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[alway]

Well, after much prior experimentation, today I built a massive cruiser for exploration of other planets.
Imgur album:
https://imgur.com/a/vpkTq
Sent it up in 4 parts (as well as an additional 2 RCS tug docking assistant vessels), then assembled in a circular orbit between 800 and 900 km, with an inclination of 5 degrees.

The trickiest part to get up was the core; it's highly asymmetric, has very high drag and weird lift forces due to the Interstellar heat radiators and such. Got that up successfully on my 3rd or so try with the Cruiser Core Launcher shown in the first image. It uses 2-stage asparagus with 8+12 3 meter engines. Of those engines, 4 are the more powerful stock engines, while the rest are even more powerful (but much lower ISP) mod engines. I put these in a setup I found to be previously very successful for unstable payloads: Payload on the bottom, fuel and engines up front (pod racer style); similar to my massive unstable payload experiments with the orbital hangar bays I posted about in an earlier post.

When the cruiser's bridge arrived, I moved the core launcher into a nearby orbit out of the way, docked that, and barely managed to strut it all together with KAS struts before some unstable wobbling feedback loops would have ripped it apart. After that were the two engine pods, each with 4 of the largest fuel tanks and 4 of the lower thrust, higher ISP 3m stock engines. The engine pods were pretty shoddy in terms of thinking through the docking process. They came with caps on their sole docking port which fed them power and had a bunch of sas for control. Turns out as soon as I popped those caps off for docking, they almost immediately ran out of power, floating aimlessly in space. Resulting in using quite a lot of monoprop to move the entire craft into place for docking, rather than just the engines. Brought in some RCS tug units to aid in the maneuvering and setting up the engine pods for docking; overall not a good time. If I ever need new engine modules, I'm just going to put some darned controls on them.

Woo, and after KAS'ing it up with struts, undocking the RCS tugs and properly distributing fuel, it can turn in all axis without snapping its back. And throttling up to 10% shows no indications of it spinning out of control (despite it being asymmetric, it was designed to be balanced) or breaking apart from the force. And time dilation is only just barely into the yellow, so it generally runs pretty well too.

Now I just need to bring up the absurdly large amount of fuel to fill it up (120k liquid fuel, 140k oxidizer) whip up a few companion craft for exploring, and fly on over to duna or something.

[LoSboccacc]

my rovering science lab, interstellar experiments included, for squeezing all the science out of duna biomes

Spoiler: scientist left for reference purpose (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: mun testing (click to show/hide)

*chutes untested at this point

update:

according to the alexmoon calculator, I have a nice window for duna in 20 days, and a return window after five year.

a wobbly mission is assembled:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

at top is the science lab, with some modification after the last round of testing:
 - roteable wheels, so the center of mass in flight is centered
 - more food to accomodate three years of rovering on the surface
 - more asas to control the attitude better on jump and while braking

at center is the transfer stage, with a very modest twr
it currently has 2.8k dv, which is the mission bare minimum, but the rover will not be brought back so there is margin
it also contains the antenna to keep communication to the control center and 3 years food for the interplanetary transfers


at the bottom the mini lander; it is empty (kerbals are in the lab and into the cupola)
it is remotely guided - hence the transfer stage must remain connected to the ksc
it has enough fuel to land and get back from duna, to ferry the kerbals from the rover lab back to the transfer stage
has a bit of food and fuel, will be discarded after siphoning the resources.

[BigD145]

Dark Multiplayer is looking pretty good. Some hitches when docking if all vessels are manned. Streamers from KSPTV have been streaming stuff, so it's in the archive to watch on twitch.

[Eotyrannus]

Managed to get my first successful Mun mission recently. My first attempt accidentally flung me into the depths of space with no fuel.

[Sonlirain]

I saw this several days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zszJRsGzo9A
I'll never be a pro at KSP.
(Epilepsy warning)

[LoSboccacc]

you cannot save while rovering. so I quicksave every jump. it makes perfect sense.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[BigFatStupidHead]

you cannot save while rovering. so I quicksave every jump. it makes perfect sense.

Wow. First I didn't know about being able to quicksave in the atmosphere (where it is a bad idea), and I didn't know about not being able to quicksave while rovering (where quicksaving -is- a good idea).
Yes, pulling a Dukes-of-Hazzard DOES seem to be the most reasonable time to quicksave.

[BFEL]

Or you could just come to a complete stop LoSboccacc.

Notice how it says "can't save while MOVING over terrain" or w/e the message is.

[Greiger]

It's more dwarven this way.   Or is it more Kerbal, not sure, there is a surprising amount of overlap.

[Girlinhat]

New version coming out semi-soon?  Any notable features?

[Aseaheru]

Corporations.

[BigD145]

It's a race between DF and KSP, but they don't know it.

Yeah, .24 should be soon. Likely before the weekend.

[Rose]

Oh god, I'm not sure I can handle double-hype.

[BigD145]

Oh god, I'm not sure I can handle double-hype.

Hype it up, Japa.
HYPE
IT
UP

[miauw62]

WARNING: HYPE LEVELS CRITICAL
DEADLINE MELTDOWN IMMINENT