General Kerbal Discussion
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
- Does the space shuttle cockpit's window open? Or what am I seeing there?
Not to my knowledge. It just looks weird from that angle.
- I thought the point of the 1.0 patch stuff was to break putting non-aerodynamic elements on the front of a craft. No nosecone? And yet it works ok?
This launcher has such a high TWR and such a high cross section already that a little more drag makes little difference. It also flies a rocket ascent profile, which makes lower atmosphere drag less of an issue.
- What part is this? A mod I assume...
KS -25 engine on a 3.75m tank. The excellent gimbal range on that engine is essential - you'll notice that it's mounted off-center to help compensate for the unbalanced nature of this launcher.
EDIT: for the record, I'd disqualify that ship because it clips. Your refinery is clipping through the shuttle bay doors slightly.
For some reason, mounting things on the inside of cargo bay doors makes the backs of those items stick out. I'll see what I can do to fix that when I address the landing gear issues.
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
my guess would be a canard that's been fiddled with the rotation and offset controls in the VAB to produce winglets.
Also correct. A little extra horizontal stability never hurts when you're flying ~120 tons around. I had to add a lot of extra wing to make that thing even capable of flight.
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@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
engine on a 3.75m tank.
Right; but that tank isn't stock, is it? I just looked through the parts list again, and none of them have that angular indent like your ship shows.
BTW: yeah the clipping on the shuttle bay doors is awful. Once I managed to make a lander out of medium tanks and cram one in there with no clipping, but it was close. It gives you a lot of sympathy for NASA engineers of the 1970s and 1980s who had to deal with pretty much that exact cross-section in the real shuttle. I don't expect other people to follow my personal rules on clipping. (Which are flexible anyway-- it's ok if wings clip into each other as long as the result still looks like a wing, and it's not like 100% overlap.)
EDIT: I love how the categories on their own wiki are about 40,000 times more useful than the categories in the game itself. "Utility" my ass.
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Kerbal STATUS:
That moment when your single full parachute burns up on launch............
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@AyGeePlus said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Groaner Wait, what? How do you do a Jool transfer without Ox?
Did you use LF engines to get nearly-to-orbit and then have traditional engines for moving around once you're up there?
That craft just has two Whiplashes and an LV-N, with a tricky ascent profile that requires going fast enough high enough so that the nuclear engine has enough time to build orbital velocity. While finicky, it was a pleasant surprise since I thought rapiers were a hard requirement for SSTOs.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
engine on a 3.75m tank.
Right; but that tank isn't stock, is it? I just looked through the parts list again, and none of them have that angular indent like your ship shows.
I believe it's a 14400 connected to a 3.75m to mk3 adapter connected to an angled mk3 to 2.5m connected to the orange tanks. I'll double check when I get home.
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@Groaner I guess I need a shot from another angle to visualize that.
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@blakeyrat Oh man I really need to get back into KSP.
Last time I played they were just about to add better aerodynamics so that nose cones weren't pointless and nuclear engines still burned LF+Ox.
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@AyGeePlus said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat Oh man I really need to get back into KSP.
Last time I played they were just about to add better aerodynamics so that nose cones weren't pointless and nuclear engines still burned LF+Ox.
The biggest change from 0.90 is that you NEED heat shielding if you plan on doing any kind of interplanetary high velocity aerobraking or aerocapture.
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@AyGeePlus I liked it better when the physics were more cartoon-y. IMO the perfect version (for the physics engine) was the one just before 1.0 came out. But oh well.
I'm getting used to how stuff works now, but I'm still confused on a lot of issues. For example, radiators. One ship has the radiators at 47% another has them at 15%. Is higher better? Or lower? What does that number even mean? Some radiators only cool "nearby" parts-- how is "nearby" defined? Distance? Number of connections? How many connections? How much distance? Bah.
The whole radiator game mechanic I'm just ignoring for the moment. I put a few on every craft just in case I need them but.
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@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
The biggest change from 0.90 is that you NEED heat shielding if you plan on doing any kind of interplanetary high velocity aerobraking or aerocapture.
Yeah and that includes the early missions when you're just returning to Kerbin. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but putting a heatshield the same diameter of my ship hasn't helped me keep my ships from blowing-up, so I always use a bigger heatshield than probably necessary.
