[WIP][TechTree @ 0.23.5] - [MS19e] - Realistic Progression LITE

[Ratzap]

What a difference 1 engine tech level makes (3 to 4). Instead of struggling to get 3.1t with 18.8k dV, I now have 12.9t with 21.1k dV. Manned Moon landings are go...

[Makeone]

You are right on that Raz. Even i have seen quite a change from 2 to 3. But you have that monstrous tier 4 engine that got like what, 25MN of thrust.

Is that 21.1k dV for landing and returning? I am currently planning for flyby and/or orbital stay for few pass but got problems to get the fuel correct. I know its around 3000dV from earth to the mun(sic!), maybe 3-400 to slow down and then 1000+ for return, altho i wonder that direct re-entry with kerbal on board could be lethal?

I also wonder what probe core is needed for Mars 2 probe as i am missing that one, is it non-stock? Although i should get Mars 1 to on its way...hum

[Mirean]

There is an excellent image available on imgur ( http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png ) with all the deltaV costs and I found out that it's pretty accurate Although to be safe, I usually add around 5 - 10% to that number - better safe than sorry

Anyways, as you can see, from a LEO (250x250km) to Moon via hohmann transfer it's 3.12km/s, so around 3.3km/s for transfer stage. After that, you need to slow yourself down to circular orbit - that's 0.82km/s - make it 0.9km/s. The same dV is needed to escape again. So for this roundtrip you are looking for around 5-5.2km/s. Not that difficult with high-efficiency hydrolox engines (430s+ ISP). If you also wanted to land on Moon, you would need additional ~3.7km/s, so let's say 9. Then add 10 for getting to orbit and I'd say that the ratztap's 21km/s is for landing and returning with some fuel to spare

[Makeone]

Nice picture, thank you very much. I hope that my non-landing mission will reach mun, make orbit and gets back to ear...kerbin.

[Ratzap]

There is an excellent image available on imgur ( http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png ) with all the deltaV costs and I found out that it's pretty accurate Although to be safe, I usually add around 5 - 10% to that number - better safe than sorry

Anyways, as you can see, from a LEO (250x250km) to Moon via hohmann transfer it's 3.12km/s, so around 3.3km/s for transfer stage. After that, you need to slow yourself down to circular orbit - that's 0.82km/s - make it 0.9km/s. The same dV is needed to escape again. So for this roundtrip you are looking for around 5-5.2km/s. Not that difficult with high-efficiency hydrolox engines (430s+ ISP). If you also wanted to land on Moon, you would need additional ~3.7km/s, so let's say 9. Then add 10 for getting to orbit and I'd say that the ratztap's 21km/s is for landing and returning with some fuel to spare

Makeone - I don't think he's made the Mars 2 probe yet. Same with Veneria.

Correct though 2.5 to 2.6 will get you from low moon orbit to landed and the same to get back up. I always build the biggest I can and save as a sub-assembly rather than optimize for a particular mission. Moon land and return is doable with 18.5k if you get all your maneuvers perfect. Lander design is different to the last versions because fuel pipes are not available. Next tech will be SRB as that ring of 16 strapons barely manages 1.2 TWR - a slow liftoff is good but it could do with a little bit more oompf. I used the big t4 25MN engine (LR8804) correct then a Centurion burning Hydrolox for the second stage. The box of igniters is so I can use it for the transfers as well rather than split things into more stages.

As you can see, take as little as possible back off the surface after packing all the data into the storage box on the side of the pod. 2 bays aren't redundant - I've deliberately left all the mat bay readings and these moon shots will take one on the way plus their landed one.

[taro8]

I'm working on an epic excel sheet with extremely detailed instructions and will have a link table with a checklist that you can flag to confirm you downloaded, installed, and where applicable, made the post install changes/edits.

There will also be an installation video!

Hang in there, sorry that you are experiencing issues.

That is good to hear. You do not need to apologise, this is my own fault that I cant get this mod working correctly.

[griffin247]

I'm working on an epic excel sheet with extremely detailed instructions and will have a link table with a checklist that you can flag to confirm you downloaded, installed, and where applicable, made the post install changes/edits.

