craft on the same principles. Only landing was a failure, unrecoverable due to the craft pointing nose down on return, although pilot error caused some avoidable damage. That makes no difference to the outcome however, as even a perfect touchdown would certainly have caused the loss of some rotor blades rendering the craft unable to do a repeat mission.

Work continues, however: the next iteration of Project Evil may be more successful...

Edit: I made another attempt with a lighter craft, equipped with only half the rotor power and about 100 m/s less dV. It succeeded in the orbital insertion but only made it to 20 km on rotor power, which left it so low it was presumed crashed. Trying  an iteration on it now, with a tweak to the rotors. Just a few klicks more...

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[FahmiRBLX]

Just tested my CRJ-1000-based SSTO and I couldn't make it to orbit. Maybe I'll shall try a different ascent profile or re-engine the four Lotuses with Whiplashes.

Check my profile status for more info.

Edited June 23, 2019 by FahmiRBLXian

[Jett_Quasar]

Today I posted this

 - Jett

[SwissSpace93]

Yesterday evening i tested my KSP Reentry, it was broken last week (dont know why). now it works again.

 

Video of the Reentry

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2019 by SwissSpace93
Yes it got it :)

[Guest]

All right, we have a successful design: introducing the BAK-9900 Seraph. She's stable on the way up and on the way down, will perform the orbital injection and get itself high enough that you can bring her back. 

Actually operating this baby is a different kettle of fish. But it does get up, and get down, without shedding any pieces, and it is theoretically possible to refuel and reload it for another round. I'm especially happy about the aerodynamic balance -- it's nose-heavy on the way up, which means it'll fly up on its ballistic arc without much fuss, and tail-heavy on the way down, which means it autorotates home with minimal intervention. It's actually quite easy to fly, which is not obvious on Eve. Only take-off and the start of the climb are a bit fiddly as you have to finesse the torque not to buckle the blades.

Edit: Craft published - https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-9900-Seraph

Man this was a difficult project. But then everything about Eve is.

Another edit: So what now?

TBH I'm not sure I'd ever want to use this in career. Reason being, refueling and reloading it would be a gigantic operation that would require massive ground resources and a loooong trip to wherever it landed. In practice I think disposable return ships are much easier; with more stages you can greatly increase the payload to carry more than one miserable kerbal packed into a Mk 1 bay like a sardine.

However, rotors are an extremely viable way to claw your way out of the soupy lower atmosphere. Even if they "only" carry you to 10-20 km, they will cut thousands off your dV budget -- my failed attempt that got to 20 klicks easily injected its payload to orbit, and only failed because of KSP's system of eliminating craft caught in the atmosphere; it would have gotten the job done. Rotors are also a really effective way of braking in the atmosphere.

So, while this is on the outer edges of actually being an operable system in career games, I think it would be possible to design a three-stage disposable launcher that carries a bigger, more useful payload with less total mass. It would use the rotors to get out of the soup, then shed them and fly to orbit in three stages.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[Cavscout74]

Yesterday, I experimented with Bluedog Design Bureau in an alternate copy of KSP, along with Tantares.  Both were pretty impressive, although much bigger mods than anything I could add to my existing main game.  Still, the Titan-Gemini launch was pretty impressive.  I may have to keep this alternate version around for occasional eye candy with more realistic craft.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Guest]

Here is these three huge posters for google chrome backgrounds available starting today. They were just allowed for use by my website https://maarlandersinnovation.wordpress.com/

Third poster EDIT

And why not add a fourth poster... this poster was all the first probe missions I did

A few months ago memorial

 

 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[capi3101]

8 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Another edit: So what now?

TBH I'm not sure I'd ever want to use this in career. Reason being, refueling and reloading it would be a gigantic operation that would require massive ground resources and a loooong trip to wherever it landed. In practice I think disposable return ships are much easier; with more stages you can greatly increase the payload to carry more than one miserable kerbal packed into a Mk 1 bay like a sardine.

However, rotors are an extremely viable way to claw your way out of the soupy lower atmosphere. Even if they "only" carry you to 10-20 km, they will cut thousands off your dV budget -- my failed attempt that got to 20 klicks easily injected its payload to orbit, and only failed because of KSP's system of eliminating craft caught in the atmosphere; it would have gotten the job done. Rotors are also a really effective way of braking in the atmosphere.

