Question for anyone using KAS/KIS: I cannot figure out for the life of me how to attach a part in a kerbonaut inventory, like a winch adapter port or a small science part, to either another ship or the same ship. Is this normal? I mean, I can use 'G' to place it, but it refuses to attach to any actual surface. Is there another key you're supposed to be hitting? It get the green model and everything, but it just floats away.
In the past, A Mechanic is Jeb (which isn't updated) let me do the same thing, so I never used KAS for that purpose--maybe I'm missing something?
You need to have a wrench or drill equipped (have the wrench in your inventory, then press the associated keypad number to equip). Then (either press or hold down, I forget which) the H key to attach things. I think it also needs to be an engineer.
The key to attach stuff and not just drop it on the ground is H
H is for "Hilariously, my engineer tried taking an antenna off of a nearby rover to attach to the ground base, pressed G and dropped it on the ground, where it promptly exploded. On Minmus. Twice.*"
Question for anyone using KAS/KIS: I cannot figure out for the life of me how to attach a part in a kerbonaut inventory, like a winch adapter port or a small science part, to either another ship or the same ship. Is this normal? I mean, I can use 'G' to place it, but it refuses to attach to any actual surface. Is there another key you're supposed to be hitting? It get the green model and everything, but it just floats away.
In the past, A Mechanic is Jeb (which isn't updated) let me do the same thing, so I never used KAS for that purpose--maybe I'm missing something?
You need to have a wrench or drill equipped (have the wrench in your inventory, then press the associated keypad number to equip). Then (either press or hold down, I forget which) the H key to attach things. I think it also needs to be an engineer.
Okay, I actually thought the wrench was for restoring "damaged" parts--but that might also be a hold-over from Deadly Reentry. I'll try both, thanks comrades.
So the Dres mission got off to a rocky start. The fuel, propulsion, and command modules were launched separately and docked in orbit, where it was discovered that the propulsion module's LV-N engine nacelles, which extend on Infernal Robotics pistons, had broken their fuel lines, leaving them with a scant 200 units of liquid fuel available, or roughly 300 delta-V. Definitely not enough to get to Dres and back. Adam Kerman, our flight engineer, went out on an EVA to repair them, only to learn that fuel lines can't be reattached on both ends in flight using KIS; you need to use a special KAS hose for that. We brought spare stock fuel lines, but none of these newfangled ones.
So a supply container was loaded onto a rocket, using the same delivery mechanism we use to service Kerbin Station. It was loaded with KAS fuel hoses and struts. Of course it made the rendezvous on the night side so by the time the sun came up and we could actually see it, it had drifted 200m away from the ship, making for a long and boring EVA for Adam, who retrieved the canister and swapped it for one of the empties on the mission craft. Then he set about attaching all the fuel hose end points to the central tank and the smaller tanks on the nacelles and connecting them one at a time, collecting all the useless fuel lines (also one at a time) and stuffing them in the discarded canister. Then he reboarded and checked the delta-V readouts.
Still only 300 dV. WTF. Apparently the KAS fuel hoses only work between vessels and will not automatically transfer fuel from one tank to another on the same vessel, making them useless.
All this took about an hour including the resupply launch and all the EVA work, which is super annoying since KIS disables your jet pack controls while you're manipulating a part. In the end I just had to install TAC fuel balancer to un-fuck the mission. Wheeee!
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
No, because as long as the IR pistons are on there the fuel lines can still randomly break on load, and those pistons are the only thing keeping the drive section down to a reasonable size for launch. It's just over 5m wide collapsed and almost double that deployed.
If I wanted to deal with a wobbly mess I could make a compact pusher-style drive module but I haaaaaate wobble and the alternative is a strutstravaganza which is like eye-poison. I almost always use push/pull configs for tugs.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
As you can see in my imgur albums and particularly this pic, my current design has outriggers one struct long, with fixed fuel lines. Wobble is... manageable, though less so on really long stacks, 'cause I do tend to mount in a mostly pusher config and wind up pushing a noodle from about 2/3 back in the line. If I put that up front, it'd probably work fine.
Yeah the wobble doesn't come from the offset distance of the engines from the core stack, but from the overall length. My tugs are positioned at about the midpoint so the big heavy fuel tank roughly cancels out the long skinny payload in front. If it was all the way at the back it'd be much more wobbly.
Also blahlbah roleplay something something don't put kerbals behind nuclear engines rabble rabble gigantic pancake fairings
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Here's a shot of the ship in solar orbit with all the panels out, processing some solar science on the way to Dres:
Meanwhile, the science mission on Minmus Orbital Station is winding down, with the biomes having been almost stripped clean. This station used the same basic design as Kerbin Orbital but with a few more parts I unlocked in further tech nodes. Once the scientists come home it will probably be repurposed to serve as a waystation for ISRU mining operations on the surface.
