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United Kingdom20332 Posts
So, the main consequence I guess is that pancake rockets with asparagus staging will no longer be the way to go.
:D
I built one recently not too complex that put 10km/s of delta V (remaining, unspent) into a ~150km circular kerbin orbit from a single launch
could have maybe made it more, though. A huge fraction of that was a nuclear engine with some fuel stacked on it, not pushing much weight after all of the staging.
I just used it to crash into the sun at 94km/s :D
asparagus staging is the result of many things though. IIRC some of the BIG reasons;
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Engines too heavy in KSP compared to reality
empty fuel tanks too heavy in KSP compared to reality
fuel transfers instant, too effective
TWR much more easily controlable with asparagus. If you want to hit golden TWR's without asparagus, you have to use a low ratio like 1.35 at takeoff with an engine, using the knowledge that you'll use a lot of your fuel and your TWR will rise towards 2.2-ish. The only other alternative is to get an engine that's too powerful and throttle it down - but again - engines are too heavy in KSP compared to reality, and that adds a huge amount of dead weight to your craft.
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^Unless they hit some of that stuff above, asparagus will always dominate anything involving boosters or side-engines and such - there's just no reason not to do it, and lots of benefits. It's no less aerodynamic just because there's a few fuel links there, it'll still be great unless they punish people for putting stacks of fuel+engines (or boosters) on the sides of their rockets and stop anything looking like that from happening effectively at all, or hit the core mechanics that make asparagus extremely effective in KSP although it's pretty crap in real life (where engines and empty fuel tanks are less of a burden, transferring fuel is harder, TWR can be controlled more easily without screwing yourself)
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It's not about not doing fuel links anymore. It's about not stacking 20 linked rockets in an absurd configuration. It's less about the aspargus and more about the pancake.
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
Yea i guess that is silly :D
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
Just tried hohmann transfer with 0.1 TWR
don't try hohmann transfer with 0.1 TWR
Low thrust engines can perform an approximation of a Hohmann transfer orbit, by creating a gradual enlargement of the initial circular orbit through carefully timed engine firings. This requires a delta-v that is up to 141% greater than the two impulse transfer orbit (see also below), and takes longer to complete.
Just burning outright was a disaster :D
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That's why ion engines, except for insanely small probes, really aren't useful for much in the game.
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I bought this game three days ago and I've lost so much sleep. Best timesink since minecraft.
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On April 16 2015 17:03 Osmoses wrote:
I bought this game three days ago and I've lost so much sleep. Best timesink since minecraft.
Welcome to KSP, i bought this game when the only planets beside kerbin were the mun and minmus (planets were added in 0.17 back Sept, 2012 i can't believe it's been almost 3years) and I still love it :D.
I'm waiting for 1.0 to start a new KSP session, between the updates and mods it's always a pleasure to come back to the game.
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
Glad i joined when i did, waiting for 1.0 :D
I was interested for a very long time, but i didn't really want to be waiting 2-4 years for a huge amount of the good stuff after i got hooked
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About ion engines, this is the only "sucessfull" thing that i did with it besides small satellites:
![[image loading]](http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/534001598388087465/4751DB93C9E9E78974400A75972653FD9EE56091/1024x640.resizedimage)
And eventhough it was very light it was not that great to manoeuver with, and it wouldn't work for long without sunlight... I liked the way it looked though :D
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
nice :D
I ran into that problem with light craft. The 24/7 generators were heavy (perhaps too heavy?) but solar panels quite reliant on positioning. I had to afk for like 10 minutes waiting for mun to line up in the right place because i couldn't accelerate time any further and i had to accelerate while in LOS to the sun
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I once had an interplanetary ship based on Ion engines on a Duna mission (I think it was a flybye), and i distinctly remember getting so annoyed with the 60+ minute burns that i swore never to do that again. Now i usually throw one onto my satellites just in case i need to move them a bit after throwing them out, but that is it. Everything that needs to maneuver gets nuclear engines.
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
sounds good :D
this totally counts as a spaceplane
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/123wotd.jpg)
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How does that thing launch? I see no landing gear! (Then again, I have been guilty of creating spaceplanes that are launched from docking clamps and you have to really hope the engines get it up to speed before it hits the runway.
Re:60+ minute burns - that to me is an acceptable use of MJ's autopilot functionality.
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
It launches vertically. I added more stuff to it, but it has a TWR of 3 from the runway and no problem getting off the ground after a few seconds to throttle up the turbojets, then you can turn to whatever angle you want by ~200-1000 meters
Lands vertically too (or with parachute, slowed to ~7m/s on kerbin first time i tried it) - i forgot power generation on my first flight though, RAPIER does not generate any power in either mode
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You need some addon that allows you to move those wings up and down, just so it looks even more like an X-Wing. And how could an X-Wing NOT be a Space Plane. An X-Wing is THE Space-Plane
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United Kingdom20332 Posts
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That would be Infernal Robotics. It lets you add controllable hinges and pistons and moving parts. Not sure how well it works in the most recent build, but people have done crazy things with it.
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It would appear that release of the 1.0 version and departure from "early access" status is on april 27th. Although not officially announced one of the staff members with regular contact with the community has been strongly hinting about it.
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Screenshot of 1.0:
I'm hyyyyyyyyped ( won't be able to play before the 19th of may though so i hope they'll take their time with the release :p)
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My level of hype is tempered by the certain knowledge that my usual modus operandi for getting things to orbit (add more boosters and struts) may not work as well in the upcoming aerodynamics.
But there's a lot to offset that.
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EPT
