Kerbals in Spaaaaace!

[Rakaydos]

I strapped an ion engine onto a jet and put it into a stable 200km orbit.

[SuperPanda]

Still haven't figured out how to make/fly jets yet, I'll want to eventually make a VTOL reuseable spaceshuttle for my minimas base and future Ike/Duna missions.

I landed on Mun, though between damage to the lander and fuel issues I still need to send a rescue ship. Burlock is chillin in his capsul for the time being.

I've got my Minimas base started though with some design flaws such as only having wheels on one part of the base (the kethane storage tanks) which are enroute (but have no RCS to control landing (they do have some liquid fuel, so it might still work).

Currently have 4 ships enroute to minimas on different encounter trajectories (launched one after another), 1 put a new Satalight into kerbin orbit on its way there, andother is delivering a new satalight to Minimas orbit, a third is taking the Kethane tanks (because the drilling base didn't have any) and the fourth is taking a prototype lander. All ships that make it with the LVN stages intact (of the two already at the base only one made it that was) will set off for flybys of other worlds, may even try landing on Duna if I can work out an encounter trajectory.

I've got 2 different ship types, my larger KOFFIN class has a crew of 3 and is better at hauling station parts, but the smaller Munatic rockets are much more fuel efficient. I think a fully refueled Koffin could land on Mun with enough fuel to take off again and rescue my stranded Kerble there but the Munatics should have more than enough fuel to get to Duna or Eve (not sure about back).

If this works, then Lake Town Minimas will be my new staging ground for future Eve and Duna missions.

[Hawriel]

if you want to make a VTOL design I recommend using four engines for any thing larger than a small one man craft. You will need the stability.

[SuperPanda]

Thanks for the tip, I'll be looking into that after I finish constructing Lake Town minimas (I chose the ice-flat with the small hill/island in it but off center since it was a) flat and b) Kethane rich.

I've been using slightly updated versions of rockets which first took me to Mun (the Munatic line) and the ship I rescued Jeb with after he was stranded on minimas (the Koffin line). I'm going to work on learnind docking to build a a Verne class (I think I wand me first Jool mission to be a Verne, if its only a one way then it becomes Jool's Verne ) Of course, I have no idea how I'll build it at present, but that a problem for tomorrow.

[Rakaydos]

Found this post on the kerbal forums... someone RPing out a carear mode done entirely with planes.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...28pic-heavy%29

[iyaerP]

So my first minimus flyby attempt to gather more !!SCIENCE!! went quite well, getting two goo measurements in minimus space, a crew report, and a mun encounter as well.

But it all went to hell when the time dialation auto-slowdown that is supposed to happen when your craft comes within kerbin atmo never occurred and so my vessel crashed into the planet at x10000 speed. I didn't even get a chance to revert the flight, it just immediately ended. I am incredibly pissed off about that.

[Jimorian]

Yeah, that's very easy to do, since the simulation at that point is just picking intermediate points along the trajectory, and if one is outside the atmosphere, and the next one is inside the planet... BEWM! At 100,000x, it's even possible to skip right through the planet entirely. I've even seen Scott Manley fall prey to this quirk a few times.

[dethkruzer]

So my first minimus flyby attempt to gather more !!SCIENCE!! went quite well, getting two goo measurements in minimus space, a crew report, and a mun encounter as well.

But it all went to hell when the time dialation auto-slowdown that is supposed to happen when your craft comes within kerbin atmo never occurred and so my vessel crashed into the planet at x10000 speed. I didn't even get a chance to revert the flight, it just immediately ended. I am incredibly pissed off about that.

yeah, that sometimes happens when you go too fast with time acceleration, I do recommend dropping it down slightly if you are on a suborbital trajectory when you return. Either that or just bring the periaps to maybe 15 000 meters or so.

[iyaerP]

periapsis was supposed to be 40K meters, and I was going to commence a braking manuever to re-enter atmo and land, but poor jeb died explosively before I could do so.