And finally, the Mun Orbital Station just opened for business. Again, using the same basic truss structure but with the addition of a large LFO tank since the Mun lander doesn't run on monoprop alone. It went up in six launches, hence the six Minotaur upper stage/munar insertion vehicles hanging off every free docking port like a swarm of remoras. I need to figure out something to do with those; they're fully kitted out to push payloads around Kerbin SOI but every new payload goes up with a new one. Maybe I'll task Bill with coming up with a use for them.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
It went up in six launches, hence the six Minotaur upper stage/munar insertion vehicles hanging off every free docking port like a swarm of remoras. I need to figure out something to do with those; they're fully kitted out to push payloads around Kerbin SOI but every new payload goes up with a new one. Maybe I'll task Bill with coming up with a use for them.
Why launch a tug with every payload? If you keep a LKO depot station you can just have a few that hang out there when not on missions elsewhere in the SOI.
You do have to burn fuel to get them back to the depot after they make their deliveries, but it probably pays for itself by not having to launch one with every station segment or whatever. Just means you have to deliver fuel to your LKO depot periodically.
My lifters are designed to cut out juuuuuust before pulling pe out of the atmosphere (boo hiss orbital debris) so the payload needs to deliver that extra push. And I figure if I'm putting an engine on there, I might as well give it enough dV to deliver the payload anywhere in Kerbin's SOI.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
My lifters are designed to cut out juuuuuust before pulling pe out of the atmosphere (boo hiss orbital debris) so the payload needs to deliver that extra push. And I figure if I'm putting an engine on there, I might as well give it enough dV to deliver the payload anywhere in Kerbin's SOI.
Build your final lifter stage with a probe core and a tiny dV surplus, then just have it make a small burn to deorbit! Or if you have a slightly underweight payload (which happens if you have a few standard lifters instead of customizing for each launch), dock with your LKO depot and transfer the extra fuel, then deorbit.
I mean in a sense, all of those extra tugs you have are orbital debris, they're just debris that can move around. :P
Does anyone know where I could find values for the amount of time it would take for a round trip to Duna and back from Kerbin? Actually, it'd be helpful to know for all the planets.
I'm trying to come up with a very efficient Duna mission involving the USI Life Support mod. The last time I went to visit another planet with a Life Support mod, I was way below estimate, and two times before that I had 4 times what I needed.
So I got a particular itch and started a new save - Career Lite so started with the tech tree maxed out and enough funds to launch one big rocket to set up a mostly unnecessary communications network. Using Antenna Range which is basically RemoteTech Lite, since it's really close to what we'll be getting with 1.1 so the satellites sort of have a use. Also, this:
Yup, it's Outer Planets. The green orbit is Jool. We're gonna need Near Future electric, solar, and construction for this. I also chopped up a bunch of other mods and ripped out a handful of solar panels here, antennas there.
We got SCANSats!
We got Comm Sats!
We got lots of Comm Sats!
And we got this thing, which looks rather unimpressive now but is soon going to grow into something.... bigger.
Stay tuned.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Not gonna lie, undocking the first one and watching it glide straight out of the bay with about a centimeter of clearance on all sides.... well, I'll be in my bunk.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
You know the payload is something special when the fairing is half the height of the rocket.
Wat's this now?
Let's send it to Minmus.
Yeah, that'll do for now. Once the first crew gets out there they can play around with all those servos and get everything set up, but KAC says there's a transfer window for Sarnus coming up so our attention is drawn elsewhere.
Sarnus Vanguard is a relay and mapping satellite delivery vehicle that's going to blanket the Outer Planets version of Saturn with SCANSats and teeny-tiny micro-relays. The launch is an absolute slideshow with the payload clocking in at 250+ parts. Once we get to space things get much smoother though. You'd think with everything tucked behind a fairing the game wouldn't try to calculate atmospheric effects on every single part, but you'd be wrong.
Those Communotron-88s are the only antenna strong enough to reach Kerbin from Sarnus, so you get a dish! and you get a dish! and you get a dish! We have an ion propelled, RTG-powered SCANSat for each moon (plus one backup), each of which deploys its own constellation of relay satellites to ensure 100% network uptime to base. That's right, our satellites have satellites. Dawg. Thanks to Tweakscale each relay weighs in at a featherweight 0.15 tons and carries only enough propellant to stabilize its orbit. By the time we're done Sarnus is going to have better network speeds than West Virginia.
Burning for Sarnus, with the big 2.5m Lightbulb NERVA from Atomic Age. Damn if that thing doesn't get HOT though, it will overheat with anything less than two of the gigantic radiator panels. The price we pay for 1200 ISP and a positive TWR. Well that and the weight. The whole satellite payload? less than 9 tons. That engine? 20. But: 7,000 delta-V on a half-size tank of LF.
This rocket cost 1.4 million of my 1.8 million kerbucks, and that was all payload. The big Near Future RTGs are expensive as hell but absolutely necessary to run ion engines that far out. Now we have to farm up some cash because there's an Urlum (Uranus) window opening in less than a month and a very slightly smaller version of this mission is going there too.