There will also be an installation video!

this wud be fantastic !!! even thou i am up and running i get the feeling iam not running the mod to its full potential. if that makes sense.

[Ratzap]

It turned out I needed the spare fuel in the lander, Bob had to get out and push to cut the periapsis from 217km to 76km then 3 braking swings before final touchdown with 846 science. That's on big problem with the atmosphere going up to 180km, aerobraking orbits are bloody boring long winded affairs.

2 more asteroids hit earth while Bob was on this moon trip too. I'll have to shoehorn the claw into the tree somewhere.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Ratzap

[Semmel]

Ok, I assume I did something wrong but I dont know what. I have installed the latest version of RPL and the other mods, especially RO and RSS. I have just finished Sputnik 2 and it was very very annoying because the engines just dont fit to the fuel tanks I have available. Not to mention that the thrust they provide is absolutely arbitrary compared to their size. Here is an image:

The white fuel tank in the image is the largest procedural fuel tank I have available, diameter 1.5 and length 1.375. The only viable engine for ascending is LR-105, the others are all too strong or too weak in the atmosphere and/or too large. In the RPL M19e tech tree, I got until General Rocketry in the rockets branch.

From left to right (engine: thrust):

R_10A-3: 66

AJ10-137: 91

RD-253: 1605

HM 7B: 65

Tribune: 210

A9R: 50

D8: 920

RL10A-3: 66

RD-855: 83

LR-89: 822

LR-105: 386

LM Ascent Engine: 15

So there is clearly something wrong with my install. I carefully followed all instructions but obviously not careful enough. Please help, does anyone has a clue what I did wrong?

Modlist (the install is a 3 or so days old):

I did not install the soviet pack because it had too many elements that were not yet sorted in the tech tree.

Cheers and thx,

Semmel

[Makeone]

Its the procedural parts that is not yet fully supported, i have the same problem. When you are building a rocket, place a tank (procedural), exit VAB, go to science building and click the latest engine tech node you have opened. Profit.

And yes, you have to do it again for each stage, and if you load old vehicle, it will have some strange looking tanks after load, again, procedure above cures the case.

NathanKells recommendation is to use latetest strechySRB instead, that will lose some procedural parts, though.

[NathanKell]

Also you didn't follow the instructions in the OP. You have the wrong engine configs (ie both). You need RftS, not RealEngines.

(And for RealEngines, the config you do have, the sizes and thrusts are not arbitrary at all, they're 100% real. KSP engine models and sizes for their roles and thrusts compared to real are as wrong as KSP aerodynamics is compared to real. Look up some actual engines. Vacuum nozzles need to be huge.)

[griffin247]

For anyone who doesn't have the stretchy SRBs in the VAB or R&D facility, here is a quick fix I made:

open GameData\RPL\Tweaks\Stretchy\RPL_tech.cfg and add these lines:

This will enable them in new careers. If you want to add them to your existing career, open tree.cfg in saves\YourCareerName\, CTRL+F and find SRBstorage1 and add this:

just after "name = solidBooster1-1". Hope it works, it worked for me

i can confirm that this works

[Miximix]

Hello guys! I'm not sure if this question was asked before, but i'm slightly confused on how to make a working relay network with new launchpad position. I'm used to launch from the equator, but now launchpad is at cape canaveral so i can't figure out how to create a proper relay network. Maybe there is a way to change launch position to New Guinea (second remote tech location), which is approximately at the equator? I appreciate any help!

[griffin247]

you need to go to the remote tech thread

[Semmel]

Its the procedural parts that is not yet fully supported, i have the same problem. When you are building a rocket, place a tank (procedural), exit VAB, go to science building and click the latest engine tech node you have opened. Profit.

And yes, you have to do it again for each stage, and if you load old vehicle, it will have some strange looking tanks after load, again, procedure above cures the case.

NathanKells recommendation is to use latetest strechySRB instead, that will lose some procedural parts, though.

I prefer procedual parts, even though its not perfect yet. And the precess you discribe: why bother with realistic KSP if I am going to cheat anyways?

