All assembled in orbit, ready to go, but my computer isn't.

[Galane]

Here's a save file if someone with a computer capable of flying this without it being a slideshow wants to give it a go. It includes some custom part cfg files.

Alan Aerospace Recycling and Packaging has assembled a simulation of an all in one mission to Eve (or possibly other places in the Kerbol system, how far can you take it?) but lacks the raw computing power to actually go anywhere with the thing. Just putting it together in Kerbin orbit was a struggle, getting the final booster docked very nearly completely stopped the system. Putting this up and flying it in the 'real' mission will have to wait until funds available allow for computer upgrades.

Mods required. Hooligan Labs. ReStock. Stretchy SRBs (only stretchy tanks were used). KAS. Kethane. KSPX (possibly, not sure anymore, the core is re-used from my Duna mission). Quantum Struts. Kerbal Joint Reinforcement highly recommended! The Clampotron Jr and four quantum struts proved to be sufficient with this booster design going to Duna. The custom cfg files included in the download.

https://anonfiles.com/file/2e2061fb47680b3032e336e493cf290f

Here it is with the first two sidesaddle boosters.

And with all four.

Some small changes were made in the 3rd and 4th boosters, mostly moving the mono tanks so they'd stay with the ship instead of dropping off with the boosters. The boosters were piloted into dock by little probes on top that were jettisoned and deorbited to reduce part count a little.

From the top is the Gilly lander, two Kethane scanner satellites and Kethane drilling rover assembly.

Next is the Kethane converting rover, equipped with two KAS winches and connectors to hook up the drilling rover and the manned lander.

Third in the stack is the manned lander, carrying two Kerbals.

Fourth is the upper stage of the ship's core. It has a combination decoupler and clampotron so the 2 man lander can can dock for the return trip.

Fifth is the lower stage of the ship's core. It has a combination decoupler and clampotron so the 2 man lander can can dock for the return trip. The design gives some redundancy in case of problems. The fuel in the upper stage could be moved to the lower, then the upper jettisoned and the can docked to the lower - just in case the upper stage engines might not be enough to slow down at Kerbin.

Operation notes (assuming it doesn't fold, spindle or mutilate under thrust).

There's a tanker in a 100KM orbit to top off the fuel and mono before leaving Kerbin. (There's also a Kethane scanning satellite and a couple of OKTO2's playing landing beacon on Eve so you may want to kill those and reset the Kethane scan data by editing the file.)

The four mainsail boosters should get the ship on its way, staging them should ignite the four core engines. (I had to move the booster engines and their middle decouplers in the staging after docking, and deactivate the core engines.) If they run out of push, stage and continue with the core engines. Probably will want to use TAC fuel balancer or that other pump mod to drain the upper side booster tanks, and to pump out of the mono tanks that'll drop with the booster engines. Action group 5 toggles the boosters' quantum struts, but undocking cuts them loose automatically. (If it comes apart, try the Eve Transfer Burn with unbreakable joints turned on. I thought about mounting some quantum struts to connect the sidesaddle boosters to each other...)

Upon arrival at Eve, get into an orbit high enough so one satellite and the Gilly lander can make it to Gilly. Decouple them and activate their engines manually.

Move to a 100KM orbit around Eve. Deploy the second satellite and scan for a Kethane deposit close to the equator. Altitude of the landing site doesn't matter due to the Hooligan Labs gas bags on the lander.

Undock the two rovers, either together or one at a time. Land the converting rover first. It carries a pair of OKTO2 for landing beacons. Make sure to land with gear down to save the wheels from damage. Since this is a Product Testing simulation, staging wasn't altered on the engine and tank jettison so you'll have to rearrange to keep the two tanks with the OKTO2 beacons until after driving to a suitably level site for the manned lander.

The landers' docking ports are on decouplers so they can be jettisoned. Pop them off after the initial deorbit burn so they'll go down and you won't have to delete them later.

With both rovers, dump all fuel and jettison the engines and tanks before raising the landing legs. Wheel damage and parts like the KAS winches falling off may happen if you don't. Also, never raise or lower the landing legs or move the rovers with the solar panels deployed. Under Eve gravity they tend to break. Please note that the rovers have no parachutes. They were tried but for some reason caused extreme instability during the final descent burn and caused MechJeb to do (very) hard landings, breaking landing legs - leaving them stuck extended, breaking wheels and other parts.

After getting rid of the tanks and engines (except the two with the beacons), find a level-ish place or two, decouple nodes on the OKTO2's then jettison the remaining two tanks and engines and drive to a safe distance.

Land the drilling rover, dump fuel, jettison and drive to a safe distance.

To prepare the manned lander. Transfer the fuel from the six upper outer tanks and the upper center tank into empty space in the core tanks. The lander can make it down fully fueled but there's no need. It was able to land in a test to nearly sea level with about 48% total load.

Set fuel and oxidizer to balance all then land. MechJeb can take it down just fine, completely hands off. Once landed, extend the ladder and go EVA. The first thing to do is repack the two radial chutes on the can. Don't have to move off the ladder to do so. Now climb down the ladder to the KAS winch and grab the cable. Let go of the ladder and immediately press I to stop the Kerbal from smacking into the ground and going *poof*. Lower gently with K then let go of the cable.

Plant a flag. (Some hydrangeas and a shrubbery would also liven up the color scheme of Eve.)

Drive the rovers near the lander, pick the connectors off the converting rover, mount to the drilling rover and the lander (I stuck one on one of the large drills) and connect up with cables from the two winches. Use Docked mode. Time to drill and fill!

Once the lander is refueled, disconnect the KAS cable and return the connector to the rover (just in case you ever come back and don't want to bring another refueling system). Use the winch to get back up to the ladder. Let go of the cable and fully retract it. Board the can and retract the ladder.

Stage to jettison the parachutes. (Could also do that immediately after landing, but you want to make sure the rovers won't get hit!)

Hit 1 (I do believe it's 1) to inflate the gas bags and liftoff. Once up to around 1500 meters, stage to jettison the landing legs. Float on up to 20KM before activating Ascent Guidance in MechJeb. (IIRC I used a 60% shape and left the rest automatic, with a 100 KM altitude.) You don't want to drop below 100 m/sec upward velocity before lighting the engines. Make sure fuel balancer is OFF on all tanks!

At around 24KM, stage to jettison the gas bags then sit back and watch lots of pieces fall off the lander as it rises. If all goes well, what makes it to orbit should have enough fuel to rendezvous with the ship core.

Getting out to Gilly and using the little lander to refuel for the trip back to Kerbin... hasn't been simulated, except for showing that the satellites and Gilly lander can't get there from a 100KM Eve orbit. The Gilly lander has been tested for landing on and lifting off Gilly. Should be able to make a few trips per refueling itself. The low gravity and annoyingly high (10KM) 1x warp altitude limit make landings very slow, but liftoffs to orbit are very quick.

I can't go any farther with this parts monster so I don't know for certain if it will all hang together and what additional changes might be needed.

[Camaron]

It's very sad to build something incredible with too many parts. I've been there. I've Terminated some of my most intricate creations with a sigh:

"I can never actually use this, so it's effectively space junk"

On the upside I may have a LGA 2011-based computer coming along soon. Here's to hoping it can smoothly handle over 1k parts. (My current machine is dropping under 10 frames in the 500-700 parts range) End up with over 1200 and you can just forget having any kind of frame rates. Keep in mind Im talking about an i7 with a GTX 660 Ti. Kerbal SP can be a really heavy game...

I wonder what someone might offer to have people launch over-built lifters for them?

[bigdad84]

I hate to say it but from my experience and from what i've seen it looks like that thing is going to collapse under its own thrust. I think you would have been better off with a tug type craft with the engines in the front pulling the cargo along.

