What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

Things that are easier in KSP than building a seaplane that is not a flying boat:

- Surface base on Laythe
- Non-self-refueling reusable lander for Tylo
- Eve return mission

Cor blimey this was hard.

TBH I think one of the reasons it was so hard lies with KSP: it doesn't appear to model surface interactions quite as they should. When you touch water, water sucks you in. In real life, water acts more like a hard surface if you're going at all fast. You'll skip off it or ski on it until you slow down enough to sink. KSP doesn't do this, instead, you sink in directly and get hit with a huge yank backwards. That's why I don't think it's possible to build pontoony seaplanes that look quite right. The physics aren't there.

I also learned that the ideal ditching method for KSP is not like it works in real life. As @Hotel26 explained it to me, IRL the critical thing is minimising your vertical speed and touching the water at a very shallow angle, so your tail strike won't slam your nose down too hard. With Kerbal physics, horizontal speed matters much more: this little guy will reliably not faceplant if you do your water landing more or less like you'd do a full-flare regular landing: slow down to 30 m/s or so and let it drop onto the water. Faster but shallower and more horizontal OTOH will faceplant.

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/OTR-1

Edited February 22, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, Delay said:

Built a Duna lander today, untested. How far can I get with 2925m/s dv?

Back to Kerbin, pretty much. 

You might make a crater at the end though.

[McFarnsworth]

Today I did several things that make for very boring screenshots:

- Spent half an hour refueling my Jool ship

- Sent a probe with a camera on a solar orbit

- Landed the Dres crew on Dres for what will probably be their final refueling

- Sent my Moho ship towards Moho

- And the Duna crew finally gets to go home:

 

 

Also today, I wanted to bring an orange tank into a 100 x 100km orbit using only 4 rapiers.

 

Turns out I can! And it only took a bajillion tries or so.

 

Uhh .... shouldn't that go out the other way?

 

 

The final design looks very slightly different, because this one couldn't get back from orbit due to balancing issues, but I forgot to take screenshots.

[RealKerbal3x]

I was loading up KSP this evening and when it showed the pic of Jeb and Val fist-bumping......

Nyan Cat!!!!! Everywhere!!!!

Don’t know if this is a partially implemented feature, glitch or Easter egg, but it’s funny!

In KSP actually, I experimented with stock pivots by creating a helicopter. It blew up. 

But it’s all for SCIENCE!!!!!!

[DJWyre]

3 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

But it’s all for SCIENCE!!!!!!

It doesn't matter how many Kerbals 'sacrifice' themselves; Science in KSP is always the ultimate justifier.....

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Cor blimey this was hard.

Congratulations, because this looks beautiful and quite realistic.

(You are too prolific, sir!  I hadn't finished playing on Duna yet!)

4 hours ago, McFarnsworth said:

Spent half an hour refueling my Jool ship

I enjoy pumping fuel around, much like some people enjoy gardening.  It's relaxing, or can be.  Then I discovered it's probably OK to warp on each transfer!

You probably already do this, in which case, you have a mighty BIG ship.

[Ace in Space]

18 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Interesting... what’s the mechanics (electronics?) behind this?

18 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

There isn't. It's a myth which will either do nothing or make things worse. 

Hm. That's interesting. I picked the technique up from my dad, who's been in the computer industry for a long time, in my childhood. I did already know that it makes things worse for the drive in question - the idea is not to "fix" the hard drive but get the data off before it dies for good. I did a little more searching and asked my dad where the idea came from, and apparently it's less "myth" and more "outdated" since it actually does have some validity... it's just that it's a solution for a specific type of problem that doesn't really occur anymore. Which makes sense given that I picked it up so long ago from someone who comes from the "old school."

So I stand corrected (and have informed my dad that hard drive design has marched on since ye olden tymes).

 

5 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Nyan Cat!!!!! Everywhere!!!!

I'm not seeing Nyan Cat in my game.

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Ace in Space said:

I'm not seeing Nyan Cat in my game.

It's only on the loading screen and only if you have Module Manager installed (likely one of the newest ones)

[Starman4308]

A few things:

First, NYAN. Also, maybe my Module Manager isn't super-current, because I'm not getting nyancats.

Second, I forgot to take the Mercury Flyby and sounding rocket contracts before launching a probe to Mercury... but that was a bit of a mercy, since I didn't quite have the delta-V. Sure, that the E1 first-stage engine cut out a couple seconds early didn't help, but the margins were just too slim. As a consequence, I'm upgrading the launch vehicle to Soyuz 1.2 and trying again at a later window.

Third, put Pioneer I into orbit around Mars with the goal of obtaining altimetry maps, with the four giants visible in the background (it's been only 6 years since the Grand Tour window, so they're still reasonably aligned).

