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[GreatWyrmGold]

Where's the option that lets your orbit predictor predict through more SoI transitions?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Where's the option that lets your orbit predictor predict through more SoI transitions?

In the config file. They should probably move it into the game proper sometime.

Settings.cfg in the KSP directory, parameter name CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Or at least mention it somewhere sensible.

[MarcAFK]

Pesky ninja! I just answered this in your LP thread :p.
Anyway, I seem to have screwed up my asteroid mission and the rock I rendezvoused with was not the one i hacked to 50,000 tons.
But anyhow I put that into an inclined orbit around kerbin and then hacked it to 50,000 tons.
The next time I loaded up I found it's path was now only half around kerbin then changing back into a solar one.
Thankfully the solar orbit is rather circular and very flat/close to/similar speed as kerbin so it should be rather easier for this attempt.
Finally I did some quick calculations, and I think I can get it into kerbin orbit with a mere 200 tons of fuel and a bunch of LV-N's, but I haven't yet calculated how long the burn will take.

[jocan2003]

Pesky ninja! I just answered this in your LP thread :p.
Anyway, I seem to have screwed up my asteroid mission and the rock I rendezvoused with was not the one i hacked to 50,000 tons.
But anyhow I put that into an inclined orbit around kerbin and then hacked it to 50,000 tons.
The next time I loaded up I found it's path was now only half around kerbin then changing back into a solar one.
Thankfully the solar orbit is rather circular and very flat/close to/similar speed as kerbin so it should be rather easier for this attempt.
Finally I did some quick calculations, and I think I can get it into kerbin orbit with a mere 200 tons of fuel and a bunch of LV-N's, but I haven't yet calculated how long the burn will take.

Probably a few hours

[BFEL]

So obviously what you need to do is make a super complex system including 400000 tons of fuel and 8 of those new super engines, y'know the REALLY big ones.

[MarcAFK]

The biggest problem I foresee is the weakness of the grabbing claw, I've already broken several during testing on a 150 ton asteroid, I'm thinking I might need to use Infernal rocketry pistons attached to additional claws in order to get a better hold on the thing.

Also I've determined a way of moving planet killer asteroids using underpowered atomic/ION engines without having to kill the rotation.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Badly thought through non-lined up ascii diagram not to scale:


         |-(_)-|
         |__ __|
             /\

(_) Is the asteroid
/\ is the engine
The rest is a multi axis frame attached to the asteriod, basically a Euler x-y-z gimbol . Torque is required at the bearings in order to keep the frame rotated in opposition of the asteroid, the whole structure is rotated so that the engines are kept facing towards the desired angle.
I'm sure moving a 1 1/2 kilometer diameter ..... frame ..... use less energy than..... the whole asteroid.... hmm, you know what, scrap that idea....

Much saner idea, mount each engine inside a gimbol which can feed it with fuel, then arrange engines all over the surface of the asteroid, basically a 3 dimensional AZIPOD . Keep each engine burning while constantly facing in the same direction. Then you don't need to cancel the objects rotation at all (well, some cancellation will occur from moving the gimbols). The energy required to move a few hundred/thousand tons of machinery would be nothing compared to that needed to cancel the rotation of a 2 trillion ton asteroid.

Edit: Of course the engines who's exhaust impact the asteroid would basically waste fuel so they could be throttled down.
I think I might be able to test this using Infernal robotics washers and RCS thrusters. Actually, I might be able to do it with mechjeb, if I put a rocket inside a huge gimbol attached to a rock, then tell mechjeb to go somewhere It should use reaction wheels/RCS to keep the rocket facing whatever direction mechjeb needs to make the burn in no matter what the rock is doing.  I could put extra  rockets on the rock to change it's rotation and then observe what happens to MJ.
The easiest way of doing this would be to open up an asteroid inside the VAB then attach stuff to it.

[LoSboccacc]

You could attach multiple independent engines each  with their claw, align them all with the asteroid velocity vector, lock the claw in place then use the davon thrust control mod to keep the trust centered without overloading a single claw.

Fuel balancer would be useful here to feed all engines with docked tanks.

[Aseaheru]

And you dont have to figure out the side bits exact size.
Because unless you have extencable ones, that plan is gonna need it EXACT.

