I smell mechjeb in this one.

[kahlzun]

Cheat!!! And it seems that has a new texture improvement mod.

seriously, who did not make this same model in the game?

Someone needs to edit this video with the KSP GUI, including Mechjeb.

[Superluminaut]

Right! Off to build that!

That may be a bit tough to do. You'll need to land that first stage fast. The second stage will soon drop back into the atmosphere and disappear once it hits 20,000 meters. The video they are doing has many things happening at once.

I started a challenge that translates the SpaceX reusable rocket into KSP.

If you have a rocket that fits, show it off in the challenge!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25204-Kerbal-Grasshopper-%28VTVL%29

[Pbhead]

I can do it without mecjeb

Awesome.

What engines at the end there did you have on action groups i guess? How were you doing that. (how did you manage to remember which action groups were which. )

[CatastrophicFailure]

Yep! Imagine what a mess it would be with a sensor installed incorrectly though. Call me old-fashioned but I'd really prefer a flesh and blood pilot at the controls if I were to be a passenger on one of those.

Haha! Yeah, those legs are going to need a new paintjob.

I went to an interesting bonfire out on Padre Island a few years back. Our genius hosts lit ~40 wooden pallets all at once. The radiant heat was too much to handle at anything less than 40 feet and bubbled the paint on car bumpers ~20 feet away. Imagine what the radiant heat coming off that exhaust plume must be like for those poor lander legs.

Ok, you're old fashioned :-P. At this point I trust computers far more than people to control such things lol.

Also keep in mind, when the first crew rides that capsule it will probably have been extensively tested with unmanned flights. That specific capsule I mean, not just the design.

To those saying there's no parachutes on the "crewed module", the dragon spacecraft is an unmanned vehicule and no, it does not have any parachutes.

The projected Dragonrider variant however, will do his first test flight this year or next year IIRC, and will come with an emergency parachute in case the engines fail.

Not so. The current version of the Dragon does indeed use parachutes to return. It's still the only privately financed craft to orbit AND RETURN from space. Yes, the unmanned variant is designed to be reusable and return a small cargo from space. The engines in the vid are still conceptual. IIRC they're also (planned) to be the launch abort engines so will have to be pretty darn reliable.

[Brabbit1987]

Yep! Imagine what a mess it would be with a sensor installed incorrectly though. Call me old-fashioned but I'd really prefer a flesh and blood pilot at the controls if I were to be a passenger on one of those.

I don't think it really has anything to do with old-fashioned. A human pilot couldn't even do that properly if you ask me. For one, they don't have any vantage point to actually see the ground well enough to land softly. In other words, if you prefer flesh, you would die lol.

[PDCWolf]

I don't think it really has anything to do with old-fashioned. A human pilot couldn't even do that properly if you ask me. For one, they don't have any vantage point to actually see the ground well enough to land softly. In other words, if you prefer flesh, you would die lol.

There's this thing called instrumental landing which even private pilots (those guys who only spent 30 hours on a plane/helicopter) are trained to do, they are able to land (as long as the runway/helipad has the equipment) without seeing anything but 2/3 instruments.

On top of that, if you put a well-trained guy inside a sealed rocket and put a $600 gopro connected to a $20 OSD that lets him see the ground and minimal inclination information, that's all you need for a manned landing.

[stupid_chris]

Not so. The current version of the Dragon does indeed use parachutes to return. It's still the only privately financed craft to orbit AND RETURN from space. Yes, the unmanned variant is designed to be reusable and return a small cargo from space. The engines in the vid are still conceptual. IIRC they're also (planned) to be the launch abort engines so will have to be pretty darn reliable.

Wah, confused myself in my thoughts. I meant the one projected to come back to the launch pad and the one shown there. But yes, indeed, the current ones splash down in the ocean and decelerate using parachutes. But IIRC, they project to remove them to save weight once the Grasshopper system to go back to the pad gets implemented. The manned Dragonrider will keep an emergency chute though.

[littlebattler]

There's this thing called instrumental landing which even private pilots (those guys who only spent 30 hours on a plane/helicopter) are trained to do, they are able to land (as long as the runway/helipad has the equipment) without seeing anything but 2/3 instruments.

On top of that, if you put a well-trained guy inside a sealed rocket and put a $600 gopro connected to a $20 OSD that lets him see the ground and minimal inclination information, that's all you need for a manned landing.

It's basically IVA landing in KSP.

[Superluminaut]

Awesome.

What engines at the end there did you have on action groups i guess? How were you doing that. (how did you manage to remember which action groups were which. )

Those are 8 24-77s, the little orange ones. You can see them mounted sideways on the COM blending in with the orange tank. What I did is used action groups 1,2,3,4 corresponding to left, up, down, right, to toggle the 4 engines available for movement in those directions.

The nave ball makes this system somewhat awkward, because it flips up and down while the rocket view does not. And you need the nav ball to control your horizontal acceleration.

[hkedi]

You know, that is one of the coolest videos ever XD.

KSP has ruined me completely. I was watching that video and when the first two stages returned to the pad and all I could think of was "WHY ARE YOU RETURNING SUBORBITAL STAGES TO THE SAME SPOT!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH DELTA-V YOU ARE WASTING!!! ARgargablel Froth Froth Froth"

[stupid_chris]

KSP has ruined me completely. I was watching that video and when the first two stages returned to the pad and all I could think of was "WHY ARE YOU RETURNING SUBORBITAL STAGES TO THE SAME SPOT!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH DELTA-V YOU ARE WASTING!!! ARgargablel Froth Froth Froth"

Not really, the Falcon 9 spent stages are really light, you need very little fuel to bring them back to turn them around. Anyway they'll be using the emergency reserves of fuel that are there in case an engine fails. So if an engine fails they loose the stage, else they bring back that expensive piece of equipment home.