I don't mind heatshields being required, honestly. I wish you could place them better. (For example, place ladders on them radially.)
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@blakeyrat I guess it could have been worse. I guess they could have gotten so into "realism" that you had to pack food and water in the ship for the Kerbals to survive.
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@blakeyrat
i stumbled upon a page in the "kspedia"(the "manual" they added on 1.1) that explains radiators.
it's not perfect, but at least there's some info on then now
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@Jarry I'll have to take a look when I get home. I was planning on mostly ignoring them until I get something really close to the sun, where I assume they'll be useful.
The ones I have actually seem to be useful for running atomics at 100% for extended periods of time. (In previous versions, if you didn't cap your atomics at 90% they'd over 5-6 minutes overheat, IIRC. Maybe longer.)
None of the Wiki pages on radiators say anything even slightly useful, except this one, which also suggests the second solid booster you get in the game is prone to overheating? Dafuq? I've never seen one overheat.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Dafuq? I've never seen one overheat.
they'll overheat on their own, but if you have them attached to a rocket they'll tend to transter enough heat to the attached parts that they'll burn out before they overheat. if you want to see one overheat attached to a rocket, drain it of fuel (because empty boosters generate heat faster) and then turn on infinite fuel so the booster still fires.
it's actually an interesting mechanic, if very poorly articualted.
it's the same mechanic that's the reason why the mainsail engine tends to overheat if attached directly to the orange fuel tank, but not when you put one of the tiny rocketmax tanks between the engine and the orange fuel tank.
that tank's supposed to represent the shuttle external fuel tank and so is "insulated" and particularly bad at transferring heat
but yeah. that's what overheating boosters are about.
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@accalia Haha I can't even envision what kind of ship a person would have to build to figure that out. Nothing but 50 of those little solid boosters and a capsule?
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
which also suggests the second solid booster you get in the game is prone to overheating? Dafuq? I've never seen one overheat.
neither i.
from what i remember,
thermal control systems -> deployable, cool all the ship because liquid cooling system
radiators -> sheet of conductive material, only cools attached and nearby partsor something like that
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@accalia Haha I can't even envision what kind of ship a person would have to build to figure that out
suborbital hoppers are what i usually see do it..
booster, decoupler(optional), capsule, parachute.
cheap as sin, and useful for contracts in the early game if you've got the patience to farm contracts in the early game (not worth it if you ask me. the contracts scale up in value too fast to make it worth it)
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@Jarry said in General Kerbal Discussion:
radiators -> sheet of conductive material, only cools attached and nearby parts
Right; but there's no definition of the term "nearby" which I can imagine at least 3 different ways Kerbal could define that.
The Mobile Processing Lab: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mobile_Processing_Lab_MPL-LG-2#Data_Value
When you shove data into it, is the science multiplier applied to it? If so, is it applied at the point where you insert the data, or when you transmit? (Does it matter what planet the lab is orbiting?)
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@blakeyrat Hmm, apparently they're mostly for cooling the Nerv and the converter plants that process mined stuff. Those can get really hot, I guess. Radiators pull heat from the hottest parts and dump it, which can help with long re-entries probably? Keeping the hottest parts cooler will pull more heat from the skin temperature, etc.
Also the solar panels are more efficient at lower skin temperature, but honestly I have no idea if radiators would even help with that.
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@AyGeePlus said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Radiators pull heat from the hottest parts and dump it, which can help with long re-entries probably?
Now I wonder if you don't use a heatshield at all but layer the ship in like 500 radiators, will it work? ... hmm. Something to try.
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@blakeyrat Pics or it didn't happen.
(Actually maybe you could use like 500 radiators as a heatshield? Build a heatshield out of radiators.)
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I figured out the confusion
And has this new mental ability opened vistas onto your world? What'll it be like if you can fit in with the hoo-mons?
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I just started the campaign in 1.1, and I was wondering, can you get into orbit unmodded with the 30 part/18 Tn limitation in the lvl 1 launchpad? I've had designs that get close, but not close enough to think that minor tweaking is going to do it. I could of course upgrade and get into orbit, but it's fun to see how far I can get within those limitations.