Also work continues on.... whatever this is.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
As someone who doesn't have nearly the required patience for RemoteTech or its ilk (and is probably more anxious than he should be about the upcoming relay implementation) I have tons of appreciation for anyone with the patience to actually put a relay together.
When I ever get around to that Duna trip with my USI Mods playthrough, I'll have to take some pictures.
Antenna Range is a lot less rigid than RemoteTech (and a lot less finicky, too). The three antennas have range enough to reach Stationary orbit (or Mun if you're using OPM); Minmus; and [everywhere else]. At KSC you can opt-in to "Probes require connection to control" and "Line of Sight gets blocked by planets" and toggle them off any time you want. Even outside their ideal range they can still transmit science (and control probes) up to a maximum range. They automatically re-route through nearby ships with bigger dishes so you don't need to point each antenna at a particular place, which means you really only need one antenna on each craft instead of 6-10. The entirety of Kerbin is considered Mission Control, not just KSC. Antennas don't constantly drain electricity. There's no signal delay (get fucked, c).
Relays can be much smaller and less complicated. You can probably cover the whole Kerbin system with three satellites (at Minmus L3/L4/L5).
It's very, very close to what the stock system is going to be so if you want to get used to it now's a good time.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
The first crew arrives at the recently-delivered Minmus Station-in-a-Can and begins setting up shop:
First, the communications array is deployed, and then the solar panel struts are unfolded. Each strut involves 4 (or 6) points of articulation on Infernal Robotics parts that allow a huge offset distance from the station when the panels are activated, while remaining extremely compact during transport.
I could watch these things unfold all fucking day.
Bill goes outside to unpack the external stowage racks. They prevent the solar panel struts from lying flush with the hull in this configuration.
This station is a testbed for similar outposts I want to put into orbit around other planets. The amount of solar power generated is total overkill for Kerbin, but out around Duna or Dres it will be needed.
Later, when the lander is delivered along with a decent quantity of monopropellant, Bill performs another EVA to inspect the docking and replace an antenna on the robotic Minotaur transfer stage. KIS is so damned useful.
Meanwhile, on Minmus, we finally got enough of a preliminary ore scan done to drop a lander/rover on the surface with the other two sensors to pinpoint a good spot for a mining base. As luck would have it, we found a spot on the flats right near the equator with 9% ore. In other games I'd fooled around with skycranes and landers with tiny rovers in cargo bays and they're all so fiddly in the light gravity so this time I just said fuck it and put wheels on the lander so it can just fire up the engine and cruise along on the frictionless wheels. The landing leg was to tip it forward onto the wheels. Pretty good design I think.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
In general you get lots of missions to scan the Mun and Minimus, if you use a probe equipped with a communications dish to do the job it basically pays for itself.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I love docking so much, especially with the rendezvous autopilot and the docking port alignment indicator. I keep trying to find ways to incorporate docking into my stuff.
Work continues on the Minmus base. The first crew of engineers went down in the new shuttle/escape vehicle. It has enough fuel to reach the orbital station or return to Kerbin directly in the event of an emergency.
The next drop was a service and power module, shown here in its collapsed configuration.
At dawn, Dany Kerman heads out to activate the servos that raise and rotate the solar panel array to face the sun. The top of the tower also mounts an array of spotlights for nighttime operations. Once that's done, Dany pulls out some supplies from the storage can on the service module and hooks up the KIS pipes to share resources between the modules.
And finally, the drilling platform lands and is similarly attached. When the fuel carriers arrive empty, they'll be hooked up to the pipe network and filled with LFO.
Meanwhile, the orbital construction continues around Kerbin. We're going to be doing a lot of launches, so it's decided that an empty fuel container should be attached so the robotic upper stage/transfer vehicles can dump their excess propellant before deorbiting.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Really nice design(s) there. I'm getting some inspiration for the next version of my own "generic station core," which was already somewhat similar, but without all the neat IR unfolding and telescoping stuff.
And yes, KAS and its successor KIS is super useful.
Also setting up a comm network in RemoteTech isn't too hard. I use 5 (could easily 3 or 4 as well) satellites in a equatorial orbit of Kerbin with just an antenna, and then position them about 1Mm up and as close to equidistant as I cant while adjusting each orbits so the orbital periods are as close to matching as possible. Then I put 2 Deep Space CommSats in highly eliptical polar orbits but opposite orbits (One with the Apo above the north pole, one above the south pole), but timed so they are at their apoapsis when the other is at the periapsis. And again, adjust the orbital periods to match. On each of the DSCS's I'll put at least 2 dishes, one on each is set to point at Current Vessel and the other is set to point at the planet I'll be working in. Using this setup the only downtime is when Kerbin and the other planet are on opposite sides Kerbol so I plan my missions to avoid this time. If I really want/need absolute 100% coverage I'll put 4 relays in equidistant and period-matching* orbits near Kerbol with 4 dishes each: 2 pointed at either neighbor, 1 pointed at Kerbin, and the last pointed at current vessel.
