What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Clamp-o-Tron]

Somehow this happened- I always do the boostback burns manually and then have MechJeb do an untargeted descent, and this time it landed on the VAB roof? The odds are tiny for this happening.

EDIT: This is the booster.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Clamp-o-Tron

[Popestar]

12 minutes ago, RP1IsSuperior said:

I actually designed an RTLS booster at 1am once. It could carry  10 tons into LKO, and it functions without mods like FMRS. I still need to do further payload testing because i may be able to expend more fuel going sideways in my ascent

My big problem right now is that it is so early on in the game that nothing is efficient.  Every engine just burns fuel like it has an endless supply.  I'm trying to bottom-load boosters for launch, primarily so I can get higher up and maybe out of the atmosphere and save fuel to get into orbit.  Just gotta keep experimenting!

[RP1IsSuperior]

its your ISP thats the issue?

Use a few throttled SRBS to get you higher up before igniting something like a terrier

[Popestar]

49 minutes ago, RP1IsSuperior said:

its your ISP thats the issue?

Use a few throttled SRBS to get you higher up before igniting something like a terrier

ISP?  SRBS?

[AlamoVampire]

6 minutes ago, Popestar said:

ISP?  SRBS?

ISP: specific impulse. Wiki: Specific impulse (usually abbreviated Isp) is a measure of how effectively a rocket uses propellant or a jet engine uses fuel. Specific impulse can be calculated in a variety of ways with different units. By definition, it is the total impulse (or change in momentum) delivered per unit of propellantconsumed[1] and is dimensionally equivalent to the generated thrust divided by the propellant mass flow rate or weight flow rate.[2] If mass (kilogram, pound-mass, or slug) is used as the unit of propellant, then specific impulse has units of velocity. If weight (newton or pound-force) is used instead, then specific impulse has units of time (seconds). Multiplying flow rate by the standard gravity (g0) converts specific impulse from the weight basis to the mass basis.[2]

 

SRB solid rocket booster.

 

hope that helps  

 

204810032020

[Popestar]

Yeah, I use an array of SRBS for initial launch to get as high as possible.  Gotta figure out why I need so much fuel to set an orbit once I've escaped from the atmosphere; I think my trajectory isn't flat enough, which causes Ap to be way out in the middle of nowhere upon setting the maneuver. 

[RP1IsSuperior]

how do you fly your rocket? Try launching from a non-equatorial launch site that will get you further away from the equator, it will be easier because you wont have to work as hard to counteract kerbin's rotation. do you do a pitchover program? (graudally pitch over as the atmo thins out to build up horizontal velocity?

[Popestar]

1 hour ago, RP1IsSuperior said:

how do you fly your rocket? Try launching from a non-equatorial launch site that will get you further away from the equator, it will be easier because you wont have to work as hard to counteract kerbin's rotation. do you do a pitchover program? (graudally pitch over as the atmo thins out to build up horizontal velocity?

Considering I'm relatively new to most of this, I'll need some explanations here.

1. How do you launch from one of the other sites?  I can see them in the Tracking Station, but I can't access them.
2. Please clarify "pitchover"?

[Francois424]

On ‎9‎/‎30‎/‎2020 at 10:13 AM, eatU4myT said:

Hopefully these images work, I've not tried linking from Imgur before.

My first Kerbal-ed inter-planetary mission.  The Discovery is setting off for Duna, and if everything works out it will be refuelled when it return to Kerbin and then head off to other planets.  9 Kerbals in the crew, and I've installed Kerbal Health for the first time, so I'm hoping that the design is capable of keeping them in one piece!

 

Really love your ship.  Good job  

[eatU4myT]

1 hour ago, Francois424 said:

Good job  

Thanks! Though I think I like the second one better... Maybe that's because it doesn't snap itself in half!

In either case, they only look as good as they do because of Nertea's parts! I was looking at the pictures - there's Near Future Propulsion, Electrical, Construction, Solar, Space Station Parts Redux, Heat Management (I'm probably getting the names wrong here)... The lander is mostly stock, but if you include Restock as a Nertea mod then the parts not made by him are the Universal Storage bits, and... The struts?!

Just amazing how comprehensive his mods are!

[jimmymcgoochie]

2 hours ago, Popestar said:

Considering I'm relatively new to most of this, I'll need some explanations here.

1. How do you launch from one of the other sites?  I can see them in the Tracking Station, but I can't access them.
2. Please clarify "pitchover"?

Actually, you want to use Kerbin’s rotation to your advantage as it gives you around 200m/s of orbital velocity for free. Launch from the KSC, every time- even with other launch sites available, the only reason I ever use them is if I’m hunting science on Kerbin and it’s easier to get to some biomes from the secondary sites (Woomerang and Dessert come with the DLCs, some mods add others).

