General Kerbal Discussion
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@blakeyrat Ah. I was thinking "functional craft" as opposed to test jig. I take it the plan is to land tankers on top of the refinery?
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@Weng Yeah. It seems like a good way to make this work in Pol, as opposed to making rovers which are also tankers which are also able to line-up their docking ports exactly on rough terrain.
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@blakeyrat Let us know how it works out? It seems like landing would be really tricky but I'm not a very good pilot. There are mods (or at least there used to be) that would let kerbals run fuel pipes between craft by hand.
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@AyGeePlus I'm trying out all the equipment on Minmus. If I can do it there, I can do it on Pol, easily.
Is there any easy rule-of-thumb for getting a perfect polar orbit? I always just guestimate.
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@blakeyrat It doesn't have to be perfect, depending on your scanner's width, right? I always tweak it after the capture orbit because I just fuck that up every time.
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@AyGeePlus I know it doesn't have to be, but I want it to be and there appears to be zero tools in the map view to help.
EDIT: while around Kerbin you can target Mun then get your offset angle to 90 degrees, but that doesn't work on Minmus of course.
So far so good. I'm sitting on 5.3% ore content, no idea if that's good or bad.
I got 100% efficiency on the drill, and 96% on the processor. Woo.
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@blakeyrat deployed, that looks like some kind of weird bug or something. I kinda like it...
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@blakeyrat Seriously neat design.
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@blakeyrat You could, uh, land a rover and drive to one of the poles? And then. Um. Set a maneuver node at the equator and only change the perpendicular burn components and minimize the approach distance? That should get you on a perfect polar orbit if you get everything exactly right.
I don't have KSP in front of me but there's got to be some way to see your orbital variables, I thought? Maybe from the tracking station.There's not, not without mods. It's saved internally, of course. You could get it reasonably close and savefile-hack it to zero or check your savefile to see what it is, depending on your comfortableness with Leet Hax.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Is there any easy rule-of-thumb for getting a perfect polar orbit? I always just guestimate.
I don't know if this is what you mean, but one way to check is that your heading (when heading prograde) has to be 0º or 180º, which you can check on the navball at any time.
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@Weng I vastly, vastly underestimated the difficulty of landing a probe on a docking port.
I can land on the platform ok:
But only within about a 3m error bar. Not close enough to use the docking port. As you can see, I also wanged the solar cell one one attempt.
Sigh.
I guess I need my fuel drone to be on rover wheels and connect horizontally.
I'm going back to the drawing board. The good news is the new fuel refinery can use the top to place all the shit I was trying to cram on the sides.
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@Kian That's true, but you can't do that while setting your waypoint up in the map.
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@blakeyrat No. I don't think there's a direct way, short of landing something on the pole and using that as a target, as @AyGeePlus suggested.
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@blakeyrat Sucks. To aid in docking port alignment on unlevel terrain, could you tack a flat "parking pad" next to your horizontal docking port?
Returning to the vertical design for a second, seems if the landing accuracy were resolvable, the safety could be improved by retracting the panels before incoming landings.
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@Weng said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Returning to the vertical design for a second, seems if the landing accuracy were resolvable, the safety could be improved by retracting the panels before incoming landings.
I retracted all of them except that one. But still wanged that one.
Flight testing version 2:
@Weng said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Sucks. To aid in docking port alignment on unlevel terrain, could you tack a flat "parking pad" next to your horizontal docking port?
Possibly? Just some plates arranged like a ramp?
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@blakeyrat in my head its just a flat plate.
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Maybe have a little prong that sticks out kind of at the bottom with the port attached to it, like someone going for a low-5.
Then the refueling ship has a prong that sticks out kind of above that, and then when you need to dock them you just strategically alter the suspension or retract a landing leg or two and bam. High-5 docking.
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@blakeyrat I just had an idea. Why not combine the two ideas? Set up your mining rig something like this:
And then you just drive the rover to be fuelled up on top of the platform and lower the rover onto the docking port. I haven't used it in a while, but doesn't the inline docking port also have a bit of extension when opened? Maybe you could take advantage of that somehow.
Again, just a concept, and I'm not entirely sure if it's workable right now.
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@blakeyrat I'd figure with those large diameter wheels, a smallish mismatch between the parking plate and ground level wouldn't be a problem. I haven't rovered much, unfortunately.
