Number of pieces?

[Cheebsta]

lol, what is part count now?

[Guest Aaack]

last time I checked a bit over 650 lol the takeoff goes at 1.5 fps, it's awesome!

Update:welp it's in orbit, sadly the orbit is really crappy and correct the 50 degrees of difference between it and the mun will take tons of fuel but Ill try, the sight is just stunning.

Edited July 20, 2013 by Aaack

[CCKinnison]

50 degrees? whoa. now THAT's some takeoff wobble.

[Cheebsta]

It's the struts, but I hated to tell the guy that after all the time spent putting them on the get it up there, lol.

If you look at the leftmost 2 tanks in the first picture on this page; when the far tank pops off the angle of the strut coming out the top of the near tank starts to act like a roll inducing fin because the strut that was balancing it out just fell off too.

[Benie]

Speaking from 'experience' of failing to fly large payloads (even with cheats) is where I say "Freak it!! I'll just HyperEdit it there!".

I remember trying to fly a Sphere Launchpad using a Skycrane to drop it. It split in half before launch.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Benie

[Guest Aaack]

Actually i believe it's the tension produced by the struts indeed. but only on stage 8 ( the first 5 stages goes smoothly) is when it start to rotate without hope to stop it, which is fine for me but then it also moves and the whole thing is so massive i can't stop it.

I made several orbit insertions to test it and to learn how to fly it.

Im adding some linear RCS intended to control the pitch and yaw during take off now will see. All I know is that I believe i have enough dv to actually land this thing! YAY

but i feel like a rat for the cheating, i -know- the thing IS reinforced enough to not need it, but i believe i way over the limit the game can calculate safely. Piece count: 682.

Wish me luck, Il post results.

Edit: changing the order of the booster jettison in the asparagus chain to preserve to the last minute the ones with control surfaces. I think that will help a lot.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Aaack

[Guest Aaack]

The new fuel lines makes my rocket so pretty and elegant....

NOT

Parts: 694. <--geez

Edited July 21, 2013 by Aaack

[Cheebsta]

rofl, yeah, that is exactly why I started doing the snake thing. You can just keep curling around adding tanks and not have to run crazy lines like that.

If you actually take your time with placement you can get a much denser pack too.

[Guest Aaack]

The previous config was snakey like yours... but it went really unbalaced (in a moment i had some sort of rectangle flying), Right now im trying to solve the maneuverbility of it (sorry bad spelling). The problem is that the thing is so heavy the momentum is brutal, and the lag doesn help at all, byt the time i realize its starting to move in a wrong way it's late.

But I will do it!

Edit: I made it! a perfect orbit, the new booster jettison arrangement worked perfectly, but I was chatting and accidentally separated the last two big ones before circularize the orbit, so... start over again!

Edited July 21, 2013 by Aaack

[BigDog]

1330 parts leaving the pad. Editor parts count is 1366 counting the 36 clamps to hold it up on the pad.

View inside the VAB to give you some idea of the strutting involved. Payload is 340.3 tons, which is 8 full orange tanks for fueling, plus some maneuvering rockets and capsule, and such.

Some tips I have learned. At a minimum on large rockets stacked joints will need 4 evenly spaced struts, but most likely will need 8. Stack couplers are about as strong as glass, in other words, they aint. Notice at the bottom of the payload in the VAB pic I have I beams on radial decouplers to allow strutting of the stack coupler joint. Try to plan ahead for your strutting needs. They are easier to place as things are being built, and you will use less of them than trying to pile them on as things fail. Triangles and X's are your friends when it comes to strut placement. Really heavy loads may need some assist with rockets at the top to reduce some of the force coming up from the bottom. This next pic shows my arrangement on this application. I beams on radials, to outrigger some SRBs. I use SRBs for this as they have better Max power than any of the small engines. Also by staging them one after the other the amount of force applied remains constant, with rockets of this size the dead weight of the future stages is just a drop in the bucket.

Lastly, I have found that large, especially long rockets can not be flown like smaller rockets. A grav turn with this rig at 10,000m will put pieces all over the place. I have to do a very slight turn at about 15,000 followed by a gentle tip to about 40degs at around 45,000ms, any more than that and gravity breaks off the lowest radial stack. Also throttle setting is limited to 3 clicks from full. Any more than that and it will break at joints at certain altitudes. This last bit may just be personal preference, but I do not use asparagus staging, I use the onion method instead. I prefer to keep the stresses I am applying to these contraptions equal. Part count has nothing to do with stuff breaking, it does have something to do with lag however. But as stuff gets staged away that goes away. Now here is to a successful launch, and an assurance that it gets easier as you get more designs successfully launched under your belt.

[Guest Aaack]

Nice Big Dog!

What was the payload of that monster?

Welp my Mün base is going to the mün right now.in a very slow and elegant orbit, Ill probably deplete the middle stage just to slow down or even to start to slow down, but that's ok, i have enough fuel on the landing stage to make it.

So what I've learned so far is that with heavy rockets you need surface controls AND RCSs to control it while leaving the athmosphere.

The new booster arrangement worked wonderfully, it went out of control on a moment just because and very sudden. I just deactivated the ASAS and manually corrected it, the linear RCSs I added on the corners of the payload helped a lot.

Also I didn't realize how heavy is the base, with all those tanks im carrying a bit more than 2 orange tanks full to the Mün, never realized that.

But you're right, it took me some launches to discover the gradual maneuver trick. mostly waiting for the proper configuration of the control surfaces. I made it in four maneuvers, the first right after jettison 6 tanks, at a very early stage of the launch, I must say that the lag helped, because my reactions were inhumanly fast to correct any movement without being... inhumanly fast!

Im used to heavy and big ships in microgravity, but this is a whole new level, with the last 3 orange tanks it takes about 2 minutes to rotate 360, so every manner has to be planned very carefully.