On Earth, orbital velocity is around 8km/s so that’s a lot of velocity to gain, but rockets lose speed in 2 ways- drag and gravity. Gravity is essentially constant at 9.8(ish) metres per second per second, so a rocket has to accelerate almost 10 metres per second for every second it’s flying vertical, just to hold its velocity; drag increases as you go faster, but decreases as the air gets thinner.

Rockets launch vertically, gain a bit of height and speed to clear the thickest part of the atmosphere and then begin to pitch over towards the east (the exact bearing and both the timing and angle of pitching are dependent on where the rocket is meant to be going). As they pitch over they begin to follow a more ballistic trajectory, but because they’re accelerating constantly the top of their arc (apoapsis) will continue to rise. Pretty soon the rocket is flying almost horizontally through the upper atmosphere to gain enough velocity to stay in orbit.

If that was too wall-of-words-y for you, watch this:

The Space Shuttle is a good example as it’s a really asymmetrical rocket so it’s easy to see what it’s doing, plus it has a very obvious roll program too so the shuttle itself is ‘down’ before pitching. When the video shows a long distance view of the shuttle you can clearly see how much it has pitched over from vertical.

 

What does any of that have to do with KSP? Well, Kerbin’s orbital velocity is a mere 2.2km/s but the atmospheric density and gravity are the same as Earth’s so the same rules apply. Climb vertically until you reach around 100m/s, then pitch over 10 degrees to the east and hold surface prograde until you reach about 40km, then pop your fairing and switch to orbital prograde. Keep an eye on the ‘time to apoapsis’ indicator and if that starts dropping below 30 then pitch above the prograde marker to try and increase it (it’s wasting a bit of fuel but better than falling out of the sky!). There’s a mod called Gravity Turn that can do this automatically, it’s a useful tool and you could learn a lot from watching it try (and sometimes fail) to get to orbit to them do it yourself in the most efficient way possible.

[harrisjosh2711]

Picture time line of my first trip to Duna playing astronomers visual overhaul.

 

My Comm satt around kerbin.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by harrisjosh2711

[king of nowhere]

I wanted to take an awesome picture of my tylo landing. unfortunately, the sun was angled such that the ladder used to dismount the ship was in shadow.

So I waited 3 kerbin days to get the sun at the right angle.

I wonder what Bob would be thinking when they told him to keep posing until the sun moves enough...

I could have taken the picture from the other side, without the ladder.

But it wouldn't have been the same, wouldn't it?

Edited October 4, 2020 by king of nowhere

[jimmymcgoochie]

@harrisjosh2711 where did you get that cable for the skyhook?

[RealKerbal3x]

4 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

@harrisjosh2711 where did you get that cable for the skyhook?

Looks to me like it might be Kerbal Attachment System.

[jimmymcgoochie]

2 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Looks to me like it might be Kerbal Attachment System.

I considered that, but I don’t know if you can connect those cables up in the editors.

[Popestar]

6 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Actually, you want to use Kerbin’s rotation to your advantage as it gives you around 200m/s of orbital velocity for free. Launch from the KSC, every time- even with other launch sites available, the only reason I ever use them is if I’m hunting science on Kerbin and it’s easier to get to some biomes from the secondary sites (Woomerang and Dessert come with the DLCs, some mods add others).

On Earth, orbital velocity is around 8km/s so that’s a lot of velocity to gain, but rockets lose speed in 2 ways- drag and gravity. Gravity is essentially constant at 9.8(ish) metres per second per second, so a rocket has to accelerate almost 10 metres per second for every second it’s flying vertical, just to hold its velocity; drag increases as you go faster, but decreases as the air gets thinner.

Rockets launch vertically, gain a bit of height and speed to clear the thickest part of the atmosphere and then begin to pitch over towards the east (the exact bearing and both the timing and angle of pitching are dependent on where the rocket is meant to be going). As they pitch over they begin to follow a more ballistic trajectory, but because they’re accelerating constantly the top of their arc (apoapsis) will continue to rise. Pretty soon the rocket is flying almost horizontally through the upper atmosphere to gain enough velocity to stay in orbit.

If that was too wall-of-words-y for you, watch this:

The Space Shuttle is a good example as it’s a really asymmetrical rocket so it’s easy to see what it’s doing, plus it has a very obvious roll program too so the shuttle itself is ‘down’ before pitching. When the video shows a long distance view of the shuttle you can clearly see how much it has pitched over from vertical.

