Kerbal Space Program

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah at this point I'm goofing around with odd designs as much as actually trying to accomplish anything.

When I have to start launching heavy payloads, I fear I will revert back to my previous ways and have 8 double stacked orange tanks asparagus staged around a central core. What works, works, I guess. I just don't know how else to do it.

 

[Antilogic]

I've been trying to get a six orange-tank fueling pod in orbit and it's freaking impossible. I can't get everything level and the thing blows itself into oblivion every time.

The three orange-tank fueling pod might be more viable, we'll have to see.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What do you mean? Are you trying to lift 6 empty tanks to orbit or 6 full tanks or are you using a 6 tank booster to deliver one tank?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Six orange fuel tanks sounds like A LOT.

But now that we have docking, why not launch them one-by-one (or three and three, as you said) and assemble them in orbit?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I just wrapped up what had to have been the most complex, challenging, rewarding and all-around fun mission I've ever attempted. I decided to create a line of super-satellites, the Explorer series, that are capable of touring entire planet/moon systems. The concept was that I would build a large satellite fitted out with all of the scientific gizmos the games offer. I would then attach 4 mini satellites to it so that it could drop them off in orbit around various moons or planetary bodies and then using either it's cruise stage or the 4 built-in ion drives it would hop over to the next destination. I also decided to fly full instrumentation on the cruise stage itself so even after it's spent it can still do some science in whatever orbit it found itself in.

Explorer I had a few minor hiccups, the worst of which was user error. I wanted to fly to Eve and drop some probes on Gilly before going back to Eve. Unfortunately, I didn't even try and align anything so I wound up with a trajectory that gave me a Moho flyby. The cruise stage ran out of fuel after I set up the Moho encounter and though I could've used the ion drives to try for an orbit, I didn't have the patience to sit for 3 hours to manually keep it aligned as it burned since I forgot an ASAS unit on the probe which made the RCS system useless and thus the probe would drift off of it's burn vector when unattended. On the plus side, I spotted the kinks in the design and I did get to see Moho up close for the first time with my own eyes before Explorer I shot off into a solar orbit. It may one day have another encounter with Moho but I'm not going to sit around waiting for it.

Explorer II was a more versatile design. All of the kinks (such as the missing ASAS unit) were fixed and it was beefed up with MOAR fuel and such. The launcher was also upgraded from a 3 mainsail booster + core stack to a 6 mainsail booster + core stack. I launched it and luckily the angels were such that I manage to get a Duna encounter with plenty of fuel to set up an eccentric orbit.

Spoiler :

The first thing I did after setting up the highly-eccentric orbit was to deploy the MicroSat I probe. This accomplished 2 goals:
a) If anything went wrong with the rest of the mission, I'd have at least one probe around Duna to show for it
b) MicroSat I was tasked with exploring the radiation belts (if any) that surround Duna and also collect data of the high-orbital space around Duna.

Spoiler :

Next, I powered up the cruise stage's engines to get an Ike encounter followed by an eccentric orbit. As with my initial Duna orbit, I decided to deploy MicroSat II as soon as Ike orbit was achieved for the same reasons as before.

Spoiler :

After MicroSat II was deployed, I circularized my orbit and inclined it such that it became a low polar orbit around Ike. After this was accomplished, MicroSat III was deployed so that as Ike rotated beneath it's orbit, it would be able to map and characterize the entire surface of the moon.

Spoiler :

After this was accomplished, I transferred orbits back to Duna. This time, I placed Explorer II in a low polar orbit just above the atmosphere. As this was the final intended destination of Explorer II, I jettisoned the cruise stage at this point.

Spoiler :

At this point I was really glad I loaded the cruise stage with it's own science instruments, power subsystems and control module because it had plenty of fuel to try for a landing. A crater was selected as the landing sight - you can see it in the lower left corner of the first image below.

Spoiler :

This crater was chosen because it lies along the frost line. It is hoped that as the northern hemisphere of Duna enters and exits Winter, the frost line will move back and forth over the cruise stage which will allow my scientists to characterize the dry ice cap. Or whatever. I don't know what they are going to do with the sciency stuff, I just built and flew the damned thing.

Spoiler :

Success! It really wasn't even that hard, I guess I've gotten decent at landing. Even though this thing had no 'chutes or legs, I put it down in more or less one piece. I was smart and put multiple redundant power and science subsystems so even though some stuff broke, none of it was mission critical.


More pics in next post

 

[hobbsyoyo]

(sorry for double post, I hit the attachment limit on the last one)

So here is the landing site for my cruise stage:

Spoiler :

After checking out that the science package was intact, I switched back over to the Explorer II.

Spoiler :

Then I dropped off MicroSat IV in this low polar orbit so that it could map all of Duna and do some stuff WITH SCIENCE!

Spoiler :

Now I've left Explorer II in it's low polar orbit, however, it still has 8 full Xenon fuel tanks for it's 4 ion engines. So if I wanted to, I could fire them up and change orbits at least but for now it's fine where it's at.

Here are some more pics from the mission. The first is another pic of the MicroSat I deployment, the second is right before Explorer II deprated Ike and the third is a final picture of Explorer II on orbit.

Spoiler :

This mission was a ton of fun and I'm pretty sure I can take the Explorer II design everywhere else in the Kerbin system. With a few adjustments, I'll even be able to fully explore the Jool system with one launch!

