If you're re-entering from Kerbin orbit, 30-35 is fine, but if you're coming back from the Mun, or even from another planet, you should be using 40-50.
That would mean an extra go around, I think.
I aim for 30kms on a return trip from the Mun and don't have any heating trouble. I have a feeling that 50 kms would mean popping back out of the atmosphere and having to wait for a second orbit.
Keep in mind I was in a giant unwieldy monstrosity with passenger cabins and science pods.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
If you're re-entering from Kerbin orbit, 30-35 is fine, but if you're coming back from the Mun, or even from another planet, you should be using 40-50.
That would mean an extra go around, I think.
I aim for 30kms on a return trip from the Mun and don't have any heating trouble. I have a feeling that 50 kms would mean popping back out of the atmosphere and having to wait for a second orbit.
Keep in mind I was in a giant unwieldy monstrosity with passenger cabins and science pods.
The cylindrical area directly behind the heat shield is all that is protected, so the stuff attached on the side was probably your problem. A 2.5m heat shield (or engine) under a 2.5m pod/tank doesn't offer any heat protection to objects stuck on the side. Either use a bigger shield or keep your periapsis high to minimize heat build up. If you have any fuel left, consider a retro burn to decelerate just prior to and/or during entry.
If you're re-entering from Kerbin orbit, 30-35 is fine, but if you're coming back from the Mun, or even from another planet, you should be using 40-50.
That would mean an extra go around, I think.
I aim for 30kms on a return trip from the Mun and don't have any heating trouble. I have a feeling that 50 kms would mean popping back out of the atmosphere and having to wait for a second orbit.
Keep in mind I was in a giant unwieldy monstrosity with passenger cabins and science pods.
The cylindrical area directly behind the heat shield is all that is protected, so the stuff attached on the side was probably your problem. A 2.5m heat shield (or engine) under a 2.5m pod/tank doesn't offer any heat protection to objects stuck on the side. Either use a bigger shield or keep your periapsis high to minimize heat build up. If you have any fuel left, consider a retro burn to decelerate just prior to and/or during entry.
A trick to prevent heat buildup in external parts is to put your craft in a slow spin. It doesn't prevent heatup of central components, but can definitely protect periphials such as chutes, instruments etc. Atmospheric entry with a heatshield these days tend to be a slight "belly flop", where the "belly" of the craft gets a fair amount of heat as well.
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I think part of my problem was that the two side pods had engines, but not heat shields. I had thought that the engines would protect the stuff above them the same way a heat shield does, and that turned out not to be the case.
Next time I won't be lazy and I'll put heat shields in and drop those last engines with a decoupler.
Or just design something better.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I think part of my problem was that the two side pods had engines, but not heat shields. I had thought that the engines would protect the stuff above them the same way a heat shield does, and that turned out not to be the case.
Next time I won't be lazy and I'll put heat shields in and drop those last engines with a decoupler.
Or just design something better.
They do, sort of. They can take a fair bit of heat because they have a high melting point, but ablative heat shielding works by burning the shield up into plasma and dumping that heat off as the plasma blows away. An engine will just transmit the heat up into the ship without dispersing it, eventually cooking the rest of the ship.
Your best bet might be to EVA out and pull the science out of the goo pods and materials labs, store it in the capsule, and let the experiments burn up / float away. You can also store some stuff in a service bay sandwiched between a heat shield and a return capsule.
I think part of my problem was that the two side pods had engines, but not heat shields. I had thought that the engines would protect the stuff above them the same way a heat shield does, and that turned out not to be the case.
Next time I won't be lazy and I'll put heat shields in and drop those last engines with a decoupler.
Or just design something better.
They do, sort of. They can take a fair bit of heat because they have a high melting point, but ablative heat shielding works by burning the shield up into plasma and dumping that heat off as the plasma blows away. An engine will just transmit the heat up into the ship without dispersing it, eventually cooking the rest of the ship.
Your best bet might be to EVA out and pull the science out of the goo pods and materials labs, store it in the capsule, and let the experiments burn up / float away. You can also store some stuff in a service bay sandwiched between a heat shield and a return capsule.
Oh that does bring up a question. Do heat shields even work if they are just in the stack? Like, could I use them to block further heat traveling up the column? Or is it really only if they are the thing at the bottom of the stack?
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
They won't work in a stack; they only work if they're the object taking the brunt of the re-entry flames. This makes recovering engines very difficult - most of the time you just have to consider them an expendable cost. Contracts generally pay well enough that you'll still make a profit.
So about aerobraking. Should my ship that's supposed to shuttle between a Kerbin and a Duna space station have airbrakes? I'm thinking that aerobraking will definitely improve how much fuel I can get up to Duna and maybe the brakes could help control that.
