Thorgalaeg
Deity
What server is it?
Kerbal Space Program
- Thread starter Leonel
- Start date
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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- Jul 13, 2012
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Sorry I missed it last night. 
I have a problem: the orbits of all my project pieces are all seriously inclined which makes rendezvous nearly impossible.
Possible solutions:
*Move the station to an equatorial orbit by having it burn at ascending/descending nodes over several passes as it doesn't have TWR to do it all in one pass of the node. [this step has to be done regardless of which other solutions I take]
*Have the landers do inclination burns the same way in multiple passes. They have the fuel in their cruise stages to do this. Pros: Straightforward Cons: Uses a lot of fuel, can't be done for all my landers as one orbits retrograde to all the others.
~or~
*Have the landers go to the surface as it will be easier to match inclinations after they take back off and re-orbit. This solution has two subparts:
a) The landers can sit on the surface and wait for the crew to come down in disposable drop-ships. Pros: The drop-ships don't have to match inclinations with anything as they can just go straight to the surface from orbit. Cons: Have to build and send drop ships.
b) The landers can touch down, then take back off and rendezvous with the station. Pros: I won't have to build disposable drop ships. Cons: The landers will have to be refueled before they can ever get a crew down to the surface as they will have already done a full duty cycle (down to surface and back up again).
Additional information:
In all cases, I will have to send tanker(s) and a deep-space crew cycler and they will have to match inclinations before they arrive.
Warpus, how did you match inclinations with your tankers?
I have a problem: the orbits of all my project pieces are all seriously inclined which makes rendezvous nearly impossible.
Possible solutions:
*Move the station to an equatorial orbit by having it burn at ascending/descending nodes over several passes as it doesn't have TWR to do it all in one pass of the node. [this step has to be done regardless of which other solutions I take]
*Have the landers do inclination burns the same way in multiple passes. They have the fuel in their cruise stages to do this. Pros: Straightforward Cons: Uses a lot of fuel, can't be done for all my landers as one orbits retrograde to all the others.
~or~
*Have the landers go to the surface as it will be easier to match inclinations after they take back off and re-orbit. This solution has two subparts:
a) The landers can sit on the surface and wait for the crew to come down in disposable drop-ships. Pros: The drop-ships don't have to match inclinations with anything as they can just go straight to the surface from orbit. Cons: Have to build and send drop ships.
b) The landers can touch down, then take back off and rendezvous with the station. Pros: I won't have to build disposable drop ships. Cons: The landers will have to be refueled before they can ever get a crew down to the surface as they will have already done a full duty cycle (down to surface and back up again).
Additional information:
In all cases, I will have to send tanker(s) and a deep-space crew cycler and they will have to match inclinations before they arrive.
Warpus, how did you match inclinations with your tankers?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
I used up quite a bit of fuel doing that at times... My approach was basically to send a bunch of tankers in randomly and deal with the fallout later. I've since adjusted this strategy by sending in everything at similar entry inclinations - makes everything a lot simpler later and means you don't need nearly as much fuel to move stuff around.
My Laythe rescue mission used up a ton of tankers, and some I even didn't use because they had crappy orbits. The original intended rescue vehicle didn't get used, because no tankers had similar orbits - I ended going with a plan C on getting my guys back in that case. After that my methodology changed to basically finetune my approach into the system months before I'm there - so that I come in at the same angle every time - or whichever one I want. Then meeting up with stuff and docking with it becomes far less annoying and you save a lot of fuel.
To match the actual inclinations I had to often start my burns 4-5 minutes before approaching the maneuver node, just so that I wouldn't run into the atmosphere during the burns. And that's with 6 nuclear engines. It was easier to change inclinations with my landers, but that seemed like a huge waste of fuel at the same time.. So for me it was really a one on one analysis of the orbits and docking things first that "made more sense", be it first docking 2 tankers, a tanker to a lander, or whatever. This decision process was probably often inefficient, but like I said I sent in an excess of tankers in anticipation of my incompetence.