So, while this is on the outer edges of actually being an operable system in career games, I think it would be possible to design a three-stage disposable launcher that carries a bigger, more useful payload with less total mass. It would use the rotors to get out of the soup, then shed them and fly to orbit in three stages.

My main questions - how much did the craft weigh at launch, and how much did it weigh when you got it into orbit? Looking for an approximate delta-V value using this kind of launch system.

Makes me awful glad to hear that it's a viable idea. Can't adequately express that in written words.

[Cavscout74]

I haven't inflicted enough pain on myself or my kerbals lately, so I'm taking another shot at a shuttle design.  It's just a little Mk2 passenger shuttle.  It used up WAAYYYYYY too much of my time & effort.  Some of the stupidest things went wrong, too.  After designing the spaceplane in the hangar & testing it at low altitudes, I moved over to the VAB.  When I rotated the whole thing 90* so it would go straight into a gravity turn on its back, the landing gear flipped so the main gear were pointing opposite directions.  Then I accidentally placed the abort sequence into the staging action group - resulted in not 1, not 2 but THREEE botched launches that I couldn't figure out what was going on.  Then came tweaking the design to get it to launch up instead of sideways.  After finally getting a successful launch, everything went haywire passing 20km or so & I had to abort again.  From there, I scrapped the entire booster setup & attached 4 1.25m boosters around the shuttle, with a few small SRBs & flew it that way - which worked pretty good.  I reached a 94km orbit with ~600 m/s dV remainng in the Terrier's on the shuttle.  Reentry was smooth - once I released radial out hold, it went by itself to about a 10-15* nose up attitude & held it without effort till most the of speed bled off.  With a Wheesley for atmoshperic flight, it doesn't want to get much over 200 m/s, so the flight back to KSC took a while - I overshot by about 250km.  But landing was smooth once I made it back.  This might be the tamest handling spaceplane I've made so far. 

Attempt 1:

Spoiler

Here's what happened when I had the abort sequence mapped to the staging action group:

Jeb earning his pay:

There were about 5 very similar attempted launches that ended up a few dozen meters from the pad.  Amazingly, all had intact cockpits

Attempt 2:

Spoiler

Rearranging the SRB's might have done the trick:

Unless one of the small SRB's hits the Kickback & destroys it.

Returning to the Dessert airstrip to land.  This is where I noticed the main gear pointing opposite directions

Attempt 3:

Spoiler

Launched from KSC this time, the small SRB's staged away cleanly, I might make it into space this time....

Unless control authority is overridden by the SRB thrust in the thinner atmosphere & I lose control again.

Approach to KSC

Attempt 4 with 4 smaller liquid boosters on both sides of the shuttle

Spoiler

This might actually work...

Booster separation, Ap is ~95km

I lost a little altitude, but Ap was still above 94km.  I needed ~430 m/s bring up the Pe, leaving me with about 670 m/s remaining for orbital maneuvers

Reentry

 

Finally, I made a picture-perfect landing with an automated resupply mission to my Minmus base - set it down 37m from the base itself, in the middle of 3 other craft.  I had hoped the transfer stage would crash close enough for the surface seismic sensor to get a reading, but no luck - I think I may have still been out of physics range when it impacted, because it should've hit <200m from the surface experiments.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, capi3101 said:

My main questions - how much did the craft weigh at launch, and how much did it weigh when you got it into orbit? Looking for an approximate delta-V value using this kind of launch system.

 Makes me awful glad to hear that it's a viable idea. Can't adequately express that in written words.

Take-off mass is just short of 45 tons. I can't tell you the dry masses off the bat, you can check them yourself if you download the craft. The delta-V values are about 2600 for the lifter and about 3000 for the orbiter.

I would like it if I could get it just a bit higher on rotors only, my first attempt got to 30k and it made a pretty big difference to the launch -- it had about the same dV with a lower TWR, and got the parabola well over 80 km whereas this one only gets to 60 km. I am going to try yet another variant to see if I can get this one to the same altitude with the same dV budget and more or less the same mass; I have an idea I want to try.

[KerikBalm]

I've completely given up on Eve SSTOs. They are too impractical. IIRC, there was one that in at least one version could get to orbit from the highest peak on eve. I think I saw one truly massive one that carried mini ISRU equipment, and took years to fill up.