As for trying to land at KSC, I'd be happy if I could just learn to land on the day side of Kerbin so I can see what I'm about to land on.
If you want to slow down more quickly just aerobrake deeper in the atmosphere. Airbrakes aren't really necessary for aerobraking a spacecraft.
So about aerobraking. Should my ship that's supposed to shuttle between a Kerbin and a Duna space station have airbrakes? I'm thinking that aerobraking will definitely improve how much fuel I can get up to Duna and maybe the brakes could help control that.
As for trying to land at KSC, I'd be happy if I could just learn to land on the day side of Kerbin so I can see what I'm about to land on.
If you want to slow down more quickly just aerobrake deeper in the atmosphere. Airbrakes aren't really necessary for aerobraking a spacecraft.
However, they will slow a craft down more at the same altitude than without airbrakes. If you're expecting to come in too fast for a standard airbrake, and you're not able to go deeper due to heat, a couple airbrakes could help tremendously. The real question is if they're worth the weight, and at .05t it takes 6 to equal the 1.25m heat shield and a whole 26 of them to equal the mass of a 2.5m shield. That's a whole lot of extra drag to slow down with...
So after some experimentation, I WAS able to bring that same craft back without fatal re-entry heat, although the speed was an issue. It was a close thing though. I had to come in at 30k and turn sideways briefly for a bit of extra drag. I suspect if I hadn't, I would have skipped off the atmosphere and had to come back around.
Regardless, learned a few things about how to design craft after all these changes.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
+2
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Skipping off the atmosphere isn't really going to hurt you, but yeah, it's annoying to have to do a second pass.
I... I think I might need help here. I decided I wanted all the planets
Yeah, all of them
...more...
Just a few more...
Ah, there we go
Started from stock 1.0.5, installed Kopernicus and the Expansion, Distant Object Enhancement, Module Manager, and DynamicTextureLoader. Also forced DirectX11 mode with " -force-d3d11". First time it loaded it was using 3GBs, but after closing and reloading KSP it was down to 2.4GBs. Planet packs include: Arkas, Asciepius, Jungis, KPlus, Kronkus, OPM, Boris, Sylandro's Planet Warehouse, Sentar, Urania, and Trans-Keptunian.
The cash and science I got from all of that was significant, so now I have access to a few more parts and most importantly, the fully upgraded launchpad. This has helped immensely with my next batch of tourists. (Six this time, which is a bit more manageable)
I was able to get to the Mun this time with a ton of fuel, allowing me to also do some flyovers of three specific spots for a different contract, as well.
My craft after losing the launch stage:
On the way back down to Kerbin, having used up the last of the fuel to get a slower orbit at about 30km periapsis.
Just barely made the speed reduction in time to parachute:
What did the pilot just say? We're coming in what?:
Oh hey, they lived:
My next set of contracts includes temporary early access to both the Mainsail and the Twin Boar. You can bet I'll be taking advantage of that. Got some more passenger missions too because they are remarkably lucrative.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
As I understand, if you try and simulate more realistic physics, you end up having to contend with the fact that the objects in the Kerbol system are insanely tiny and dense. Distances remaining true to the game, it wouldn't remotely resemble reality, heh.
In 1.0.5 I'm running into something I'd never encountered before: Jool has two natural satellite captures.
I don't know how it happened, but I guess the game generated at least two asteroids ridiculously deep into Jool's gravity well ( want to say within one planet diameter, or close to it), that their velocity went "NOPE!" and they ended up with very circular orbits.
Yeah, I forgot to put the Mechjeb unit on the rover... just as well, I've already rolled it a couple times when my attention drifted. Lost the headlamps and atmo analyzer, not that either is useful on solar in a vacuum :-p
I spent a lot of time last career play session trying to get rovers to work on Mun and Minmus to get as much science as possible from them. This time I am just going to do a little surface hopping until I have what I need to set up a base on Duna. Rover should be a lot more useful there.
Plus the wheel update is coming soonish.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
So all this talk of KSP recently finally got me to load up my game and start planning for a tour of the Solar System.
I built a refueling station at Minmus, with 2 landers to pickup ore and transfer it to an orbiting station for refining. (The landers also have mini refineries for edge cases where they spend too much fuel). The orbiting station also has a polar orbit so it could do the surface scanning and find the best mineral concentrations.
Then I built the main vessel, which has 3 nuclear engines & radiators, a science lab & experiments, and a stupid amount of LF tanks (I think it has something like >6k dV once I fill the tanks and jettison all the previous stages).
