Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Operation ComProbe: Send a small satellite (an octagonal control module, four un-cased solar panels, and a stock large antenna) into orbit of every planet and planetoid. Progress of mission: Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus all have satellites around them. A new interplanetary vessel must be designed to make the trip to either Duna or Eve and their moons.

Also, this is my first IPV I have ever designed, even for such a small payload. Any tips would be appreciated.

[Shooer]

Huzza my first mun landing

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now I just need to bring up the rest of the crew and equipment.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sirus]

So are the various communication antennae in the new version useful at all, or are they just there to weigh ships down?

[Putnam]

They're useless.

[bombzero]

So umm.. I got bored and decided to see how large of a spaceplane I could build and make fly out of vanilla parts.

I give you the Dragonfly Mk I.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Approximately 54 or so engines, ~10,000 units of fuel, 32 air intakes, who knows how many support struts, and one incredibly unlucky Kerbinaut.

However I tried time compression...
The game says it may cause 'some' instability in large craft.
'some'

Spoiler: some... (click to show/hide)

The thing lifted off the ground about 10m from the ocean.

[nogoodnames]

Operation ComProbe: Send a small satellite (an octagonal control module, four un-cased solar panels, and a stock large antenna) into orbit of every planet and planetoid. Progress of mission: Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus all have satellites around them. A new interplanetary vessel must be designed to make the trip to either Duna or Eve and their moons.

Also, this is my first IPV I have ever designed, even for such a small payload. Any tips would be appreciated.

It really doesn't take much more to send a probe to the nearby planets than it does to get to the Mun or Minmus. I got a probe in orbit around Eve using a simple tiered rocket and an ion engine. The rocket was just one of the small black and white fuel tanks and an LV-T45 engine which split into two using a bi-coupler for the second stage and four for the first stage. Even that was enough to get such a small payload into solar orbit.

The hard part is intercepting the planet. I used the ion engine to match Eve's orbit and used the same method you would use to dock with a station to get into its SOI.
Of course if you're using an Ion engine you'll need a book or something to do while it performs a maneuver. On average my maneuvers took 45 minutes at full thrust. You'll need a bigger rocket if you want to go the slightly more sane route of using a nuclear engine.

Of course this was literally my first and only interplanetary transfer, and I wasn't even intending to get to Eve (I wanted to see if I could crash the probe into the sun but I messed up the launch) so you should probably take my advise with a grain of salt.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Nogoodnames: With manouver nodes, it is much easier, and I just planted a probe in Duna's orbit. The final powered stage, a nuclear rocket with a small fuel tank is still attached and has fuel to spare.

The biggest problem is getting into orbit with enough fuel for manouvers. Hint to anyone new out there: use the Mun as a slingshot to save fuel.

[Shooer]

The rover landed and loyally went to it's new master.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I forgot to get shots of it in flight, I used the same launch vehicle as I did for the base.  Almost a bit excessive.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And the sun sets on the base as it shuts down for the munar night, with it's new rover curled up at it's feet.

[Aqizzar]

Hint to anyone new out there: use the Mun as a slingshot to save fuel.

The problem with this is planning on the location of the Mun.  To anyone who hasn't flown a million missions already, it's basically impossible to guess where the Mun is going to be in relation to the launch center in order to slingshot yourself in the direction you want.

I can't wait for some sort of "pre-launch mission planner" so you can schedule an optimal go time.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

I meant from orbit, it saves fuel when escaping Kerbin's SOI, although I guess expierenced players might be able to use it better.

[LoSboccacc]

The problem with this is planning on the location of the Mun. 

I usually go for a low kerbin orbit, around 100km, then place a maneuver node with AP intersecting the mun, then move the node around until I see a nice slingshot.

[da_nang]

So why is it that it seems docking is an easy, everyday task for everyone except me? @_@

Well I have this standard procedure I follow. The first step is to hold the launch until the station is roughly 30º-45º ahead of me. After that, launch and get into orbit around 70-100 km. The less eccentric, the better. Set the target and adjust the inclination at the first ascending or descending node with maneuvering nodes to match the target. After that, set up a new maneuvering node and increase the prograde velocity until you have an intersection. Ideally, you want the two intersecting points as close to each other as possible. Then, move around the node until at least one of the points has a separation of at most 2 km.

After that, time your burn. You want to start your burn when the time to reach the node is the same as the burn time, although I typically burn one second earlier to account for the non-instantaneous jerk. Once you're close to the intersect point and the target's speed difference shows up, burn retrograde until the speed difference is 3 m/s or less. The closer the better as this is the orbital height you'll later be working on. Then quickly turn your craft to point to the target and burn until you reach a minimum separation distance at the upcoming intersection. Repeat this process until the separation is at most 0.2 km and the speed difference is less than 3 m/s (or less depending on your RCS configuration), after which you can use RCS to maneuver the craft into dock.

Prior to docking, though, I recommend having the targets docking port point normal or antinormal so its relative position isn't affected by rotation. At least for beginners, it certainly helps.
I tend to eyeball the docking procedure, by using the navball and the docking controls to get a good trajectory until I'm really close and then simply move it into position slowly. When approaching, I limit the speed difference to 0.5 m/s and 0.1-0.2 m/s when docking.

One thing that is important when designing the craft is the placement of RCS thrusters. Improperly placed thrusters will rotate your craft when using the docking controls and makes docking more difficult. Try to predict the mass distribution of the ship and place RCS thrusters where more thrust is needed to stabilize the net torque.

[Skyrunner]

How do you spin the ship around so fast? >.> Prograde and retrograde are like 180 degrees apart from each other Dx (by definition, but still!)

Also, the docking seems so hard. I always find myself slipping past, unable to line up... though it may be because those tries were with very light ships that bucked with every RCS burst.


Question : it possible to gift KSP? It seems you need to have an account to buy KSP, and nothing else works.

[forsaken1111]

How do you spin the ship around so fast? >.> Prograde and retrograde are like 180 degrees apart from each other Dx (by definition, but still!)

Also, the docking seems so hard. I always find myself slipping past, unable to line up... though it may be because those tries were with very light ships that bucked with every RCS burst...

Spin faster by adding more RCS. Disable some of the RCS if you need finer control at docking.

[da_nang]

More specifically, add more RCS thrusters further away from the predicted mass center. It's all about torque.