Trans-Keptunian: for when you absolutely, positively need to spend five hours in time warp getting to yet another rock at the edge of the solar system. It's a shame because some of the planet models look pretty cool but gat damn that travel time.
Meanwhile, in LKO:
OK I think it should be pretty obvious by now that we're building a space station. What's going to set this one apart is the sheer scale of it, consisting of nearly all 2.5m parts. To reduce part count I've installed the dev release of the part welding mod that turned this truss segment from 80+ parts to less than 30. It's basically a near future hollow octo-girder stuffed full of batteries and monoprop tanks in a layout that's both functional and greebley. Outside are mounted a bunch of docking ports, radiators, and lots of lights.
To send up the next module we're going to use a prototype spaceplane to work out the kinks in the design.
It's a split-wing design that uses the Mk4 spaceplane dual-mode engines (basically a 4x RAPIER) and can fairly easily loft a full orange tank. This cargo is considerably lighter and the plane goes supersonic right off the runway. Here we are at altitude, accelerating to plaid.
And in orbit, bay doors open and solar panels out with 700+ dV in the tanks:
The payload is a habitation and storage module that can comfortably house six kerbals and a sizeable amount of spare parts. We rendezvous with the station shortly before dawn.
The payload is moved out of the cargo bay and docked to the station via robotic tug. While the tug parks itself at a spare docking port, flight engineer Serena Kerman EVAs to the station to inspect the construction. She'll stay up to perform a bit of housekeeping as the next modules arrive.
Its mission completed, the shuttle undocks and reenters. Unfortunately the control surfaces on the rear wing don't survive re-entry heating and every one of them explodes; lucky for us Jeb is at the controls and brings it down in the vicinity of the runway using only canards and RCS for attitude control. Co-pilot Valentina has some choice words for the engineers, however.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Trans-Keptunian: for when you absolutely, positively need to spend five hours in time warp getting to yet another rock at the edge of the solar system. It's a shame because some of the planet models look pretty cool but gat damn that travel time.
Trans-Keptunian: for when you absolutely, positively need to spend five hours in time warp getting to yet another rock at the edge of the solar system. It's a shame because some of the planet models look pretty cool but gat damn that travel time.
Yess! Two more mods I never knew existed, and now can't possibly live without!
Sent up a couple more modules to the space station. First: a second hab/storage module. Serena went out on EVA to attach the KIS storage containers to the exterior to free up some internal space, and then strapped one to her back while she flew around collecting all the unneeded RCS quads scattered around all the modules. Gotta get that part count down!
Ahh, much cleaner.
For the next segment we're going to need a really, really big cargo bay. Fortunately there's a Mk4 spaceplane parts mod for that.
This monster was originally designed to haul huge, ridiculously heavy payloads into orbit but even with six 2.5m dual mode engines it didn't have the legs to get there with the two massive 3.75m fuel tanks I stuffed in the bay. However, it could absolutely deal with this particular payload, which was lightweight but extremely bulky. There are so many fuel tanks on this beast it had almost 2000 dV in orbit.
These solar panels are from the KOSMOS pack and I actually had to tweak them down by 20% to fit in the Mk4 cargo bay, they're just that gigantic.
Re-entry in this behemoth did not go well. Despite filling up the station's tank and pumping all the excess fuel forward, it was still nearly impossible to control lower in the atmosphere. Definitely needs more control surfaces as the two tweakscaled shuttle tail fins I was using as wings couldn't handle both pitch and roll at the same time. Also the two nuclear engines (which turned out utterly unnecessary) I added just before the flight pulled the dry COM back juuuuuuust enough for it to turn supermaneuverable. It went into a flat spin and the crew had to ditch it over the ocean west of KSC.
And by ditch it I mean stand it on its tail and burn off the rest of the gas leveraging that 1.2 TWR.
I'll say this for the Mk4 parts - they can take a fucking pounding. Lost all of the engines and wings but the main fuselage was undamaged and the crew made it home alive.
(As a side note: I love spaceplanes to death but they are so damn time intensive. Everything takes longer than it does with rockets. Longer ascent, longer/more complicated re-entry. And none of it can be automated to save time the way MechJeb can loft a rocket or land on a dime.)
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
The first crew arrives at the recently-delivered Minmus Station-in-a-Can and begins setting up shop:
First, the communications array is deployed, and then the solar panel struts are unfolded. Each strut involves 4 (or 6) points of articulation on Infernal Robotics parts that allow a huge offset distance from the station when the panels are activated, while remaining extremely compact during transport.
I could watch these things unfold all fucking day.
Bill goes outside to unpack the external stowage racks. They prevent the solar panel struts from lying flush with the hull in this configuration.
This station is a testbed for similar outposts I want to put into orbit around other planets. The amount of solar power generated is total overkill for Kerbin, but out around Duna or Dres it will be needed.
Later, when the lander is delivered along with a decent quantity of monopropellant, Bill performs another EVA to inspect the docking and replace an antenna on the robotic Minotaur transfer stage. KIS is so damned useful.
