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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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After some more drawing board stuff, I got the lander under 0.5 tons without cutting fuel. This one has the same basic concept as the last one, only with a smaller monopropellant supply, less battery, one fewer solar panel and better probe core.

1XDG7kp.png

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41 minutes ago, moogoob said:

After some more drawing board stuff, I got the lander under 0.5 tons without cutting fuel. This one has the same basic concept as the last one, only with a smaller monopropellant supply, less battery, one fewer solar panel and better probe core.

1XDG7kp.png

How much delta-V is in there?  Might have to calculate by hand, I don't think KER or MJ handle RCS well.  I wonder what happens to dV with a couple of the 0.005t science instruments...

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10 hours ago, Vermil said:

But towards the end of the test, an important fact was learned. I'm ejecting the stabilizer boom after I've deployed the first parachutes. This is to reduce the risk of it causing damages later. However, the drag chutes and standard chutes that I deploy early are not enough to keep Orpheus directionally stable. It immediately started to tumble. So this has to change. Perhaps the boom will only be ejected after landing? Sounds risky, but with a few separator rockets...

That makes me think, did you run into the tumbling issues before or after the chutes reached full deployment?  Because I have noticed that keeping stability on an atmospheric lander after the chutes are fully deployed is easy, the hard part is when the craft is still moving at high speed and low pressure before those chutes can get enough control.  So you might consider just waiting for the chutes to fully deploy before you eject the boom.  

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13 minutes ago, fourfa said:

How much delta-V is in there?  Might have to calculate by hand, I don't think KER or MJ handle RCS well.  I wonder what happens to dV with a couple of the 0.005t science instruments...

No idea!! Mechjeb was no help as it doesn't consider an RCS port set to "use throttle as forward" or whatever as an engine, and I didn't bother putting an AR-202 case on for that reason. :) If it helps you eyeball, I had about 5/6ths of the tank left after landing.

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14 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

That makes me think, did you run into the tumbling issues before or after the chutes reached full deployment?  Because I have noticed that keeping stability on an atmospheric lander after the chutes are fully deployed is easy, the hard part is when the craft is still moving at high speed and low pressure before those chutes can get enough control.  So you might consider just waiting for the chutes to fully deploy before you eject the boom.  

There's a lot of light and draggy structures at the bottom of the rocket. The chutes don't stand a chance. That's four drag chutes and four normal chutes. As you can see, the XL chutes are still red, I can't deploy them at that this moment. But of course the plan is that the Orpheus will hang stable in the parachutes.

Edited by Vermil
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52 minutes ago, moogoob said:

Cool! Thanks for crunching the math and satisfying my curiosity.

Turns out (after doing the math by hand), RCS Build Aid computes it.

Thirdly, I make TWR to be 4.3 in Kerbin orbit.  This thing can land and return to orbit of the smaller bodies - Eeloo through Gilly.  I never realized it, but a single place-anywhere thruster is actually a lot of thrust relative to a tiny probe like this.  Have a look at the 0.625m or 1.25m RCS tanks (better weight ratio) - you can actually use a ton more fuel if you want.  

And I know you said monoprop only, but I got curious about the Ant LFO engine (same thrust, less mass, better ISP) as well as probe cores with reaction torque and ended up with this:

ukWj1gq.png?1

3807m/s dV, and can land and re-orbit any body except Eve, Tylo, Kerbin, and Laythe!

Edited by fourfa
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10 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Turns out (after doing the math by hand), RCS Build Aid computes it.

Thirdly, I make TWR to be 4.3 in Kerbin orbit.  This thing can land and return to orbit of the smaller bodies - Eeloo through Gilly.  I never realized it, but a single place-anywhere thruster is actually a lot of thrust relative to a tiny probe like this.  Have a look at the 0.625m or 1.25m RCS tanks (better weight ratio) - you can actually use a ton more fuel if you want.  

And I know you said monoprop only, but I got curious about the Ant LFO engine (same thrust, less mass, better ISP) as well as probe cores with reaction torque and ended up with this:

ukWj1gq.png?1

3807m/s dV, and can land and re-orbit any body except Eve, Tylo, Kerbin, and Laythe!

nice! How heavy?

