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[Kerbal Space Program] Shiny new thread! Desperately seeking pictures of rockets
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I'm consistently getting in a stable orbit now, with fuel to get home...so I'm going to start shooting for the moon here soon. Just a few more quality of life things to figure out before I start that adventure.
Most of the science stuff is very light, so you can keep it attached to your crew capsule and recover it at the same time.
MWO: Adamski
e: Obligatory shot of Orbit II, the rocket that got me there and back again. She's not a looker, but she flies real purdy.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Nosecone chute
Mk1 capsule
-ox-stat solar panels on the sides
-cheapo antenna
Service bay with
-Batteries
-thermo/baro/grav/etc experiments
-up to 4 goo cans depending on where we're going
Heat Shield
Decoupler
Never, ever had issues with reentry heating on that setup. Just don't pop the chute until 250 m/s. If it doesn't stop you in time, come in shallower or stop reentering over the mountains
The service bay doors double as landing gear too in case you insist on coming down over those mountains
A lander with lots of spare fuel to hop around is the only realistic option for that purpose.
The Mun rotates, so your orbit will slowly shift over time.
All you need to do to hit multiple sites is to make sure that your orbit has enough latitude (closeness to the poles) to hit all sites and time will do the rest.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
As far as engineering solutions go, I'm a fan of using a mothership loaded with very small probes to do multi-point surveys. It's pretty easy to make tiny probes with a couple km/s of dV, so all you really need to do in most cases is get your mothership into high orbit above the target body and drop a probe on each point. Sometimes it's easier to park the carrier in polar orbit and wait until things roughly line up, but even then at least you have a good deal of leeway to hit your target.
Here's an (old and kind of outdated) example of the concept:
That one is built for use on Kerbin so the probes have to contend with an atmosphere. On the Mun they could be simpler and probably pack more dV, especially if you don't care about landing them safely.
Well, another mod to get when I go home, I guess.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
No, but there's nothing stopping you from building crewed drop pods and leaving a dozen kerbals in tiny capsules orbiting for years at time until you need them! Unless you run one of the life support mods that cares about that kind of thing, anyway.
It's so good! One of my must-have mods. It makes it possible to do so much fun and exciting stuff.
And if you do run one of the life support mods then it'll be a fun project to make a habitat space station to do the job with docked survey command pods hanging off every square inch.
You might have better results if you angle your flight into an arc instead of just going up and down. Still aim to hit ~80km at apoapsis, but a shallower reentry should be easier on your craft.
You can also reduce the amount of ablator carried on the heat shield; you'll never burn through the full load on a flight like this. (Right-click on it in the VAB and drag the bar around to set the amount.) This makes your craft lighter and will let the atmosphere slow you more rapidly. You could even try omitting the heat shield altogether - coming back from a low orbit/suborbital flight, it might not be necessary.
I ended up doing exactly this and have been messing with powered-recovery first stages for the last few days. Here's probably my most refined one, puts 15t in orbit in two stages:
Skipping over the unremarkable initial launch, here's me using the Trajectories mod (once again crucial to doing cool stuff) to execute a proper boost-back burn:
Descending on KSC:
Touchdown!
For this one I handled the engines manually, but I later installed Throttle Controlled Avionics which makes the suicide burn at the end a lot easier to do safely and efficiently.
It would be nice to be able to hit a target LZ more precisely, but Trajectories can't account for airbrakes and has some accuracy limitations anyhow. MJ's landing guidance doesn't seem to have a clue about how to do this kind of landing either.
So far this has been an entertaining experiment, but it needs FMRS or something like it to actually be usable. Looks like FMRS isn't working right now or I'd try it out....
That video was fine when it was made, and Scott Manley's videos are generally awesome. The problem is that that particular video was done before the major atmosphere model change that was made for the 1.x releases.
I was able to make it work by going up at a slight angle, thanks to the advice in this thread.
Would you recommend I find another more updated set of tutorials, or should I be fine just continuing with those ones, and go to google or here when things don't work as explained?
I think that was my record, anyway.
I ended up not able to wait for 1.1 to start playing again and I'm still defaulting to how I used to build rockets. It's fine most of the time, but I can't get away with some of the shit I used to pull, so I had a couple.......accidents.
Don't you feel better already.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Now should my next step be to try and make a rover or to head out to Duna and Ike? The lack of reasonable ways to stow a rover always bugs me.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
For minmus and Ike it's a lot easier to just jump around with your entire 60-ton mining/science craft (reducable to maybe a third of that if you don't feel an overwhelming need to fulfill "establish a science base on Minmus" at the same time.).
Xenon is OK, but you can't refuel it.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
My greatest achievement last night was getting an unmanned probe to the Mun, land, do some science and return safely.
But then I got cocky. A manned mission went up next. Got to the Mun, EVAd around, planted a flag, screen shots, got in for the trip home and ran out of fuel to bring my orbit to reentry...poor Bob, the first Kerbal on the Mun yet destined to be forever alone.
I would mount a rescue operation until I realised I have no idea how to accurately match orbits with a tiny tiny craft...suggestions? Or is he destined to stay there forever?
*Salutes*
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
There is a key to switch between radial and mirror symmetry. I forget which one, but you can look it up online. I think it's like F or R.
Match orbits by first getting your rescue ship on the same inclination as the marooned one. Get this info by right clicking the stranded vessel and setting it as target, then maneuver on the ascending or descending node to correct. Be in a significantly higher or lower orbit. With the other vessel as target, make a maneuver node to bring your orbit into intersect with the target's orbit. You will see some arrows indicating the relative position of each ship when the two orbits cross. Drag the node around the orbit and adjust the burn until those arrows are very close, then execute the burn.
When the ships get close, the nav ball will switch to Target mode, but you can click on the velocity to change this manually. Burn retrograde to target velocity to cancel out your relative speed. Execute a small burn to bring yourself closer and a counterburn to stop, repeat as necessary.
You don't need to get precise here since the EVA suit has a good bit of delta v. However it's good practice because when you start docking you will be doing this a whole lot.
I can get to this bit fairly OK. I can even slow down my relative speed by switching to target and retrograde for a bit. But they will still only intersect for a very brief time...do I just have to be quick?
Ha! Thats good. Maybe as a last resort.