Meanwhile, on Minmus, we finally got enough of a preliminary ore scan done to drop a lander/rover on the surface with the other two sensors to pinpoint a good spot for a mining base. As luck would have it, we found a spot on the flats right near the equator with 9% ore. In other games I'd fooled around with skycranes and landers with tiny rovers in cargo bays and they're all so fiddly in the light gravity so this time I just said fuck it and put wheels on the lander so it can just fire up the engine and cruise along on the frictionless wheels. The landing leg was to tip it forward onto the wheels. Pretty good design I think.
Infernal Robotics has limited uses, but in certain applications it really does shine. Nice work.
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JacobyOHHHHH IT’S A SNAKECreature - SnakeRegistered Userregular
I've been trying @DivideByZero's career tutorial. I didn't realize how much thinner the atmosphere is now.
Jeb made it to space just fine. Coming back? Well, the lithobraking tests didn't go according to plan... In that there wasn't supposed to be any lithobraking.
The rep bump (from all the contracts) tells me he died a hero. Makes sense.
Shallow descent seems to be the main takeaway here. Any other advice?
Chutes will rip off if you're going more than 250m/s, and will burn up if you try opening them in the early re-entry, or if the re-entry flames blast against the chute. Your best bet is to put them on top of a capsule where they're shielded from the heat, and make sure to remain shield-first during your reentry.
Yeah they've put out at least two updates since I wrote that tutorial? And each one fucked with the atmosphere, heating, or both. You can't make a safe ballistic descent anymore. Gotta come in shallow or you won't have time to deploy chutes before hitting the ground. A basic gravity turn to 45 degrees should allow that first liquid fueled rocket to escape the atmosphere with enough time to run & collect experiments before re-entering, and a shallow enough entry that you won't burn up.
According to Squad the stock chutes are designed to safely deploy at 250 m/s.
edit: also I never had a chance to try out that landing leg mod because it corrupts all my ships with legs and glitches them unusable in the VAB.
DivideByZero on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Shallow descent seems to be the main takeaway here. Any other advice?
I try to aim for a 40-50km periapsis for re-entry, it's ok to make multiple passes if need be, and having fuel left for a retrograde burn during re-entry can help too. Also, I when I think I've enough parachutes on I always add one more just to be safe, which I then use as a tester because it's easy to activate them too early and break the parachute.
And to switch gears a bit, meet the Kerbal Space Agency's newest launch vehicle
In this configuration it's carrying 6 CommSats, total of ~10tons above the lifter, and it'll take this craft up to a 2000km orbit still have 2000ΔV left after the orbit's circularized. It's made with the necrobones suite (SpaceY, Modular Rocket System, Fuel Tanks Plus) which is a bit of an OP mod suite, but I don't really care.
A quick look at the cargo before taking it to the launchpad. Each service bay has 2 CommSats that have a tiny solid booster on each satellite that pushes the probe out while the antenna and solar panels are activated.
Liftoff!
And the side LFO Boosters are out
And we have successful separation.
Release the probes!
Other mods seen are Surface Mounted Lights (See last picture, the light on the CommSats), BoxSat, and EngineLights, which turns each engine into a light source while powered (This is effect is best seen in the separation screenshot, and you'll wonder why you ever did night launches without this before.
All my captures from Mun/Minmus are done at a 30km pe because I hate going around twice. As long as a heat shield or engine is pointed down there's no danger of overheating unless you have a bunch of fragile parts attached radially (that's what service bays are for!). For crew transfers and general purpose use I fly a variant on the SDHI stockalike service module which gets ditched on reentry:
I mean sure it could probably land itself intact with a combination of chutes and engines but I just never get tired of watching this:
The solar panels (and antennas) are from AIES which just updated to 1.04; they're bigger than the stock panels (not that this thing really has any serious power demands) but most important I love the way they look. Sadly there's no AntennaRange config for the AIES antennas so they're mostly decorative. It's launched on an Ares-I-style SRB with a liquid upper stage.
For crew transfers in LKO the standard "Korion" module is enough, but it lacks the legs to get to the moons, so I have a Block II variant with an extra 1.875m LFO tank (Home Grown Rockets, or I guess you could TweakScale it) and that's enough to do a round-trip anywhere in Kerbin SOI. Of course that extra fuel means extra weight which means a bigger upper stage which means a bigger SRB to get it into orbit:
(@veevee I've never tried the SpaceY family of mods because I'm obsessed with aesthetics and IMO those engine models look like, I dunno, plastic? Like they're toys. That's a baller lifter though. Very Falcon Heavy.)
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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You need to have a wrench or drill equipped (have the wrench in your inventory, then press the associated keypad number to equip). Then (either press or hold down, I forget which) the H key to attach things. I think it also needs to be an engineer.
Okay, I actually thought the wrench was for restoring "damaged" parts--but that might also be a hold-over from Deadly Reentry. I'll try both, thanks comrades.
