I realized recently how easy it is to get to duna (and took a basic trip there) and also learned some more stuff about adjusting orbit and how to go interplanetary much more cleanly and easily. I think i'm gonna throw some parachutes on one of my craft and take a trip to ike + duna properly
when i first came towards the planet with test craft, i was amazed at the size of ike compared to duna, it's actually way bigger than i thought (and duna smaller than i thought)
maybe the lander and KO/transfer craft that i have could even do a return trip, but if it's possible it'd probably need some nice flying. It's extremely over-engineered but it's a mun/minmus lander, not an ike+duna+return lander (:
I like going to outer planets more - the speeds involved in low orbit of the sun are extremely high and 1km/s of delta-v suddenly doesn't mean as much any more - harder to adjust trajectory in a significant way or really do anything
I tried a yolo docking maneuver(super high approach speed since nobody got timefor that shit), ran out of electricity since I forgot that mod engine doesnt produce electricity and managed to crash into the target from like 5km away. That aim though.
I have not been playing much on the new version, have people figured out SSTOs again? And related to that how good is the vanilla atmosphere now are mods still needed?
I'm trying to get back into this game after not playing for several months. Back in the day my crowning achievement was landing on Duna's moon so while I'd say I'm not a complete rookie, I was never very good (never could get to Jool's moons)
I'm having some problems with heat and parachutes. I'm playing career mode and the two things I'm trying to do are get into orbit and break 2500m/s, both of which I can do, but not complete. Each time I either burn on reentry, I deploy my parachute(s) too early, or I deploy my parachute(s) too late. So I ask:
How do I prevent my ship from burning up? I've been putting a heat shield on the bottom of the main part of my ships (command pod and science stuff). Do the radiator panels actually do anything, and how many do I need?
When should I deploy my parachutes? I know I should only deploy them at around the 1k-2k altitude mark but last time I deployed at about 900m and it didn't slow down at all.
Also, every time I use the thumper rockets (long white solid fuel boosters) my ship tips over in the air, is there an easy fix to this?
On June 30 2015 04:46 Erandorr wrote: I have not been playing much on the new version, have people figured out SSTOs again? And related to that how good is the vanilla atmosphere now are mods still needed?
Spaceplanes were buffed in the most recent patch. I like the new atmosphere, but as always there are people who complain loudly about change. Just play it and decide for yourself.
On June 30 2015 06:33 Chocolate wrote: How do I prevent my ship from burning up? I've been putting a heat shield on the bottom of the main part of my ships (command pod and science stuff). Do the radiator panels actually do anything, and how many do I need?
When should I deploy my parachutes? I know I should only deploy them at around the 1k-2k altitude mark but last time I deployed at about 900m and it didn't slow down at all.
Radiator panels are for temperature management in space, probably mostly useful to keep nukes from exploding. Your craft shouldn't explode if it's protected by a heat shield, just don't rush steeply into the atmosphere. 30-35km periapsis is usually sufficient to slow you down without explosions, unless you're coming in at interplanetary speeds.
You can deploy parachutes as soon as reentry effects stop. <1km is a bit low I think, the parachutes deploy more gradually now. You need more chutes for a massive craft obviously and as always just ignore drogue chutes unless you have a very specific reason to use them. I can't think of other reasons why parachutes wouldn't slow you down enough.
On June 30 2015 04:46 Erandorr wrote: I have not been playing much on the new version, have people figured out SSTOs again? And related to that how good is the vanilla atmosphere now are mods still needed?
Spaceplanes were buffed in the most recent patch. I like the new atmosphere, but as always there are people who complain loudly about change. Just play it and decide for yourself.
On June 30 2015 06:33 Chocolate wrote: How do I prevent my ship from burning up? I've been putting a heat shield on the bottom of the main part of my ships (command pod and science stuff). Do the radiator panels actually do anything, and how many do I need?
When should I deploy my parachutes? I know I should only deploy them at around the 1k-2k altitude mark but last time I deployed at about 900m and it didn't slow down at all.
Radiator panels are for temperature management in space, probably mostly useful to keep nukes from exploding. Your craft shouldn't explode if it's protected by a heat shield, just don't rush steeply into the atmosphere. 30-35km periapsis is usually sufficient to slow you down without explosions, unless you're coming in at interplanetary speeds.