Anyway, as soon as Kopernicus updates, I'll be playing a 3x system, in which case you can kiss an Eve SSTO goodbye, as a Kerbin SSTO with airbreathing engines is already quite difficult.

Previously in my 3x rescale, I decreased Eve's gravity to 1.25 G, and increased its atmospheric pressure from 5 to 10 atmospheres... to make it more Venus like. The Isp of rocket engines at 10 atmospheres is ridiculously bad. Lower grav and thicker atmosphere should render prop planes more viable. I will definitely only design rockets to land at mountain peaks, and use relatively high speed transit by prop planes for surface exploration. In my custom rescale: SMA and celestial body radius increases by 3x, but atmosphere height increases by 1.25x, and terrain height by 1.5x. So mountains are in relatively thinner air in my rescale.... badly needed on a 10 atmosphere 2100km radius Eve.

After seeing your post, I might try an ascent vehicle using props for the first stage if it can lift the whole thing much higher than the mountains, then I can land anywhere, and have shorter trips for exploration.

I'm a bit tempted to deviate from stock vehicle design (I like to do mod worlds, but stock craft), and use this mod:

Its a lot easier to make practical 2 stage to orbit designs if you don't need the 2nd stage to stay high enough, long enough, for the upper stage to get to orbit.

[Guest]

Yeah the atmospheric self-destruct bugs me too. There's a lot of fun to be had from stratolaunchers and having them disappear "just because" is a bit of a downer. 

Thanks for pointing out FMRS. It does just what I would like the game to do. My main reason for not using it is that I want my designs to work in a pure stock game. So that's one thing for the stock wishlist... although perhaps an unreasonable one.

(I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be to get out of Eve in a 3x system. It's bloody hard as it is. I kinda doubt it would be even doable without MechJeb doing some extremely precise flying... and that's another thing, I like to fly my rockets myself, I really enjoy the hands-on feel of it.)

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Anyway, as soon as Kopernicus updates, I'll be playing a 3x system, in which case you can kiss an Eve SSTO goodbye, as a Kerbin SSTO with airbreathing engines is already quite difficult.

@_@! What you mean 3x? Does it make stock KSP 3 times bigger? (I’m not very fluent with mods) why deciding to play with that?

P.S.

RE: Kerbin SSTO... 

I’ve been playing with making cool looking fighter aircraft recently and every plane I make seems to be SSTO capable in the stock game. I remember a time when I first started that making an SSTO was hard but now it seems like I’m doing them without trying. I wonder if the game is somehow easier now or if it’s just me getting better at building stuff... 

I haven’t tried an eve SSTO though! If it’s  anything like Venus that does sound hard... 

D: 

P.P.S

Nothing wrong with a two stage takeoff, you could still re-use the first stage if you parachute it back and refill it. Lots of atmosphere to play with!  

Edited June 24, 2019 by Guest

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

I’ve been playing with making cool looking fighter aircraft recently and every plane I make seems to be SSTO capable in the stock game. I remember a time when I first started that making an SSTO was hard but now it seems like I’m doing them without trying. I wonder if the game is somehow easier now or if it’s just me getting better at building stuff... 

 I haven’t tried an eve SSTO though! If it’s  anything like Venus that does sound hard... 

Kerbin SSTOs are not easier, you're just better at it. 

As to Eve SSTOs, they are one of the hardest things in the entire game that have still been proven to be possible. You need about 8000 m/s to get into orbit from sea level on rocket power only, and putting that into a craft that achieves > 1.0 TWR at Eve's sea-level atmospheric pressure means a humongous craft. It has been done with (pre-Breaking Ground) stock propellers with about 4000 m/s, with the same approach I was using --- get as high as possible on props, then fly out. 

Before the Making History parts, there were basically three engines that worked on Eve ASL: the Vector, the Mammoth, and the Aerospike. 

Anyway, if you want to try that, good luck, it's gonna be a big undertaking. I've never managed it although I did get close once. I kind of lost interest when it dawned on me just how huge those ships are for a tiny payload. They wouldn't really be practical for career -- if you want to make them 100% reusable (which is the whole point) then heat shields are out for atmospheric entry, which means you have to fly them in empty and fuel them in situ, and because the things are so huge refueling takes years. Even a 4000 m/s single-stage craft using conventional LfOx engines is going to be absolutely massive, especially as the rotors it used to get up high enough to manage it with that also add dry mass. And an 8000 m/s one is positively ridiculous. A two-stage 8000 m/s LfOx craft is already huge.