I would like to present to you guys the latest evolution of the same design I've been building up on while unlocking the tech tree. So parts of it aren't logical, but it works very well and I think is kind of beautiful
What was a lander is now a lander with a medium sized science probe attached at the top. I've replaced the main engines with mainsails, and am now able to use the main asparagus stage to get to Eve and put myself in a 100km or so orbit with the "interplanetary" stage 100% full of fuel when I arrive. So the SRBs on the 1st stage are a bit excessive and designed for a much less powerful liquid stage, but it kind of feels good to have to throw fuel away, because there's just too much.. First world problems, right..I present to you Standard Science Unit. The launcher has 73 SRBs and is missing a central mainsail core. Instead the centre has some fuel for the "interplanetary" stage, as well as 7 SRBs right in the centre, 6 of which fire up right at the start, and 1 is used as a "booster" helper later on during ascent.
Spoiler :
Asparagus mainsail stage and the central booster in action. The booster isn't really necessary with the mainsails in place now, but I like it.
Spoiler :
In a tight orbit around Eve with the asparagus stage just about out of fuel. Interplanetary stage ready to go, to be used as a tug and deorbiting helper.
Spoiler :
Standard Science Unit Probe doing science.. a lot of science. After this mission was done I was able to unlock a lot of stuff. I also just added actual fuel to this probe, so it can fly around on its own. The only thing I had for landing here were the chutes... the extensible solar panels got ripped off during landing, but the backup ones worked just fine.
Spoiler :
Good to have all this extra fuel to use to make the landing a bit more graceful
Spoiler :
Worked far too well. I think 2 more missions and the whole tech tree is going to be unlocked, maybe 1 if I go back to Jool.
I've also stopped using protractors and angles of any sort when travelling between planets. I just get out of Kerbin's SOI without checking planetary alignments, and always now manage to find an efficient intercept maneuver node.. It might be 250 days in the future, but it always seems to exist... so far. I'm probably just doing the same thing, just backwards - exiting Kerbin's SOI first and then ending up burning when the angles are optimal. Or maybe this won't work with certain planets.. we'll see, so far Eve and Duna seem to work just fine
Chairman Meow
Class IV
I've found that you can usually get an intercept if your phase angle is way off, but it comes at a cost of a lot of delta-V. So if you've got delta-V to spare, that will work.
Myself, I don't go to the length of using a protractor, but I do try to get it visually close, then I launch straight to Kerbin escape (at sunrise if it's an outer planet, and sunset if it's an inner planet).
Myself, I don't go to the length of using a protractor, but I do try to get it visually close, then I launch straight to Kerbin escape (at sunrise if it's an outer planet, and sunset if it's an inner planet).
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
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That's a pretty awesome ship Warpus, it's extremely capable. 
I see you are taking the 'bigger is better approach'.
Update:
I moved my station to an equatorial orbit. Then I docked it with the lander I had sent down to the surface as a test run. It completely ran out of fuel and I switched to the station and used it's very little remaining fuel to dock them. It was a real nail biter and I didn't think I could pull it off until it happened. Now I'm going to try and move all my other landers over to dock with the station one at a time. It should be less nail biting as the rest have lots of fuel left from their cruise stages. Hopefully I'll even have enough left over to refuel the station a bit but with all the massive inclination changes necessary that will be doubtful to say the least.
Plus, there's still the one lander orbiting retrograde to sort out....crap, I just checked and there's actually 2 orbiting retrograde.
I see you are taking the 'bigger is better approach'.Update:
I moved my station to an equatorial orbit. Then I docked it with the lander I had sent down to the surface as a test run. It completely ran out of fuel and I switched to the station and used it's very little remaining fuel to dock them. It was a real nail biter and I didn't think I could pull it off until it happened. Now I'm going to try and move all my other landers over to dock with the station one at a time. It should be less nail biting as the rest have lots of fuel left from their cruise stages. Hopefully I'll even have enough left over to refuel the station a bit but with all the massive inclination changes necessary that will be doubtful to say the least.
Plus, there's still the one lander orbiting retrograde to sort out....crap, I just checked and there's actually 2 orbiting retrograde.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
What I do is blindly get out of Kerbin's SOI, then create a maneuver node with whatever deltav is required to touch orbits.. Then I drag that thing around all the way around the sun until I get an intercept or until it looks close enough, in which case minute adjustments in other directions might be necessary.
That's a pretty awesome ship Warpus, it's extremely capable.
I think my engineers have you been subscribing to your newsletter, check out the long detachable interplanetary fuel tank.
