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CactEye Orbital Telescope


Rubber Ducky

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Does anyone have craft files for the telescopes with the new version? I know the 0.23.5 version of the mod had craft files included.

They're not that difficult to build:

  • Telescope tube
  • Instrument bay
  • Processor mount and processor
  • Gyroscope
  • Probe body
  • Solar panels

Add batteries and antennas as needed.

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In the "Could this work" in-box; If I could somehow position my telescope satellite so that it were perpetually within the Umbra zone (the area of total eclipse cast by a celestial body), would this effectively avoid the risk of solar burnout?

Of course those of you who are now typing "sure, why not" will save your time by appreciating that I have only the slightest idea of what orbital mechanic would be necessary to position said satellite in said Kerbal orbit. And the rest of you who are wondering how I would then power such a craft without the Interstellar mod's beamed power or nuclear generators, will be happy to hear that I do not have Interstellar, and while I do have TAC and Universal Storage I haven't the slightest idea if their generators can power CACTEYE.

Ugh, time to burn though some of that excess contract cash I got laying around. If only NASA had that for a problem.

Ugh,

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In the "Could this work" in-box; If I could somehow position my telescope satellite so that it were perpetually within the Umbra zone (the area of total eclipse cast by a celestial body), would this effectively avoid the risk of solar burnout?

Of course those of you who are now typing "sure, why not" will save your time by appreciating that I have only the slightest idea of what orbital mechanic would be necessary to position said satellite in said Kerbal orbit. And the rest of you who are wondering how I would then power such a craft without the Interstellar mod's beamed power or nuclear generators, will be happy to hear that I do not have Interstellar, and while I do have TAC and Universal Storage I haven't the slightest idea if their generators can power CACTEYE.

Ugh, time to burn though some of that excess contract cash I got laying around. If only NASA had that for a problem.

Ugh,

Possible, and you could use RTGs for power, but I don't belive this is possible since you would have to be orbiting around the L2 lagrange point which isn't possible in KSP.

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In the "Could this work" in-box; If I could somehow position my telescope satellite so that it were perpetually within the Umbra zone (the area of total eclipse cast by a celestial body), would this effectively avoid the risk of solar burnout?

Yes, the type of orbit you are searching for is a L2 LaGrangian orbit, where the combined gravity of the two bodies (i.e. the star Sol and the planet Earth) act on a third body (i.e. the Herschel Space Observatory) to keep the planet and telescope at the same rotational speed at different orbital heights. the simplest way to think about this is that the angular velocity to maintain a given orbital height is directly related to the force of gravity of a mass. a higher orbit will be angularly slower for the same mass, and the same orbit will be anglarly faster for a larger mass. an object in the L2 orbit will be orbiting at the same angular velocity as the planet because it is orbiting the combined center of mass of the two bodies, which is slightly larger then the center of mass of the central body alone.

Unfortunately, stock KSP uses patched conic orbits, rather then

(watch bop and Pol around :30, super interesting interactions) that would allow for LaGrangian and other exotic orbital interactions. Patched conics only simulate Kepler's laws, not Newtonian or relativistic gravity. The typical reason for this that n-Body calculations get exponentially harder as N increases, such that true N-Body physics simulations for 300+ part stations would melt a typical CPU, that orbital prediction asymptotically approaches impossible, or that floating point errors in weak gravitational interactions would affect the system chaotically (read: summon the kraken); all of which are very true. Nevertheless, someone is trying it, which is very kerbal, never let the kraken stop you from strapping something explosive onto something else.
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Thanks. BTW, I'd put that MM code into a separate file, so it doesn't get overwritten the next time you update RemoteTech.

As RT2 is being updated again and this is a definite possibility (until they integrate the slim core themselves) could you explain where I'd save this separate file and what name I should give it? Sorry, this is the first time I would do this kind of path and I'd like I learn how it's done properly (meaning I've certainly adjusted configs, KAS for instance but not I this manner).

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Thanks Taki and Aether! I'd totally forgotten RTGs since I haven't unlocked them yet in this career save. DUH!

Also, thanks cause I now have a whole list of source material for my fall reading list! Awesome subject that you've illuminated for me.

Another thought might be to try and establish a largely elliptical orbit, um shoot Fine Print is always asking for it, anyhow, where the craft would spend lots of time in the umbra while still orbiting Kerbin. A really LKO PE and really high AP.

Hmm that may only allow safe near-Kerbal viewing paths for a couple months of the year though. Might be better sending the craft almost to he edge of the sphere of influence where the low velocity would maximize the time in the dark. Ugh, now I'm wondering if the umbra is conical and there's a diminishing return.

I love this game!! Assemble the test craft!

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As RT2 is being updated again and this is a definite possibility (until they integrate the slim core themselves) could you explain where I'd save this separate file and what name I should give it? Sorry, this is the first time I would do this kind of path and I'd like I learn how it's done properly (meaning I've certainly adjusted configs, KAS for instance but not I this manner).

Name and exact lcoation doesn't matter so much -- as long as it's somewhere in GameData and has the extension '.cfg' it'll get loaded. For my own install, I created a folder named "ModuleManager" to hold random tweaks. I name the files logically like, "Cacteye_RemoteTech2.cfg" or "FASA_LaunchClampCost.cfg" just so it's clear what each file is doing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This mod looks awesome! really sad to see the original developer had to leave but thats whats great about this community, lots of talented people and in general most are nice enough to leave fairly open licencing when they do have to leave.