You can deploy parachutes as soon as reentry effects stop. <1km is a bit low I think, the parachutes deploy more gradually now. You need more chutes for a massive craft obviously and as always just ignore drogue chutes unless you have a very specific reason to use them. I can't think of other reasons why parachutes wouldn't slow you down enough.
Thanks, this was super helpful, in the older versions a shallow reentry wasn't necessary but I see that now it is
I tried a yolo docking maneuver(super high approach speed since nobody got timefor that shit), ran out of electricity since I forgot that mod engine doesnt produce electricity and managed to crash into the target from like 5km away. That aim though.
I have not been playing much on the new version, have people figured out SSTOs again? And related to that how good is the vanilla atmosphere now are mods still needed?
Nice aim :D :D
SSTO's are pretty good now. They were getting kinda figured out and then they got buffed, so it's all good.
I think it's good to use a nuclear engine or 2, you need a moderate TWR but not really high. Could try something in the ~0.5 range from kerbal engineer.
3 stages for orbit that seemed to work well for me
1; get to a decent height and then ascend maybe 20-25 degrees up from horizon at full throttle, try to get to max speed. Rapiers should carry you to around ~1600m/s at 24km, IIRC. If your thrust to drag ratio is too bad to speed up and get the rapiers going, a turbojet or two performs better at lower speeds and will get you up there.
2; (optional) small-medium sized burn using oxidizer and rapiers, maybe a booster
3; nukes to circularize and do spacey stuff
pretty sure i've gone up using entirely liquid fuel with a pretty conventional design post-buffs, but i took a note to take a small oxidizer tank to get a bit higher/faster before relying entirely on nuclear engine
-------------------------------
Chocolate, since 1.0 atmosphere changes (maybe not in 1.0.2, but i skipped 1.0.2 atmosphere using only 1.0.0 and 1.0.3+) it's been pretty fatal to do suborbital straight up/down flights.
Previously there were many cases where it was better to fall through the atmosphere steeply (rather than being at a narrower trajectory and at a higher speed for longer; you heated up over time) but now after changes, steeper re-entry is even more fatal. If you're falling like that then you need to slow yourself down to control your speed through the lower atmosphere (below 20-25km especially) - putting a bunch of airbrakes on your craft is probably fine but maybe not available in career
simplest way i think is to simply use retrograde burns to control your speed. Save some fuel, point your engine towards the ground (or locked retrograde) and just throttle up to lower/control speed - under ~1km/s by 20km should be mostly fine, i think. If you get heat indicators, as long as your speed is in the ballpark right area and your TWR is pretty good, you should be able to adjust. If not, note the approx speed and altitude that you had problems and try to slow down some more after a quickload/reset
Going straight up/down at a very high speed is quite dangerous and inefficient, if you're going straight up/down it's best to stay slower i think and if you're going close to orbital velocity (~2km/s+) it's probably safer/easier to do it sideways
I'm in the midgame now (doing flights to mun/minmus) so I usually have enough angular velocity upon escape to just do a shallow reentry; it's actually the most fuel efficient way of reentry from their orbits.
It's really not a big deal that I can't go straight down anymore, I just wasn't used to it.
I'm kinda pissed at how expensive the science center upgrade to allow you to research techs costing more than 100 points is, though.
On July 03 2015 04:26 Chocolate wrote: I'm kinda pissed at how expensive the science center upgrade to allow you to research techs costing more than 100 points is, though.
You can adjust the variable FundsLossMultiplier in your save file, that actually affects building costs and you will most likely never fail a contract anyway, so there is no point in putting in a "punishment" for that. I think 0.5 or lower makes the building upgrades more reasonable. If you want something to deter yourself from cancelling contracts, just increase RepLossMultiplier. Having only awful contracts available is far more punishing than losing a tiny amount of funds.
Well fuck. My first SSTO to Laythe (note the speed on navball)
HAHAHA
i thought maybe i could skim the outer atmosphere, aerocapture and have a chance after that speed was twice as high as i anticipated (can always quickload and increase periapsis)
LOL NOPE
I do like the 1.0.3 physics, but i think if this speed is too high to live half a second when crossing some arbitrary threshold (50km) - they should maybe increase the height of atmospheres to make up for it. Going from kerbin for example, if the edge of the atmosphere was technically 85km instead of 70km and everything else stayed the same, you'd be able to skim the edge of it safely at around four times the speed.
On July 04 2015 02:31 Cyro wrote: That's what rescue missions are for
have you tried to take a SSTO to laythe and back without refuelling?