 

What does any of that have to do with KSP? Well, Kerbin’s orbital velocity is a mere 2.2km/s but the atmospheric density and gravity are the same as Earth’s so the same rules apply. Climb vertically until you reach around 100m/s, then pitch over 10 degrees to the east and hold surface prograde until you reach about 40km, then pop your fairing and switch to orbital prograde. Keep an eye on the ‘time to apoapsis’ indicator and if that starts dropping below 30 then pitch above the prograde marker to try and increase it (it’s wasting a bit of fuel but better than falling out of the sky!). There’s a mod called Gravity Turn that can do this automatically, it’s a useful tool and you could learn a lot from watching it try (and sometimes fail) to get to orbit to them do it yourself in the most efficient way possible.

That's a great technical answer, and it answered the "pitchover" question.  When I am launching, I pretty much aim straight up until I'm about 3/4 burned through fuel with the BACC's, at which point I start to pitch east, aiming for 70 or so degrees.  Once the BACC's finish burning, I stage to the next engine and try to pitch to about 20 degrees.  This then gets me out of the atmosphere and I can then set an orbit.  Unfortunately, I'm finding I'm still burning fuel too fast, and no matter how much I take with me into orbit I do not have enough to generate an equatorial orbit and then maneuver into a polar orbit.  My guess is that this is a function of engine efficiency...or that I'm doing something really wrong that nobody has helped me identify yet.

However, for the answer you gave, that didn't tell me how to actually launch from one of the other sites.  Button press?  Map icon?  Right click somewhere?  Pray to the Kerbal deity?  I can see them in the tracking station, but how do I access them?

[Kraken that doesn't exist]

broke the game using bdarmory gps guided bombs

 

and got new text

[N_Danger]

I launched a couple of suborbital rockets for science and to get a feel for gravity turns in JNSQ,

Then we went for the first orbit.(several tries were needed)

And finally after tweaking the rocket and the gravity turn I get into a stable 101KM x 100KM orbit.

And Val returns with all the science.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

That's a great technical answer, and it answered the "pitchover" question.  When I am launching, I pretty much aim straight up until I'm about 3/4 burned through fuel with the BACC's, at which point I start to pitch east, aiming for 70 or so degrees.  Once the BACC's finish burning, I stage to the next engine and try to pitch to about 20 degrees.  This then gets me out of the atmosphere and I can then set an orbit.  Unfortunately, I'm finding I'm still burning fuel too fast, and no matter how much I take with me into orbit I do not have enough to generate an equatorial orbit and then maneuver into a polar orbit.  My guess is that this is a function of engine efficiency...or that I'm doing something really wrong that nobody has helped me identify yet.

However, for the answer you gave, that didn't tell me how to actually launch from one of the other sites.  Button press?  Map icon?  Right click somewhere?  Pray to the Kerbal deity?  I can see them in the tracking station, but how do I access them?

If you want to get into a polar orbit, simply aim north instead of east when you launch- getting into an equatorial orbit and then changing the inclination is a hideously inefficient way of doing it!

If you want to launch from a different launch site, make sure that you've enabled them in the difficulty settings. When that option is selected, look carefully under the launch button and you'll see a drop-down menu; hover over it and it should give you a list of available launch sites which you can then launch from by pressing the arrow-like button beside the name, or clicking the bullet point button and then the green launch button.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Got some nice images today while completing various missions:

 

Although admittedly some went better than others:

[harrisjosh2711]

 

7 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

@harrisjosh2711 where did you get that cable for the skyhook?

It is kas. I built the rover and crane a few weeks ago and just got around to finishing it. I cant recall if there was an issue with connecting in the editor. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by harrisjosh2711

[RealKerbal3x]

I got into orbit in KSP 0.13.3! It's a lot harder than in more recent versions of the game

After this, I realised that my rocket was capable of more and managed to achieve a Mun flyby. I could have probably orbited but since quicksaves don't exist in this version, I decided not to risk it.

After leaving the Mun's SOI (there are no patched conics - similar to the level 1 tracking station - so it's hard to see where you'll go next) I was flung onto a highly elliptical Kerbin orbit. After decreasing my periapsis, and a second, more distant encounter with the Mun, I re-entered and successfully splashed down. This was a fun look back at the early history of KSP!

 

[Popestar]

5 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

If you want to get into a polar orbit, simply aim north instead of east when you launch- getting into an equatorial orbit and then changing the inclination is a hideously inefficient way of doing it!

If you want to launch from a different launch site, make sure that you've enabled them in the difficulty settings. When that option is selected, look carefully under the launch button and you'll see a drop-down menu; hover over it and it should give you a list of available launch sites which you can then launch from by pressing the arrow-like button beside the name, or clicking the bullet point button and then the green launch button.

Aha!  That helps!  Yaw north instead of pitching east.  Or roll down and then pitch north.  Thanks!

I didn't touch any of the settings, so I may have to do that if I want to launch from somewhere else 

[Commodore_32]

Today I recreated the Sputnik-1 mission