[0.17] Multiversal Mechatronics - Munolith Research Division - 1.3

[RedDwarfIV]

I want to use this, but I don\'t like the AWACS design.

I\'d use it if one were made that looked like this though:

Plus, this is downfacing for ground imaging, which is exactly what this Muon detector is supposed to be doing.

[TheOverlord5000]

i did a clean download recently and its saying 'not on this version of KSP' even though i run 0.14.4

[Nibb31]

I want to use this, but I don\'t like the AWACS design.

I think it\'s nice that it\'s big and ugly. It makes its use sort of dissuasive as compared to the short range device.

Try putting it on a sat:

It worked fine at an 8000m orbit on the Mun. It should work on Kerbin at 70000m, but will cover a narrower area.

This is my method for locating precisely the Munoliths from orbit.

1- Build a MuonSat based on the long range device as above, and put it into a low altitude/high inclination orbit (70° or 80° for example).

2- Leave it to orbit on 10x acceleration. On your first pass, when it beeps, zoom out as far as possible and take a snapshot of the area. Print out the picture and use it as a map.

3- On each pass over the area, draw a green line on your map to mark your orbital trajectory above the area.

4- Watch the green light. As soon as it turns red, mark that spot with a cross on your green line.

5- Trace a red line perpendicular to the green line, passing through the cross.

6- After several passes, the intersection of the red lines marks the candidate location.

7- Send a landing expedition equipped with the short range device to explore the location.

8- ? ? ?

9- Profit!

[RedDwarfIV]

I think it\'s nice that it\'s big and ugly. It makes its use sort of dissuasive as compared to the short range device.

Try putting it on a sat:

It worked fine at an 8000m orbit on the Mun. It should work on Kerbin at 70000m, but will cover a narrower area.

This is my method for locating precisely the Munoliths from orbit.

1- Build a MuonSat based on the long range device as above, and put it into a low altitude/high inclination orbit (70° or 80° for example).

2- Leave it to orbit on 10x acceleration. On your first pass, when it beeps, zoom out as far as possible and take a snapshot of the area. Print it out the picture and use it as a map.

3- On each pass over the area, draw a green line on your map to mark the orbit above the area.

4- Watch the green light. As soon as it turns red, mark that spot with a cross on your green line.

5- Trace a red line perpendicular to the green line, passing through the cross.

6- After several passes, the intersection of the red lines marks the candidate location.

7- Send a landing expedition equipped with the short range device to explore the location.

8- ? ? ?

9- Profit!

Well maybe the underslung version could go on planes/spaceplanes.

[madmat]

Nibb31,,On point 4 where you say watch the green light ,as soon as it turns red,mark that spot. What RED/GREEN lights are you talking about? Thanks Mat

[RedDwarfIV]

Nibb31,,On point 4 where you say watch the green light ,as soon as it turns red,mark that spot. What RED/GREEN lights are you talking about? Thanks Mat

Look on top of the device\'s base. There\'s a little spot that is green in one image and red in another.

[Nibb31]

Well maybe the underslung version could go on planes/spaceplanes.

Yeah, but it\'s more fun to launch it on a satellite and more of a challenge. KSP should be about rockets and putting stuff in space, not flying around in airplanes! =P

(Only joking. It\'s a sandbox game so you can pretend whatever you want... )

Nibb31,,On point 4 where you say watch the green light ,as soon as it turns red,mark that spot. What RED/GREEN lights are you talking about? Thanks Mat

The detection light is only on the long range device. It blinks green when you are approaching the source of Muon emissions and turns red when you are moving away from it.

[RC1062]

I swear that MunLith by the KSC wasn\'t there before! S:|

Love it. I see some fun times ahead for my Kerbals.

Dastardly Plans;

- Create satellite network around the Mun.

- Identify landing zones.

- Land recon carts.

- Pick suitable one and land base parts for research.

- Launch mega craft to find one in space!

[Jouzu]

I found one Munolith (the one near the equator) thanks to your radar!

Just one thing, the red/green light isn\'t working for me, I am running with 2x AA, Pixel light count 10, Shadow cascades 6 and max 120 FPS, 1920x1200 res and everything else maxed out. (Nvidia 570gpu).