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@Kian With enough tech tree you certainly can. I don't play campaign mode, are the limits only on part count and weight, or is the tech tree limited also?
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@blakeyrat
part count, weight, and i think dimensions
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@Jarry I guess I'd have to try it myself. Dimensions might make it tricky depending on what they are.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Nothing but 50 of those little solid boosters and a capsule?
Pretty much... There was a time when you could build a ship literally of that, plus a single tiny liquid fuel rocket, and escape the planet's gravity well...
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@Kian With enough tech tree you certainly can. I don't play campaign mode, are the limits only on part count and weight, or is the tech tree limited also?
Yeah, getting into orbit was kinda tough but you can definitely do it, especially with the solid boosters
EDIT: By kinda tough, I mean you either need MechJeb or need to be a MechJeb... Much skill is required to maximize fuel efficiency
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
EDIT: By kinda tough, I mean you either need MechJeb or need to be
a MechJebScott Manley... Much skill is required to maximize fuel efficiencyFTFY.
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@accalia True.
I pulled it off with... like, 20 m/s^2 of ΔV though. And a periapsis of like... 69,800. So, just barely enough to deorbit myself, if I did it right...
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@accalia said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Scott Manley
FTFY.
HULLO! (You are now reading the rest of this post in his voice!)
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@Groaner Including the md5sums
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
is the tech tree limited also?
Yeah, in that you have to perform experiments to gather science to unlock things. My problem is weight more than anything. It's very easy to go over-budget.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
My problem is weight more than anything. It's very easy to go over-budget.
Really?
My biggest issue was the size... the launchpad was the first thing I upgraded
EDIT: Second. I upgraded the runway first cause I couldn't launch anything with it before......
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
My biggest issue was the size
I guess I might be adding too many boosters. Should see where just using a ton of fuel gets me.
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Success!
Ship that did it:
Trick was adding a second stage to the main rocket with the LV-909 engine (low thrust, high ISP), and turning horizontal earlier than I usually do in the ascent. Now I just have to hope the heat shield protects the chutes on the capsule.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Now I just have to hope the heat shield protects the chutes on the capsule.
It should, but trigger the chutes manually once you're outside of the
DANGER ZONEor you might have issues of theParachute 1 was destroyed due to atmospheric forces and heat
variety
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@sloosecannon Landing was pretty good. Splashed down 85 km away from the launch site. Lowered periapsis to 50 when I was halfway around the world, aero braking dropped it further to zero, and when I was about 45 km high I fired the remaining fuel to speed the descent and fall close to the launch pad instead of on the next continent. Shielding didn't suffer any damage. When I was below 500 m/s I opened the drogue chutes, and once those dropped me to a safe speed for the main chute that was triggered.
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@Kian Nice!
I just got a small spaceplane to land - it was fun watching that thing come in.
The intakes for the jet engines exploded too... That was slightly troubling.......
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@sloosecannon said in General Kerbal Discussion:
EDIT: Second. I upgraded the runway first cause I couldn't launch anything with it before......
it's impossible to launch a plane with the first runway, impossible
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@Jarry Well, I bet you could if you either did VTOL or enough thrust to launch the sucker off the runway. But a regular takeoff roll? Yeah, not gonna happen.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I fired the remaining fuel
Also, I should do this... Right now I just put the thruster to max and blow the stage so I don't have issues on reentry, but now that I think about it....... there shouldn't be any, and using the fuel while reentering might help with overheating issues...
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I've managed to send a unmanned rocket directly out of the orbit around kerbin. I seem to have lost control over the pod with the sciency stuff, and retained my boosters instead -_-
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@swayde
welcome to KSP, we're all glad that you had your baptism today
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Gilly: too damned light. Takes FOREVER to land.
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@Jarry said in General Kerbal Discussion:
baptism
Pshaw, did you read his post?
It was an unmanned pod.
The babtism is when you do that with Jeb, Bob, and Bill...
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Landing was pretty good. Splashed down 85 km away from the launch site.
BTW pro-tip: you can plant flags on Kerbin, and they make excellent navigational aids since they're visible from everywhere. (So build a quick and dirty little car, drive to the end of the runway, and slap down a flag named "Space Center Runway". At least, that helps me a ton.)