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I don't recognize the KSP physics any more, in 1.1. It's not just the wheels. Everything's affected by strange over-steered oscillations.

screenshot4372jg.jpg

 

I can't trust that my old rockets will be launchable any longer. Many, like the Magma superlifter here, will not, until it's thoroughly worked over to work with the Unity 5 physics. It's just as if the physics simulation is less accurate. Same with orbits and trajectories, they don't fine-adjust or stay stable.

And soon after I made a successful testlanding the dam client crashed again...  Even though it was the 32-bit client.

I'm in a bad mood now.

 

Edited by Vermil
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3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Probably goes nowhere very fast. 

Indeed, she did not make it....

         †

Marcie Kerbal         ????   -   21-06-2016

Edited by Triop
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'Manually ran the numbers on the Xenon Tempest Mk 3 protoype:

screenshot149.png

Spoiler for maths that belong in a spreadsheet:

Spoiler

Two puffs are present to allow mono to be used for boost thrust at a better efficiency than just holding 'H'
560 mono for 2.24t, set aside 60 for rotation/docking, 500 for 2t
Puff Isp: 250s, thrust: 40 total
min puff dv: ln(106.736/104.736)*250g = 46.39m/s @.038-.039 TWR
max puff dv: ln(12.725/10.725)*250g = 419.4m/s @.320-.380 TWR

Main drive: 12 ion engines in a puller configuration for 24kn of thrust
S8: ln(106.736/88.016)*4200g = 7945m/s
    TWR: .0229-.0278
S7: ln(72.686/60.206)*4200g = 7761.5m/s
    TWR: .03365-.0406
S6: ln(49.886/40.526)*4200g = 8562m/s
    TWR: .0490-.0604
S5: ln(32.411/26.171)*4200g = 8811m/s
    TWR: .0755-.0935
S4: ln(20.861/16.701)*4200g = 9164m/s
    TWR: .1173-.1465
S3: ln(12.725/12.125)*4200g = 1900m/s
    TWR: .1923-.2018
total minimum main drive dv: 44.14km/s
(burning all 2t of mono gives each stage roughly 1km/s more, for a max of around 50km/s)

44.14km/s minimum vacuum dv from the main drive system alone, using an un-optimized staging scheme -- this thing makes my previous designs look quaint.

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6 hours ago, Dispatcher said:

Your problem is:  not enough boosters!  Seriously, good luck in your future attempts.  That looks like it was a lot of work.

Of course I need moar boosters!  I just couldn't find any place to put them. :confused: ...I had already put some extra rockets there.

 

Edited by Vermil
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Well, the Magma_A MkII superlifter (which was perfectly fine before v1.1) continued to progressively break into pieces in the lower atmosphere during launch attempts. But the Orpheus_X7 payload did survive sometimes to allow me to make test-landings.

This one wasn't ultimately useful, as it ended up in the water. But it did confirm that the rocket driven ejection of the stabilizer boom after all chutes are deployed now works as intended.

screenshot4379jg.jpg

 

Well try again. This time I came down on a nice piece of land. There was mainly only one immediate problem. Descent rate was very high. I think I originally - when I once deviced this thing - counted on Eve's thicker atmosphere to make the chutes more effective. But I don't think the more realistic aerodynamic model works that way any longer? I'll throw on another 16 XL parachutes.

Anyway, the high sink rate forced me to burn way too much fuel for the landing. I landed alright though and on Kermin's gravity the landing strut arraignment work.

screenshot4381jg.jpg

 

But it wouldn't be able to reach orbit on Eve with that fuel loss on landing. Question is if it'll be able to do so even with full fuel load? I've started to doubt that. Another concern is the nose heat during ascent, which I gather is a problem on Eve. On Kermin, Orpheus has no problem reaching orbit, even throttled down, with plenty reserves. So I went through the motions. Also re-entry and landing. And discovered that I'm not happy with the crew module. I must have designed this a long time ago.

screenshot4387jg.jpg

Edited by Vermil
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I've gone as far as I can with my in-line winged boosters, so I've created two near-identical winged boosters strapped to each other.. They look rather like skylons. One is all propellant and remains suborbital, the other is half prop, half cargo. They're crossfed, but I jettison the crossfeed pipes around 10km to keep the whole thing balanced towards the end of the burn. It'll lift 36 tons comfortably, but I'd like it to lift 40 comfortably before I transfer it to my main game.

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