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[Red]

(My rocket is floating in orbit with a full tank of fuel left)

"Hmm.. I should probably turn on the stage lock so I don't accidentally jettison my engine."
*Presses Spacebar when reaching for the alt key, engine jettisons.*
*facepalm*

Luckily my orbit turned out to be less circular than I thought it was and Jeb and crew eventually made it back to the ground safely.

[Deadmeat1471]

Heh, I built a 2 stage srb only rocket which can be successfully set into orbit, but only the 10% of the time it doesn't have a resonating failure or hit itself or simply explode randomly on the way up. Though it isn't a very good orbit, nor is there any maneuvering fuel left, as it is all srb.

The fun rockets are the ones which start with an epic failure of a design and are tweaked until just under the 100% failure rate.

Sounds Russian.

No, it is the American way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_rocket

At its launch attempt on December 6, 1957 at Cape Canaveral, the booster ignited and began to rise; but about two seconds after liftoff, after rising about four feet (1.2 m), the rocket lost thrust and began to fall back to the launch pad. As it settled the fuel tanks ruptured and exploded, destroying the rocket and severely damaging the launch pad.

Only 3 of 11 launches were successful.

Lol you guys are such trolls. Need to grow up. It was a joke about the safety of the rocket. Is your intellectual self esteem that low you have to keep up these attempts at petty point scoring? amusing 

[Sensei]

The petty point scoring is directly tied to our amusement, thanks.

[alway]

Yay! 8.5 fixes the liquid fuel tank slowness issues!

Mine was also a joke about the safety of rockets throughout history. The Vanguards are pretty much the design one thinks of when thinking of failrockets. It's wiki page even has a picture of the first launch with the caption

Vanguard rocket undergoing rapid unplanned disassembly shortly after launch at Cape Canaveral (December 6, 1957).

On a humorous side note, according to my uncle, 'rapid unplanned disassembly' is actually the official term for it.

[Aklyon]

Good to know theres always a way to not say "its exploding" outright.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Parachute experiment log, attempt #18.



Results conclusive. It is impossible to preserve liquid fuel engines with any sane amount of parachutes.

Phase 2 of research is postponed pending shipment of 5000 parachutes.

(and yes, those are side-mounted parachutes. Something vanilla should have, IMO, it's a trivial mod.)

[Sensei]

I've tried parachuting parts too (even before .85) and yeah, it seems pretty hopeless.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's not all parts, just liquid fuel thrusters. Empty fuel tanks and solid boosters can survive just fine. In that test the fuel tank stack crashed because the tanks were mostly full - I just flew up 600 meters to test the chutes.

Also, looking at the files, it seems the reason for this is that the ExplosionPotential values haven't been set for them. I suppose it's an easy fix - after all, the engine itself isn't supposed to be explosive unless it's damaged during operation. I mean, it's mostly just piping, right?

[Sensei]

Oh yeah, liquid fuel thrusters break off too easily. I've had some big ships where liquid fuel thrusters contacting the launch pad break off as soon as the ship spawns, just under its own load.

[Aqizzar]

I've read several good tutorials about how to get into orbit, and the new orbit calculator makes staying in orbit pretty easy (although it requires quite a bit of station-keeping).  Now I just need some instruction on how to descend from orbit anywhere near at intended splashdown.  Last roundabout, I fell a bit shy of the launchpad, in the sea to the east with the campus just over the horizon.  Admittedly, falling into the ocean within rowboat distance of home is better than NASA ever managed, but I want to land smack on target.

Parachute experiment log, attempt #18.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Results conclusive. It is impossible to preserve liquid fuel engines with any sane amount of parachutes.

On the upside, you built a totem pole.  That's pretty awesome.

[Rakonas]

I've read several good tutorials about how to get into orbit, and the new orbit calculator makes staying in orbit pretty easy (although it requires quite a bit of station-keeping).  Now I just need some instruction on how to descend from orbit anywhere near at intended splashdown.  Last roundabout, I fell a bit shy of the launchpad, in the sea to the east with the campus just over the horizon.  Admittedly, falling into the ocean within rowboat distance of home is better than NASA ever managed, but I want to land smack on target.

Parachute experiment log, attempt #18.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Results conclusive. It is impossible to preserve liquid fuel engines with any sane amount of parachutes.

On the upside, you built a totem pole.  That's pretty awesome.

I've managed to land in the launch zone by deaccelerating while approaching my perigee above the launch zone. It was a significant part luck, though, as it's not easy to eyeball massive distances while going at massive speeds.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I think it's pretty easy to land anywhere if you've got fuel to spare and are good on the controls.

Btw, does anyone need these side-mounted parachutes? I didn't download any mod packs, so I've no idea if anyone else made 'em.

[dogstile]

Lol you guys are such trolls. Need to grow up. It was a joke about the safety of the rocket. Is your intellectual self esteem that low you have to keep up these attempts at petty point scoring? amusing 

The difference between trolling and what you're seeing is MASSIVE. If anything, you're trolling with that little jab you had there. * twitches*

[Aqizzar]

Judging by some of his posts over the last few pages, I don't think Deadmeat has any real idea what the word "troll" means, since he basically called himself such a little while ago.  He saying things he heard cool people say, it doesn't matter.


The ETA for version 0.9 is "three weeks", which will supposedly include symmetrical reconnectors (i.e. 1-to-3 and 3-to-1), a totally redesigned staging system (so you can define as many stages as you want, any way you want), and some other changes.  Three weeks sure sounds like a long time, when you've only been playing for a week.

[Fikes]

While I had the wrong location (the pad was on the other side of the ocean) I did manage to put down almost exactly where I THOUGHT the pad was.

De-Orbit: I slowed down in 300m/s intervals. To do this, I put my rocket in the exact opposite  heading as my velocity and throttled up very lightly for slow burns. This let me see how my speed was changing my altitude. I was down to about 1100m/s before I felt it was time to do my full de-orbit. I kept my rocket on the same heading (again, opposite from my directly of travel) but this time I pitched the nose down and fired my rockets until my lateral speed hit zero and I started falling like crazy.

Then I put my rocket straight up. It actually didn't take that much throttle to keep my speed reasonable and aim my "lander". I ran out of fuel about 800 meters above the ground though and had to pull the chute.

Do you use the same amount getting to space either way? Is there a "most efficient" way?