It was really exciting and I felt like I had accomplished a whole lot even though it was a video game. I really hadn't expected the landing to work out - I put the power, control and science systems on the cruise stage as a 'just in case' measure. I figured that *maybe* I'd have enough fuel to crash it into the surface which can provide useful data in and of itself. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I could actually put it down intact until literally minutes before it happened. I can't believe I had enough fuel for that - AND - I even picked the spot where I wanted it to go!

So what do you all think?

I can post pics of Explorer I (but not from it's mission, sadly) or the launchers for Explorer I and II if you'd like.

 

[cardgame]

I've landed in almost that exact same spot, and a similar crater on the south pole

The view from fading ice to the dirty red surface in a crater is pretty awesome

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I've landed in almost that exact same spot, and a similar crater on the south pole

The view from fading ice to the dirty red surface in a crater is pretty awesome

Yeah it's definitely a cool spot to land on. I lucked out in that it happened to pass right under me as I seperated the stages so it was easy to get to. It is also pretty flat so that also helped landing quite a bit.

Unfortunately these probes didnt have mapsats or kethane detectors because I just switched to Steam and updated the game. I would've installed the mods but with the new version coming out its pointless. It is going to suck recreating all my missions on the new version but I am finally good enough that I only have fun without all the stress of screwing up constantly like I used to.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So I upgraded the launch vehicle from Explorer II and left the satellite the same. That was my Explorer III and I only launched it once to shake out the launch vehicle. It worked pretty darn well considering it's massive size (24 mainsails at ignition and something like 34 orange fuel tanks or so). Once again, I didn't align anything though I hoped to get a Dres encounter. Unfortunately, the only encounter I could get was a very inefficient encounter with Jool so that's where I went.

I was able to get an extremely eccentric orbit and one Tylo flyby before my fuel in the cruise stage ran out. I dropped off two microsats in different eccentric orbits and I also dumped the cruise stage. It turns out that the 4 Xenon engines are very helpful in that they allowed me to drastically change my orbit. Of course, I had to let them run for a good 10 minutes but still that's better than nothing. I could do a lot more orbital maneuvers but I don't have the patience. I didn't take any pictures of the mission, it was pretty boring. With the new launcher, I think I can take Explorer III just about anywhere though it doesn't have enough probes or fuel to fully explore the Jool system.

So I went back to the drawing board and built this behemoth, the Explorer IV:

Spoiler :

Explorer IV has the new rocket from the Explorer III plus a completely revamped Satellite and cruise stage. The cruise stage now has a much larger fuel supply as well as double the LV-N engines (6 v 3) of the last design and a parachute system for landings. The satellite itself has double the microsats (8 v 4) and more RCS fuel than the Explorer III. Additionally, I added a pair of XL solar panels to compensate for diminished sunlight out at Jool's orbit. Explorer III could run it's Xenon engines for a good five minutes before the battery drained completely but Explorer IV should be able to run continuously.

I'm about to launch the Explorer IV on it's first mission to the Jool system and this time I'm actually trying to line up the planets. I am a bit nervous though as the launcher is definitely high up on the diminishing-returns curve. Basically, all of the engines in the game are really underpowered compared to real life ones. So as you ad more fuel to the rocket to go further, you have less and less margin of excess thrust to lift it. I know that Explorer III could get to Jool (and the core stage of the rocket was actually able to do almost the entire Jool injection burn) but I'm worried that with the additional weight of Explorer IV the whole thing's not going to work.

Oh well, we'll just have to see how it does. It's also going to melt my processor, the satellite alone has over 250 parts.

I'll edit in pictures of the mission on this post to avoid triple posting if everything goes well (or spectacularly bad).

 

[hoplitejoe]

I managed my first moon (minmus) landing with the help of Scott Manley.

Spoiler :

I am going to try and make a trip to the mun with no help, but what are some other things which are good to do for beginners?

 

[J-man]

I am going to try and make a trip to the mun with no help, but what are some other things which are good to do for beginners?

A rendezvous in low Kerbin orbit, pretty hard at first but quite satisfying when you first achieve it. Also a very handy technique, especially when mastered.

 

[Fr8monkey]

Link to video.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I managed my first moon (minmus) landing with the help of Scott Manley.

Spoiler :

I am going to try and make a trip to the mun with no help, but what are some other things which are good to do for beginners?

Sweet dude!

Yeah, I'd say going for a rendevouz/docking should be your next task because if you can do that then interplanetary missions get somewhat simpler in that you don't have to launch everything at once.

 

[Antilogic]

Don't know if this has been posted here yet, but I just found the FTL egg.


Link to video.

 

[SouthernKing]

Just got this game, was only able to play for like 30 minutes. I just strapped a probe onto the biggest booster I could find and managed to get it like 300 km above the surface. Yay?

Anyway, it's already loads of fun, and this is easily one of the most enjoyable games I've played in quite a while.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I also just got the game. Played around with it for a while, can regularly make it into space now, just having problems establishing a successful orbit. Whenever I try to use the maneuver thingy it wants me to do a giant elliptical.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wait till you get to the apex of your arc and burn at 90 degreed until you get a circularish orbit.

If you guys have any questions on how to do XYZ just ask.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

Kerpollo 8 has achieved orbit. It's not a pretty orbit, but it works.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Did I help at all?

I'll post more get-to-orbit tips tomorrow. I have had a few too many for Science! right this minute.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

Did I help at all?

I'll post more get-to-orbit tips tomorrow. I have had a few too many for Science! right this minute.

It was the apex thing that cleared it up for me.

And now, to try and launch a mission to the mun. Bringing the rocket and its passengers back optional, for now, depending on fuel levels.