I am full of grief and coffee

[numerobis]

What do you have burning the central fuel tank? It doesn't seem to be connected to the outer clusters.

[Whackjob]

Both the Mk2 and the Mk3 burn the central tank first to get rid of the weight. The tank remains and functions as a spine of sorts. I think in the picture you're referring to, was just an early test run to test out the balancing and burn time of the engine clusters.

[Aragosnat]

Points all taken. Will redo everything. Honestly, I might just dump my save to clear things up and start anew. Probably with an orbital fuel depot. I've been putting that off. Gotta learn docking sometime!

The first place I did a successful docking was around Minmus. Due to the fact one can have slower orbital speeds and smaller orbits.

Two things to remember. Have a nuke battery and head lights facing away from the docking port on your docing craft.

Second make sure you have a lot of RCS fuel and set up the docking controls to your liking.

[korda]

Points all taken. Will redo everything. Honestly, I might just dump my save to clear things up and start anew. Probably with an orbital fuel depot. I've been putting that off. Gotta learn docking sometime!

Use navball during last hundreds meters of docking to put your self going straight to target - when you have target distance displayed above navball prograde and retrograde marks show your speed relative to target, so you should keep your docking port facing target - pink marks on navball - and try to put prograde marking on pink mark as well. If your station can turn around to face you with it docking port it's much easier - you don't have to worry about going from right side anymore.

EDIT: you can wait to new version of KSP if you want. it will be way way way way easier after changes in SAS (no more disabling SAS to turn around, no more losing all RCS because of SAS wanting to have some fun, no more wobbling like hell)...

Also start with docking with both docking ports being put along 'main axis' of your ship, my experience with docking ports on sides (ah docking spaceplanes) shows that KSP doesn't always show info about directions right when you do that (even after using "control from here" and selecting right port as target).

Edited July 1, 2013 by korda

[Whackjob]

Stand by for some picture spam!

With a new save, I decided to eschew the usual giant constructions, and instead do some actual exploration. Here is the full setup for my Munar Station Alpha. Giant booster, a quad landing stage with atomic rockets, and a center escape capsule that will return Jebediah safely to earth. The lander stage has a control core, batteries, and solar panels. I want to view the moon's surface any time I want. This will be the first of hopefully many to come. Maybe a city.

Go, Jeb, Go! I've really taken a liking to those atomic rockets. They just FEEL right.

Dark side of the Kerban homeworld. I try to compose something poetic and it comes out juvenile and has poor cadence.

"This one, right?"

"EASY. Let it down easy. I don't want you to break even so much as a single leg on that marvel of engineering!"

A perfect landing. Didn't even bounce. All legs intact! Way to go, Jeb!

Jeb escapes after realizing there isn't a coffee shop anywhere near here. Note the escape pod totally didn't wreck the stay-behind lander.

"Maybe we should put retrorockets on the capsule in the future."

"Oh, great. I'm gonna tear the chute off. Burn the rest of the fuel!"

Saaaafe! Coffee imminent!

"I'm pretty sure the insurance is paid up. Help me get out of this mud."

And then I decide to check in on the station left behind on the Mun.

Truly, quality Kerbal engineering of the highest caliber.

#EDIT: Just noticed I mixed in two pictures from the test run in. Bill's the test pilot, Jebediah is the Munar hero.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Whackjob

[Spatzimaus]

You're still really overbuilding. That lander could have been one-quarter the size and still worked fine; Mun's surface gravity is only 1/6th of Kerbin's, and the escape velocity is far lower. More importantly, you could have done that design with far fewer struts, because there just aren't large stresses involved in that sort of mission; yes, I know strut masses are tiny, but it jacks up your part count, and as you've seen before part count is the primary contributor to lag. You've also got a lot of unneeded parts, like the large number of batteries and solar panels. Given that you've got almost nothing requiring electricity, and rocket engines generate power simply by operating, it's just not necessary. Stick a single 100-unit stack battery below your ASAS, put four fixed-orientation solar panels on the outer tanks, and you're done.

The only time a Mun lander needs to be that big is if it's carrying along something like a rover, a kethane refinery, etc.; basically, the payload fraction for rockets are pretty much fixed, so if you're carrying a lot of payload then you need something large. But when your ship is just fuel, engine, and a tiny 1-man crew capsule, there's really no need for something that large. It's not that you can't ever do a bit of overkill, but A) You need to practice making small designs for those situations where the larger one just ISN'T as good (like with spaceplanes or the upcoming resource system), and eventually there'll be a career mode, which may or may not add economic reasons to keep things small.