[twobit]

yay! was able to find one for the first time! thanks! was alot of fun.

[Emilio]

could you do a version of the unmanned pod, but instead of the eye pointing at the camera, make it point at the nearest munolith ?

[RedDwarfIV]

I still maintain an underslung Muon Detector should exist. Aside from how AWACS is for air detection and underslung RADAR is for ground mapping and recon, underslung looks more aesthetically pleasing if you\'re trying to make a streamlined craft. An AWACS dish might look okay pointing out the top of a Munar satellite, but not so much when you have a spacecraft that will half the time have the dish facing away from the Mun. Underslung could be put on top too, if you wanted.

[Muka]

I dunno what happened to my head, but I\'ve developed simple mathematical formula (I hate maths ???) for anyone who needs/wants to know range of bigger radar when mounted on satellite. Char ,,a' stands for altitude of orbit (assuming it\'s perfectly or nearly circular, if it\'s not, margin of error can be bigger) given by km above sea level.

Formula for scan radius: 2nd root of (150^2 - a^2) = X (km)

Formula for scan area: PI*(150^2-a^2) = X (km^2)

Due to uneven terrain and simplifications this is not perfect, but should be accurate for about ~1-0,5 km in range and ~100km^2 on area. Also formula works (obviously...) on ranges from 0 to 150 km.

I hope someone will find this useful ;P

EDIT: If You\'ll put radar dish on cricular orbit of 80 km,area scanned will be 0,71(5) per cent of it\'s original performance, this gives us 50579,6417227956711392485584708 km^2 of covered area and scan radius of 126,88577540449520380193772746089 km (with performance in radius of amazing 84,590516936330135867958484973927 per cent!) . On ground You\'re getting 70685,834705770347865409476123789 km^2 covered and... duh.... 150 km of scan radius ;P

[RedDwarfIV]

Does it still work if left on a jettisoned stage?

[SteevyT]

1- Build a MuonSat based on the long range device as above, and put it into a low altitude/high inclination orbit (70° or 80° for example).

2- Leave it to orbit on 10x acceleration. On your first pass, when it beeps, zoom out as far as possible and take a snapshot of the area. Print out the picture and use it as a map.

3- On each pass over the area, draw a green line on your map to mark your orbital trajectory above the area.

4- Watch the green light. As soon as it turns red, mark that spot with a cross on your green line.

5- Trace a red line perpendicular to the green line, passing through the cross.

6- After several passes, the intersection of the red lines marks the candidate location.

7- Send a landing expedition equipped with the short range device to explore the location.

8- ? ? ?

9- Profit!

Is this what you mean by drawing the lines?

[Zephram Kerman]

So we\'ve all been using the Muon detector to scan Mun and Kerbin for munoliths and other anomalies. Now that the very last one is still eluding me, I\'m getting serious about the search. So I tried to figure out the optimal orbit, and realized some of my math has rusted beyond serviceability. Could someone help me figure this out? (I swear I could do this in my head 20 years ago.)

Part 1:

The width of the swath of ground covered by the detector as it passes overhead is (using the good ol\' Pythagorean theorem)

= 2 * ?slant range²-altitude²

For example, at minimum altitude of 70km, the path width is 264 km. ( 2 * ?150² - 70² )

Part 2:

The surface of Kerbin rotates at 175.6 m/s (according to the in-game instrument). This means that in just over 25 minutes, the 264 km swath will move far enough that the next orbit will not overlap. ( T₁ = 264 km / 175.6 m/s * 60 sec/min )

Part 3:

How to calculate orbital period for a given altitude? (T₂)

If T₁ < T₂ then the swaths do not overlap, and parts of Kerbin near the equator might be skipped.

edit: Thanks to MechJeb orbit info, we know that a 70km circular-ish orbit has T = 1834 seconds or 30.56 minutes. Looks like I should mod some parts to make a frictionless orbiter for low altitude surveys. But I\'d still like to find a formula for orbital period, to determine the proper altitude target.

[noneyabidnis]

The detection light is only on the long range device. It blinks green when you are approaching the source of Muon emissions and turns red when you are moving away from it.

Hilarious. I thought red meant it was getting closer and green meant you were in the vicinity, but actually moving further away! No wonder why I\'ve been having such a hard time finding these things.