My two-stage rotor-driven solution is an attempt at squaring this circle -- making something that's just barely within the bounds of what you could actually operate in a career game. 

Even a disposable, multi-stage Eve launcher is very hard. I've seen some designs that are as light as 15 tons although I'm not sure if those are for sea level or for launching from a peak.

I've only ever made one Eve return mission in a career game. It was a spaceplane that carried an ISRU. It flew in empty, refuelled, hopped biomes, and when it was time to return shed the ISRU, then the wings, then boosters, then the lifter, and finally flew to orbit in a teeny little capsule. That was not easy either.

I never published the craft as it was such a beast to fly (and I think I've lost the file actually), but here's a picture of it landed and starting to refuel: 

[KerikBalm]

38 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

@_@! What you mean 3x? Does it make stock KSP 3 times bigger? (I’m not very fluent with mods) why deciding to play with that?

Kopernicus is a mod which enables one to modify the stock system. I use it along with the mod "Sigma dimensions" (which just does a lot of the work, I don't need sigma dimensions to do it, but then I need to manually rescale every body and atmosphere) and my own custom mods to change the system to something I like more.

So kopernicus itself doesn't make stock Ksp 3 times bigger, but I use it to do that (basically).

As for why? because stock KSP is overall to easy for me now. There's no sense of achievement getting to orbit, or SSTOing (since SSTOs with over 50% payload fraction are possible). Sure, Eve SSTOs are really really hard (but an eve ascent with a disposable vehicle, no so much anymore). Given the ease at which I can get large payloads to orbit, even Moho's not hard to get to for me anymore.

The ease of getting stuff to orbit just means I can massively overbuild everything. Going to 3x really makes me think, and optimize and minimze missions down to essentials to keep the rocket or spaceplane on the pad a manageable size.

17 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

if you want to make them 100% reusable (which is the whole point) then heat shields are out for atmospheric entry, which means you have to fly them in empty and fuel them in situ, and because the things are so huge refueling takes years. Even a 4000 m/s single-stage craft using conventional LfOx engines is going to be absolutely massive, especially as the rotors it used to get up high enough to manage it with that also add dry mass. And an 8000 m/s one is positively ridiculous. A two-stage 8000 m/s LfOx craft is already huge.

My two-stage rotor-driven solution is an attempt at squaring this circle -- making something that's just barely within the bounds of what you could actually operate in a career game.

Well, in theory, now with breaking ground, you could use an inflatable heat shield (no ablator), or a normal heat shield that doesn't need ablator (they still have high temp tolerance, and make a detached shockwave), that rotates or retracts... but yea... better to just come in empty and light, as you will be doing anyway after an ascent (those tanks will be empty). Fueling can be done faster if you have a surface base with many drills and a skilled engineer. Self fueling designs take years (decades), because they can spare so little mass for power, drills, and a converter.

In 3x, I've turned to 2 stage designs for Kerbin reusability, operating like you propose: the 1st stage uses wings gets on a suborbital trajectory with some rocket burning at the end, then the 2nd stage gets to orbit before the 1st stage falls back down too much. If not using LV-Ns, it really beats the single stage designs by a large margin. Kerbin 3x SSTOs can increase their payload fraction by a lot by loading up on LV-Ns, but the time to orbit is very long. The 2 stage designs can't make much use of nukes due to the time constraint on the first stage. They do get payload to orbit much faster, and after the switch, are much more manageable (despite needing to land 2 craft). On 3x, the suborbital first stage doesn't get all that far away from KSC, relatively speaking, and is a "simple" powered turn around and high speed flight back to KSC. As its not even orbital velocity for 1x kerbin, heating is light, and the "FAT-455 airliner wings" can be used. The orbital 2nd stage is also winged, but its many fewer parts, a few 3.75m tanks, a mammoth, and other basics. Much better frame rate for reentry, and much smaller and sturdier. I've though about giving it some whiplashes or panthers so that it has more room to maneuver if the glide back to KSC is misjudged. (whiplashes would help the steep and speedy first stage ascent, but for maximum efficiency, airbreathers aren't taken to orbit... but maybe I'll take 2 and leave the other 40+ on the first stage)

Edited June 24, 2019 by KerikBalm

[cantab]

On the topic of Eve, Stratzenblitz demonstrated a bold but effective approach - the Eve ascent vehicle puts itself on a suborbital trajectory and an orbiting space tug meets it and pushes to orbit. It'll take great skill or/and a lot of quickloading but it can work. His ascent vehicle still needed to be a big rocket plane with a mountaintop landing to carry just a chair in a service bay.