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@abarker Interesting idea, but my big problem is I HATE making a spaceship/rover combo because it looks like ass and also has to drag around wheels.
Here's my current tanker/refinery assembly:
I took it for a ride to test it out:
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@blakeyrat One other thought that – upon reflection – should be blinding obvious. Why use docking ports at all? Why not just use the Advanced Grabbing Unit? It allows transfer of resources and the only requirements for attachment are a perpendicular connection at sufficient force. Since you have to meet those criteria (and more) to align docking ports in a surface maneuver, it seems like it should simplify operations.
And in order to avoid needing to put a claw on every ship that you plan to refuel, just build and land a fuel rover or two near your refinery. Leave it hooked up to the refinery when not needed, and make sure it fills up. Then when a ship comes in for a pit stop, you free the fuel rover from the refinery, drive it to the ship in need, connect, fuel, and go. It's a little more work, but it is a somewhat nice solution. It also avoids the need to make your ships double as rovers.
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@abarker I presume on Pol the grabbing unit would just push the tanker around. Since it takes quite a bit of force to get them to grip. But who knows, might be worth a try.
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The new one also looks pretty amazing in orbit:
EDIT: I'm pretty happy with it:
Too bad the accompanying tanker looks like boiled shit.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@blakeyrat Holy shit driving on Minmus is difficult, it's 100% ice.
The lack of gravity makes rovers tricky. I've heard of some people using ion engines for downforce.
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@Groaner said in General Kerbal Discussion:
The lack of gravity makes rovers tricky. I've heard of some people using ion engines for downforce.
Interesting idea.
My bigger problem is I mounted by docking ports wrong so they don't show the navball correctly. I need to fix that first, so the driving controls will make sense.
Successful docking:
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@blakeyrat Next task: getting that mining equipment to Jool.
I built a new long-range booster:
Kerbodyne parts still feel like cheating:
You can launch anything with this shit. ANYTHING.
I put up 4 of them because I'm sure I'll need more than a couple, now my Kerbin orbit's really really busy:
Starting to get worried about debris... hm.
If you're wondering, that capsule icon is this space plane:
Which I left in orbit because ???. For some reason, Kerbal doesn't have an icon for space planes.
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This is gonna be fun to dock:
Ok. Docked.
Oh shit. This is gonna be fun to try and fly:
The good news is it appears they've vastly increased the magnet strength on the Rockomax docking port, which is a relief. In previous versions it was wimpy as shit.
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Tempted to divert to Eelou:
But, uh, not much use for a fuel station there.
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Refinery delivered:
Not landed yet, because stupidly I included the resource scanner with the tanker, not the refinery. So until the tanker gets here, I have no idea where I should land it.
The irony of the situation is the leftover fuel from boosting the fuel station to Pol is enough to completely refuel every tank on my science station:
Heh.
I love how space stations look when they just "naturally" evolve from your missions, like a huge misshapen lump of crap all stuck together:
All tanked up, and 748 units of fuel to spare:
Hm. I was hoping it'd empty out so I could discard it, but I guess I'll keep it hooked up to the station for now. It nothing else it has 4,000 more battery power to contribute to the operation.
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Got my resource scanner in-place:
Now all three vessels, I'm ready to pick a landing site:
But first, let's dock my long-range booster back with the science station:
Oops I "accidentally" delivered another 5338 units of fuel. Heh.
Now that Rockomax docking ports actually work correctly, I'm tempted to make a new station based on them. It'll hold together a heck of a lot better as parts are added.
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I finally got fed up with Jeb always occupying the default pilot seat. Now he's on early retirement on the beach near KSC. I don't have the ability to put down flags, so he's also a useful radar beacon.
Keep up the good work, Jeb.
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@AyGeePlus said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I finally got fed up with Jeb always occupying the default pilot seat.
(You can select your kerbanauts from the menu in the construction screen before you move the craft to the launch pad/runway.)
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@blakeyrat I know, but if you pick valentina as your pilot you need to keep doing that. I tried to reorder them so she'd be first by default, but no dice.
Eventually I gave up and retired him.
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@AyGeePlus Oh. Yeah. True. Once you remove all pilots and hit "save", it saves that the craft is intended to have no pilots. But otherwise it'll always automatically assign whoever's next in line.