[Brabbit1987]

There's this thing called instrumental landing which even private pilots (those guys who only spent 30 hours on a plane/helicopter) are trained to do, they are able to land (as long as the runway/helipad has the equipment) without seeing anything but 2/3 instruments.

On top of that, if you put a well-trained guy inside a sealed rocket and put a $600 gopro connected to a $20 OSD that lets him see the ground and minimal inclination information, that's all you need for a manned landing.

Oh wait, your right XD. For some reason I didn't think of that. Though I still trust a computer more so then a human being. Sure a computer can malfunction but so can a human in many more ways than a computer lol.

[Rickenbacker]

In operation, it seems they'll be making a 'turn around' burn at altitude to land the first stage back at the same launch-pad. That's very fuel intensive and I think they said something about a higher payload in "expendable mode".

That sounds odd, can't they just set up a landing pad in northern Africa somewhere and land it there? Would save immense amounts of fuel, probably enough to justify shipping the parts back by boat. Or not, I'm really not up to date on the economics of this operation.

[stupid_chris]

That sounds odd, can't they just set up a landing pad in northern Africa somewhere and land it there? Would save immense amounts of fuel, probably enough to justify shipping the parts back by boat. Or not, I'm really not up to date on the economics of this operation.

It barely uses up any fuel. As I said earlier just a few posts up, the empty stages are extremely light, and they're using only a tiny amount of fuel to go back, the emergency reserves. Anyway, I think that when the first stage detaches, it's barely 50km downwind, that's barely nothing. Pretty sure the second stage comes back after making a full orbit though, so it only needs the fuel to deorbit.

[Nibb31]

We already discussed this in the Science Labs forums.

A ballistic trajectory makes the first stage fall a few hundred kilometers from the launch site. Burning to Africa (or to Florida from a Texas launch site) would cost more propellant than to return to the launch site. Do you have any idea of the distances involved?

A solution might be to build a landing pad on an oil rig 200km off the coastline. That would probably cost more than the fuel needed to for the reverse trajectory burn.

[AngelLestat]

I can do it without mecjeb

Hey luminaut, where do you locate all the air intakes?? I dont see them.

The problem of that design is that you are using turbines, They are a lot more efficient, but they reaction time to throttle changes is slow. So the risk to land is higher. But I like it.

[Rickenbacker]

We already discussed this in the Science Labs forums.

A ballistic trajectory makes the first stage fall a few hundred kilometers from the launch site. Burning to Africa (or to Florida from a Texas launch site) would cost more propellant than to return to the launch site. Do you have any idea of the distances involved?

A solution might be to build a landing pad on an oil rig 200km off the coastline. That would probably cost more than the fuel needed to for the reverse trajectory burn.

I didn't have any idea, but now that I know it's not coming down far from the pad, their method makes much more sense.

[AntonioAJC]

How come we don't have pods with RCS and thrusters? These would be so cool ^.^

BTW, sorry if there is, but I don't use mods, I go full vanilla.

[OtherDalfite]

How come we don't have pods with RCS and thrusters? These would be so cool ^.^

BTW, sorry if there is, but I don't use mods, I go full vanilla.

That's a planned feature. With the new 0.21 ASAS overhaul, the entire pod torque system is being changed. Pod rolling now requires power.

[stupid_chris]

That's a planned feature. With the new 0.21 ASAS overhaul, the entire pod torque system is being changed. Pod rolling now requires power.

... but that doesn't add neither RCS thrusters or engines to pods?

[Guest]

How come we don't have pods with RCS and thrusters?

Why should the game limit your imagination by predetermining where your RCS and thrusters go, and how much fuel they have? Design some pods to your specifications.

[AntonioAJC]

Why should the game limit your imagination by predetermining where your RCS and thrusters go, and how much fuel they have? Design some pods to your specifications.

Though would be cool to at least have a pod with those, y'know? Maybe using it so you don't have to put in an RCS tank and some thrusters that would add weight.

Though, let's say, career mode, that pod would be expensive.

[Guest]

Though would be cool to at least have a pod with those, y'know? Maybe using it so you don't have to put in an RCS tank and some thrusters that would add weight.

Though, let's say, career mode, that pod would be expensive.

I would imagine that, in order to balance such a pod against the others in the game, the mass of a pod with all that built-in stuff would increase proportionally. Otherwise there'd be no reason to use any other pod.

[Deadweasel]

I don't think it really has anything to do with old-fashioned. A human pilot couldn't even do that properly if you ask me. For one, they don't have any vantage point to actually see the ground well enough to land softly. In other words, if you prefer flesh, you would die lol.

Look up SpaceShipOne TONU (Tier One Navigation Unit). It looks and works almost exactly like KSP's navball, and those who have figured out its use in the game understand precisely how it makes it possible for a human pilot to commit a vertical landing without necessarily being able to see the ground.

In fact, during one of SpaceShipOne's very first powered flights, it began to spin wildly. The pilot commented about how the view out the window was doing nothing but making him nauseous, so he focused all of his attention on the TONU and used that to get him stabilized.

If you want to see some true awesomeness in privatized space engineering, go look for Discovery Channel's "Black Sky: Race for Space" & "Black Sky: Winning the X-Prize".

[Jarnis]

Right! Off to build that!

Like this?

Already did that a while ago... and note that it was filmed in one go which is bit complicated as you need to go back to driving 1st stage before it falls down..