Then I built the lander to attach to the front of the main vessel. It also has all the science experiments (no lab), has a drill and small refinery, some drogue chutes, parachutes, and it has 4 Toroidal Spike engines for getting it down to the surface then back up again. (It also carries an Engineer to improve efficiency of the drill / refinery, and repack chutes).
I'm hoping this bad boy can get me to Eve & Duna along with their moons fairly easily, as I have only stepped out of the Kerbin / Minmus / Mun SoI once many patches ago.
It seems like the most efficient way to refuel is to launch it up from the surface to an orbiting ship or a fuel station, yeah?
There is no way to generate fuel in space, so all fuel has to come from some planetary body.
I chose Minmus because it has the lowest gravity, so it requires less fuel to be spent landing and taking off, which means more fuel for refueling.
Other options would be to design an SSTO from Kerbin that could keep ferrying fuel up to your craft, and it would just cost cash to replace the fuel instead of time (unless you setup some sort of refinery with ore extraction next to your runway maybe...). Unfortunately, designing an SSTO seems to be beyond me so far.
It seems like the most efficient way to refuel is to launch it up from the surface to an orbiting ship or a fuel station, yeah?
There is no way to generate fuel in space, so all fuel has to come from some planetary body.
I chose Minmus because it has the lowest gravity, so it requires less fuel to be spent landing and taking off, which means more fuel for refueling.
Other options would be to design an SSTO from Kerbin that could keep ferrying fuel up to your craft, and it would just cost cash to replace the fuel instead of time (unless you setup some sort of refinery with ore extraction next to your runway maybe...). Unfortunately, designing an SSTO seems to be beyond me so far.
Building an SSTO that can carry any substantial amount of fuel into orbit is difficult, and the repeated launches would rapidly get tiring. I actually managed to get a decently-sized SSTO to orbit with a significant amount of fuel (~800 LiquidFuel?) and a pair of LV-Ns for transfer burns, but it took 30 minutes to climb into orbit. That's the real tradeoff. Money in KSP is easy to get once you've got some basic tech and upgrades, and even though SSTOs will save you a lot of money, it's usually better to save 20 minutes (not counting all the extra time designing and optimizing) and use a heavy lifter rocket over an SSTO spaceplane.
So what are these rescue contracts I keep seeing. I have never successfully done an intercept, so I am a bit scared of them.
You rescue kerbonauts. Rendevouz are pretty easy. Watch a few tutorial videos (like this one by Scott Manley) and Do it! Just DO IT!
You need a small craft with a fair amount of monopropellant, thrusters towards all cardinal directions and at least a semidecent vacuum engine.
P.S: Never accept a "orbit around Sol" rescue contract. They can be absolute bullshit.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Posts
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Keep in mind I was in a giant unwieldy monstrosity with passenger cabins and science pods.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The cylindrical area directly behind the heat shield is all that is protected, so the stuff attached on the side was probably your problem. A 2.5m heat shield (or engine) under a 2.5m pod/tank doesn't offer any heat protection to objects stuck on the side. Either use a bigger shield or keep your periapsis high to minimize heat build up. If you have any fuel left, consider a retro burn to decelerate just prior to and/or during entry.
A trick to prevent heat buildup in external parts is to put your craft in a slow spin. It doesn't prevent heatup of central components, but can definitely protect periphials such as chutes, instruments etc. Atmospheric entry with a heatshield these days tend to be a slight "belly flop", where the "belly" of the craft gets a fair amount of heat as well.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Next time I won't be lazy and I'll put heat shields in and drop those last engines with a decoupler.
Or just design something better.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
They do, sort of. They can take a fair bit of heat because they have a high melting point, but ablative heat shielding works by burning the shield up into plasma and dumping that heat off as the plasma blows away. An engine will just transmit the heat up into the ship without dispersing it, eventually cooking the rest of the ship.
Your best bet might be to EVA out and pull the science out of the goo pods and materials labs, store it in the capsule, and let the experiments burn up / float away. You can also store some stuff in a service bay sandwiched between a heat shield and a return capsule.
Oh that does bring up a question. Do heat shields even work if they are just in the stack? Like, could I use them to block further heat traveling up the column? Or is it really only if they are the thing at the bottom of the stack?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
https://glittering.blue/
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
If you want to slow down more quickly just aerobrake deeper in the atmosphere. Airbrakes aren't really necessary for aerobraking a spacecraft.
However, they will slow a craft down more at the same altitude than without airbrakes. If you're expecting to come in too fast for a standard airbrake, and you're not able to go deeper due to heat, a couple airbrakes could help tremendously. The real question is if they're worth the weight, and at .05t it takes 6 to equal the 1.25m heat shield and a whole 26 of them to equal the mass of a 2.5m shield. That's a whole lot of extra drag to slow down with...
