🚀 The Kerbal Thread - Share Your Kerbal Creations
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Absolutely. The only reason I haven't gotten it already is that I need to do other stuff, like eat, sleep and work. Once I get this, I foresee all that other stuff being severely neglected. I'm also planning on giving it to my son for Christmas. He's a Physics major; he'll love it — maybe too much for his own good.
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New Mun ship. Probably won't work, based on my success rate for first attempts at a mission.
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Fail. This is the first time I'd used the stack tri-coupler. The whole thing is very wiggly, and not in a good way.
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Finally a version of this concept that can actually get into orbit with enough fuel remaining to (almost certainly) make it to Mun:
Yikes, that took a long time to work-out. Once I'm done shaking it out I'll do the full mission. (Current version lacks solar cells and RCS on the plane.)
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Mun attempt configuration:
Take-off:
Pretty good performance this time, and the added intakes help:
Burnin'. Instead of setting up a bunch of action groups (due to lazy), I just let the engines flame-out and manually correct the plane's course when the thrust was off-center. It worked surprisingly well, so I got max turbojet thrust:
Steady orbit. 878 fuel for 2 atomics, hmmm:
Let's make some space garbage:
And... lander has no solar cells left. WELP! Back to the drawing board!
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Nice spoiler. Now see if you can get a triplane.
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It's not really a spoiler, it's a "try my damndest to get the center of lift somewhere even slightly resembling the center of mass".
Much like in real life, triplanes induce too much drag to be really effective. I actually tried a triplane version for awhile.
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Ok let's try this again, buttoning-up my solar cells this time (you'll also note I did a lot better on fuel use):
No damage, yay!
5 minutes of burn to get to Mun intercept (it ain't a fast ship):
Ass-end to the Mun:
Nice reasonable Mun orbit:
Spacewalk to the Mun capsule:
Lander detached:
Retro-Burnin':
Retro-Burnin' 2: Electric Boogaloo:
Shadow visible:
Cut engines:
Down and safe:
Glamour shots:
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Passing over Munbase Alpha on my way back:
I like this shot:
Coming home:
Lining it up:
And docked, holy crap I lined that up pretty damn well if I do say so myself:
Spacewalk back to the plane:
Now let's salvage all the lander's extra fuel for the homeward trip:
Discard the lander, we don't need it anymore (more space trash!):
Plotting a course home, should be no problem for the amount of fuel I have + mass reduction from discarded stuffs:
Burnin' home:
Prep for re-entry, I'm guessing my lack of vertical stabilization is going to make regaining control of this thing a bitch, but let's see:
Hot tamale:
Ok flying now, did a 180 so I can maximize my amount of daylight:
It turns out that without the lander, this damned thing's very very difficult to fly. Read: land. Hm. Might have to send up a rescue lander instead.
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Ok, after a few (cough) quickloads, I got it all figured out. The key is creative use of the thrust limiter feature and only activating 4 of the engines instead of all 6:
I was able to get it down nice and gentle at about 40 m/s, which is actually a better glide speed than almost everything I've built to-date:
There's only ONE small problem left:
Hope you guys brought a ladder truck (Kerbalnauts in this shot don't seem to have mouths anymore):
So there you have it. Entire Mun landing mission on a single plane. Woo.
EDIT: an interesting idea would be to put that entire upper wing structure on decouplers, and discard it after reaching orbit-- I don't need that many engines on the way back down, and the center-of-mass without the lander would be much more reasonable. Hm!
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Fail. This is the first time I'd used the stack tri-coupler. The whole thing is very wiggly, and not in a good way.
Moar struts?
This. I would also consider strutting your lander stage to the stage below for extra rigidity.
5 minutes of burn to get to Mun intercept (it ain't a fast ship):
LV-N burns without physics warp are painful. Even more so for ion enthusiasts.
And docked, holy crap I lined that up pretty damn well if I do say so myself:
I like how you fit the lander inside. I've never really done a lander + orbiter in a single launch - I always end up launching a permanent space station and then a separate lander.
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Tylo ascent time. This is where we left off with our three-stage lander...
The one nice thing about not having an atmosphere in which to aerobrake is that the gravity turn can be done early.
And orbit, with a decent amount of fuel left.
Time to rejoin the fuel in orbit for the return trip.
There's enough fuel to fill the lower stage and get Steve home. That was easy.
I'm running out of things to flag. Should I attempt an Eve ascent next? I'm expecting that to be a pain in the ass, but it is something I haven't yet done.
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idea: why not try to put a space station in orbit around every major body, complete with giant solar panels, science lab, docking ports, fuel storage, space for i dunno 10 kerbals.... stuff like that.
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Do this:
It's way harder than you'd think. At least, without mods. Moving the Class D and E asteroids in particular.
Edit: Also I don't think I've pulled-off a single-launch Moho flagging or a single-launch Eelou flagging, that'd be pretty damned challenging.
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EDIT: an interesting idea would be to put that entire upper wing structure on decouplers, and discard it after reaching orbit-- I don't need that many engines on the way back down, and the center-of-mass without the lander would be much more reasonable. Hm!