So a supply container was loaded onto a rocket, using the same delivery mechanism we use to service Kerbin Station. It was loaded with KAS fuel hoses and struts. Of course it made the rendezvous on the night side so by the time the sun came up and we could actually see it, it had drifted 200m away from the ship, making for a long and boring EVA for Adam, who retrieved the canister and swapped it for one of the empties on the mission craft. Then he set about attaching all the fuel hose end points to the central tank and the smaller tanks on the nacelles and connecting them one at a time, collecting all the useless fuel lines (also one at a time) and stuffing them in the discarded canister. Then he reboarded and checked the delta-V readouts.
Still only 300 dV. WTF. Apparently the KAS fuel hoses only work between vessels and will not automatically transfer fuel from one tank to another on the same vessel, making them useless.
All this took about an hour including the resupply launch and all the EVA work, which is super annoying since KIS disables your jet pack controls while you're manipulating a part. In the end I just had to install TAC fuel balancer to un-fuck the mission. Wheeee!
If I wanted to deal with a wobbly mess I could make a compact pusher-style drive module but I haaaaaate wobble and the alternative is a strutstravaganza which is like eye-poison. I almost always use push/pull configs for tugs.
Also blahlbah roleplay something something don't put kerbals behind nuclear engines rabble rabble gigantic pancake fairings
Meanwhile, the science mission on Minmus Orbital Station is winding down, with the biomes having been almost stripped clean. This station used the same basic design as Kerbin Orbital but with a few more parts I unlocked in further tech nodes. Once the scientists come home it will probably be repurposed to serve as a waystation for ISRU mining operations on the surface.
And finally, the Mun Orbital Station just opened for business. Again, using the same basic truss structure but with the addition of a large LFO tank since the Mun lander doesn't run on monoprop alone. It went up in six launches, hence the six Minotaur upper stage/munar insertion vehicles hanging off every free docking port like a swarm of remoras. I need to figure out something to do with those; they're fully kitted out to push payloads around Kerbin SOI but every new payload goes up with a new one. Maybe I'll task Bill with coming up with a use for them.
Why launch a tug with every payload? If you keep a LKO depot station you can just have a few that hang out there when not on missions elsewhere in the SOI.
You do have to burn fuel to get them back to the depot after they make their deliveries, but it probably pays for itself by not having to launch one with every station segment or whatever. Just means you have to deliver fuel to your LKO depot periodically.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Build your final lifter stage with a probe core and a tiny dV surplus, then just have it make a small burn to deorbit! Or if you have a slightly underweight payload (which happens if you have a few standard lifters instead of customizing for each launch), dock with your LKO depot and transfer the extra fuel, then deorbit.
I mean in a sense, all of those extra tugs you have are orbital debris, they're just debris that can move around. :P
I'm trying to come up with a very efficient Duna mission involving the USI Life Support mod. The last time I went to visit another planet with a Life Support mod, I was way below estimate, and two times before that I had 4 times what I needed.
MechJeb's Advanced Transfer To Another Planet function does this too.
Yup, it's Outer Planets. The green orbit is Jool. We're gonna need Near Future electric, solar, and construction for this. I also chopped up a bunch of other mods and ripped out a handful of solar panels here, antennas there.
We got SCANSats!
We got Comm Sats!
We got lots of Comm Sats!
And we got this thing, which looks rather unimpressive now but is soon going to grow into something.... bigger.
Stay tuned.
Wat's this now?
Let's send it to Minmus.
Yeah, that'll do for now. Once the first crew gets out there they can play around with all those servos and get everything set up, but KAC says there's a transfer window for Sarnus coming up so our attention is drawn elsewhere.
Sarnus Vanguard is a relay and mapping satellite delivery vehicle that's going to blanket the Outer Planets version of Saturn with SCANSats and teeny-tiny micro-relays. The launch is an absolute slideshow with the payload clocking in at 250+ parts. Once we get to space things get much smoother though. You'd think with everything tucked behind a fairing the game wouldn't try to calculate atmospheric effects on every single part, but you'd be wrong.
Those Communotron-88s are the only antenna strong enough to reach Kerbin from Sarnus, so you get a dish! and you get a dish! and you get a dish! We have an ion propelled, RTG-powered SCANSat for each moon (plus one backup), each of which deploys its own constellation of relay satellites to ensure 100% network uptime to base. That's right, our satellites have satellites. Dawg. Thanks to Tweakscale each relay weighs in at a featherweight 0.15 tons and carries only enough propellant to stabilize its orbit. By the time we're done Sarnus is going to have better network speeds than West Virginia.
Burning for Sarnus, with the big 2.5m Lightbulb NERVA from Atomic Age. Damn if that thing doesn't get HOT though, it will overheat with anything less than two of the gigantic radiator panels. The price we pay for 1200 ISP and a positive TWR. Well that and the weight. The whole satellite payload? less than 9 tons. That engine? 20. But: 7,000 delta-V on a half-size tank of LF.
This rocket cost 1.4 million of my 1.8 million kerbucks, and that was all payload. The big Near Future RTGs are expensive as hell but absolutely necessary to run ion engines that far out. Now we have to farm up some cash because there's an Urlum (Uranus) window opening in less than a month and a very slightly smaller version of this mission is going there too.