While I got about 40% of Mars's surface scanned at high-resolution while babysitting the electricity usage*, after that point I just left it on, returned to the KSC scene, and warped forwards about two months until I got 95% of the high-res map. The way I entered Mars's SOI, I had a low periapsis, and I didn't want to waste limited delta-V circularizing to the 7.5-8 km orbit SAR functions best at, so the stripes I got near the north pole were very, very narrow.

*Pioneer 1 has enough solar panels to sustain the 1.5 kW SAR scanner... at Earth. At Mars, I was only able to get about 1 kW of solar power, meaning I had scan for a couple orbits, shut it off, regenerate, turn it back on, etc. Time-consuming micromanagement got unfun after a bit.

EDIT: 980 science from the SAR and radar scans. Wow. I am not used to that sort of return... possibly in part because the last couple GPP plays I've had, I've reduced the science gain significantly.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Starman4308

[InterplanetJanet]

17 hours ago, NightRunner said:

I saw this and was very confused! Negotiating gravity alright

Oh, good...  I thought those rainbow-trailing whatever-they-were's, were just me, and/or a lack of coffee.

I have not yet had another kerbal day (6 hours), but I designed a 7-person not-too-partsy capsule and tested it several times in KRASH (simulator). Then I redesigned my airless-world landy probe from scratch because the dumb Block IV design kept running out of fuel just a hundred meters above the Mun's surface - it mostly survived but not upright and some of DMagic's science experiments are, well, directional in nature. I really should've read the instructions again for Impact! Science before the Block V design, though. (unfortunately, I don't have the RAM to keep a browser window open while playing KSP)   Or at least before I threw six of them, two sets of three each, at the Mun.  Block Vb tomorrow, I guess...  Though this one has the unusual ability of being able to stand back up, on Kerbin at least, if it lands on its side. I'd like to claim I designed it like that, but it was more a happy accident coincidence (as well as a "wouldn't it be nice if it could..." that I hadn't gotten to yet).

Launchers for both were out of the pile of previous designs, and not my Fuel Efficient Exo-atmospheric Delivery tanker/boosters (which is on about Mk7, and I just today thought of an enhancement...)

Then I had a mission (self-generated; I'm playing Science mode) for the 7-person capsule and launched it with 3 crew, and MechJeb tried to kill them during rendezvous maneuvers.  NEVER TRUST MechJeb!! Seems like every time I don't assume the psychopathic little computer is out to get me, it gets me. And while I am okay with real driving in heavy traffic up to 80mph/130km/hr, my rocket-flying reaction times are much much slower. The mission is ruined, but thanks to inefficient design and the Department of Redundancy Department the kerbals are still alive, in a non-decaying non-aerobraking orbit (____ you MechJeb! We recovered from your latest vicious murder attempt!), and I have some science for them to do and a live test of the re-entry systems (grossly over-engineered as usual; not too worried). This is about the 4th or 5th attempt to run the .... Nehemiah's? KEES frame in-orbit experiment called Orbital Debris. The three other KEES frame experiments that work exactly the same way, no problem; but this one has: 1) floated away at several meters/sec because of a minor PEBKAC error; 2) exploded due to mild acceleration; 3) was left out too long and 'ruined'. Maybe more than one floated away; it took me a while to figure that one out. So I'm wondering if this one experiment is somehow  cursed ...

I'm rather enthusiastic about collecting science because I counted up after I had almost all the Tech Level 7 stuff (300 science level) unlocked and many of the TL 8's. I require, to unlock everything remaining in my mod-rich tech tree, nearly fifty thousand science points.

So the ill-advised polar-orbit science lab I threw up (heh) about 12 days ago is going to have to wait another hour or more for their de-crewing and soon-to-follow deorbit.

I counted, and Kerbal Alarm Clock said I had twelve maneuvers or SOI changes in the next Kerbin day/6hrs. Busy busy! And I've still got the Junkpile Mun doing its orbital science run over the equatorial biomes before trying a manned (en-kerbal-ated?) Mun landing.

So naturally I watched YouTube videos most of today.  *facepalm* Still, there's always tomorrow...

[LordFerret]

11 hours ago, papuchalk said:

could you share your manned Eve ship with me? at least basic engine and fuel tanks settings. I cannot find proper construction for ascent. Most of youtube videos are outdated

if i take enough fuel, the ship is too heavy, unstable on descent, and usualy explodes. taking more inflatable shields doesnt work (like on Matt Lowne videos - they explode and your whole ship too, when you undock them)

if i take less fuel, i have perfectly stable ship, land easily, but cannot get high enough to make orbit 

quite tough mission..

 

My Eve trial was a bust. 

