Print

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

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm not really sure what you're making an SSTO for with over 5500m/s dV.

Okay, I honestly don't understand this one.

But if you REALLY want a powerful engine setup for space, you could try the Near Future Propulsion mod. The TWR numbers on most anything in it aren't great considering you need to pack some serious electric storage and generation for it all to work, but if you have a relatively lightweight fighter (0.49 TWR on 120kN of thrust?) then losing the heavy NERVAs and regular fuel can make it lightweight enough for installing an MPD thruster with some fuel and capacitors to enable it to make short bursts of decent acceleration.

Aren't those theoretically like the existing atomic rockets?

[BigD145]

Lots of dv is fine in a SSTO but if you're ever in atmosphere or high gravity you need high TWR much more. If you can't lift off the surface then all the dv in the world won't help you. The nuclear rockets are very heavy and I can't say I've ever seen them used in a SSTO successfully.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I thought you meant 5500m/s dV post-ascent. The delta-V provided by NERVAs doesn't mean much if you're using them in atmosphere.

I just made an SSTO (well, an SSTSO, technically - I didn't bring so much as a solar panel along, so couldn't fully circularize just on batteries and capacitors) using two RAPIERs and a cluster of four MPDTs, with some extensive battery backing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Very respectable 3.something TWR on takeoff, and a very respectable 4800-something dV once in space, of course provided some means to generate electricity, which I didn't bring along, in my infinite wisdom. Space-mode TWR of .89 (I think), quite decent for short bursts of acceleration, and the battery storage plus capacitors allows for about 35 seconds of sustained maximum acceleration. Batteries alone provide around 12 seconds, for quick renewable bursts (capacitors charge rather slowly, and need action groups set up to avoid lots of menu clicking).

[LoSboccacc]

was doing my complex mission to date, with thre launches (lab, tank, lander) aimed to exploit all minmus biomes in one go then suddenly

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I realized I brought mono propellant instead of mystery goo.

[puke]

was doing my complex mission to date, with thre launches (lab, tank, lander) aimed to exploit all minmus biomes in one go then suddenly

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I realized I brought mono propellant instead of mystery goo.

haha... I didn't use the lab, but I built a super complicated heavy lift vehicle with a tranist stage that delivered nine (9!) mini-landers to minmus.  Did all the biomes in one trip.  Well, actually I missed one, screwed up the landing and hit one biome twice.

And I cant really say I did it all in one trip, I probably had upwards of twenty failed launches trying to get the ship constructed right, and heaved into orbit.  And when I finally got it there, the transit stage was stuck in Minmus orbit after the mini-landers had gone home so I had to send a rescue craft after it.

[Leonon]

So after some looking at numbers I discovered that the new KR-2L has the highest thrust/weight ratio of any liquid engine at 384.6153846. It only weighs 0.5 more than a Mainsail but has 2500 power and 380 vacuum ISP compared to the Mainsail's 1500 power and 330 vacuum ISP. It has the same 280 sea level ISP as the Mainsail.


The new fuel storage is worse than the old. It has 79.02439024 fuel/mass and 648 fuel/dry mass compared to the standard 80 and 720.

What does this madness actually mean?


Well, I put two Rockomax 64 tanks staged lineary on a KR-2L...


And launched it...


A few times.



It's not the most fuel efficient design but it looks like it can direct ascent to anywhere in the solar system if planned and piloted properly.

[LoSboccacc]

Any mod that overlay biome on a planet?

I know this http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55832-PLUGIN-PARTS-WIP-SCANsat-terrain-mapping

But as far as I can tell it shows biomes on a map window.

I'd like a mod that have satellite scanning that then allows you to see the biome under your cursor when pointing to a planet place that has been scanned.

Any idea?

[dennislp3]

it needs to be a feature...would help give satellites a use if they showed some sort of info...also it would be nice and reasonable if they gave like 1 science per orbit or something for a science trickle...both features could be added with a camera (or multiple cameras) to enable such things...

[puke]

Just thinking here, because I guess I'd rather not be doing my job today...

Has any one used maneuver nodes for landings?  I always waste fuel on the way down, burning too early or too much.  If I could just determine the proper moment to apply thrust, and the correct amount, I could land with much less fuel wasted!

This might only work in the absence of atmosphere, but when there is atmosphere then I'm probably not going to be landing on jets anyway.

I guess a caveat might be that you would have to target a flat enough spot that when the planetoid rotates your maneuver node will be at the same elevation as when you placed it.  So this may only work on minmus flats.

On a related note, as anyone modded in Pathfinder style airbags?

[MarcAFK]

"The goo is silent..."

EDIT:
 Wooo 28 minute video from danny? It must be christmas.
I think I saw airbags ages ago, also a corollary to your question, how effective are maneuver nodes for rendezvous? My asteroid adventure finally taught me how to use nodes sufficiently for orbital transfer, but I failed to manage rendezvous using anything more advanced than simply alternatively burning retrograde and or towards target.

[GreatWyrmGold]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0JtdvVJ_mU

Danny, back with more physics abuse!

You know it'll be good when he turns a kerbal into an eldritch abomination in the introduction!

Quite possibly my favorite part:

EDIT:
 Wooo 28 minute video from danny? It must be christmas.

Wasn't the Christmas special less than two minutes?

[Aseaheru]

On a related note, as anyone modded in Pathfinder style airbags?

Someone did, yes.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Now KSP won't work at all. It loads, then closes. I'll try just removing it and reinstalling it from Steam.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I deleted and redownloaded KSP, then copied over the old Game Data so I kept my mods.


...
What.

I may just redownload all my mods.

[MarcAFK]

What, I don't even...
Looks like corrupted video something.