Also work continues on.... whatever this is.
When I ever get around to that Duna trip with my USI Mods playthrough, I'll have to take some pictures.
Relays can be much smaller and less complicated. You can probably cover the whole Kerbin system with three satellites (at Minmus L3/L4/L5).
It's very, very close to what the stock system is going to be so if you want to get used to it now's a good time.
With all the problems I had with 1.04, though, who knows? I may have to breakdown and restart myself. Rather not, of course.
First, the communications array is deployed, and then the solar panel struts are unfolded. Each strut involves 4 (or 6) points of articulation on Infernal Robotics parts that allow a huge offset distance from the station when the panels are activated, while remaining extremely compact during transport.
I could watch these things unfold all fucking day.
Bill goes outside to unpack the external stowage racks. They prevent the solar panel struts from lying flush with the hull in this configuration.
This station is a testbed for similar outposts I want to put into orbit around other planets. The amount of solar power generated is total overkill for Kerbin, but out around Duna or Dres it will be needed.
Later, when the lander is delivered along with a decent quantity of monopropellant, Bill performs another EVA to inspect the docking and replace an antenna on the robotic Minotaur transfer stage. KIS is so damned useful.
Meanwhile, on Minmus, we finally got enough of a preliminary ore scan done to drop a lander/rover on the surface with the other two sensors to pinpoint a good spot for a mining base. As luck would have it, we found a spot on the flats right near the equator with 9% ore. In other games I'd fooled around with skycranes and landers with tiny rovers in cargo bays and they're all so fiddly in the light gravity so this time I just said fuck it and put wheels on the lander so it can just fire up the engine and cruise along on the frictionless wheels. The landing leg was to tip it forward onto the wheels. Pretty good design I think.
The next drop was a service and power module, shown here in its collapsed configuration.
At dawn, Dany Kerman heads out to activate the servos that raise and rotate the solar panel array to face the sun. The top of the tower also mounts an array of spotlights for nighttime operations. Once that's done, Dany pulls out some supplies from the storage can on the service module and hooks up the KIS pipes to share resources between the modules.
And finally, the drilling platform lands and is similarly attached. When the fuel carriers arrive empty, they'll be hooked up to the pipe network and filled with LFO.
Meanwhile, the orbital construction continues around Kerbin. We're going to be doing a lot of launches, so it's decided that an empty fuel container should be attached so the robotic upper stage/transfer vehicles can dump their excess propellant before deorbiting.
And yes, KAS and its successor KIS is super useful.
I bring you, real orbital decay
Also setting up a comm network in RemoteTech isn't too hard. I use 5 (could easily 3 or 4 as well) satellites in a equatorial orbit of Kerbin with just an antenna, and then position them about 1Mm up and as close to equidistant as I cant while adjusting each orbits so the orbital periods are as close to matching as possible. Then I put 2 Deep Space CommSats in highly eliptical polar orbits but opposite orbits (One with the Apo above the north pole, one above the south pole), but timed so they are at their apoapsis when the other is at the periapsis. And again, adjust the orbital periods to match. On each of the DSCS's I'll put at least 2 dishes, one on each is set to point at Current Vessel and the other is set to point at the planet I'll be working in. Using this setup the only downtime is when Kerbin and the other planet are on opposite sides Kerbol so I plan my missions to avoid this time. If I really want/need absolute 100% coverage I'll put 4 relays in equidistant and period-matching* orbits near Kerbol with 4 dishes each: 2 pointed at either neighbor, 1 pointed at Kerbin, and the last pointed at current vessel.
Fakeedit: Oh, and @DivideByZero there's also the Trans-Keptunian Planet Pack
Meanwhile, in LKO:
OK I think it should be pretty obvious by now that we're building a space station. What's going to set this one apart is the sheer scale of it, consisting of nearly all 2.5m parts. To reduce part count I've installed the dev release of the part welding mod that turned this truss segment from 80+ parts to less than 30. It's basically a near future hollow octo-girder stuffed full of batteries and monoprop tanks in a layout that's both functional and greebley. Outside are mounted a bunch of docking ports, radiators, and lots of lights.
To send up the next module we're going to use a prototype spaceplane to work out the kinks in the design.
It's a split-wing design that uses the Mk4 spaceplane dual-mode engines (basically a 4x RAPIER) and can fairly easily loft a full orange tank. This cargo is considerably lighter and the plane goes supersonic right off the runway. Here we are at altitude, accelerating to plaid.
And in orbit, bay doors open and solar panels out with 700+ dV in the tanks:
The payload is a habitation and storage module that can comfortably house six kerbals and a sizeable amount of spare parts. We rendezvous with the station shortly before dawn.
The payload is moved out of the cargo bay and docked to the station via robotic tug. While the tug parks itself at a spare docking port, flight engineer Serena Kerman EVAs to the station to inspect the construction. She'll stay up to perform a bit of housekeeping as the next modules arrive.