So here's some pics of the current state of the mission:

[Johnno]

Also I didn't realize how heavy is the base, with all those tanks im carrying a bit more than 2 orange tanks full to the Mün, never realized that.

Your base itself is what, around 25 tons? You're carrying about 4 times more fuel than you'd need, even for Mün transfer, orbit insertion and landing. Also your landing engines are sort of inefficient and you have so many that you'll have bucketloads of thrust.

I predict you'll be on the ground with around 65% fuel left, and you'll have to do the last part of your landing at around 10% thrust.

Happy landing, will be interesting to see it deployed.

[Guest Aaack]

Actually I have no clue how to calculate the weight at this point.

I was very concerned about being able to land it and decided to play it safe, that was the genesis of the whole ordeal.

however I've a plan also, I'm taking all that fuel with me in case I need a refuel to return to the Mun station... nothing will go to waste! (or it will but will be fun anyway)

Edit: BTW deploy is relative, the whole thing is just a pankake, the deployment is just extend the landing struts and open 3 solar panels and the antennae I added for eye candy lol

But hey! for my third mun landing is not bad, no matter how much fuel I have left.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Aaack

[BigDog]

Actually I have no clue how to calculate the weight at this point.

Get the MechJeb Mod for this. See that window open in the VAB pic, that is from MechJeb. MechJeb is very handy with lots of info available, it is worth it alone for its manuver node planer to place and tune nodes,instead of clicking and playing around until you find what you want. It does have an autopilot function but that is entirely optional to use.

Oh and the payload on what I posted is 340.3 tons. Weight on the pad is 3000.6 tons.

That is a nice looking base, whether it has too much fuel or not. I figure over kill is much better than under kill in these situations.

[Cheebsta]

Just make sure you get the one from the forum. That is, unless Mechjeb 2.0 is on the Spaceport now, I couldn't find it there. I am not sure the original has all that info.

[Guest Aaack]

Big, I try not to install plugins because I'm still learning, I think when this stops to be fun ill install something that flies my creations for me, but for now... newp!

Thanks! i think it'll look pretty once on the surface, that was the idea at least, right now im burning the poodle stage to make a very good orbit to land, I'm trying to make my life easier and the fuel helps!

Cheebsta, thanks for the tip man, Ill check it out just for the sakes of having it, but with the new upgrade around the corner, I may need to just wait for now, I don't know?

Looking too cool in orbit...

[BigDog]

Big, I try not to install plugins because I'm still learning, I think when this stops to be fun ill install something that flies my creations for me, but for now... newp!

That was the point I was trying to get across,MechJeb is MUCH more than an autopilot. Look at this attached pic with some of the MechJeb windows open. Notice on the bottom left one the 2 options, create and create and execute. With this window up when my apoapsis crosses 100k the yellow warning goes away. I can then chop throttles and create my node to circularize. If I pressed create and execute then the autopilot would fly it. These windows that are up allow you to crate nodes without all the clicking and guess work. Orbit info is handy for setting up satellites to map planets, which is useful for other mods mostly. The Delta V window is invaluable for building ships. I can tell if it will reach orbit or the Mun or wherever in the VAB based on knowing what the Delta V requirements are roughly for what I want to do, ie orbit Kerbin is roughly 4500 DV. Again this takes all the guess work and go fly and hope approach out of it.

I think MechJeb is probably the most miss understood Mod there is. It seems a lot of people assume it is an autopilot, I know I did. In reality it is full set of flight information and node creation tools that just happens to also have an autopilot, that is 100% optional to use. I hope you put up a pic of that base on the surface, I am assembling/building a base for Duna and may steal a few ideas!

[Guest Aaack]

Wow, that info!!

I'll definitely locate the plugin now hahaha you convinced me Big!

Meanwhile im aproaching the mun surface, almost there...

[Johnno]

Wow, that info!!

I'll definitely locate the plugin now hahaha you convinced me Big!

A different but similar alternative would be Kerbal Engineer Redux. Pretty much the same info but without the autopilot functions.

Looking at that MJ screenshot though I probably should mention that Engineer doesn't have separate windows, just one window with 4 different buttons to toggle info viewing.

[lammatt]

it's not the "game' can handle how many parts

it's your CPU and RAM

(also note Unity isnt 64-bit; it doesnt matter if you have a 16-core cpu...what mattters is your clock speed)

[Guest Aaack]

Oh Iammatt that's a good information. I wondered why most of my cores were kinda... idle.

Is Unity the name of the engine of the game?

Also why "game"? Isn't it one?

[Guest Aaack]

Johnno I just saw a video where the guy used that plugin, looked pretty cool to get a quick info.

So I managed to land the whole thing it was a very tense moment, but made it!

However while I was driving the rovers to it I suffered two spontaneous explosions... I jettison those half full tanks for the sake of my mental peace.

Now my base has the shape it was intended to have:

(The first explosion had a reason tho, I forgot to turn off the ASAS, i guess the constant shaking made it go boom, the second explosion is a mystery tho, everything was off, including the tank valves).

[lammatt]

well... Unity is actually the engine the game use

so...ya... game can also be the word then...

[Guest Aaack]

Everytime I see the word Unity im not sure if it's about the engine or the custom interface Ubuntu made for it's OS.

I asked about the word game because you used semicolons, and perhaps the politically correct thing to do is call KSP emulator or something. Some people are touchy about the words, so I prefer to ask first.

So I have a severe case of haunted rover or perhaps the tilted terrain where's the base is way too tilted? the second explosion was caused by the moon light rover, it just slide and collide with a fuel tank, even with the brakes on. Also killed two kerbals.

Now I parked it away from the base just in case, with the heavy rover next to it to stop it to run away... I hope.