The problem was descent, the large 10m inflatable heat shield acting like an umbrella and flipping my ship around and ..... poof! The atmosphere ate it. I'll work on this some more and find a solution, as it was kind of shaky and questionable during trials descending on Kerbin to start with. I had high hopes and was determined to try. I should have researched it more. I'll work it out and keep you posted. If I can get it down to the surface and land successfully, I'm confident it can make it back into orbit. I'll post a picture of the lander later.

 

The Eeloo encounter is coming up.
The Duna crews are almost home.

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

The problem was descent, the large 10m inflatable heat shield acting like an umbrella and flipping my ship around and ..... poof! The atmosphere ate it. I'll work on this some more and find a solution, as it was kind of shaky and questionable during trials descending on Kerbin to start with. I had high hopes and was determined to try. I should have researched it more. I'll work it out and keep you posted. If I can get it down to the surface and land successfully, I'm confident it can make it back into orbit. I'll post a picture of the lander later.

I'm sure someone succeeded in an Eve attempt the first time*.

(I managed it with my third craft.) 

*tiny probes don't count

[Magzimum]

10 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

TBH I think one of the reasons it was so hard lies with KSP: it doesn't appear to model surface interactions quite as they should. When you touch water, water sucks you in. In real life, water acts more like a hard surface if you're going at all fast. You'll skip off it or ski on it until you slow down enough to sink. KSP doesn't do this, instead, you sink in directly and get hit with a huge yank backwards. That's why I don't think it's possible to build pontoony seaplanes that look quite right. The physics aren't there.

I think that KSP treats water like very thick air or gas. And since the pontoons (fuel tanks and nose cones) have no lift, they don't act like you expect. The only thing that probably happens is that you suddenly hit an enormous amount of drag which seems to "suck you in". All that really happens is that you slow down very quickly due to drag, while gravity pulls you to down until the buoyancy balances it out.

If you add small winglets onto the pontoons, and you place them at an angle, then the velocity will most definitely cause the plane to slowly rise out of the water. If you tell yourself that it's a hydrofoil (link to wiki), then it's not even too far away from something real.

[Ace in Space]

I may or may not be sending a wagon train large number of crafts to Duna orbit (and then to Ike one by one for assembly). This may or may not be only half of them.

Mimon Kerman has died of dysentery.

[RizzoTheRat]

I currently have my air dropped, ground based, comms relay project underway, and am in the process of trying to scale up my single seater Eve craft to a 4 seater. 

So of course last night I installed kOS and managed a somewhat eccentric orbit using a square root of altitude function and a pretty poor altitude based circularisation burn. I've now figured out how to calculate the required dV, and therefore when to start the circularisation burn, I just need to work out how to set it tangential to the Apoapsis. 

I have the attention span of a 

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I landed my rover on Duna.

It was a bit tough getting it down because I wanted to do it without deploying the parachutes on my lifter (since I don't have any Kerbals currently in the system to re-pack them) but after a few usages of the F9 key I was able to get it to the ground safely and launch the lifter back into a stable orbit.

The rover itself is one of my new, larger designs with an enclosed crew cabin allowing it to be used to refuel a stranded Kerbal's EVA propellant tanks. It's also got one of every repeatable experiment that can be done on a planet's surface, allowing me to continue gathering science data despite no longer having a crew on or around Duna or its moon.

[RealKerbal3x]

4 hours ago, Geonovast said:

It's only on the loading screen and only if you have Module Manager installed (likely one of the newest ones)

Weird. I’ve had the newest version of ModuleManager for a couple of weeks now and I only saw it yesterday (22 Feb)

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

If you add small winglets onto the pontoons, and you place them at an angle, then the velocity will most definitely cause the plane to slowly rise out of the water. If you tell yourself that it's a hydrofoil (link to wiki), then it's not even too far away from something real.

Yep, I tried this on one design which was able to land but has trouble getting out of the water, and it did help.

Unfortunately it doesn't help with the yank backwards: as soon as the pontoon hits the water, it will cause that sudden drag spike. If this puts the winglet under water at a negative pitch, the results are somewhat... dramatic. 

In fact I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to design pontoons that ski on the water rather than sinking into it. If it's possible, I didn't discover it.

[papuchalk]

3 hours ago, LordFerret said:

My Eve trial was a bust. 

The problem was descent, the large 10m inflatable heat shield acting like an umbrella and flipping my ship around and ..... poof! The atmosphere ate it. I'll work on this some more and find a solution, as it was kind of shaky and questionable during trials descending on Kerbin to start with.

Try to rotate the ship using E or Q button. This way you will keep the shiled facing where you want. Unless you have main mass of ship on the opposite side of the shiled. Then it really works more like parachute, and not shield. 

 

Edited February 23, 2018 by papuchalk

[Atkara]

3 hours ago, LordFerret said:

My Eve trial was a bust. 