Besides, if you're just going to Mun, using LV-Ns on every stage is not the best idea. Consider your final stage, a 2.25-ton engine on a 2.25-ton fuel tank. Functionally, in a vacuum this is only slightly better than a 4.5-ton fuel tank with a 0.5-ton LV-909 engine; the LV-N might be twice as efficient, but the weight is so much higher that you're not really saving anything. (An LV-N should really never use less than a 4.5-ton tank for this reason.) But that's in a vacuum, and as seen in your pictures, you were using it to brake during your return to Kerbin. (That's another issue, which I'll get to in a minute.) In-atmosphere, an LV-N's efficiency goes down quickly; at sea level its efficiency is worse than any other engine in the game, so there's very little benefit to using one for an in-atmosphere deceleration.

And that brings up another issue: you shouldn't have been using a rocket to decelerate at all. In Kerbin's atmosphere, a couple small parachutes are all you need to make a safe landing with a return vessel of that size. Even without parachutes, simple atmospheric friction will kill almost all of your velocity (all but about 100m/s) before you reach ground level; that's basically the definition of terminal velocity, so you absolutely shouldn't be firing rockets above a couple thousand meters unless you're trying to aim for a specific landing spot. This is also why I previously suggested placing a stack separator just below the RCS tank, so that your final stage is simply the capsule, its parachute, the RCS tank, and four RCS jets. That small vessel would be capable of returning to Kerbin from Mun orbit by itself, and would have no need for any deceleration engines at all.

(Note: if you try landing on Duna, its atmosphere is thin enough that you usually need to use rockets to decelerate to any safe speed. If you try on Eve, you can go in completely unpowered, except that you'll want to fire the rockets a bit once you get really low just to keep the higher gravity from breaking your landing gear on impact. Kerbin's pretty much perfectly in between these two extremes.)

[korda]

I know strut masses are tiny, but it jacks up your part count, and as you've seen before part count is the primary contributor to lag.

As far as I know game treats struts in very special way, for example they don't actually add to weight of crafts. It was similar with ladders too, but I think it was changed recently.

[Whackjob]

Well, the reason that lander was so large was because I wanted the lander to stay behind and function as the first part of a Munar base. Though I did miss a few parts I need to put in; Docking port to siphon off fuel and power, and a can for visitors to lounge in. I will do it again.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I give you my Munar Base Alpha. This one remained intact. I am... delighted.

#EDIT: I think one of these needs to go on Minmus.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
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[Whackjob]

This is my next major project. A rover of improbable proportion.

I've tried and failed to get it into orbit. I've gotten quite close, though. Tomorrow will hopefully find me with success.

[Aragosnat]

The only problem with your base other then the lag you might have when bringing in another ship / rover to it is... You will have a problem getting to the docking ports due to the landing gears. Unless you use a long tube to connect to it so that the rover wheels don't touch the landing gears as well as making sure that the rover is ballanced too. Other then that. It looks good enjoy.

[Whackjob]

Progress so far:

Kerbaltastic.

A little early for the holidays, but...

I think I built a rover tree.

Heartbroken. Up until a sudden structural failure, a perfect launch. Orbit looked immanent.

Next launch. No structural failures. Looks pretty. Except... orbit was not achieved. The rover is too massive for 8 atomic engines to position it. I will have to change those out.

"Yo, Dawg! I heard you like girders and struts. I put girders and struts in your girders and struts so now you can strut while you girder and girder while you strut."

Well, another flight, another failure. This time everything went perfect. Just didn't have enough Delta-V. Tomorrow, I add a fourth stage and go for ludicrous speed. With luck, everything will go to plaid.

Good night everyone.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
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[CCKinnison]

I'm ... afraid to suggest anything that would reduce the awesome insanity of what you're building.

But SERIOUSLY... decaf. just a little.

[Whackjob]

Decaffeinated coffee is coffee in the same way my Dodge Stratus is a tactical nuclear powered submarine.

You could only ever confuse the two after a botched lobotomy, and even then maybe once out of a thousand tries.

I'll get 'er in orbit. It's a matter of perseverance, time, and lack of common sense. All three things I have in impractically large quantities.

[Bunsen]

Well, another flight, another failure. This time everything went perfect. Just didn't have enough Delta-V. Tomorrow, I add a fourth stage and go for ludicrous speed. With luck, everything will go to plaid.

Good night everyone.

Just make sure you have one of these watching

[Whackjob]

#EDIT: Nvm. Wrong forum.

[CCKinnison]

Decaffeinated coffee is coffee in the same way my Dodge Stratus is a tactical nuclear powered submarine.

You could only ever confuse the two after a botched lobotomy, and even then maybe once out of a thousand tries.