When I tackle it myself, I'll probably try my hand at rotors and settle for an expendable launch vehicle on top of that.

[Guest]

Yep, I studied that, and decided that it's beyond my piloting skills

I am going to try make an expendable rotor-driven launch vehicle, just because... and to see how small I can make it. 

[Flibble]

[1.6.1 RSS/RO] I designed my first Lunar probe today. Three stages to LEO then an unguided spin-kick to get the probe out to the Moon. It should work...

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, cantab said:

On the topic of Eve, Stratzenblitz demonstrated a bold but effective approach - the Eve ascent vehicle puts itself on a suborbital trajectory and an orbiting space tug meets it and pushes to orbit. It'll take great skill or/and a lot of quickloading but it can work.

yea, I saw that, but it requires too much precision for the tool available in KSP, especially using mech Jeb. I'd love ot be able to place a maneuver node, and set it to execute at a specific time (for a landed ship), so I could already plot the maneuver to intercept a craft in an eliptical orbit, and use the countdown to the maneuver as a countdown to launch... but skipping forward by orbit numbers doesn't really work for landed craft.

It would also be great if we could get the closest approach markers to show up for maneuvers... so I could plan the ascent burn when it gets close to an intercept with theorbiting tug, and then I could fine tune the intercept with the tug before the landed vehicle launches.

Of course Eve's atmosphere would screw it all up anyway...

Its fine with me, not everything can be reusable when it comes to spaceflight, thats just the way it is. Nobody's going to be SSTOing from the lower Jool atmosphere... although now we might be able to make craft that hang around down there for a while, swinging their rotors about.

So the same is fine for me with Eve.

[capi3101]

6 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Take-off mass is just short of 45 tons. I can't tell you the dry masses off the bat, you can check them yourself if you download the craft. The delta-V values are about 2600 for the lifter and about 3000 for the orbiter.

I would like it if I could get it just a bit higher on rotors only, my first attempt got to 30k and it made a pretty big difference to the launch -- it had about the same dV with a lower TWR, and got the parabola well over 80 km whereas this one only gets to 60 km. I am going to try yet another variant to see if I can get this one to the same altitude with the same dV budget and more or less the same mass; I have an idea I want to try.

So the props shed off about about a third of the typically needed delta-V? That's good to know. I'm probably going to be making my own attempt at a prop-launch craft in the Very Near Future^TM.

Meanwhile...


(1.6.1) I spent the majority of my weekend at the nascent Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly working on construction and installation of the outpost structures. On Friday,  Pilot Melrie Kerman and scientist Dumin Kerman printed up two more Pathfinder Casa modules, five Hacienda modules and a second Micro ISRU module which engineer Bartzor Kerman EVA'd and installed. First up was the Casa Habitat, which the trio used to punch their tickets. 

These three are the first 5-star staff I've ever had in a career save. Bit of a milestone.

Bartzor was able to get the Casas, the ISRU, four of the Haciendas, another Chuckwagon storage module and a Rangeland remote launch pad installed before the day was out. It turns out that the formula that the Micro ISRU uses for Equipment printing is different than the one in the Iron Works, requiring Minerals instead of Exotic Minerals as well as Rare Metals. While Exotic Minerals are absent at OR's site, these others are there in sufficient abundance to make it work. Friday also saw the successful retrieval of Mathat's Craft over Gilly via a Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe, which burned to take it to rendezvous with LSV House Corrino in low Gilly orbit.

Saturday I hit a bit of a snag when the time came for Melrie and Dumin to print up the three Doc science labs for the base. Turns out the print there requires some Exotic Minerals. Rather than cheat (which is certainly within my power to do), I did some reconfiguring of the nearby TBD 7dG lander, converting one of its battery packs into an Exotic Mineral container. After printing up and installing a PB-NUK on the lander so it wouldn't be totally dependent on solar power for the job, the lander took off and flew over to the Highlands 4.2 kilometers to the south (which for Gilly is a pretty significant difference considering the whole moon is only 26 kilometers in diameter). Once there, the lander's drill was deployed and started tanking up.