[Galane]

It's based on this successful design. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58167-Duna-mission-planning-and-R-D

It was mostly planned and built prior to the release of Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. KJR made it work better and I removed many struts connecting to the quad group so the leftover ends wouldn't add to the part count, should have left the four quantum struts between the quad orange tanks and the stage above. I left those on this build.

Since KJR has gotten even better through its updates, and MechJeb too has gotten better. I'm thinking this ship might not be so crumple prone. Might just give it a try, parts start shedding before the transfer burn is complete, so lag will start reducing.

The first stage of the booster which lofted the components to orbit is a hive of strut spam, leftovers from the pre-KJR era. It usually worked without failure.

One big difference between this ship and the Duna one is it won't have to carry the upper halves of the sidesaddle boosters all the way so that mass won't be hanging around so long. The return from Eve configuration will also be lighter than the return from Duna due to a much lighter lander. Those poor Kerbals, their lives depending on dangling from a couple of pieces of flimsy cloth...

I'd still like to see someone with a more powerful computer give it a try, to see if it works, and if it can go places other than where it was built to go.

If a tug arrangement would work better, no problem! I could hang the converting rover and manned lander off the bottom and put the drilling rover, satellites and Gilly lander on top without having to re-launch them.

[Galane]

Well, it almost worked. I raised the apoapsis to 105KM, there was a bit of wobble, KJR seemed to be holding everything together. Didn't see anything wrong at the end of the burn. But when I set the next command to circularize... WTH? Something's come adrift.

The docking port came off the top of the lander can so there's no in-flight fixing. F9! Will add more quantum struts to the decouplers on top and bottom of the conversion rover to firmly attach to the manned lander and drilling rover. That I can swap out in flight without relaunching everything.

Since I can't bring the ship to the tanker, I'll just bring the tanker to the ship, which is in dire need of mono. That... didn't go so well either.

Aftermath of rendezvous autopilot slamming the tanker backwards into the assembly, four Skippers at full throttle (a bit too late) after requesting a 150 meter rendezvous. Everything above the can smashed to flinders. Bob and Jeb, either they're ecstatic over the awesome debris cloud, or they're happy to be alive.

Some of the many pieces of debris that are on direct Kerbin escape trajectories, or this is how Kerbals simulate a particle accelerator.

No problem, we'll just start all over, decouple the lander from the booster and go home...

Awesome debris cloud number 2. The deorbit burn failed to achieve sufficient altitude loss and ran headlong into the rear of the booster stage, knocking the lander completely apart and everything off the can, including its parachutes. RIP Bob and Jeb. They don't look happy at all this time.

Sooo, I'll be swapping out the conversion rover, with additional bracing. I'll probably also replace all four sidesaddle boosters, replacing the eight each cylindrified mono tanks with one larger tank atop each one. This thing eats mono for pre-breakfast, breakfast, lunch, second lunch, dinner, supper and midnight snack. 18 fewer parts (subtract 28 mono tanks then add 10 quantum struts) should also help a tiny bit.

At least it performed as expected under full thrust! (Except for the docking port falling off the lander can...)

Edit: Ohhhh. KJR 2.0 is out. I'll try that first. Thank you magic F9 button. (And keeping a backup copy of the save file.)

Edited February 13, 2014 by Galane

[Galane]

More updates and modifications.

The Kethane converting rover is replaced with one that has added quantum struts to connect to the rover assembly above and the manned lander below. I also moved the docking ports with OKTO2 landing beacons to the underside of the girder frames so no fiddling with the tank and engine jettison staging will be needed. That will also remove the need to have that extra weight that could possibly damage the wheels when raising the landing legs.

The other big change is the two sidesaddle boosters that had mono tanks on their lower half have been replaced with ones that have two large tanks on top, plus a 4K battery and a large reaction wheel.

All else remains the same. Anonfiles has quit accepting zip, rar and other archives for upload, so here's the updated archive at a different place. http://www.fileswap.com/dl/6MYdcS0ud5/

Included in the archive are two Module Manager cfg files, one to add MechJeb to all parts with command and another that adds breaking force and breaking torque to all parts that don't have such entries, which includes some of the original Squad parts.