[factotum]

Yeah, that's very easy to do, since the simulation at that point is just picking intermediate points along the trajectory

It's not so much that it's picking points, it's that the computer can't calculate any faster. For example, if you're getting 50 frames per second, and are running at x10000 speed, that means you're getting more than 3 minutes of simulation time in between each frame--easily enough time to miss what you're aiming at or have some really weird stuff happen. What may have happened in this case is that the x10000 speed meant he jumped to a frame where his capsule was at 40km altitude and still travelling at full orbital velocity, and thus got ripped apart by atmospheric effects.

[Keris]

You can also end up on a shifted orbit if you time-warp across a sphere-of-influence change, probably for similar reasons (i.e. instead of starting to be accelerated by Kerbin's gravity instead of Minmus's as soon as you change SOI, you continue along your original path for 3 mins first). So a carefully planned re-entry corridor can turn into a mindless plummet into the ground.

For this reason, and others, it's important to quicksave often, ideally whenever everything is going OK (you don't want to restore a quicksave that's on an unavoidable collision). And I'm gonna give another plug to Kerbal Alarm Clock; with it you can schedule alarms that automatically drop you out of time-warp just before you hit a SOI change, or when you're getting close to the edge of the atmosphere.

[Rakaydos]

For this reason, and others, it's important to quicksave often, ideally whenever everything is going OK (you don't want to restore a quicksave that's on an unavoidable collision)

It took me SO long to figure out how to get out of a bad laythe aerobreak when i had a quicksave 2 seconds from atmosphere. It involved 1)detaching the extra fuell and science I was carrying for other worlds, 2) reactivating my Kerbin Circularization engines, 3) Pivoting 180, 4) pumping fuel during a burn to keep the circularization engines fed, without unbalancing the ship more than the SAS could handle. (so, half a tank for one side, then half a tank for the other, and back, and back, and back, while trying to keep the rocket pointed in the right direction...)

[iyaerP]

How on earth do you quicksave? Because I am having to do each failed mission over from launch, or in this case, just lose everything entirely since it didn't let me revert.

[AgentPaper]

How on earth do you quicksave? Because I am having to do each failed mission over from launch, or in this case, just lose everything entirely since it didn't let me revert.

F5 to save, hold F9 to load. Careful about the loading thing, though, since there's no limit on how long ago the save you load is, and there's no way to go back. Even if that save was five missions ago.

[Jimorian]

F5 to save, hold F9 to load. Careful about the loading thing, though, since there's no limit on how long ago the save you load is, and there's no way to go back. Even if that save was five missions ago.

And don't accidentally hit F5 when you mean to reload with F9. Been there, done that, re-flew the mission from scratch, and didn't even get a t-shirt.

EDIT: Nassault's latest: Gravioli.

[Jimorian]

Finally managed to finish and upload episode 5 of my tutorial series "How To Science!"

It's long, but shows one failed build/launch and the fixes needed for that ship, then one full Munar landing mission, and a 2nd mission for more science in another biome, but only starting the footage once in Munar orbit to save some time.

Episode 6 will be some return missions, but I think I have a neat way to keep it short and interesting.

[Rakaydos]

Asteroid patch is out. Damn those new engines are OP. Single stage to Eve from just 1 engine. :/

[factotum]

Asteroid patch is out. Damn those new engines are OP. Single stage to Eve from just 1 engine. :/

The new engines are based on NASA designs, aren't they? Which means they're designed for a planet 10 times Kerbin's diameter and with a much deeper atmosphere...no wonder they're OP in the Kerbal solar system.

[Wookieetank]

Will have to fire this up today then and see what sort of shennanigans I can get myself into.

[Jimorian]

Started up a new series, Kerbal Speed Program, this time a straight Let's Play in .23.5 career mode where I will attempt to put an asteroid in orbit around each body in the solar system. Oh, and I speed up the video by 150% to move things along. I suggest YouTube's automatic captions to see how they manage to deal with my chipmunk voice! Surprisingly, this feels less weird to me than listening to my real voice.

Spoiler: Embedded Video

Show

[Peelee]

Asteroid patch is out. Damn those new engines are OP. Single stage to Eve from just 1 engine. :/

What's your build for that? Admittedly, I haven't had much chance to play since I went back to school, but while I was able to make it to Even and Duna, I've never quite been able to make it back. SSTE design might give me some ideas on what I need to start looking into

[Keris]

Y'know, sometimes I think I may be using too many mods. Usually whenever the game crashes more than four times in about ten minutes.

