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[TheDarkStar]

Here's something I did for a challenge on the forums: http://imgur.com/a/ZNlbG#1.

The challenge was about going through Kerbin's atmosphere at the altitude possible and still getting back into space. My solution was to go out past 2000 gigameters, but in an orbit retrograde to the direction of Kerbin, and then set up an intercept. I got to almost 28500 m/s when I was entering Kerbin's atmosphere, and Jeb had reentry effects showing up from about 65000 meters up.

tl;dr I sent Jeb as a fireball through Kerbin's atmosphere at almost 28500 m/s.

[PTTG??]

That's fantastic!

[Aseaheru]

I really wish i could get the fool thing to work...

[alway]

TIL: Be VERY careful with the KAS pipes. Apparently they explode randomly. Landed my smeltery craft on Minmus, right next to my ore miner; excellent landing, within pipe range. So, I EVA, go to link the pipe. Grab the pipe on the other ship, run back to the pipe connector on the smelter ship, then hit 'link.' Suddenly, the ore miner explodes in several places, entirely blowing off 2 of the 4 large structural legs (we're talking things capable of landing are rather high speeds, not actual landing legs), and flipping it on its top. Go to grab try again,because why not, and end up blowing off a structural leg on the smeltery ship as soon as I hit link on it (didn't even pick up the green pipe thing that time, it just exploded). After that, finally get a pipe attachment. Of course, it's basically useless, since the mining craft is on its back. Well, here was the end results of trying to salvage that base:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, that didn't exactly work out as planned.

[BigD145]

I've had KAS do something like that and blackscreen, which apparently has something to do with the lazer mod.

[alway]

Anyway, plopped another craft where those two had been. This time I just sent both mining and smeltery equipment.

It's all at an ore deposit of about 650k which is less than 10 km from a kethane deposit (location marked by the flag in the previous image). I'm pretty much going to try putting down a super-massive spacecraft construction depot near the kethane site (it's much more level than the mountainous mines). And since it's all on Minmus, I hardly even have to worry about getting things off the ground. Which means I can make craft as big as my fps lets me. To start out with, I'm planning on a mothership using the fancy near future stuff, which should give it near infinite delta-v.

[Descan]

What mod adds/uses ore?

[LordSlowpoke]

extraplanetary launchpads, was it?

it uses the kethane framework for a lot of stuff so it's like a plugin for a plugin

[Eric Blank]

Today I did something quite silly: I made a reaction wheel roller:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It just rolls around by pressing the w or s keys, rotated by the other four, and can attain a top speed of 11-12 m/s on kerbin. Not the fastest, but with the I-beams on the rims of the reaction wheels it's actually very tough, and technically it can't wind up flipped over. I managed to find space for all the scientific ameneties besides the materials lab modules, and it has two communotron 16 antennas to transmit data. A bit hard to control, and extended exposure could induce headaches and/or nausea. I only managed to break it by standing it on its' ends and rotating it, which twisted a reaction wheel off either side. Some of the struts might actually be unnecessary, but even with them it only has 61 parts.

I then took it out to Minmus, and had a bit of fun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yes, under Minmus' pathetic gravity, the Science Roll can balance itself on the corner of one of the I-beams. Indefinitely, I might add: the four nuclear generators provide enough power to just keep rolling. Forever. Unfortunately the low gravity also means it pretty much just flings itself in the air when it rolls, and it can't go much faster than 6-7 m/s because it doesn't maintain contact with the ground very effectively.

[miauw62]

And Kerbin should have collapsed in on itself.

Gads, gais. Eez a gaem!

A giant ravine running along the equator of a planet sounds awesome tough

[Skyrunner]

Today I did something quite silly: I made a reaction wheel roller:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It just rolls around by pressing the w or s keys, rotated by the other four, and can attain a top speed of 11-12 m/s on kerbin. Not the fastest, but with the I-beams on the rims of the reaction wheels it's actually very tough, and technically it can't wind up flipped over. I managed to find space for all the scientific ameneties besides the materials lab modules, and it has two communotron 16 antennas to transmit data. A bit hard to control, and extended exposure could induce headaches and/or nausea. I only managed to break it by standing it on its' ends and rotating it, which twisted a reaction wheel off either side. Some of the struts might actually be unnecessary, but even with them it only has 61 parts.