[MarcAFK]

I'm designing a 300 ton payload lifter, but mechjeb isn't telling me the delta v for my first stages, so I'm resorting to guesswork and using a ratio of 1 part payload to 2 parts second stage to 5 parts first stage ( more efficient would probably be 1 part payload:1.89 parts second stage:3.78 parts first stage). First stage flames out at about 20 kilometers, second stage finishes the orbital burn with 14,000 fuel left.
The payload is 7 orange tanks and 6 1/4 orange tanks, with one of the largest RCS tanks, and 6 LV-N,s a grabbing claw and a bunch of landing legs arranged near the claw as stabalizers.
The last stage has 14 km/s of delta V, and I think the left over fuel in the second stage is about 160 tons so using the 6 KR-2L's in that stage there should be around 170m/s DV there. However I think I can remove half the KR-2L's and get the second stage into orbit with only .5 TWR. the saved would help DV, finally I might shove an LVN onto that stage so I can squeeze extra DV out of it.
I also found that those rockomax 24s are awesome for correcting annoying roll, just shove a bunch onto the base of your rocket tilted 5 degrees towards the roll, then throttle them down untill you find the right setting. Previously I had 2 dozen large ASAS and over a hundred RCS nozzles which did nothing for the roll.

Edit :Well the game doesn't like my asteroid hacking, after saving and reloading I find the asteroid has always been restored to 89 tons, a shame.
I guess I'll go back to my LP, or my megaconstruction.

[forsaken1111]

You know it's too much KSP when you're thinking about stories, and you mentally replace climax with apoapsis.

"Oh baby I'm reaching apogee! Don't stop!"

[BFEL]

You know it's too much KSP when you're thinking about stories, and you mentally replace climax with apoapsis.

"Oh baby I'm reaching apogee! Don't stop!"

Much good, so sig.

[tahujdt]

Well, my interplanetary science probe just hit Jool. Much science is to be had.

[i2amroy]

Just learned how to use the maneuver-planning command. Suddenly getting to the mun got a whole lot easier. XD

[PTTG??]

Some thoughts on mining kethane from Asteroids.

Right now, it's possible to just give asteroids a flat amount of kethane storage, although it is not aware of the size of the asteroid. Hopefully, a workaround will eventually exist, and it could potentially add some degree of randomness, since some asteroids should have lots, and others might have none. However, I decided to work out how much kethane asteroids could conceivably hold.

I assume for this that asteroids have a consistent density and that all asteroids of the same class have about the same volume. I also assume that the outer 2.5 meters of rock, no matter how solid it is, will eventually lose all its kethane to evaporation/sublimation. The remaining body of the rock might be up to 25% "kethane slush" by volume (as I've determined through the highly scientific method of "guessing"), and I assume that any displaced mass is present as either denser surrounding rock or projections of stone on the surface.

A and B class asteroids are too small to retain kethane, but that's only if we assume that kethane requires 2.5 meters of solid rock to stick around. Since we really can't assume much about the orbits asteroids take- players might send them solar skimming, frankly- I'm not going to do blackbody radiation calculations to determine how much kethane they should contain. If you want to give it a try, go right ahead. If you estimate one meter of surface rock, then even A-classes can have a little kethane.

Class C asteroids mass 100 tons- using the average density (derived from the information on the wiki), that's a diameter of 9.3 cubic meters. Subtracting 5 (For a 2.5 m thick layer), that's 4.3m, or 333 cu. m of gas storage space. That works out to about 1.3 orange tanks worth of kethane, which sounds about right.

Class D asteroids mass 400 tons, with a diameter of about 15m, porous d of 9.7, which is 3823 cu. m, about 15 orange tanks.

Class E asteroids are 3000 tons, and have a D of 30. That works out to 65450 cu. m, which is about 250 orange tanks. Yes, 250.

That's all assuming the absolute maximum total capacity. I'd assume that there would be a bell curve of most asteroid having about 50% capacity, with a few that are naturally empty, and a very rare set that are naturally full.

You can use similar calculations to derive the amount of ore from extraplanetary launchpads. I'm assuming that about 10% of the average asteroid by mass would be rich enough to qualify by ore (I know that many asteroids are c-type asteroids with no iron or other ores, EXPL uses one type of ore for everything so we obviously are dealing with some simplifications), so that means that an A-type is 0.04% of a full storage tank, B-type is 10%, C-type is 66%, D-type is 2.5 tanks, and E-type is 20 tanks. However, these aren't maximal values; In fact, having asteroids have wildly varying ore densities, they could have anywhere from 0% to 100% ore; there's quite a few naturally occurring asteroids that are made entirely of nickel-iron. Finding a Class-E motherloade would be a fun event, assuming you can find a way to slow 6000 tons of high-grade ore.