[Rakaydos]

Dunno, I use the Stock Rebalance Project these days. Recently failed the Jool 5 challange, and have been thinking of replacing my RCS tug withh a laythe jet, rather than rely on my tylo lander for everything- its got crazy DeltaV, but is a fuel hog and refueling it is painful

[Eirala]

Y'know, sometimes I think I may be using too many mods. Usually whenever the game crashes more than four times in about ten minutes.

I know that feeling...



With texture reduction mods and the active texure management mod i'm still at 2.7 GB at KSP startup
Still, if you're not already using it i can only recomment active texture management, does wonders for RAM load.

[Keris]

I know that feeling...

And this is the point where I try and salvage my ego by pointing out that the number of module manager patches doesn't necessarily have a direct correspondence to the number of mods used. Of my 692 patches, the majority come from only a handful of the 50 distinct mods I'm using. And if you are running ~150 mods then I certainly wouldn't want to be in your shoes when 0.24 comes and and breaks compatibility for half of them.

With texture reduction mods and the active texure management mod i'm still at 2.7 GB at KSP startup
Still, if you're not already using it i can only recomment active texture management, does wonders for RAM load.

Yeah, ATM is always added pretty much as soon as I install any other mods. I stopped using reduced texture packs a while back when I swapped to the agressive version of ATM, but since KSP is presently taking up 3.2GB of RAM on startup and is right at the 3.6GB limit in-flight I should probably look into them again.
Or maybe I'll try using the 64-bit linux version. It's not like I could just uninstall these mods, after all. ( )

[Wookieetank]

*quietly plays vanilla KSP in the corner* Don't mind me.

[Eirala]

And this is the point where I try and salvage my ego by pointing out that the number of module manager patches doesn't necessarily have a direct correspondence to the number of mods used. Of my 692 patches, the majority come from only a handful of the 50 distinct mods I'm using. And if you are running ~150 mods then I certainly wouldn't want to be in your shoes when 0.24 comes and and breaks compatibility for half of them.

Yeah, that's gonne be """fun"""...though most large mods get updated surprisingly quickly, i remember playing pretty much instantly when the ARM patch came out. Some hiccups with the new parts, but playable.
I probably use about 80 - 90 mods including small ones like SelectRoot, too much to count them one by one for lazy me in any case

It's not like I could just uninstall these mods, after all.

How could anyone do such a thing? That would be like eradicating their existence once and for all...

[AgentPaper]

But, why would you play anything other than Better Than Starting Manned?

[Keris]

Installing all the relevant texture reduction packs took me from 3.6GB of RAM on the launchpad to... 3.59GB. Whelp. Looks like Active Texture Management was already doing pretty much all that could be done.

*quietly plays vanilla KSP in the corner* Don't mind me.

That's an option that gets more and more tempting as time goes by... or at least playing with stock plus 'mods that should totally be stock' and 'mods that are too damned useful to leave out', like SelectRoot, Enhanced NavBall, Docking Alignment Indicator, RCS Build Aid, KER, KAS, RPM.... Okay, maybe not really that vanilla after all.

But, why would you play anything other than Better Than Starting Manned?

I'm already using KSP Interstellar, so I don't think I ought to mess with the tech tree more than it already does. And with Remote Tech 2 and TAC Life Support I end up with a heavy focus on unmanned anyway.

[AgentPaper]

I'm already using KSP Interstellar, so I don't think I ought to mess with the tech tree more than it already does. And with Remote Tech 2 and TAC Life Support I end up with a heavy focus on unmanned anyway.

Well, the point of BtSM isn't to have a focus on un-manned missions, it's to create an overall more balanced and challenging progression for the game. It makes just getting into a stable orbit a difficult and satisfying accomplishment. You can't just slap a capsule on top of a pile of fuel and expect it to take you to the Mun or Eve or whatever, either, but instead have to carefully plan out each mission and design a rocket suitable for it, with not only enough Delta-V, but also enough power and lifesupport to get there and and back.