[Captain Sierra]

Galane, In builds like this, the pendulum fallacy ceases to be a fallacy. You may want to seriously consider a megatug design. I have yet to find something that 20+ nuclear engines won't pull with a reasonable speed.

And you're using Quantum struts? How they working? I heard they broke things a lot when used with KJR. Also, why drilling/conversion rovers? Rovers are a pain. If you could get away with landers, you'd be simpler and have less difficulty with structural instability which you are currently contending with.

[DaMichel]

I can feel your pain. But why do you use chemical rockets?! Nukes are a lot more efficient so you would be able to take less fuel and have less parts.

Here's to hoping it can smoothly handle over 1k parts. (My current machine is dropping under 10 frames in the 500-700 parts range) End up with over 1200 and you can just forget having any kind of frame rates. Keep in mind Im talking about an i7 with a GTX 660 Ti. Kerbal SP can be a really heavy game...

Hm .. this is my experience as well with my Duna mission (700 parts with tankers and other stuff around). Similar computer setup i guess, i7-2600k, GTX 660 Ti. I couldn't believe that my computer cannot handle it

[Captain Sierra]

I can feel your pain. But why do you use chemical rockets?! Nukes are a lot more efficient so you would be able to take less fuel and have less parts.

TWR I guess? For Duna, and to a lesser extent, Eve, chemical rockets are still viable. Matter of fact, on a small ship, chemical rockets are actually better if you keep it under 6 tons and use a 909, but that ain't under 6 tons.

Hm .. this is my experience as well with my Duna mission (700 parts with tankers and other stuff around). Similar computer setup i guess, i7-2600k, GTX 660 Ti. I couldn't believe that my computer cannot handle it

Assuming I obey Sierra Space Industries L.A.G. protocol (Low Altitude Guide), I can get up to about 750 parts and still hold double digit FPS. God, ocean terrain is murderous, which is why if it's gonna be over 400 parts, it goes to 275k minimum.

And I'm running i7 2670QM @ 2.2GHz, 8GB 1300MHz(?) RAM, and a Geforce GT550M.

KSP nearly nukes this machine. When money becomes available, KSP hardware will be upgraded to a dedicated gaming desktop capable of running Planetside 2 at max graphics. We'll see how much of a load KSP puts on that. Wish list for that setup is a 4.6GHz factory overclocked i7 Extreme, minimum.

[Galane]

My system is a Athlon 64 Phenom II 555 dual core, 1.83 Ghz. 6 gig DDR2 RAM (only 3.25 usable with 32bit XP). Video is nVidia 9800 GT with 1 gig. Will be upgrading to a Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 soon. Hopefully the other motherboard I have is good so I can move the AM3 CPU to it and unlock to quad core. Also waiting on DDR3 RAM. Current board is an AM2+ with a chipset just one revision too old to unlock extra cores.

Quantum struts cause no problems unless mounted on or aimed at tiny, low mass parts like the octagonal struts or cubic octagonal struts, and only when turned on. Aim one quantum strut at one cubic octagonal strut and it makes a low power use way to rigidly lock the rotation of the ship, add to an action group for easy toggling of rotation lock.

The strut guns have another issue, when installed across a pair of docking ports assembled in VAB or SPH, they won't disconnect with a node decouple. They pull the ports back together to dock. Undock and then the strut guns will turn off.

The 3 in 1 and 2 in 1 docking ports usually have to be commanded to undock 3 or 2 times when docked to another 3 in 1 or 2 in 1 port. I'd like to know how to modify the cfg files so they have one undock button to release all at once. (Not my custom CFGs, found them on the forum.)

The RockoOKTOClampo is my own custom part cfg, made because I wanted a way to be able to dock to the front of a transfer vehicle after decoupling from it. After adding the clampotron to the Rockomax decoupler, I figured it would also be good to add bare bones command and control functions so I added those parts from the OKTO2. I've been using that almost exclusively in place of the standard decoupler because it adds no extra weight or parts. Makes it easy to send up small deorbitizers to dock with and bring down boosters left in orbit.