I'll get 'er in orbit. It's a matter of perseverance, time, and lack of common sense. All three things I have in impractically large quantities.

I was referring more to the design. They're beautiful, but good god, where do you find the time?!?!? And yeah, I notice the lack of caffiene too. But it intereferes with my sleep too much these days.

[Whackjob]

I don't think I could ever get coffee to interfere with my sleep. I've been a pot-and-a-half-a-day since I was about 12 years old. My mother used to yell at me... "Don't drink that stuff, you'll stunt your growth!" Given I ended up at six foot three inches, if it DID actually stunt my growth, I'm happy about it.

Regarding the time, it isn't too difficult. Aside from work, I spend almost all of my time at home, near and on hand. I take care of an invalid parent, you see. So gaming is pretty much the most convenient form of entertainment for me. So the time part is covered. I have nothing but time.

A sneak peek at my current project.

Project tentatively titled, "An Exercise in Absurdity Mk4". Kindly note speed and altitude.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
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[Scotius]

It's useless. I's impractical. It's absurdly time and resource consuming. I bet your computer is weeping white-hot lava tears when forced to process this abomination. It is also beautiful, stunning, epic and challenging. It's a laugh and a punch in the face of every law of physics there is. And it's a Kraken bait the size of the moon I hope you will get this ship into orbit, against all odds. Just to show nothing can stop human imagination and invention.

[arq]

Decaffeinated coffee is coffee in the same way my Dodge Stratus is a tactical nuclear powered submarine.

Bahaha I like it.

[CCKinnison]

Scotius, after the Mk3 made orbit, I'm sure this will.

I'm more interested in how much of a PAYLOAD one of these things can carry with them.

[Whackjob]

It's useless. I's impractical. It's absurdly time and resource consuming. I bet your computer is weeping white-hot lava tears when forced to process this abomination. It is also beautiful, stunning, epic and challenging. It's a laugh and a punch in the face of every law of physics there is. And it's a Kraken bait the size of the moon I hope you will get this ship into orbit, against all odds. Just to show nothing can stop human imagination and invention.

This one is only 1,500 parts or so. The Mk3 was a whopping 3,900 parts. This one is a lightweight, but has much better performance so far. Orbit is almost a guaranteed thing.

Scotius, after the Mk3 made orbit, I'm sure this will.

I'm more interested in how much of a PAYLOAD one of these things can carry with them.

The Mk3 never did make orbit. It could have, if I'd spent the time on it, but it was more of a practical exercise than anything. The Mk4 will be different. It WILL have a payload. Specifically, this is what's going to haul my UberRover to the Mun. I might even use it to land the rover there, then drive it off. I'll have to build a ramp off

Oh, and here's something interesting.

Test one flameout altitude and speed:

Test two flameout altitude and speed:

Anyone notice anything interesting?

#EDIT: Both tests were run at max possible thruster strength regardless of altitude. Throttle was only eased back only to prevent overheating.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
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[Scotius]

Let me guess - Weird Physics caught up and is accelerating the ship despite empty tanks.

[Whackjob]

Nope. Quick update, as I work on this prior to going to work this afternoon:

It's at least somewhat maneuverable. ...but how far does it go, now?

Kerbin's Hill Sphere has been breached.

Complete, total, absolute success.

This is the "An Exercise in Absurdity Mk4". And that picture is the AEIA Mk4 in orbit. Yes, orbit. I am pleased beyond what is probably called for. I've spent some fifty plus hours designing and building the various AEIA machines, and right now I'm just revelling in this success.

#EDIT: So now I'm faced with the question, "What now?" This was just a test run, and it isn't functional. Do I add docking ports and solar panels and make it a space station? Do I add a lower carriage and make it a bloody giant lander? I could, you know. I'm confident enough in my trussing ability to handle it.

#EDIT2: Oh, and to explain the minor mystery... the Mk4 uses a sort of odd reverse asparagus design. Rather than have engines on the outside drop, I drop tanks and engines from the inside out. Keeping the outermost gimballed engines allows me to have better orientation control. Right now there's about 6x8 drop tank/engines in the center carousel, with room for more I just hadn't gotten to yet.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Aphox
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[CCKinnison]

Congratulations!

[Whackjob]

Now that I've been mulling things over, it seems to me that there's tons and tons of possibilities for the Mk4. With panels and docking ports, would it not make a really nice extremely high capacity fuel depot? I can add lower trussing and living space, and it becomes a lander / station. Or I can boost it into orbit, top the tanks off, bolt on a forward section, and it's the power plant for an interstellar ship.

Possibilities, many many possibilities. My mind is awhirl with them.