Also you didn't follow the instructions in the OP. You have the wrong engine configs (ie both). You need RftS, not RealEngines.

(And for RealEngines, the config you do have, the sizes and thrusts are not arbitrary at all, they're 100% real. KSP engine models and sizes for their roles and thrusts compared to real are as wrong as KSP aerodynamics is compared to real. Look up some actual engines. Vacuum nozzles need to be huge.)

Thx Nathan. I dont know how that got there, I assume I tried it out at some point and forgot that its still in this folder. My procedure was to make sure I have everything I need before installing failed because I didnt check if I had more than I should have. Sorry for the inconvenience, without RealEngines, the engines and their stats look much much better.

Thx again and Cheers,

Semmel

[NathanKell]

Miximix: do you want a constellation in low or medium Earth orbit, or do you want one in geostationary orbit? Different answer for each. See here for a post on the RSS wiki about your issue.

Semmel: it's not really cheating, since early rockets were limited more by engine thrust than how large a tank it was possible to make. At the very least you should have a limit of 2-3m at TL0, and basically unlimited by TL3. Solid motors, though--those had sharply limited diameters: something like 0.5/1/2/3/7 for the first 4 TLs.

And you're most welcome! Glad it's working better now.

[Bedi]

Its the procedural parts that is not yet fully supported, i have the same problem. When you are building a rocket, place a tank (procedural), exit VAB, go to science building and click the latest engine tech node you have opened. Profit.

And yes, you have to do it again for each stage, and if you load old vehicle, it will have some strange looking tanks after load, again, procedure above cures the case.

NathanKells recommendation is to use latetest strechySRB instead, that will lose some procedural parts, though.

You can always edit

ProceduralParts\Parts\ZOtherMods\RFTank1Default.cfg

and change diameters for the starting node. It's a bit cheaty though.

[Ratzap]

I forced the claw into the tree and built myself a truly huge rocket (having mined the moon of science). I lifted off with over 25k dV, caught up to the asteroid 69,000km out from Earth (rather close but I went for the nearest to save some poor earthicans). Sadly the rock proved to be horrifically large (I should have checked before heading to it) - class E. As the claw sank into its surface, the available dV plummeted from 7,125 to 103 and the weight rose from 26t to 917t. The cheapest maneuver node to miss Earth cost 625 m2 so Jeb n Bill said 'Oopsie folks, better start evacuating' and plotted a return to Earth. Tragically for them, the realchutes deployed at 22km and FAR decided they got ripped off by aerodynamic forces. All in all, not what you'd call a successful mission as such but the next version should go better. Plus it seems RSS asteroid moving is seriously harsh - the amount of fuel required to move that rock would have needed something like 7 or 8 launches...

[Mirean]

Well, in reality, if this scenario was to happen, they (NASA, or some other space agency) would send a re-direct "probe" much more ahead than 4 hours before hitting Earth like you did. At this point it would be almost impossible If you intercepted the asteroid even 14 days before it hits Earth, it would cost you much, much less.

For the chutes, I prefer setting them to deployment by altitude and I usually set pre-deployment at ~8km and full deployment 700m and I never had a problem with them, even if I arm them when I'm still above the atmosphere.

[Ratzap]

Well, in reality, if this scenario was to happen, they (NASA, or some other space agency) would send a re-direct "probe" much more ahead than 4 hours before hitting Earth like you did. At this point it would be almost impossible If you intercepted the asteroid even 14 days before it hits Earth, it would cost you much, much less.

For the chutes, I prefer setting them to deployment by altitude and I usually set pre-deployment at ~8km and full deployment 700m and I never had a problem with them, even if I arm them when I'm still above the atmosphere.

Like I said, I just picked the one that looked like hitting soon - it was pretty far out but by the time I got to it and matched orbits it was almost on top.

I went out to a class A at 320,000km today, attached and got it captured but the whole procedure is really fiddly in RPL. Ignition count, ullage (with the asteroid attached - not fun), even the 30% min throttle on the Centurion was a problem. It wobbled and spun like crazy after a few seconds of thrust although I had it centered on the rocks CoM. I think this is one of the parts of the game where the realism aspects of RPL simply suck the fun out of it.