That's almost a challenge. Would docking with external tanks be considered "refueling"? Or maybe just having some drop tanks?
I kindof want to try this now, but I haven't built a decent SSTO that can get to orbit with enough fuel left over.
The one in the video after one reset and not even any iterations on building (i copied a reddit design and made some edits when building that i thought were better) is capable of getting to orbit and on a jool intercept with as much as ~700m/s of delta-v remaining. ~2.8k DV at 80km circular or so
getting BACK is probably the hard part. You can probably get there and back using gravity assists; i saw a post recently where a guy dropped periapsis to eve orbit, used eve gravity assist and then edited trajectory at apoapsis to get another eve gravity assist to reach jool. That saves maybe >500m/s? Just guessing, but it should be a fair amount
Would docking with external tanks be considered "refueling"? Or maybe just having some drop tanks?
By SSTO i meant literally no staging, just go
a refuel rendevous in LKO would be fun, though. Maybe even carry a drop tank up there and drop it during the transfer burn
rocket partway through construction, added more fuel tanks, engines and asparagus for maximum overkill
Duna landing
Ike landing
Re-entry. Didn't come in optimally (was gonna see if i could use gravity assist to slow down but it didn't seem so; i ended up just going in at ~3km/s without quickloading to adjust trajectory from further out) - heat was close but manageable; going in nose or ass first seemed to be suicide but flopping around sideways actually slowed the craft down so that it wasn't still going fast enough to explode when reaching lower altitudes, also spreading out the heat across everything
Safe return (:
I'm a pretty slow player so this took like two hours to actually execute without rushing lots of fun!
As one addition, i figured out that when using SRB's like that (on the lander) i could put some small fuel tanks on top of them, fuel lines to the main tank and set the thrusts so that i could run the main lander engine at 100% for the whole time the SRB's were burning, but then have full fuel after decoupling the SRB's + small tanks. Not sure what's optimal but it felt pretty cool
Also.. i think a lot of the stuff people thought about having to use fins and such on rockets post 1.0 could largely be put down to people being unfamiliar with weight distributions and TWR's that work well (bad habits from previous versions with wildly unrealistic aero) - i never even bother with that stuff any more - if it's aerodynamic at all, as top heavy as you can reasonably make it and using a TWR of like 1.7 at launch to 2.5 by 15km, it seems pretty easy to fly
On July 05 2015 23:32 Cyro wrote: As one addition, i figured out that when using SRB's like that (on the lander) i could put some small fuel tanks on top of them, fuel lines to the main tank and set the thrusts so that i could run the main lander engine at 100% for the whole time the SRB's were burning, but then have full fuel after decoupling the SRB's + small tanks. Not sure what's optimal but it felt pretty cool
It won't be optimal. This is because you need to lug those SRBs to Duna. Optimally you will burn the fuel that gives you the worst specific impulse first. Well done executing a mission with landings both at Duna and Ike though. My first return mission from Duna was much less elegant.
Also.. i think a lot of the stuff people thought about having to use fins and such on rockets post 1.0 could largely be put down to people being unfamiliar with weight distributions and TWR's that work well (bad habits from previous versions with wildly unrealistic aero) - i never even bother with that stuff any more - if it's aerodynamic at all, as top heavy as you can reasonably make it and using a TWR of like 1.7 at launch to 2.5 by 15km, it seems pretty easy to fly
Putting fins on a craft is less work than a total redesign if you see (or experience) the weight distribution is wrong. And since this usually only applies to stage 1 and stage 2, the actual loss in delta V is minimal. Also, for those who choose not to use KER or mechjeb the TWR will always involve a certain bit of guesswork (or tedious manual calculation).
It won't be optimal. This is because you need to lug those SRBs to Duna. Optimally you will burn the fuel that gives you the worst specific impulse first
I was not worried about that, with cost not being much of a factor and that craft dropping like 2.5km/s of delta-v unused from the transfer stage after coming in for duna landing but it's something to consider
I bought this game on monday cause I used to play around with Orbiter quite a bit a couple of years ago. I didn't even watch any youtube videos nor check any reviews. Guys, I am having such a blast playing this game. Almost 50 hours logged already and I just start to realize some of my ideas. The first space station, 3 modules, all manually docked (!!! this is hard for a beginner, wow) is finally in space.
EPT![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iM0SF.png)
(note the speed on navball)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iNX5C.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iNWXf.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iNWXV.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iNWZa.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/iNX2p.png)