What I suspect was the reason the 3 in 1 docking port came off the top of the can in the first test was a lack of breaking force and breaking torque in the cfg file. The module manager patch will fix that, plus the additional quantum struts. In that test, aside from that one break at the end of the burn it was very solid.

Why rovers? Because I couldn't get anything put together in one lander that could make it down to Eve and get back to orbit. Putting mining, conversion and the manned capsule all in one would have required a much larger and heavier lander than the two rovers and one lander. To do it all in one would start with a craft as big as the manned lander, then pile on the mining and converting equipment, then add even more engines and parachutes... As it is, all that will make it back to Eve orbit is the can and minimal propulsion to rendezvous and dock with the transfer craft. The rest will stay on Eve forever.

This way I can drop one rover, move it to a flat-ish area and mark it, then move away a safe distance to bring down the other rover, move it then bring down the lander and move the rovers back for refueling. Using just landers might miss the Kethane or land too far from each other or they could hit one another, depending on how accurate MechJeb decides to be.

Less chance of having to repeat parts of the mission when only the manned lander's landing spot is critical.

It can handle a bit of slope, but if the hatch side is downhill, reboarding the Kerbal can be a problem. In one test I had to move fuel around, lock the downhill legs' suspension, raise some uphill legs and even dump some fuel to get the winch cable to swing close enough so the ladder could be grabbed. Whew! Kerbal saved! But ohcrap, in a "real" mission that wouldn't work because he has to be on the ground to manage the fueling connections and fully fueled it wouldn't have been possible to tilt the lander enough.

That's when I though of adding the droppable OKTO2's for beacons.

So anyway, if you have a computer with the power to handle a large ship, give this a try. I'd love to see a mission report.

[NKL]

My system is a Athlon 64 Phenom II 555 dual core, 1.83 Ghz. 6 gig DDR2 RAM (only 3.25 usable with 32bit XP). Video is nVidia 9800 GT with 1 gig. Will be upgrading to a Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 soon. Hopefully the other motherboard I have is good so I can move the AM3 CPU to it and unlock to quad core. Also waiting on DDR3 RAM. Current board is an AM2+ with a chipset just one revision too old to unlock extra cores.

As far as I know, KSP does not handle Multi-core right now. Also, KSP is a 32-Bit (Please correct me if I'm wrong) software and does not use more ram than your 32bit system will allow. No big deal there. But 9800GT is an old-badass (use to get 2 of them in SLI) Graphic card.

I guess what you wanna change is the GPU (a better graphics card) and the RAM(CAS9 for good speed), and go to a "64bit-ish" OS to get the maximum benefit of your RAM.

Also, in future, look up for a better CPU (and of course the MotherBoard that go with it) because your CPU will become the bottleneck of your computer performance.

However don't go for a i7 multi-core, for the obvious reason stated earlier. A simple fast i3 "k-ish" (for O/C purpose and still dual core for when KSP will be upgraded) should REALLY do the trick.

[TheSuperintendnt]

Everyone's got these nice machines with part limits between 500-1000, and im just using a laptop and topping out at around 200, ah well makes it a challenge:cool:.

[andrew123]

I used to have a 2670qm and a 6770m, but that laptop was fried due to hp and their crappy motherboard capacitors along with my msi and evga overclocking antics. I now have a fx 6300 and a 2 gb evga nvidia gtx 760 sc, and I will soon get a ssd if I have to in order to complement my cas 9 1600 mhz dual channel 8gb ram and dell e228 1050p display that I currently have.

Old prices die hard. http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.aspx?itemid=1443221325&partno=BFGE981024GTGE&rid=90&origin=pla&gclid=CKTs_9m95rwCFU1bfgodxSkAlQ

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Core-i7-990X-Extreme-Processor/dp/B004NRQDQQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1393304681&sr=1-8&keywords=core+i7+extreme

Edited February 25, 2014 by andrew123