I was really glad this plan actually worked...really didn't want to have to cheat again and I was so glad I didn't have to for once...

The TBD gathered 278 units of Exotic Minerals before it lost daylight. The single RTG wasn't sufficient to keep the drill running so operations were secured and the TBD made the return flight to Ocean Ranger, where Bartzor hooked up the lander and pumped the Exotic Minerals over. Base construction continued after that, with another six Haciendas, eight Chuckwagons, 3 Doc laboratories and five Castillo variant modules printed as well as six Walkway modules. The time needed for the lander to get the Exotic Minerals and return allowed the base to print up a fair amount of Equipment and so installation proceeded rapidly, with all but five of the Walkways and the Castillos put in place before day's end. The Clinton hauling Mathat's Craft docked up at Corrino, and a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe I'd launched over Kerbin on Thursday conducting a junk hauling mission successfully rendezvoused and grabbed its target. Owing to low delta-V at that point, the probe was put into a sub-orbital trajectory for de-orbit rather than make an attempt to land it close to KSC.

Yesterday I was able to get the remaining structures installed. Ocean Ranger is now fully operational.

The completed, slightly levitating Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly just after a joint Kerbolrise/Everise.

My obligatory "down the mass driver" shot.

And a slightly better view.

Once construction was completed, Ocean Ranger began the construction of an Ikeport Core 7 craft which is destined to become space station Eveport. Construction will take 51 hours to complete. The outpost also conducted its first mass driver shot, sending up fuel supplies to House Corrino. The Clinton 7b also safely splashed down yesterday, landing 150 kilometers east of KSC and fulfilling the junk hauling contract. The replacement contract I found to be rather amusing.

Uh...South Base is, like, three kilometers south of KSC. So you want me to send kerbals from Kerbin to......colonize Kerbin? And you're going to pay me to do it? Okay...

Seriously, I only took the contract because I thought it was funny. It's not like it's going to pay all that well.

This morning I went ahead and put the Micro ISRU I'd stolen off the TBD 7dG (which I plan to rename as Golf 1 in the near future) back and added a thermometer so it could conduct a temperature survey on the far side of Gilly. I also reconfigured it for monopropellant production so the lander is now capable of refueling itself if necessary. I launched the lander this morning and it's still en route to a 10k equatorial orbit as of this post. For kicks I went ahead and put a second Rangeland launchpad at Ocean Ranger - making it the only one of my bases to have two pads - and began the construction of a G-LOC 7a dockable return-to-Kerbin craft; it will finish up in just under six hours. Plan there is to launch it and dock it up to House Corrino for hauling to Kerbin, where it will finish out the current exploration contract. I'm not sure what the next exploration contract will be...I have my suspicions though, and I hope they turn out to be correct.

Also loaded those three colonists aboard a modified Wisent 7 utility rover and drove them over to South Base. I didn't have time to unload them, but that's first on the agenda in my next session.

Not much else going on at the moment. I have some tourists to send out to Mun; going to probably send them up at some point. I also am going to begin construction of a Clinton 7c aboard LSV House Atreides in Kerbin orbit and send her on over to Duna for a junk-and-kerbal mission over Ike; I have two more warp ships available, so I might as well use them. I would prefer to use LSV House Harkonnen, but her engineers are currently both aboard House Corrino; HH is currently sitting in Kerbin's orbit with no one aboard...

Also got an Eve craft to design. I've got five tourists in orbit who want to go visit the surface, the jerks...

[stargazer424]

On 6/23/2019 at 8:18 AM, Jett_Quasar said:

Today I posted this

 - Jett

Epic space station @Jett_Quasar!

[Guest]

Today I formatted my pc, not knowing that the resource locations can generate differently (fresh instal of the game). I thought they might have been fixed... but now my resource rich polar crater on the Mun is gone  I’ve been trying to re-roll another resource rich polar crater but no luck so far in about 6 new saves T_T

(I’m trying to do NASA moon stuff... so having a legit resource location on the South Pole of the Mun was pretty cool)

Edited June 24, 2019 by Guest