Kerbal Space Program

[Ulminati]

Getting better. I ran the mission with mechjeb once and noted down the velocities I needed using the ascent profile I used to get a 100km apoapsis.
(Straight up for 10km, 45 degree inclination until 20km, 60 degrees until 30km, 85 degrees at 45km). Since the speed needed to maintain an orbit at a given height is known (2245.8m/s for 100km), I can then wait until my vertical speed hits 0 and burn prograde/retrograde to adjust apoapsis/periapsis. It usually takes me 3-4 correction burns but I can get very, very close to 0 eccentricity this way.

Next step was timing the Hohmann transfer. For this I went slightly un-manley and set the Mün as my target for the additional approach indicator on my navball. (Still only using the navball and instruments to fly by). I noted down the approximate difference in angle between my prograde and approach vector when I started the Hohmanm burn and the final velocity I was moving at once it was done. This has reliably gotten me within 150km of the Mün on 3 successive attempts. Capture is simple enough at that point, although one time I found myself on a direct collision course with the Mün instead of being slightly ahead/behind it.

Next step I need to learn how to do properly is the landing. Since I'm using the Mk1 cockpit I can't actually see the surface during landing. I mostly just need some more practice determining when I need to start my initial suicide burn to lower my velocity enough that I can still break wirh the radar altimeter kicks in while still having fuel left over for the final approach. I managed to land once, but I hit with 13 m/s, which snapped off two of my landing legs and made it impossible for me to take off again.


Just when most of the "hard" things in KSP (rendezvous, docking, interplanetary operations) became trivial, Manley Mode has managed to make the most trivial things hard again.

 

[Hellraiser]

Landing properly doesn't seem to be that hard from IVA only. Sure you see jack shit but all you really need to see during landing is the navball. With a forgiving lander design as long as you don't land on top of an easter egg you should manage to touchdown safely on all but true vertical cliff. That's assuming the radar altimeter actually works properly.

Now if terrain scatter rocks had a collision mesh, now that would be hard.

 

[Ulminati]

Landing properly doesn't seem to be that hard from IVA only. Sure you see jack shit but all you really need to see during landing is the navball. With a forgiving lander design as long as you don't land on top of an easter egg you should manage to touchdown safely on all but true vertical cliff. That's assuming the radar altimeter actually works properly.

Now if terrain scatter rocks had a collision mesh, now that would be hard.

My lander design isn't very forgiving.

I'm going to make a few more attempts at this to get the timings right. I'll be streaming it if you want to call me a feeder noob scrub uninstall tetris

[edit]

K, stream ovah. Gotta work a bit more on the timings. My notes were at odds with what my navcomputer was telling me. More maths are needed before I can do this completely blind.

 

[Hellraiser]

Personally I would just go for overkill and do wide stiff legs with the new structural parts. In fact I want to attempt a IVA only Mun landing with this:

Hopefully the three small tanks are enough for a return. But the legs are the real killer here, if you botch it they are usually still intact enough to keep the lander pointed straight up. Usually the flat panels blow up first but the girder will survive. I use a similar approach for my kethane rigs:

The panels either blew up on loading/landing or they clipped beneath the surface. The remaining girders are enough to keep it standing still. Just add a decoupler to leave them on teh Mun like apollo did in real life, no need for legs in spess.

 

[Ulminati]

Well, I just did an IVA Münlanding on stream with Phoenix watching and soothing classical music. There was no return though. Even though the lander had plenty of fuel left over, I forgot to extend the landing legs and the resulting 2m/s collision with the Mün knocked the engine off my return stage

As for the vessel itself, it's pretty straightforward.

First two stages gets it to orbit with plenty of fuel for correction burns.
Third stage is a T800 tank with a LV909 engine which handles the TMI burn and brake for capture.
Fourth stage is 3 LV909 engines feeding inwards. The two external tanks are enough for landing if you do it perfectly. You do have some margin for error using the inner tank as well. Uou can get away with using about half of it and still have enough fuel for the return.
Fifth stage jettisons the two side engines and lander legs to save dry mass. As long as the T400 tank is more than half full, you should have enough fuel for orbit and return burn.
Sixth stage is capsule+parachutes for atmospheric reentry.

 

[Absalom]

The panels either blew up on loading/landing or they clipped beneath the surface. The remaining girders are enough to keep it standing still. Just add a decoupler to leave them on teh Mun like apollo did in real life, no need for legs in spess.

That's a cool looking rig! I might "borrow" it for my own designs. But how do you move the fuel from the rig to a spaceship?

So far I've gone with a station in space doing the converting for easy docking and refueling of visiting spaceships, with a carefully designed lander to actually mine it. All my ideas for a mining station on the surface ran into the same problem of not being able to move the fuel to another ship, defeating the purpose.