You could demote Jeb into running KerboSpaceStation One or something.
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@blakeyrat No space station tech yet. Hence beachside 'resort'.
I'll probably install him at the most distant part of the solar system I can actually reach every so often.
Or put him on an escape trajectory from kerbol.
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@AyGeePlus said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I'll probably install him at the most distant part of the solar system I can actually reach every so often.
i launched him into deep space on top of a ..... i think it was close to 60 tonne rocket. escape velocity baby!
this is a valkyrie run.
which is screwing me over right now because all the scientists that are available to hire have been males the last times around in the hiring process.
got plenty of pilots and engineers, not enough scientists.
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@accalia If you want him gone-gone, you can just shove him in a 1-man capsule, hit "launch" go to the Tracking Center, and hit "delete".
I think he eventually regenerates still though.
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@blakeyrat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
I think he eventually regenerates still though.
and that's why i shoved him, bill, and bob into a capsule and shoved them off on a kerbol excape trajectory, never to return.
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@accalia Don't old missions eventually auto-delete?
Doesn't play KSP
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@PleegWat said in General Kerbal Discussion:
@accalia Don't old missions eventually auto-delete?
old debris will eventually autodelete, but craft are persistant. they're marked as a craft, not as debris so they'll stay fine for ages.
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Software Update Destroys $286 Million Japanese Satellite
The Japanese X-ray telescope Hitomi has been declared lost after it disintegrated in orbit, torn apart when spinning out of control. The cause is still under investigation but early analysis points…
Looks like the Japanese had a Kerbal experience.
The STT and IRU disagreed on the attitude of the satellite. In this case the IRU takes priority, but its data apparently was wrong, reporting a rotation rate of 20 degrees per hour, which was not occurring. The satellite attempted to stop this erroneous rotation using reaction wheels. The satellite configuration information uploaded earlier was wrong and the reaction wheels made the spin worse.
The satellite now went into “Safe Hold” mode and thrusters were called upon to stop the rotation. Using the same erroneous configuration information they increased the spin further causing the satellite’s rotation to exceed design parameters. Parts, like the solar sails, came off. In all, at least 5 pieces were observed in addition to the main body. Some reports indicate there may be as many as 10 pieces with 2 larger and 8 smaller pieces continuing in orbit.
Yup, I've had Kerbalcraft do that before.
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If they die and you have unset the option "kerbals reappear" (not sure the name) I think they stay dead. At least, Jeb hasn't respawned for me yet.
Yeah, had a flight lose control on reentry, and the mission could not be reverted. I'm getting new kerbals from rescue missions, though. Still confused why the original 4 have orange suits and everyone else has grey suits.
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@Kian said in General Kerbal Discussion:
Still confused why the original 4 have orange suits and everyone else has grey suits.
They're recreating Star Trek Generations, the Star Trek movie so cheap they didn't even bother to make a new DS9-style uniform for every actor. (Half of them are still in the Next Gen-style uniforms.)
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I got my Kerbal stranded around Moho about... halfway back. But he landed and flagged the planet and all that good stuff, when I send another long range booster to him and bring him back, it'll complete my tech tree for sure.
I didn't take any screenshots because.
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@blakeyrat Wow returning a sample from Moho is only 300 science? Pfft. Jool moons are both easier to reach and provide more science.
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From a realism point of view Mercury/Moho is basically just a brick in a vacuum. Not a lot of sexy science going on there. There aren't even moons?
Jool on the other hand...
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-sigh-
okay.... wtf happened to my KSP save?
I was playing the game, massively failed a reentry of an unmanned capsule, which caused it to explode, shooting pieces of the capsule everywhere.... okay fine..... it wasnt carrying much, mostly i just wanted to avoid the kessler effect.
i go to the tracking station to find the other satelite to deorbit, and notice a blip waaaaaay off on the edge of the solar system...... that's moving at over 1,000,000,00 m/s .... or three and a bit times the speed of light back here in reality.... i didn't put that there......
so i switch to it to see what it is, it's a solar panel..... just a undeployed solar panel, moving like a bat outta hell.
goting back to the space center i notice that i now have negative science and cash.... and the game crashes when i alt-tab away to open paint for some screenshots..... now the save refuses to load.... it just causes the game to crash when i try.
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@accalia Kraken.