I just stick the chutes on and arm them. If the defaults don't always work - blame Jeb for pulling too soon. Him and Bob had both respawned before the latest mission even landed.

[Mirean]

Anyways, I thought I'd share my Delta II/Delta IV mutant - it has 9 SRBs just like the Delta II (6 are lit at liftoff, the remaining 3 after previous booster separation) which are almost exactly the same - diameter, height, burn time, only the thrust is a little bit off (I have the SRB's on first level). The first stage is also much shorter, it burns only for 4 minutes. Second stage is kind of similiar to ULA's Centaur upper stage with 2 engines, only the thrust and isp is a bit lower (3rd tech level). It's capable of delivering 6 tons to LEO (Delta II could deliver 6.1t) and around 2 tons to GTO (DII - 2.2tons). Ullage for the GTO burn is provided by RCS (tank is located on the very bottom of the upper stage and rcs pods are on the top and bottom - in the interstage fairings).

I think I have a new universal launcher

[Semmel]

At this point, I want to say thank you MedievalNerd and NathanKell as well as all the other modders, making this experience possible. Playing KSP in the RSS environment, with the RPL tech tree. I just finished Vengard and I must say, so far, its a really really good experience. I didnt thought that, after the original KSP size didnt had any challenges left, the game could be THIS fun again. I especially like the new probe centred science system in M19e. Very good indeed. Please continue this road!

The only thing I find odd at moment, that still after solving the engines issue, I have the problem that my rockets are too powerful. Because I cant throttle down, the engine motors scratch at the 10g mark during ascent, which is not very good. Nathan, you said that early rockets have the problem of being not powerful enough.. I have rather the problem that they are too powerful. Ok, I have only little payloads of 0.5 - 1t, but still. If I try to make full use of the rocket motors at their respective tier, they are too powerful or the rockets become too noodly. For higher payloads, I dont really have the technology, because with 1.5m procedural fuel tanks, its hard to make heavy rockets. A solution was posted before, but I think you should rebalance the procedural fuel tanks sizes for the next iteration. 2m width x 2m length (currently 1.5x1.4 m) on tier 2 and 2m width x 4m length (currently 1.5 x 4m) on tier 3 might be appropriate. That doesnt sound much, but since the volume increases squared with the base area, going from 1.5->2 gives a 80% increase, which might be enough. Also then, it is possible to use the 2m diameter engines, which is not easily the case at moment.

Cheers,

Semmel

[Mirean]

@Semmel

I have the latest version of Realism Overhaul and RPL and I don't experience the same things you do

Yes, it was quite a pain at the beginning to get to TL1, but after that, it was really, really easy. I don't remember exactly how it went, but now, I'm at tier 3 too and I have already made rockets with 4m diameter, so it's not restricted here.

Also, the solution to high-power rockets - more stages. If the stage burns less of its fuel compared to total remaining fuel of vehicle, the TWR will not change so drastically. + for the upper stages, you don't need a TWR 1.5+. I usually go with starting TWR of 0.8+ and it's just fine. With this setup, you shouldn't get above TWR of 6 in any part of the flight

(I almost forgot, you can apply the lower TWR even to the first stage - if you take a look at my delta II launcher above, if I fired only the main engines, I would get around 0.6 sea level TWR. That's why the SRBs are here. They have poor mass-to-power ratio, but excellent thrust. Use them. Abuse them.)

[Makeone]

Semmel, you should be able to stretch the tanks more that that (for some reason, there 'seems' to be a volume lock, like tier 4 it seems to be 10kLitres). But if you do like i told you, you can stretch them bit more freely and it is not cheating. So, once more, when you are placed a stretchy tank on your craft, save, exit VAB, go to science building, click the last opened engine node there (nothing else), exit science building and return to VAB, now you should be able to quite freely to alter the size of the tank. Once you have placed interstage fairing or another adapter and placed next tank, repeat the above again.

Also, it is not necessary to use biggest engine all the time, you can always use smaller engines in clusters if that works to get twr 1.2-1.5 to launch.

[NathanKell]

Working on diameter limits