 

[Hellraiser]

Absalom there are two ways, one which is what I planned originally was to use the KAS mod (kerbal attachment system) to hook up docking ports to a winch on the mobile tanker (refinery-tanker combos in one ship are very inefficient, better have two seperate vessels) and extend them to make improvised fuel lines and just land dock. However there is an issue where if you undock there is a small ammount of force exerted to aid the separation of vessels. In orbit and on kerbin while noticeable it is not a problem. On the Mun, Minmus or Ike though that thing was enough to send the tanker rover doing somersaults 10 meters above the ground. Even without mods this is a problem. Anyway you can see some of the docking ports on top of some of the legs, those are the ones that survive either the landing or the reloading of the rig.

However the new version of KAS changed a few things so I need to check out if maybe the guy got around that land docking issue. That mod started originally as an attempt to do fuel lines but ended up drifting into making winches for cranes and other things. Here's the link to the mod if you're interested.

Anyway an easier way is to use the Romfarer's laz0r mod. It has a resource transfer laser which works within a 1000 or 500 meter range. You also only need it on one vessel because you can use it to transfer fuel to and from other vessels. The downside is the mod loads every vessel into memory (as opposed to just those within 2,5 km of the one you are controling) so there is a very noticeable load time and performance decrease. It is unlikely that the mod will be updated with a solution to that problem as Romfarer was hired by Squad recently and he's working on stuff related to resources.

Since the topic has been bumped I'll add that both flags and kerbal seats are indeed in the WIP 0.20 build. Flags are fully customizable in .png format and can also be used as decals on rockets and are also displayed around the space center. Also you can name planting sites and add flavour text I believe. Soon Polant have actual flag on many body of Kerbin system!

Unfortunately it turned out resources are more work than expected, again. So the whole system will be introduced in pieces in a few updates starting from the next one, we'll probably get just the ingame knowledge database. Maybe something else.



Also news has been slow recently because one of the community managers quit, which is also why there were no dev streams for the past 3 weeks or so (in addition to the official forum going tits up and wiping everything after october, r00fles!). But the devs managed to optimize some key stuff, particularly regarding memory usage after they talked to other teams using unity and the unity devs themselves. Less crashes, better performance and most importantly detailed planets will load only when needed. That last part was a barrier to adding more planets AFAIK.

Hopefully the update will come this month.

 

[Absalom]

Anyway an easier way is to use the Romfarer's laz0r mod. It has a resource transfer laser which works within a 1000 or 500 meter range. You also only need it on one vessel because you can use it to transfer fuel to and from other vessels. The downside is the mod loads every vessel into memory (as opposed to just those within 2,5 km of the one you are controling) so there is a very noticeable load time and performance decrease. It is unlikely that the mod will be updated with a solution to that problem as Romfarer was hired by Squad recently and he's working on stuff related to resources.

Yeah the performance issue is what kills it for me. I just bought a new video card so I can get better performance, I'm not gonna add a mod just to go down again. And also that mod seemed a bit "cheaty" to me, shooping kerbals and fuel at lightspeed is fun but a bit silly.

But yeah the flags look beast and will help in the sense that after a while you have to hunt to find stuff to do (the decals will help rockets from looking samey); the resource system taking longer than expected is fine, I like this game enough that anything is good. I'm like an abused spouse that way.

You should update your lp d00d. And "ingame knowledge database?"

 

[Hellraiser]

I have no time for LPs unfortunately, work, life sucks etc.

The knowledge database is basically a journal meets wiki hybrid for your space program. Contains basic information like planet orbit and size and you fill it up, you send a probe and get measurements of gravity/atmo, it gets updated with that. It also lists all missions you sent to a body, what you sent into orbit , what you landed etc. They need to track that for career mode mission generation for one. Also it will list resources and resource locations once you scan for them. Your spacecraft and kerbals along with their stats will also be listed inside of it.

 

[Absalom]

That's desperately needed. Also that's a wicked rocket sled up there you posted; I'm assuming pilot able "seats" are going in the update soon. Kerbal is the gift that keeps giving

 

[Hellraiser]

The new KAS mod version is pure even if it totally breaks previous versions of craft using KAS parts

Check this out:

You have a connector "hook" now and small radial/stack connector ports. Extend the cable as usual until it's at a level your green dolts can grab it from. You walk to it with a kerbal in EVA, grab it and have him walk and plug the thing into the connector port. Just like a proper fuel line should.

After its plugged in you switch the mode, that basically changes the connected vessel's status to docked. Transfer fuel as usual and then just right click on the connection port set mode to undocked and unplug it without having to EVA again. No more undocking force making land docking a low g hazard.

Basically good for tankers I want to use to refuel SSTO shuttles, also better for orbital refueling as you don't need to fully dock just fly into the vicinity.

Finally, true EVA fuel lines major . Also apart from the eloctromagnet and suction-cup there are now grappling hooks. Perfect way to steal remove Lenmark satellite from inventory for benefit of Polant.

 

[Absalom]

Honestly that is worth the mod alone. I can finally make mining Mun semi-profitable. What other mods do you use?

 

[Hellraiser]

After purging the installation I use mechjeb, kethane, firespitter, aviation lights and KAS.