Chairman Meow
Class IV
Ah, okay, I see. So by dragging around the timing of the maneuver, you're effectively adjusting the phase angle. Sounds like a pretty good idea, actually.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Efficiency wise so far it's been good, but I'm not sure how well it is going to work for planets with orbits on an inclination. It should work fine, I think, but might just need an extra burn elsewhere. And maybe I've been getting lucky getting those encounters - but so far It's been far more effortless than checking angles and waiting for stuff to align.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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Thats really clever Warpus. You're probably right in that it isn't as efficient as an aligned launch due to the loss of the Oberth Effect but as long as you have lots of fuel it won't matter so much. I am not one to rely on precise, ultra efficient burns myself and will always prefer the easiest way to do things so I will have to try this myself.
I managed to dock one of my retrograde landers and it was quite challenging. I raised my apoasis so that when I burned retro I wouldn't dip into the planets atmosphere. Initially I thought a really high apoasis would save me fuel as you are goong slower at higher altitude so it would take less energy to reverse course. Then I remembered energy is conserved so I would have to put in a lot of energy just to get that higher orbit.
Even worse, energy isn't strictly conserved and as I rise I lose the Oberth Effect and give some energy to the planet so it didn't make sense to go higher than I need to to avoid the atmosphere. I also wasn't able to do my inclination burn at the same time I reversed orbital direction as the angles weren't favorable.
By the time it was said and done I coasted to the station on empty tanks with RCS. It was close but I made it and I can probably get the other retro lander to the station with a bit of fuel as now that I know how to do it I can be more efficient. The other big waste was that I transferred fuel from the lander to the ICS because the landers have limited RCS and are extremely unstable during docking manuevers. Dragging around a mostly empty ICS cost me half of the deltaV I had but it made docking much, much easier as it the ICS/lander combo is much easier to fly than the lander itself. At some point I am going to replace the landers with a better design but that will have to wait until I at least have a crew on the ground.
I managed to dock one of my retrograde landers and it was quite challenging. I raised my apoasis so that when I burned retro I wouldn't dip into the planets atmosphere. Initially I thought a really high apoasis would save me fuel as you are goong slower at higher altitude so it would take less energy to reverse course. Then I remembered energy is conserved so I would have to put in a lot of energy just to get that higher orbit.
Even worse, energy isn't strictly conserved and as I rise I lose the Oberth Effect and give some energy to the planet so it didn't make sense to go higher than I need to to avoid the atmosphere. I also wasn't able to do my inclination burn at the same time I reversed orbital direction as the angles weren't favorable.
By the time it was said and done I coasted to the station on empty tanks with RCS. It was close but I made it and I can probably get the other retro lander to the station with a bit of fuel as now that I know how to do it I can be more efficient. The other big waste was that I transferred fuel from the lander to the ICS because the landers have limited RCS and are extremely unstable during docking manuevers. Dragging around a mostly empty ICS cost me half of the deltaV I had but it made docking much, much easier as it the ICS/lander combo is much easier to fly than the lander itself. At some point I am going to replace the landers with a better design but that will have to wait until I at least have a crew on the ground.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
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Spoiler :
3/4 Landers have docked. This latest one had a bit of fuel left over that I transferred to the station before jettisoning the ICS which is now a comm sat.
The last lander is also on a retrograde orbit (it turns out that 3/4 landers were in retrograde polar orbits and only the one that landed was not) which was tricky but I'm getting better and more efficient at lining up the rendezvous. I actually didn't have to quickload to redo the docking, it went right the first time.
It's getting pretty lagtastic....
hobbsyoyo
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Spoiler :
4/4
Docking the last one made exceptionally difficult by the serious lag and once I got within 200m the lag intensified and the SAS system had a nervous breakdown. I only had to reload as my first attempt actually docked but the magnets didn't engage and the loss of fine controls meant I wasn't able to reorient the craft towards the docking port.
I quickloaded and fired my RCS thrusters so I came in at 2m/s; this allowed me to cruise through most of the glitchyness and I didn't slow down until 10m - at which point I was perfectly aligned and it docked.
I don't think I'll be able to dock the crew cycler, I'll bring it to within 3km and then send over the Kerbals on EVA to avoid the lag. Not sure what I'll do for tankers to sent to refuel the station and landers. I will probably never have all the landers docked to the station all at once again,, I'll just send them back up to the station after landing one at a time to aavoid lag. It sucks cause it breaks immersion but oh well.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
That's a pretty sweet Christian science station you've got there Hobbs. What are you doing with those landers again? Are they landing in different spots for science?
Can we take your game, put it in multiplayer, and let each one of us control each one of those landers?