Holy crap that was a great idea:
(Ejecting before I do the orbit rounding burn, so those wings'll burn-up in the atmosphere. I already got a TON of junk in low Kerbin orbit.)
This thing's a sports car without carrying around all that useless weight:
And by the time I eject that top wing, its fuel tanks are bone-dry anyway so I lose nothing. Awesome.
Flight testing very satisfactory also:
Steady as a rock. No engine thrust-limiting needed.
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My new Mun lander. This is actually Mk II, the first one took me to the Mun and just barely got back to Kerbin. This one gets rid of the science processing center which turned out to be completely worthless, instead having lots more Science Jrs and goo tanks. Going to Minmus this time, with three Kerbals aboard for soil samples.
I think it's like 3/4 SRB by mass...
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Ugh...staging failure. I deployed my parachutes at launch.
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Lesson number 1 of Kerbal: never trust the VAB's automatic staging. :) It's always wrong.
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Asparagus staging makes it even more complicated to get right on the first try.
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Safely in orbit over Kerbin, still has the main mid-stage whatever-you'd-call-it with about half its fuel remaining. Should get me to Minmus and handle most of the maneuvering before landing, then it'll be ejected and leaving this WTF-looking lander for the remainder of the trip.
After Minmus I need to learn docking and stuff so I can make trips to other planets. I doubt I could make a lander that can successfully land on another planet, take off, and return to Kerbin so I gotta figure out the separable lander design.
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Do you have solar cells unlocked? That's a lot of mass in batteries.
I love the ladder though.
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Yeah, it's got the entry-level solar panels installed. Definitely more than needed but I had one mission fail because I ran out of battery and couldn't light my engines to return to Kerbin.
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Wow, with enough SAS, you can keep flying fine even after a destructive wing-strike:
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Definitely more than needed but I had one mission fail because I ran out of battery and couldn't light my engines to return to Kerbin.
Even worse than that is not being able to deploy your parachutes due to no power after an otherwise-successful mission. And even worse than THAT is having retractable solar cells, but not being able to power their little motors to actually deploy them. That's just mocking you.
EDIT: Also the LV-909 motor which is otherwise excellent has no alternator in it. That's a bitch early-on.
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idea: why not try to put a space station in orbit around every major body, complete with giant solar panels, science lab, cocking ports, fuel storage, space for i dunno 10 kerbals.... stuff like that.
This is mostly done already:
That leaves Tylo, Dres, Moho, Eeloo and a couple moons. The first two I would expect to be easy with my new higher dV designs that are quite affordable with ~20 million currency. The last two could be interesting; we'll see.
I have a couple larger spaceplanes to perfect (in the 80-115 ton range), and I have something BIG in mind to replace Laythe's station.
It's way harder than you'd think. At least, without mods. Moving the Class D and E asteroids in particular.
I'm aware. I caught a couple of D's and E's during 0.23.5. A few km/s for a capture burn on a heavy object is tricky.
Edit: Also I don't think I've pulled-off a single-launch Moho flagging or a single-launch Eelou flagging, that'd be pretty damned challenging.
I did a single-launch Moho flagging earlier in this thread (with no LV-N's and no asparagus staging) earlier on in this thread. A return trip will require a second launch, however.
I sent my broken-ass nuclear lander to flag Eeloo, but hadn't posted pics yet. Intercept:
Capture burn:
Deorbit:
With almost 7km/s remaining in this stage, I expect to have little trouble doing the return trip.
Here's the whole craft at launch. 9.5km/s IN ONE STAGE.
And for reference, here's my non-asparagus, non-LV-N Moho lander:
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A return trip will require a second launch, however.
Oh well, getting there is easy, I've done that (it's in this thread, too.) Getting there and back-- that's the challenge.
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Oh well, getting there is easy, I've done that (it's in this thread, too.) Getting there and back-- that's the challenge.
Single-launch land and return, hmm. My nuclear lander could probably do it without too much trouble, but that would be too easy.
Let me give this some thought. I think that plus stations around the remote celestials should be enough for now.
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I unlocked the extensible solar panels. They don't work quite like I expected, not that I even knew what to expect.
This probe is on its way to Minmus to establish an orbit and do the quick-and-easy Minmus science data contracts as they come up. I'm also using this ship to test out the nuclear engine. I suspect this thing has way too much fuel on board since it's supposed to be super-efficient. Oh well.
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Yep, got in orbit around Minmus and my final nuclear stage basically has full fuel. Good to know.
Also, WTF is this contract? Do they want me to test a John Deere tractor in the Marianas Trench while I'm at it?
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well it won't do anything but you can test the part there.....
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I went to shake-out the decouplers, ended up landing on Mun and doing a complete mission for no reason at all.
Once all the weight is shedded, flying this thing is fun as heck:
Performs just as well as a Spectre, of course it's like 80% identical to a Spectre with all the shit ejected off it.
EDIT: oh and hey the landing gear works on landing now, no need for the ladder truck!:
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Here's an interesting idea I just came up with, but it would require creating a new save: how about a "zero debris" run? Flag everything, keep the debris counter in the tracking center at zero.