Regardless, learned a few things about how to design craft after all these changes.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yeah, all of them
...more...
Just a few more...
Ah, there we go
Started from stock 1.0.5, installed Kopernicus and the Expansion, Distant Object Enhancement, Module Manager, and DynamicTextureLoader. Also forced DirectX11 mode with " -force-d3d11". First time it loaded it was using 3GBs, but after closing and reloading KSP it was down to 2.4GBs. Planet packs include: Arkas, Asciepius, Jungis, KPlus, Kronkus, OPM, Boris, Sylandro's Planet Warehouse, Sentar, Urania, and Trans-Keptunian.
Too busy?
I was able to get to the Mun this time with a ton of fuel, allowing me to also do some flyovers of three specific spots for a different contract, as well.
My craft after losing the launch stage:
On the way back down to Kerbin, having used up the last of the fuel to get a slower orbit at about 30km periapsis.
Just barely made the speed reduction in time to parachute:
What did the pilot just say? We're coming in what?:
Oh hey, they lived:
My next set of contracts includes temporary early access to both the Mainsail and the Twin Boar. You can bet I'll be taking advantage of that. Got some more passenger missions too because they are remarkably lucrative.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Hey, I can see my house from here!
The most interesting thing about this is that Bop is stripped away from Jool.
Challenge accepted!
*goes to download HyperEdit*
As I understand, if you try and simulate more realistic physics, you end up having to contend with the fact that the objects in the Kerbol system are insanely tiny and dense. Distances remaining true to the game, it wouldn't remotely resemble reality, heh.
They just want to be free!
Also on my brain when trying to plan interplanetary trips.
My math skills are barely sufficient to deal with KSP as it is.
I don't know how it happened, but I guess the game generated at least two asteroids ridiculously deep into Jool's gravity well ( want to say within one planet diameter, or close to it), that their velocity went "NOPE!" and they ended up with very circular orbits.
...
I'm going to download hyperedit for the first time, because fuck driving this thing for a couple hours!
There's a mod for that
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129363-105autorove-autonomous-rovermovement-in-the-background/
I just my did first mun landing of my career play as well, just one spot. The contracts are good money but weren't getting me new science.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Plus the wheel update is coming soonish.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I built a refueling station at Minmus, with 2 landers to pickup ore and transfer it to an orbiting station for refining. (The landers also have mini refineries for edge cases where they spend too much fuel). The orbiting station also has a polar orbit so it could do the surface scanning and find the best mineral concentrations.
Then I built the main vessel, which has 3 nuclear engines & radiators, a science lab & experiments, and a stupid amount of LF tanks (I think it has something like >6k dV once I fill the tanks and jettison all the previous stages).
Then I built the lander to attach to the front of the main vessel. It also has all the science experiments (no lab), has a drill and small refinery, some drogue chutes, parachutes, and it has 4 Toroidal Spike engines for getting it down to the surface then back up again. (It also carries an Engineer to improve efficiency of the drill / refinery, and repack chutes).
I'm hoping this bad boy can get me to Eve & Duna along with their moons fairly easily, as I have only stepped out of the Kerbin / Minmus / Mun SoI once many patches ago.
Here is the lander:
MWO: Adamski
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
There is no way to generate fuel in space, so all fuel has to come from some planetary body.
I chose Minmus because it has the lowest gravity, so it requires less fuel to be spent landing and taking off, which means more fuel for refueling.
Other options would be to design an SSTO from Kerbin that could keep ferrying fuel up to your craft, and it would just cost cash to replace the fuel instead of time (unless you setup some sort of refinery with ore extraction next to your runway maybe...). Unfortunately, designing an SSTO seems to be beyond me so far.
MWO: Adamski
Building an SSTO that can carry any substantial amount of fuel into orbit is difficult, and the repeated launches would rapidly get tiring. I actually managed to get a decently-sized SSTO to orbit with a significant amount of fuel (~800 LiquidFuel?) and a pair of LV-Ns for transfer burns, but it took 30 minutes to climb into orbit. That's the real tradeoff. Money in KSP is easy to get once you've got some basic tech and upgrades, and even though SSTOs will save you a lot of money, it's usually better to save 20 minutes (not counting all the extra time designing and optimizing) and use a heavy lifter rocket over an SSTO spaceplane.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
You rescue kerbonauts. Rendevouz are pretty easy. Watch a few tutorial videos (like this one by Scott Manley) and Do it! Just DO IT!
You need a small craft with a fair amount of monopropellant, thrusters towards all cardinal directions and at least a semidecent vacuum engine.
P.S: Never accept a "orbit around Sol" rescue contract. They can be absolute bullshit.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden