I am full of grief and coffee

[nats]

My latest attempt... I present to you, the Arkingthaad Mk3.

Lol! I wonder how it flies because in my experience when you double up on fuel lines like that - where two tanks feed into one tank the fuel doesnt flow in a balanced way and one tank gets emptied quicker than the other, resulting in overbalancing and BOOM ... usually.

Oh hang on a minute , no I had it the other way - one tank feeding into two tanks - that way is NOT a good idea!

Edited June 20, 2013 by nats

[Whackjob]

Hehe. Yet it worked Give me an email address, and I'll send you the raw files and you can fly 'er yourself.

And with this post, I fulfill my promise made in the OP. I have just purchased the full game off of steam. I fully expect to be completely lost, as I was when I had started, but that's fine. I have no doubt that before long I will have giant space stations in orbit. Giant machines of monstrosity and fuel. Rockets of a strange and esoteric fashion whose function is implausible in all the ways inappropriate for general rocketry.

It's time to go full Kerbal.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Whackjob

[Spyritdragon]

^Im sure Jeb is very excited about the huge amount of enormous boosters you now have at your disposition. I don't even dare think what a possible Arkingthaad mk. 4 would look like .

Your screenies are so awesome. I just love trying to build the biggest ship possible with the demo version, even though i have the real one .

[Whackjob]

Hah! Ok. Arkingthaad Mk4 under construction. Let's take the weird dial and turn it up to 12.

[korda]

The hard thing is to build Spaceplane that actually can reach orbit without throwing away anything, at least it was hard for me compared to sending missions to other planets...

[el_coyoto]

The hard thing is to build Spaceplane that actually can reach orbit without throwing away anything, at least it was hard for me compared to sending missions to other planets...

Space planes are harder to design in my opinion, mostly because of all the center of gravity issues. Rockets are easier, because if you don't mess up your fuel lines, the CoG stays aligned with the thrust all the time.

"Building rockets is no rocket science. Building planes IS rocket science!"

[Whackjob]

First run with the Arkingthaad Mk4. The longer fuel tanks means less stages, but has an interesting side effect where I cannot really make the structure perfectly sound. I have to fly it "right".

The local Kerbonians have started calling it "The Iron Christmas Tree". Interestingly, I have to take off at half power, goose it up to three fourths until I hit 120kph, then continually back off on the power until I hit 130,000 feet. I wait a wee bit longer than the usual 100k because there's still a little thick atmosphere up there, and this thing doesn't like turning and air. It tends to freak out and shed pieces like an industrial line butcher on meth.

Because there isn't a "three core" wide body fuel tank setup, I have to base the structure off a single core. Nothing but trouble, but not unfamiliar trouble.

Will do a couple more runs to practice, then hopefully I'll be in orbit. I even suspect I might have an extra stage with fuel when I'm there.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Whackjob

[inigma]

Whackjob, check out https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Campaigns and tell me what you think. I've tried a minimalist approach in my KSP learning. Maybe that might make things easier for you too.

[mk78123]

Those orange fuel tanks do have a habit of making the whole rocket unstable, and make engines directly under them (particularly mainsails) overheat really easily. I prefer to use two 32's instead of one jumbo 64.

Btw, have you killed jeb? I don't see him in the bottom right;.;

[Bunsen]

Sweet crispy deep-fried Jesus on a stick, man! My eyeballs are lagging just looking at that thing. I assure you it's possible to get a Mun lander to orbit with far less complexity and lag, y'know, if you're into that sort of thing. (Try longer-burning stages and fewer of 'em. Kerbal engines are heavy, so lots of stages creates lots of dead weight. Just getting to orbit is fairly easy on two stages. I can usually get the third to handle trans-Munar injection, Munar capture, and most of descent, with the fourth providing landing, ascent, and return.)

If you're just into beating the crap out of your CPU and flying spectacular monstrosities, though, carry on and have fun.

[Whackjob]

I end the mission before impact, so technically I've killed none yet. If you note the top stage, there are not one, but five parachutes. I take safety seriously, even as I fly in the face of it.

[Commander Zoom]

Whackjob: While I acknowledge your very Kerbal ("MOAR BOOSTERS!") approach, you really do not need all of that to get to the Mun. Trust me. I've gotten there several times with something like this:

Sometimes less really is more.

[mk78123]

Download kerbal engineer - very useful to see how much delta-v your craft has in the VAB. Use this handy delta-v map to see how much you need to get to your destination.

[Whackjob]

If you're just into beating the crap out of your CPU and flying spectacular monstrosities, though, carry on and have fun.

I've done more efficient designs. This falls squarely in the "flying spectacular monstrosities" category. It's fun. Fun in the meaning Dwarf Fortress's "Fun".

Whackjob: While I acknowledge your very Kerbal ("MOAR BOOSTERS!") approach, you really do not need all of that to get to the Mun. Trust me.

Oh, I'm quite aware. This is more of a "Build it like this because you can" and not "This is what works".

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
Merged multiposts

[Boris_T_Roach]

Oh, I'm quite aware. This is more of a "Build it like this because you can" and not "This is what works".

The important question for any KSP rocket is "does it fly?" not how well built or efficent it is, does it fly? and the 2nd most important question is of course "does it fly without exploding?"

The questions "will it complete the mission?" "can you land the thing on the mun?" "have you have remembered the parachutes this time?" are merely for information as your ship flies apart when you do too sharp a gravity turn at too low an altitude

Boris

[Spatzimaus]

First run with the Arkingthaad Mk4.

Congratulations on building a ship capable of reaching Jool.

Seriously, you're WAY overbuilding if your intent is to reach Mun. But as I said on the previous design, you've got way too much engine and too little fuel, especially on the upper stages. One orange tank per Mainsail just isn't enough fuel. Those engines are heavy, and go through fuel quickly; as long as you have enough TWR, use less engines and/or more fuel tanks. Also, it looks like you've upgraded to the full version, which means LV-N engines are usable. They're ideal for upper stages (anything outside an atmosphere); low thrust and high weight, but extremely high fuel efficiency.

To illustrate the point, here's one of my old designs from when I was first starting the game, the Pink Koala 3:

It's purely stock, other than the Flight Engineer that I added to take the screenshot (and which I really wish I'd had back then). As you can see from its engineer readout, I didn't have enough TWR on the lower stages; 1.87 on the bottom stage is a bit weak, but the 1.37 for the one above that is really problematic. The delta-V total shows that I required three stages to get to orbit when two probably would have worked with a little more thrust (4000m/s is about what you need to get to orbit). But once I was in orbit, the high specific impulse of the LV-Ns gave me plenty of delta-V to get to my destinations. What you can see is that the Mainsail was being fed by two orange tanks, stacked vertically. The white tanks next to it are asparagus-linked, with LV-T30s on the bottom of those stacks as well (which don't START firing until the SRBs separate). Once those white tanks are depleted, separators eject them. It's a lot of fuel feeding a small number of engines; a little too small, as I mentioned from the TWR, but the basic concept is sound.

This design was capable of going to Duna and returning safely, albeit with no fuel left and I had to land with RCS jets. It was also enough for me to land on Minmus and then land at Mun on the way back, while ditching quite a bit of my fuel in the LV-N stage. I've since designed it to be much better on the bottom stages, although I now use a lot more mod parts. (Of course, I haven't actually launched one of these in a couple months; my newer designs are mostly SSTOs.)

[Nao]

First run with the Arkingthaad Mk4. The longer fuel tanks means less stages, but has an interesting side effect where I cannot really make the structure perfectly sound. I have to fly it "right".

The local Kerbonians have started calling it "The Iron Christmas Tree". Interestingly, I have to take off at half power, goose it up to three fourths until I hit 120kph, then continually back off on the power until I hit 130,000 feet. I wait a wee bit longer than the usual 100k because there's still a little thick atmosphere up there, and this thing doesn't like turning and air. It tends to freak out and shed pieces like an industrial line butcher on meth.

Because there isn't a "three core" wide body fuel tank setup, I have to base the structure off a single core. Nothing but trouble, but not unfamiliar trouble.

Will do a couple more runs to practice, then hopefully I'll be in orbit. I even suspect I might have an extra stage with fuel when I'm there.

Hahaha landing this rocket on minmus could kick him out of the orbit! Be careful of your environment and stay green. Moons have rights too.

Also 120kph and 130k feet ? Where do you live >_<? it's 120m/s (432kph) and 130 km (426 500 feet).

If you ever get tired of blowing this huge rockets up and actually want a mission to succeed the best idea is to start small, and keep it small. For example the small 1 Kerbal pod can do a trip to mun and back on less than 10 parts.

May the coffee flow with you.

[Whackjob]

Dumb question. How exactly do you calculate the TWR ratio? Someone baste my brain with variables for me.

[technicalfool]

Dumb question. How exactly do you calculate the TWR ratio? Someone baste my brain with variables for me.

Engine thrust in newtons over weight in kilos, if I remember right.

R = T/W.

Or just use the *Engineer or Mechjeb mods to do it for you.

Edited June 21, 2013 by technicalfool
Grammar.

[Whackjob]

Here's one of the figures spatz put up in an earlier post:

6: mass 285T, thrust 4515kN. TWR: 1.6

Ok. Pardon me for a moment, my math chops are not particularly robust. So in this example, the formula would be 4515000/285000? I'm getting 15.84. I'm definitely going wrong by a factor of ten somewhere. Which reminds me, I'm behind on coffee.

[Fried]

man I see all these 2013 joiners and I don't feel so bad about doing the same thing a year and a half ago.

[technicalfool]

man I see all these 2013 joiners and I don't feel so bad about doing the same thing a year and a half ago.

Just late to the forums, dear. Not to the game.

[Spatzimaus]

I'm definitely going wrong by a factor of ten somewhere. Which reminds me, I'm behind on coffee.

I gave the equation in an earlier post, but what you're missing is the factor of 9.8m/s^2. You see, one metric ton is 1000 kg, and one Newton (N) equals one kg m/s^2, with a kiloNewton (kN) being a thousand times that. On Earth (or Kerbin), one kilogram of mass has 9.8 Newtons of weight; on other planets, the ratio's different. Contrary to how most people use it, a kilogram is NOT a unit of weight (force), it's a unit of mass, while thrust values are always expressed as a force, and if you want to make a unitless number like TWR you need to cancel out the remaining units.

It's easiest, therefore, to convert everything to Newtons, although those values will only be good for the particular planet you're on. For simplicity, we keep everything in Kerbin units, and just adjust our required value as necessary. So the equation is

TWR = (Thrust in kiloNewtons) / (Mass in tons * 9.8)

But if you're doing it in your head, you can just round that 9.8 off to an even 10.

[technicalfool]

Here's one of the figures spatz put up in an earlier post:

6: mass 285T, thrust 4515kN. TWR: 1.6

Ok. Pardon me for a moment, my math chops are not particularly robust. So in this example, the formula would be 4515000/285000? I'm getting 15.84. I'm definitely going wrong by a factor of ten somewhere. Which reminds me, I'm behind on coffee.

Edit: Damn yes, I forget we're dealing with mass rather than weight here. Adding the gravity (in m/s) of the planet you're on also helps.

Also, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable academic source, but it can still be useful.

Enjoy your caffeine.

[Whackjob]

TWR = (Thrust in kiloNewtons) / (Mass in tons * 9.8).

Much appreciated. Sorry, I see now that was explained prior. I am lacking a severe level of attention to detail. I self diagnose this as a coffee deficiency which I will immediately remedy.

Ok! Time to use what I know. I figure I'll try a three stager.

Third stage will be a "lander" for the Mun. I will aim for 1.2 TWR.

Second stage will be the orbital arrangement system. I will aim for 1.8 TWR.

First stage will be the liftoff system. I will aim for 2.5 TWR.

Thoughts? Am I in the ballpark, or am I still rooting around in the trash cans in the parking lot for discarded sandwich crusts and snack-pak leavings?

This is what I came up with for the Munar lander.

According to my newly granted maths, this has a munar TWR of 1.2 almost exactly. Hah... I would have never have thought that a mere two of those tiny tiny rockets would be sufficient. I know the fuel tank is a wee bit... big, but I'm still quite new at landings and prefer to have the spare fuel to burn.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
Merged multiposts