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technically couldn't you do that by slapping a probe body on every one of your stages? then they wouldn't be debris.
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Well it's a self-imposed challenge, so you kind of rely on yourself to "win" it without using technicalities.
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Mun Lander Mk III, going to do an Apollo-style mission with a separable lunar module. I hope to get it there, land the lander, do some science, return the lander to orbit, dock with the rest of the ship, fly back to Kerbin, then separate and splash down separately.
If I can accomplish this, I think I'll be nearly ready to visit other planets.
Epic fail.
Moar struts! Possible success?
Negative.
The short story is docking ports do not work like I expected.
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fair enough.
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yeah docking ports are way bendier than one might expect.
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Mun Lander Mk III, going to do an Apollo-style mission with a separable lunar module. I hope to get it there, land the lander, do some science, return the lander to orbit, dock with the rest of the ship, fly back to Kerbin, then separate and splash down separately.
If I can accomplish this, I think I'll be nearly ready to visit other planets.
I see that you like boosters.
Here's an interesting idea I just came up with, but it would require creating a new save: how about a "zero debris" run? Flag everything, keep the debris counter in the tracking center at zero.
How would you envision that working - using only single-stage craft or only craft that dumps all its stages on suborbital trajectories?
Coincidentally, apart from the launch stages, this craft might be a good base for such missions. Meet Executor, so named because it faintly resembles a certain fabulous Sith Lord's flagship.
Boosters ejected.
This is the end of the outer stages, and the craft at this point doesn't have a TWR > 1.0. Let's burn and hope to shed enough fuel mass so that it can achieve orbit.
Out of atmosphere, but far from orbital velocity.
Running the main 25x4 is no longer necessary to circularize the orbit.
This is almost as silly as my nuclear lander, except this isn't designed to land. Such high dV and fuel storage could have many applications, though this craft is designed mainly to serve as a Laythe orbital base, especially since it has extra jet fuel for planes.
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How would you envision that working - using only single-stage craft or only craft that dumps all its stages on suborbital trajectories?
The latter makes more sense, that and creative use of sepatrons and/or small solid boosters.
I was just thinking about it while I was modifying my Munplane so I could do the separation before I do the circularization burn, so the bits fall back and burn-up. Then I added a remote control unit to the lander (which previously didn't have one) so I could crash those back into the Mun after done with them.
I probably won't try it myself.
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i am interested. giant metal phalic objects are my ball bag yo.
I'm just waiting for it to be on sale, I'm a cheap whore.
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Well, thanks to you guys I bought KSP on Saturday. Now I'm never going to get @RichardNixonBot finished.
One of the first things I did was kill poor Jeb because I forgot to put a parachute on his capsule. Oops.
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Installed the demo today. If I like it... I don't even want to think about it. Thinking about screencaping the whole thing because I get the feeling no amount of still shots will be enough to properly describe my levels of fail.
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One of the first things I did was kill poor Jeb because I forgot to put a parachute on his capsule. Oops.
I finally killed Jeb. My latest Mun lander didn't have enough fuel to safely land, and due to working on other missions while he was in-flight my last quicksave was after the lander had already de-orbited and started a descent towards the Mun. Couldn't revert and had to watch him splat into the lunar surface at 1500 m/s1.
1After I realized I couldn't save the mission, I may or may not have pointed the lander directly at the Mun and burned off all remaining fuel. Jeb seemed happy about the situation though!
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Well... that was a laugh
So, we have blakey posting cool missions, Groaner building fancy planes, accalia building space stations and mott going for realism. And now, for something completely different, to remind you all how much you sucked at the start (ok, it's quite possible I'm worse, shut up!), and to introduce people who are thinking of starting the game to being terrible: It's Onyx' "Fail to the Mun!"
So, you're supposed to get captured by the gravity of the Mun and then wait for the periapsis to burn, eh? How hard can that be?
Well, fcuk!
No! never give up, never surrender!
Steady as she goes...
HA! Suck on that, gravity!
Land, you say? Sure! I got this by the ass man!
That's how you do the landing stuff, right? Right?
Up! Left! No, roll! What am I even doing?
Can't say I'm surprised...
So far this is fun! Maybe, just maybe, if I stop sucking...
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When I bought the game a month or so ago, the tutorials at no point teach you how to land on the Mun though they mention that they will do so.
My technique:
[spoiler]Once in orbit, kill all orbital velocity so my lander is falling straight towards the surface. Point the nose directly up so the thruster is facing the Mun. Burn at low throttle to reduce velocity, ideally your velocity should be under 5 m/s by the time you're near the surface. Touch down and turn off thrusters.[/spoiler]
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When I bought the game a month or so ago, the tutorials at no point teach you how to land on the Mun though they mention that they will do so.
Not sure if that's still the case in the full game or it's a demo thing, but yeah, no landing tutorial. The mission just suggest you can give it a go if you want.
As for the spoilered part - that was kinda the plan... it didn't pan out :P