Mechjeb 2 is good, lots of telemetry, does delta-v and TWR calculation for each stage by itself (although it has issues sometimes), can setup maneuver nodes based on number-based commands rather than click and dragging them, also can be used to check coordinates of surface locations. That's all in addition to the autopilot bit, although personally I prefer to fly everything manually and just let it do long slow burns for me especially with laggy craft. A very useful tool if only for the data read outs.

The Firespitter mod adds some nice plane parts, most notably propellers in both electric and conventional variants, airbrakes (a bit too good). Also helicopter rotors, VTOL propellers and some other bits. Part models are a bit underwhelming visually, most notably the cockpits and textures overall. Nice to screw around with though, VTOL craft including helicopters are a bitch to make and fly.

Aviation lights are just a bunch of lights which quite frankly could use an update to use action groups. As they're one of the "hackier" mods they bumped up the initial loading of the game considerably. Also the light effect could use some touching up. Just fluff.

 

[Absalom]

Don't you have to manually update all your ships from mechjeb 1 to 2 if they already had the old version? It looks very much superior to the old one (also, sleeker gui,) I'm upgrading with my next installation purge. Docking without all the extra info from the rendezvous module just gets tedious real fast.

You tried the HOME pack? Also, that mod that introduces life support and other "realistic" resources will also get added when I get bored with Kethane.

It's hard to find a mod that introduces actually good looking parts without it being cheaty just from a general use standpoint.

 

[Ulminati]

3 mods that also come in really handy:

Kerbal alarm clock. Set it to kill time warp and alert you when your ships are about to change SOI, maneuver nodes are approaching, transfer/rendezvous windows are coming up, etc.

Haystack. A filterable, searchable list of everything you have in orbit, available from the map view, with options to target/control it. Super handy once your low-Kerbin orbit gets cluttered with old missions.

Sub-assembly loader. Adds a button to the VAB/SPH that allows you to save parts of your vehicle for later retrieval. Build the lifting rocket once. Then copy and paste it unto all your payloads.



Plus of course KAS, mechjeb and quantum struts. Also, b5 aerospace has some really sweet new cockpits with detailed interiors if you want to fly things in IVA mode.

 

[Absalom]

Sub-assembly loader. Adds a button to the VAB/SPH that allows you to save parts of your vehicle for later retrieval. Build the lifting rocket once. Then copy and paste it unto all your payloads.

Oh god yes. That mod saved me so much time, why isn't that functionality already in the game? Same with the rest, except quantum struts. I can understand why you use them but I've never built anything big enough to really need them. Still, aesthetic reasons maybe.

 

[Ulminati]

Quantum struts are good for eliminating wobble at docking ports. Most missions outside Kerbin, mun and minmus where I plan to return usually involves orbital assembly of sub-components.

 

[Absalom]

Well yeah same here. I just don't get much wobble- it's never been a problem for me. And christ looking at the official forum they are planning to go all out for the flags in the next update. You can design a misson patch for each mission!

 

[Absalom]

Fairing Factory is a great little website if you're ocd/ want a better looking rocket. It allows you to create custom fairings and is fairly intuitive. This one below took less than 3 minutes. Sure it's unnecessary and will only be used for the ascent but it's just such a nifty thing to do.

There are 3 more textures in addition to this one as well. No doubt as the game gets updated, the website will be updated as well with more.

 

[Ulminati]

Not even Polant would use that many SRBs to get such a tiny payload into space.

If your stage 1 TWR is bigger than 3.0, you're going to waste the majority of your fuel to atmospheric drag in the 0-10km range. And your SRBs will likely burn out before you make it much further. You could dump 4 of them without altering your ascent profile.

 

[Absalom]

Not even Polant would use that many SRBs to get such a tiny payload into space.

If your stage 1 TWR is bigger than 3.0, you're going to waste the majority of your fuel to atmospheric drag in the 0-10km range. And your SRBs will likely burn out before you make it much further. You could dump 4 of them without altering your ascent profile.

Ja I just realized that. Wow I was not thinking when I was designing that.

 

[Hellraiser]

Not even Polant would use that many SRBs to get such a tiny payload into space.

Polant didn't, but the Spess Transportation Corporation did.

That's 23 SRBs to get the rover into Munar orbit (this was a direct munar ascent, no parking orbit). The liquid fuel stages only did the final burn to reach the Mun's SoI, the orbital injection and the descent. The payload is a small rover.

 

[Absalom]

Direct ascent eh? The first time I entered the Müns' SOI was an accidental direct ascent. I left that poor bastard stranded in Münar orbit for like 30 yrs until I learned more about the game. How did you design your rover?

 

[Hellraiser]

Like so:

Basically a bunch of structural parts to put the solar panels on them. Landed on top of a rocket sled, decoupler launched it like 2 meter above the ground on the Mun while the seperatrons pushes the structural assembly away sliding it into the horizon. Looked quite hilarious.

I did the rover and the rocket sled lander in the SPH then copied the file to the VAB folder.

 

[Absalom]

Nice! It's a natural progression from sky crane to rocket sleigh, though rocket sleigh technology will get significantly more awesome in the next update with command seats. As for the SPH -> VAB trick, why not use Sub Assembly loader? It's how I got the Delorean from the Kerbal forums onto Dres.