[noneyabidnis]

I found one!!! Hooray!! My life is complete. I\'ve been trying on and off for the past 3 weeks or so to find one of these. Never underestimate the importance of properly understanding how to use the tools being used.

[togfox]

I\'m waiting to stumble upon one by accident - no luck yet. And no - I don\'t want to use mods or radar or even someone send me screenies. When I find one by accident then it will be a genuine treat.

[Nibb31]

There is very little chance of that ever happening.

The Mun has an area of 125 663 706 143 m², and you need to be at less than 2 000 m from the Munolith to vaguely see it as a black pixel. Chances are that even if you did land nearby by chance, you wouldn\'t even notice it unless you were less than a few hundred meters away.

[Excalibur]

I\'ve found the easiest way to find the Munoliths with this plugin is simply with a stopwatch.

Once my orbital recon had pinned down the approximate locations of the three Munoliths I would send down a stable, high mass fraction/high TWR lander equipped with the short range Muon Detector. I stipulate high mass fraction/highTWR as you\'ll likely want a good few minutes of loiter time hovering over the Munar surface.

At around 100-500m above the surface I\'d then zero out my vertical speed and head out in a random horizontal direction at constant horizontal velocity (100m/s or so).

Using the stopwatch (I used the one on my phone) I would time the interval between beeps using the Lap function. Although it\'s very difficult to accurately time the beep interval using human reflexes, the results are close enough to show the increase/decrease in interval trend.

After perhaps 20 beep intervals you\'ll soon be able to perceive whether you\'re moving towards or away from your target. If the beep interval increases, then reverse horizontal direction until beep interval decreases again. Take a note of this heading (it will denote your baseline once established).

Eventually you\'ll reach a \'peak\' where the time between beeps is at a minimum. This is the point of closest distance to target. Kill any horizontal velocity and pick a normal course (that is, perpendicular to your baseline - why you noted your heading earlier).

The time between beeps will either increase or decrease again. Once you find out in which perpendicular direction the beep interval decreases, simply keep heading in that direction until your detector goes nuts. You should pass within a hundred metres of a Munolith if you\'ve been reasonably careful with your timings and headings.

No messing around with drawing plots et cetera, takes only a few minutes! Probably sounds more complicated than it really is though... as I\'m hungover. :

[Zephram Kerman]

I did this in a cart. No hovering required.

I like your method of getting the bearing. Instead of this, I brought the long-range detector down to the surface on the cart. By driving in a circle, I could get a pretty good idea which way to go.

[noneyabidnis]

A method I use is to keep the larger finder with lights on my cart. Then I work out the 180 range where it\'s red, and the 180 range where it\'s green. I then go to 90 degrees on green. I stop every once in a while and ensure heading is still accurate. Once I started doing that, I found one pretty quickly. I just remember checking bearings on last time and thinking 'no.... it can\'t be down there...Really? There\'s no way. That\'s insane - how am I supposed to do that?' But, I stayed true to the method and sure enough, there was one down there.

[Excalibur]

I did this in a cart. No hovering required.

I like your method of getting the bearing. Instead of this, I brought the long-range detector down to the surface on the cart. By driving in a circle, I could get a pretty good idea which way to go.

I did originally set out to use carts however I\'m pretty impatient; I kept taking off at 50m/s and spiralling back into the ground with a very Kerbal firework show. So I switched to a hovering lander. No terrain worries as with the cart and you can traverse the surface much faster than on wheels; great if you lack the patience to trundle along the surface.

A method I use is to keep the larger finder with lights on my cart. Then I work out the 180 range where it\'s red, and the 180 range where it\'s green. I then go to 90 degrees on green. I stop every once in a while and ensure heading is still accurate. Once I started doing that, I found one pretty quickly. I just remember checking bearings on last time and thinking 'no.... it can\'t be down there...Really? There\'s no way. That\'s insane - how am I supposed to do that?' But, I stayed true to the method and sure enough, there was one down there.

Your method of location is essentially the same as mine... establish a baseline then head off on a normal course from it til you hit paydirt.

\'Great minds...\'

[MaverickSawyer]

Works great with the long range unit, but not able to find the light on the short range unit.