I then took it out to Minmus, and had a bit of fun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yes, under Minmus' pathetic gravity, the Science Roll can balance itself on the corner of one of the I-beams. Indefinitely, I might add: the four nuclear generators provide enough power to just keep rolling. Forever. Unfortunately the low gravity also means it pretty much just flings itself in the air when it rolls, and it can't go much faster than 6-7 m/s because it doesn't maintain contact with the ground very effectively.

Does it work on Earth? o_O

[ank]

Yeah, you'll get flung off due to the faster-than-escape-velocity speeds at the surface. You need to land near the pole.

Check it out.

I was thinking about it being possible to land near the equator if you just had enough friction with the ground.
The rotation is not pushing you upwards, but rather sideways, so with enough landing legs planted it should be possible to stay stuck to the surface.
Then again, it might turn out you'd need millions of legs or something.

Let g be the planet's gravitation at your current position, ω be the planet's rotation speed (in radians per time unit), R be the distance from the center of mass to your landing position, α be the global latitude, and β be the local latitude (the angle between the equator and your local surface normal).
To keep staying on the ground without hooks, you need an acceleration of at least ωēRcos(α) to the axis of rotation. Let's put this in a coordinate system so we can use 2D vectors. The acceleration required is a1 = (-ωēRcos(α), 0), and the planet's gravity provides a2 = (-gcos(α), -gsin(α)). The difference a1 - a2 = (gcos(α)-ωēRcos(α), gsin(α)) needs to be covered by surface friction. For this to be possible, we need tan(ß) to be greater than (ωēR/g - 1)cot(α). For α=ß (landing on a horizontal surface), we get tanē(α) > ωēR/g - 1, or cosē(α) < g/ωēR.

In case of Inaccessable, g = 1.18 m/sē, ω=0.0143, R = 15000, so you can only stay on horizontal surfaces in latitudes greater than around 52°, although you'll need to go at least above 75° unless you have a buttload of friction to spare.

/physics

Man, I'm gonna have to read that ten times to understand it, but I will!

Thanks for the Maths! I've been thinking about how to solve this problem.

You got a "cot(α)" in there, I assume that's a typo, and not some trigonometric function I'm not aware off?


Thinking a bit about it, don't you need at least some friction to stop sliding along the surface? Since no matter what you do, you'll end up with a vector not entirely perpendicular to the plane?

[LoSboccacc]

Does it work on Earth? o_O

remotely related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAhQyBLxgu4

[da_nang]

Yeah, you'll get flung off due to the faster-than-escape-velocity speeds at the surface. You need to land near the pole.

Check it out.

I was thinking about it being possible to land near the equator if you just had enough friction with the ground.
The rotation is not pushing you upwards, but rather sideways, so with enough landing legs planted it should be possible to stay stuck to the surface.
Then again, it might turn out you'd need millions of legs or something.

Let g be the planet's gravitation at your current position, ω be the planet's rotation speed (in radians per time unit), R be the distance from the center of mass to your landing position, α be the global latitude, and β be the local latitude (the angle between the equator and your local surface normal).
To keep staying on the ground without hooks, you need an acceleration of at least ωēRcos(α) to the axis of rotation. Let's put this in a coordinate system so we can use 2D vectors. The acceleration required is a1 = (-ωēRcos(α), 0), and the planet's gravity provides a2 = (-gcos(α), -gsin(α)). The difference a1 - a2 = (gcos(α)-ωēRcos(α), gsin(α)) needs to be covered by surface friction. For this to be possible, we need tan(ß) to be greater than (ωēR/g - 1)cot(α). For α=ß (landing on a horizontal surface), we get tanē(α) > ωēR/g - 1, or cosē(α) < g/ωēR.

In case of Inaccessable, g = 1.18 m/sē, ω=0.0143, R = 15000, so you can only stay on horizontal surfaces in latitudes greater than around 52°, although you'll need to go at least above 75° unless you have a buttload of friction to spare.

/physics

You got a "cot(α)" in there, I assume that's a typo, and not some trigonometric function I'm not aware off?

It's the cotangent function. cot(x) = 1/tan(x)

[alexandertnt]

I got the planets mod, more planets is always a good thing.

Of course, the first planet I try to land on is "Inaccessable".

Holy crap is that one fast spinning planet. I attempted to land on it and exploded. I am not sure, but I think the planets quick rotation was messing with my everything, e.g. my ship would start randomly rotating (or was it the camera+navball?).

Diddn't even think of trying to land on the poles.