So quick question for the community regarding interaction with DOE, I understand it is the flares themselves that screw this up, from what I remember there is an in game UI for DOE that allows you to adjust the brightness and toggle the flares on and off, so if you just turn them off snap your pictures and turn them back on again there shouldn't be any issues correct?

If that is the case it shouldn't be a big issue for someone skilled with UI programming (not me I can barely code a simple game of snake, and that was using java back in highschool) to add the functionality to adjust flares to this mods UI.

Cheers

Akira

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  • 3 weeks later...
hmm is anyone developing specific fairings for the Cacteye or not?

I don't believe so. If you are that concerned about it it will fit in any fairing that is 2.5m or larger (Though you might have to use the expanded fairings from KW Rocketry if you have lots of radially attached bits) I personally use Procedural fairings so it's not an issue.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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So I've reinstalled AND tried the VDS fix. Anyone else had this issue? I just made a whole episode for my Youtube series about deploying this behemoth with my Shuttle and I can't seem to fix it. (Version 24.2) I AM running 64-bit, and I'm leaning more toward it being a conflict with some other mod I've got buried in the background, rather than the mod itself. I made an demo video where I did the exact same thing while the Shuttle was in testing phase, and it worked perfectly. I'm afraid I just wasted that effort. (Though a Telescope having an imaging

problem right after deployment from a Space Shuttle... I seem to remember hearing something similar a few decades back... =))

**Edit**

Those hexes... I'm thinking Kethane conflict, now.

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[...] I AM running 64-bit [...]

abandon all hope.

not kidding. the Windows x64 version of .24.2 would crash randomly when memory accesses started happening anywhere near the 32-bit line, and the .25 version is far far worse. Here is an accounting of my last Win x64 experience:

i think the correct response here is blame squad. the reason Ferram (and a few other modders also) has dropped support for Win-64 is that it is very, very, VERY, fragile. it frustrates me to no end, because i have 12 unused gigabytes with which to store textures. My Video card has 2GB of ram by itself. 32-bit numbers are just not large enough to store all the collected awesome of this modding community.

in testing .24's x64, i quickly came to the conclusion that, once mods were installed, there was no longer consistency in the causes that operated in the natural world, reason only sometimes worked, logic was a lie, and large memory access is governed by the old ones. i felt like James Mickens was laughing at me. This was my world while i tried to figure out what mods worked and what failed.

i tried .25 x64 once. it crashed during the nyancat.

if you're running Linux x64, then carry on, apparently that's working normally.

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http://imgur.com/a/6Ax2l

So I've reinstalled AND tried the VDS fix. Anyone else had this issue? I just made a whole episode for my Youtube series about deploying this behemoth with my Shuttle and I can't seem to fix it. (Version 24.2) I AM running 64-bit, and I'm leaning more toward it being a conflict with some other mod I've got buried in the background, rather than the mod itself. I made an demo video where I did the exact same thing while the Shuttle was in testing phase, and it worked perfectly. I'm afraid I just wasted that effort. (Though a Telescope having an imaging

problem right after deployment from a Space Shuttle... I seem to remember hearing something similar a few decades back... =))

**Edit**

Those hexes... I'm thinking Kethane conflict, now.

Looks like EVE to me since it's not made to render the clouds that far.

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abandon all hope.

not kidding. the Windows x64 version of .24.2 would crash randomly when memory accesses started happening anywhere near the 32-bit line, and the .25 version is far far worse. Here is an accounting of my last Win x64 experience:

if you're running Linux x64, then carry on, apparently that's working normally.

Looks like EVE to me since it's not made to render the clouds that far.

I'm more worried about the UI at this stage. Screenshots are nice, but nonfunctional. Gonna give up trying to fix graphics artifacts. I sent a service mission up and swapped antenna for a known good one and I can at least transmit science, which is what I was most worried about. The UI is still janky, and that's the bothersome part.

^and aethergoddess: It is WinX64. I've been running this series since .24 came out now and have rebuilt the file about 6-7 times (each episode has, somewhere in the VO, me saying: "I think I've got it now, smooth sailing ahead!"). What I'll probably end up doing is making a clean x64 install and trying the mod on its own to isolate the issue to a conflict with other mods. I'm hoping to at least finish an ISS, capture an asteroid, put my VentureStar into operation, and send a Constellation mission to Duna before moving into .25, and going back to 32-bit. It's been interesting to be a guinea pig, but I'd like to get back to not holding my breath between scene transitions =)

Edited by Subasean
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I can't seem to keep the telescope pointed straight long enough to take a picture, it's just way too shaky. Any way to fix?

Time Acceleration stops all motion to the best the game can do. Otherwise, nope. Wait for the objects to orbit closer to each other.

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I can't seem to keep the telescope pointed straight long enough to take a picture, it's just way too shaky. Any way to fix?

If you're running into the same issues i was, consider using Caps lock (aka Fine control mode) to slow down your control inputs. this "slowly" ramps the power of the push up the longer you hold the button down, rather then the default behavior of going all the way to 100% torque the second you push the button. also, disable as many reaction wheels as you can. Assuming you have only one of the high tech surface GRUs from this pack, you should be able to apply something like .025 n torque, which should be enough to move any sufficiently large telescope slowly enough to get stable pictures of almost everything.

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