And then see who can land the closest to some sort of a target? Probably not, but that'd be fun.
Can we take your game, put it in multiplayer, and let each one of us control each one of those landers?
And then see who can land the closest to some sort of a target? Probably not, but that'd be fun.That's a pretty sweet Christian science station you've got there Hobbs. What are you doing with those landers again? Are they landing in different spots for science?
Can we take your game, put it in multiplayer, and let each one of us control each one of those landers?
Yes, yes we can. Assuming he's using stock parts.
What is up with mods these days? Now the long awaited New Planets Mod has been released! I'm so excited for this *goes off to send a probe to the new gas giant*
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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I don't use stock-only parts. :\
Breakdown:
Station - 99% stock, uses Kerbal Engineer and KWRocketry Struts
Landers - 50% sock, use KE, KW Struts, NovaPunch Tanks and Engine
Mobile Hab - 100% stock
Rovers - 100% stock
Comm Satellites - 75% mods, NovaPunch tanks, engines, KE, KW Struts
So unless there is a way to load a new copy of KSP without mods that won't delete my current install, then I'm not going to get to play KMP as I'm not willing to give up on my Laythe Base. Sorry guys.
That's a pretty sweet Christian science station you've got there Hobbs. What are you doing with those landers again? Are they landing in different spots for science?
Can we take your game, put it in multiplayer, and let each one of us control each one of those landers?
Less Jesus, more 2001Spoiler :
Unfortunately we can't all play my game because of the mod issue.
The original concept was to have a ring station that could be spun and generate artificial gravity with fully functional parts. I have seen ring stations in KSP and for the most part they are either enormous but incorporate actual usable parts like hitchhiker cabins or are very small but made entirely out of structural panels. I tried to make this as small as possible (mostly for part count reasons) and it was darned hard to make a fully circular ring with hitchhiker modules functioning as the ring itself without making it enormous as it's very hard to angle the parts to form a good ring because they are all longish. So it wound up more like a diamond than a circle and it can't be spun because the solar array throws off the CoM on the Z axis and reaction wheels are too dumb to realize that if I'm spinning around the Z axis then that mass on the end of the Z axis doesn't matter...so spinning it causes it to wobble terribly like a top which doesn't make physical sense but whatever.
If I had to redo it, I would have made it a simple tube with docking ports to keep the part count as low as possible to combat lag. As it is now it looks pretty but is just barely usable with all 4 landers attached. Like I said before, I'm going to have to jet the Kerbals over to the station one-by-one to avoid horrendous lag when the game loads the transfer craft and the station at the same time when they get within 2.2km of each other. As for refueling it, well I think I have enough fuel to send down a lander first and then I can bring in the tanker without as much lag and detach landers as they fill with go-juice to get around the lag.
The landers are all going to land on the same island where I'm setting up my base as close to each other as I can manage. If they wind up far apart, well that's why I sent the 4 rovers down to pick up the Kerbalnauts and drive them over to the base. The mobile hab modules, which form the core of the base, can also be driven to a good spot as well. The landers though are simply there to transport crew down to the base and then back up to the space station to go home. I only intend on using 3 of the landers as all together they have space for 16 kerbals but the base is only intended to have 12 kerbals (at the moment). The extra one was a test ship and now is the back-up lander in case one crashes or something.
Next up I am going to send a refueling tanker to top off the landers. It will probably also have a set of orbital tugs that can be used to dock with landers and pull them over to the station in case they have a botched take-off and wind up in sub-optimal orbits.
After that I am going to send over the Laythe jet with a pilot and also the Jet Tanker. I'll drop the tanker down from orbit (it will land with chutes) and then send down the plane from orbit, fly it around, and then land it near the tanker. Then I'm going to send the crew transfer craft with 11 Kerbals, meet up with the station and then send down all the Kerbals.
Finally I'll send over the sounding rocket station, a comms tower, some miscellaneous stuff and the base will be complete.
sorry that was tl;dr
Chairman Meow
Class IV
Don't know if there's something in the Steam version to prevent this, but at least in the version from the KSP website, you can just copy the install directory. I use that to make backups of my installs whenever I try to install a mod (in case the mod destroys the install or the saved game).So unless there is a way to load a new copy of KSP without mods that won't delete my current install, then I'm not going to get to play KMP as I'm not willing to give up on my Laythe Base. Sorry guys.
