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[tahujdt]

Most of GWG's rockets had them, so I thought you had to in general. He seemed to have no trouble crashing with them, so I thought there was some sort of trick.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Most of GWG's rockets had them, so I thought you had to in general. He seemed to have no trouble crashing with them, so I thought there was some sort of trick.

*shrug*

I have no idea. Generally I haven't been suicidal enough to not put parachutes on my rockets. Should be possible and easy not to do though. Try it and see what happens.

[sum1won]

Make your parachutes stage earlier, once you've hit a good velocity while still in dense atmosphere.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Firstly: I downloaded MechJeb 168, as advised earlier. How do I use it? Where do I put it? There's no readme or anything! Why isn't there a readme?

_{Seriously, what self-respecting programmer doesn't think an explanation of--} Ahem. Thanks to the advice of Councilor Pi, we have created a nice little rocket intended to reach other biomes.


He changed his mind during testing. (Note: This "crash" was 100% intentional!)

Another test.

Landing failure. Well, no one got hurt.

Let's play "Find the Staging Error"!

Our attempts to make it not take off in a straight line were...rocky.

Sticky fuel boosters. Note to self: Double-check them decouplers.

This is nice.

We briefly had a speed a few dozen centimeters-per-second over 1500 m/s.

Shoulda brought a steak. Or some eggs.

The mountains. We might hit--I mean, land in the mountains!

Did we make it?

Close, but no cigar. (Plenty of kaggis, though.)

Nice sunset, though.

Hm. The winglets' removal didn't make it easier to control.

Highlighted image elements were not predicted by briefing crew.

Oh, that's more like it.

Let's aim for the isles.

Hm. Maybe we should eject.

Final design.[/i]

For some reason, the testing made Bill less than eager to re-enter the Bolden, so we launch Bob instead.

We fly up to around 15 kilometers before "ejecting" the solid fuel boosters. We really need to get better radial decouplers...We fly higher and southlier, reaching a respectable altitude of 30,537 meters right as the second stage left. Landing was...um...


<sub>Wait--

--what?!?</sub>

I suspect that deploying the parachute caused large forces to be exerted across the stage. Despite being at a fair altitude when the parachute shouldn't have been fully deployed just yet.
Well, I didn't get any science from that one just yet anyways...

Most of GWG's rockets had them, so I thought you had to in general. He seemed to have no trouble crashing with them, so I thought there was some sort of trick.

I'm a bit insulted...
But yeah, my parachutes are there for the express purpose of not crashing. At least, not in a deadly way.

And now my battery is dead (KSP eats charge up), so I must bid adieu. Oh, wait, we have 46 Science. So, should we research Flight Control or something for tomorrow?

[Aseaheru]

What can get get again?

[WillowLuman]

If we can get reaction wheels that aren't part of cockpits, we must.

[BigD145]

SAS is a must, as I said before. Flight Control.

Mechjeb folder goes into the gamedata folder. That's it. Add mechjeb part to any vehicle. Use the funky flat box one that weighs nothing. You still need to build a proper craft. Hit up the mechjeb topic at the official forum.

[3_14159]

Firstly: I downloaded MechJeb 168, as advised earlier. How do I use it? Where do I put it? There's no readme or anything! Why isn't there a readme?

Firstly, as already said, put it in the GameData folder. Then, nothing else is needed. Just start the game normally.
Once you have researched, I believe, flight control you have an additional part available: The MechJeb casing. Just slap it somewhere onto your craft. Then, you should see in the right upper edge of the VAB a small "MechJeb" thingy. Click on it to expand it. One of the possible windows is deltaV stats or so. Clicking on it should open a window like this image that I just googled for:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The window in the upper left is the one you're looking for. What do those things mean?
From left to right:

• Stage: The stage number, obviously
• TWR: The thrust-to-weight ratio. Keep it over one if you want to go places. If you want to land somewhere else than Kerbin, keep it over the relative gravity. For example, the Mun has about 1/6th of Kerbin's gravity, so 0.2 would be enough for the lander stage.
• dV: How much deltaV is available, both in atmosphere and outside. Usually, atmosphere deltaV is lower signifying less efficiency. With about 6kdV total, you should be able to establish an orbit. That is, a total dV of 6000m/s, what each stage has is more or less irrelevant as long as they add up.
• thrust time: The time your engine can run. Again, atmosphere and out of it.

Now, what do you do with that numbers? You look here. This shows you that you require about 4500m/s to leave Kerbin and establish orbit if all goes perfectly. It never does, so take a bit more, and a bit even more to get back using aerobraking. 6km/s should be enough, I believe.
Once you're on launch pad, either the window is already there, or you can click on the same MechJeb thingy on the side and display it.

So, yes, you require flight control I believe - so maybe slap an SAS module on the rocket, too.

Lastly, feedback to the last rocket: Looks pretty good. I'd say reduce to SRBs to three, which still should be enough and hopefully make decoupling them a bit easier (do you actually have them linked to the decoupler, that is not touching anything else of the rocket? Try it with just one decoupler and one SRB. Set that up, then change to 3x symmetry, then click on the decoupler and you should get that SRB/decoupler pair three times.)

Also, congratulations on nearly hitting colliding with landing at the mountains.

[MarcAFK]

Like in real life, SRBs give you thrust to lift off, get to about 100-200m/s, then the liquid fuel engines take over with a TWR of slightly above one and get you up up and away.

The space shuttle's SRB's provide enough force to get the shuttle to 46 kilometers before seperating, I find that in KSP my solid boosters only manage about a kilometer before seperation and crash landing back into the VAB.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Also, congratulations on nearly hitting colliding with landing at near the mountains.

FTFY.