Its mission completed, the shuttle undocks and reenters. Unfortunately the control surfaces on the rear wing don't survive re-entry heating and every one of them explodes; lucky for us Jeb is at the controls and brings it down in the vicinity of the runway using only canards and RCS for attitude control. Co-pilot Valentina has some choice words for the engineers, however.
Oh, didn't you know? There's a mod for that
Edit: Oh. My. God. Auto Balancing Landing Legs.
Jeb-approved!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Sent up a couple more modules to the space station. First: a second hab/storage module. Serena went out on EVA to attach the KIS storage containers to the exterior to free up some internal space, and then strapped one to her back while she flew around collecting all the unneeded RCS quads scattered around all the modules. Gotta get that part count down!
Ahh, much cleaner.
For the next segment we're going to need a really, really big cargo bay. Fortunately there's a Mk4 spaceplane parts mod for that.
This monster was originally designed to haul huge, ridiculously heavy payloads into orbit but even with six 2.5m dual mode engines it didn't have the legs to get there with the two massive 3.75m fuel tanks I stuffed in the bay. However, it could absolutely deal with this particular payload, which was lightweight but extremely bulky. There are so many fuel tanks on this beast it had almost 2000 dV in orbit.
These solar panels are from the KOSMOS pack and I actually had to tweak them down by 20% to fit in the Mk4 cargo bay, they're just that gigantic.
Re-entry in this behemoth did not go well. Despite filling up the station's tank and pumping all the excess fuel forward, it was still nearly impossible to control lower in the atmosphere. Definitely needs more control surfaces as the two tweakscaled shuttle tail fins I was using as wings couldn't handle both pitch and roll at the same time. Also the two nuclear engines (which turned out utterly unnecessary) I added just before the flight pulled the dry COM back juuuuuuust enough for it to turn supermaneuverable. It went into a flat spin and the crew had to ditch it over the ocean west of KSC.
And by ditch it I mean stand it on its tail and burn off the rest of the gas leveraging that 1.2 TWR.
I'll say this for the Mk4 parts - they can take a fucking pounding. Lost all of the engines and wings but the main fuselage was undamaged and the crew made it home alive.
(As a side note: I love spaceplanes to death but they are so damn time intensive. Everything takes longer than it does with rockets. Longer ascent, longer/more complicated re-entry. And none of it can be automated to save time the way MechJeb can loft a rocket or land on a dime.)
Infernal Robotics has limited uses, but in certain applications it really does shine. Nice work.
Jeb made it to space just fine. Coming back? Well, the lithobraking tests didn't go according to plan... In that there wasn't supposed to be any lithobraking.
The rep bump (from all the contracts) tells me he died a hero. Makes sense.
Shallow descent seems to be the main takeaway here. Any other advice?
Switch: nin.codes/roldford
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
According to Squad the stock chutes are designed to safely deploy at 250 m/s.
edit: also I never had a chance to try out that landing leg mod because it corrupts all my ships with legs and glitches them unusable in the VAB.
I try to aim for a 40-50km periapsis for re-entry, it's ok to make multiple passes if need be, and having fuel left for a retrograde burn during re-entry can help too. Also, I when I think I've enough parachutes on I always add one more just to be safe, which I then use as a tester because it's easy to activate them too early and break the parachute.
And to switch gears a bit, meet the Kerbal Space Agency's newest launch vehicle
In this configuration it's carrying 6 CommSats, total of ~10tons above the lifter, and it'll take this craft up to a 2000km orbit still have 2000ΔV left after the orbit's circularized. It's made with the necrobones suite (SpaceY, Modular Rocket System, Fuel Tanks Plus) which is a bit of an OP mod suite, but I don't really care.
Liftoff!
And the side LFO Boosters are out
And we have successful separation.
Release the probes!
Other mods seen are Surface Mounted Lights (See last picture, the light on the CommSats), BoxSat, and EngineLights, which turns each engine into a light source while powered (This is effect is best seen in the separation screenshot, and you'll wonder why you ever did night launches without this before.
I mean sure it could probably land itself intact with a combination of chutes and engines but I just never get tired of watching this:
The solar panels (and antennas) are from AIES which just updated to 1.04; they're bigger than the stock panels (not that this thing really has any serious power demands) but most important I love the way they look. Sadly there's no AntennaRange config for the AIES antennas so they're mostly decorative. It's launched on an Ares-I-style SRB with a liquid upper stage.
For crew transfers in LKO the standard "Korion" module is enough, but it lacks the legs to get to the moons, so I have a Block II variant with an extra 1.875m LFO tank (Home Grown Rockets, or I guess you could TweakScale it) and that's enough to do a round-trip anywhere in Kerbin SOI. Of course that extra fuel means extra weight which means a bigger upper stage which means a bigger SRB to get it into orbit:
(@veevee I've never tried the SpaceY family of mods because I'm obsessed with aesthetics and IMO those engine models look like, I dunno, plastic? Like they're toys. That's a baller lifter though. Very Falcon Heavy.)