The problem was descent, the large 10m inflatable heat shield acting like an umbrella and flipping my ship around and ..... poof! The atmosphere ate it.

Yeah, that's the fate I fear, for the mobile surface miner I'm sending to Eve.

Now, it does come with it's own reaction wheels (with additional wheels at the heat shield assembly) and torque due to asymmetric payload has been accounted for (and for the most part, dealt with). But I still don't know how it will do.

Before anyone asks, the Aerospikes are there in case the chutes don't give a proper descent rate. They'll have enough fuel for a max ~15 sec burn -should be enough to keep it safe at touchdown.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Atkara

[RizzoTheRat]

4 hours ago, LordFerret said:

15 hours ago, papuchalk said:

could you share your manned Eve ship with me? at least basic engine and fuel tanks settings. I cannot find proper construction for ascent. Most of youtube videos are outdated

if i take enough fuel, the ship is too heavy, unstable on descent, and usualy explodes. taking more inflatable shields doesnt work (like on Matt Lowne videos - they explode and your whole ship too, when you undock them)

if i take less fuel, i have perfectly stable ship, land easily, but cannot get high enough to make orbit 

quite tough mission..

 

My Eve trial was a bust. 

The problem was descent, the large 10m inflatable heat shield acting like an umbrella and flipping my ship around and ..... poof! The atmosphere ate it. I'll work on this some more and find a solution, as it was kind of shaky and questionable during trials descending on Kerbin to start with. I had high hopes and was determined to try. I should have researched it more. I'll work it out and keep you posted. If I can get it down to the surface and land successfully, I'm confident it can make it back into orbit. I'll post a picture of the lander later.

 

The Eeloo encounter is coming up.
The Duna crews are almost home.

I found for my single seater some wings at the back kept it pointing the right way, but the slightly shorter and fatter, and much heavier, 4 seat attempt failed even with bigger wings.  Photo of both a few pages back (page 1600) if it helps.  My next plan based on suggestions from here is try it with a drill and ISRU but nearly empty tanks instead of trying to land with enough fuel for the launch, this will also do away with the need for an orbital tanker to top it up after it's transit to Eve. 

[Guest]

I just don't seem to be able to stop tinkering with these VTOL aircraft. They're just so much fun. 

This one is another light trainer. It still needs a few tweaks, but I'm confident it will be the e-z-mode VTOL and general flight trainer. It's already exceedingly well behaved in normal aerodynamic flight -- it's very pleasant to fly without Atmosphere Autopilot and without SAS, or with either or both on. All three types of take-off and landing (H, S, V) are likewise easy and pleasant. Only thing that needs a bit more work is precision hovering -- if you want to drop it exactly somewhere things get a bit overly tense. Some tweaks to RCS ought to do it.

I'm also thinking of adding an up-facing control node just so it'll have identical controls to the big ones made for real missions.

(I also like how this looks. And yes I'm trying to figure out a word that starts with a K and invokes a vampire.)

(Edit: I've got it. This one will be the BAK Karmilla.)

Edited February 23, 2018 by Guest

[papuchalk]

EVE landing:

i was trying to land with spaceshuttle and get back to orbit of EVE. Landing is very easy !!! spaceshuttle is very controllable and has high temperature resistency, at least with MK3 parts. As for ascent - There is atmosphere on Eve, i thought of using lift of wings for ascent. That could be very efficient to gain some altitude using more wings lift rather than engine power. However, there is no oxygen on Eve, sou you cannot bring engines that use air-in-takes. 

I think it is pretty potencial idea, but i am not that experienced with flying spaceshuttles, so i didnt manage to get back into orbit.

Edited February 23, 2018 by papuchalk

[Atkara]

@papuchalk Heh, this must've been among the first things I tried, back in 1.0. Let me guess, it's the Space Shuttle, it can go, land and takeoff from everywhere and anywhere. And because it's engines are so awesome, all Kerbals have to do is spit in the fuel tanks once and it has enough fuel for 10 years. Oh -and it can reach 0.5 Warp (for those who've watched Airplane II: The Sequel)

Been there, done that and thought exactly like that. Guilty as charged

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

As for ascent - There is atmosphere on Eve, i thought of using lift of wings for ascent. That could be very efficient to gain some altitude using more wings lift rather than engine power. However, there is no oxygen on Eve, sou you cannot bring engines that use air-in-takes. 

Won't work I'm afraid. The main difficulty getting out of Eve is the soupy lower atmosphere -- you'll burn a lot of fuel fighting it whatever you do, and since you have rocket engines there's only a downside to staying in it any longer than you have to.

I.e. burn straight up for about 10 km, then maybe start considering a gravity turn.

(Source: tried it.)