Like in real life, SRBs give you thrust to lift off, get to about 100-200m/s, then the liquid fuel engines take over with a TWR of slightly above one and get you up up and away.

The space shuttle's SRB's provide enough force to get the shuttle to 46 kilometers before seperating, I find that in KSP my solid boosters only manage about a kilometer before seperation and crash landing back into the VAB.

Maybe you need to use bigger boosters. I've been using the big Rockomax ones.

Where would the gamedata folder be? No matter where I look, I can't find anything relating to KSP! Even searching my computer for it only finds the shortcut.

[MarcAFK]

KSP win/gamedata
The location of KSP win depends on where you installed it, uh, or where you unzipped it.
Try rightclicking on your shortcut and clicking open target location"

[BigD145]

I assume you bought it through steam. steam>steamapps>common.  Something like that. I'm not sitting at my computer now.

Don't use mechjeb in career. Just see how it flies your most stable craft in sandbox. Your ksp save folder has craft files in the sph and vab folders if you want to copy between career and sandbox. Any parts on a craft in sandbox that are not unlocked in career will make the craft file show up when opening them in vab but they will be unusable until you unlock all the parts.

[3_14159]

Like in real life, SRBs give you thrust to lift off, get to about 100-200m/s, then the liquid fuel engines take over with a TWR of slightly above one and get you up up and away.

The space shuttle's SRB's provide enough force to get the shuttle to 46 kilometers before seperating, I find that in KSP my solid boosters only manage about a kilometer before seperation and crash landing back into the VAB.

Well, it completely depends on what you're launching. My comm satellite launcher actually very nearly achieves orbit with two pairs of big SRBs (though from a mod pack, they should be nearly identical to the standard big one). One pair gets it to a few kilometres, then I wait until it's slower than 150m/s which is usually at around 10km. The next pair usually pushes the apoapsis far out of atmosphere. But, then again, that thing is tiny - a capsule is rather more difficult.

Where would the gamedata folder be? No matter where I look, I can't find anything relating to KSP! Even searching my computer for it only finds the shortcut.

If you have the shortcut, it doesn't matter - right click on it, then attributes. In that, there's something like "File this shortcut is linking to". That's the path you're looking for. I cannot tell you the exact names since I am not on a windows computer currently, but that should work.

Don't use mechjeb in career. Just see how it flies your most stable craft in sandbox. Your ksp save folder has craft files in the sph and vab folders if you want to copy between career and sandbox. Any parts on a craft in sandbox that are not unlocked in career will make the craft file show up when opening them in vab but they will be unusable until you unlock all the parts.

I believe his intention (or at least mine when referring him to that) was not to use auto pilot at all. (Auto pilot actually is not unlocked for most of career mode, I believe). Just the information it can give you are invaluable to piloting.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I assume you bought it through steam. steam>steamapps>common.  Something like that. I'm not sitting at my computer now.

Alright, that helps. Also helpful: Checking the C drive instead of just all the little miscellaneous folders.

Don't use mechjeb in career. Just see how it flies your most stable craft in sandbox. Your ksp save folder has craft files in the sph and vab folders if you want to copy between career and sandbox. Any parts on a craft in sandbox that are not unlocked in career will make the craft file show up when opening them in vab but they will be unusable until you unlock all the parts.

Proof that while kerbals have a sense of right and wrong, they lack a sense of sane and crazy.

Projected Δv looks good!

I like how MechJeb sometimes measures speed and such in nanometers per second when you're not moving much. Millimeters per second is slightly less amusing, but much more common.
Jet engine ascent is slower than I'm used to. A minute and five seconds just to reach 5,000 meters...although the next kilometer takes about ten seconds, so it seems to be speeding up.
Playing around and looking at MechJeb stuff helps pass the time. I wonder what the Translatron's "Panic!!!" button does...
Nine thousand meters and I've barely spent any fuel. I might as well see what kind of horizontal velocity I can build up with these jets before the air gets too thin.
My vertical velocity begins to drop too much, so I straighten up.
I start to lose control. Suspecting engine flameouts (I'm above 18 kilometers), I eject the nearly-full jet boosters and activate the mainsail. Much more powerful, that is. Hell of a fuel hog, though. Not too much later, I'm at 28 kilometers, have an apoapsis past 75, and one-third of the Mainsail's fuel is gone.
Of course, the apoapsis drops five kilometers before we get there.
8*G acceleration several seconds before apoapsis, not quite out of the atmosphere even. The estimated burn time was high, it seems. Then the Mainsail runs out of fuel and it's up to that final launcher stage to do stuff. The ant-class engines are small and efficient, but fairly weak; I had hoped I wouldn't have to use them until I was well in orbit.
The orbit is getting annoyingly elliptical, apoapsis (at this point) 711.5 kilometers, periapsis not even 56 kilometers. Remind me to fix that stuff next time I play KSP.

If you have the shortcut, it doesn't matter - right click on it, then attributes. In that, there's something like "File this shortcut is linking to". That's the path you're looking for. I cannot tell you the exact names since I am not on a windows computer currently, but that should work.

I tried that early on.

Not helpful.

[BigD145]

I assume you bought it through steam. steam>steamapps>common.  Something like that. I'm not sitting at my computer now.

Alright, that helps. Also helpful: Checking the C drive instead of just all the little miscellaneous folders.

I try not to talk about drives because I have 2 physical drives and one has 3 partitions, so four lettered drives. I always use a dedicated windows drive and a dedicated game drive. Extra drives are for storage organization and dual booting 64 and 32 bit for closet case software. Not really an option with most laptops.

Mechjeb gets changed a lot, so you'll find some versions are just broken. Getting on the KSP forum is a good idea.