You can neva have enough lights on a lander I have moved home and due to ineptitude on behalf of both sky and bt I am still without internet after a month of waiting :/ Otherwise I'd just link the steam cloud screens. desperate times :/
That sucks! I was without internet for a good 15 days in this place when i moved in. tethered my phone to the pc. hit about 6gb of data in that 15 days. thank goodness for unlimited data plans!
Nice lander and screen shots, are you using one of the mods that changes the look of the planets? they look real nice. I just made my first successfull return trip from minimus with much science earned. duna next!
Mod available here needs Universe-Replacer-v4-0 for it to work. The ship is mainly stock with KW Rocketry engines & tanks, & is part of a larger interplanetary craft, which is left behind in system/orbit as a science/depot/fuel station.
I did a nice epic mission to Eve over the weekend. Probes sent down onto the surface, and my 3 man capsule sent to Gilly. All returned with about 4000 delta-v to spare! lol. First time I haven't had to send a rescue ship!
On a mission to Tylo Bill Lets Jeb drive....... Lucky the new explorer interplanetary stage has a modded "AI" rescue craft "rescue one". New Explorer MK V sent out (with refuel craft) from KSP to replace "slightly scratched Explorer mk IV" (Jeb's quote)
So last night, I just happened to have a transfer window open up to Eeloo, Jool and Dres all within a week of each other, so what is one to do? Yep, sent science probes to all three... juggling that at the moment (thank you Kerbal Alarm Clock!)
But seriously; flying that thing there was a pain in the ass. It'll happily hold over 800M/s in Atmo, but the set of rocket motors are ever so slightly off the centre of mass, so it has a tendency to lift the nose up during a burn. That and there isn't exactly a great amount of fuel. I'm not sure precisely how much Delta V, but only really enough to viably make orbit. Making the Mun was a challenge in patience and tweaking to get into space using as little fuel as possible, then from Kerbin to the Mun without circularization, took me a couple of attempts to get it all right. Then I slammed it into the mun about four times trying to get it to land properly, since the engines face forwards, while the gear faces down, which made things awkward. Worth it just for that picture, though. Also gave me a chance to find a lot of the little problems with it, so I've gone and fixed a lot of those, too. It's now going to run around as my Space Station Manned Transport back and forth from kerbin to send Crew back and forth once I've started getting the rest together.
Nice job, I'm yet to get a SSTO spaceplane beyond orbiting Kerbin. I did however attach one to some extra rockets and took it to Laythe
The B-9 Aerospace parts pack has really completely changed my fundamental understanding of the ssto space planes. Ironically, making good planes is actually harder than making good rockets! I just unlocked docking ports in the tech tree in the campaign. It should now be much easyier to make a rocket to get to duna, with a light weight lander attached via docking ports that I can also use for the return journey. Atleast that's how I did it in sand box mode! although back then I did not need the extra power and weight required and added for science eqipment.
I have to admit; it's way easier for me to get into space, since I'm using Ferram Aerospace Research (It does make flying way more painful, though. You can stall wings SO EASILY!), hence half of what I build probably isn't viable for people on non-modded installations. In other news; a Probe to Eve and Gilly got me 3000 odd science to play with. I can finally grab that Roccomax Hub and start building the rest of that station...
Any tips on science probe design and appropriate rockets to get them there? I have unlocked precision engineering, scidence equipment and all the little tanks, batteries and solar panels one might need but confess im not good at compact craft. My forte seems to be medium sized rockets with small landers attached. Any tips/picture reference would be much appreciated.
My advice is simply to build as light as possible. I used a few bits from KSP Interstellar pack, but you can easily achieve the same effect with a nuclear engine. RCS is really, really good for shuffling small rockets around, spamming the thrust nozzles helps. I landed on Gilly using only RCS. As for the rockets to get to space; Asparagus Staging. It's the godsend to power output and efficient launches. I haven't used SRBs in absolutely ages as a result. I'll try a provide a quick tutorial; Start off by slapping down a fueltank with an engine ontop, then around it you place six decouplers (Most of the time) And seperate them out into opposite pairs, before adding a fueltank and engine to each, so you can jettison each pair at a time. Then you run Fuel lines around so that you feed from first to be jettisoned to second, then second to third, finally third to centre. The thing to watch out for, however, is that you're not too far off your prograde vector when you drop each stage, though. I've lost many a rocket to having bits hit each-other from Asparagus staging. So from the top, it should look something like this; And then one from the side, for a sense of scale. That is, incidentally, the same lift platform I used to get the probe to Eve, fuel lasted until I was burning to rendezvous with Gilly, although you should always take anything I say about this with a pinch of salt, since I think it takes somewhere around 1000M/s less Delta V for me to make orbit due to FAR.
I mainly use Onion staging, in that I feed the centre tank from the out-side in, ditching weight as the fuel and thrust of the stages are exhausted. I will definitely have to try some Asparagus staging, thank for the pictures/tips. I tend to have a Core on an orange tank using the 650 thrust Rockomax engine, with 8 of the slim 800 tanks (double stacked) with the 215 thrust engines, feeding into the main tank via fuel lines. Radially attached to those are 8 tall SRBs, with 8 more half size SRB radially attached to those. I tend to brake the first 5-10k of atmo (depending on weight) with the SRBs but in what I call a "no thrust loss" scenario, whereby as soon as the half SRB stage is ditched, the 8 inner rockets engage, and as soon as the 8 full size SRBs are ditched, the main tank is started. Effectively, I use my stages for specific bits of the journey, in this case, my main stage is used to achieve the 70k Apoapsis and the circularisation burn. with the '8' engine radials to cover '1 atmo' escape and the initial gravity turn stages. Then I normally have a nuclear engine powered transfer vehicle, attached to a small lander. I will post a picture this evening of 'Dun Sci IV' if my internet gets activated today. I confess what I'm really struggling with with the ability to return from some of the far off places, I finally made it to Duna's Moon Ike last night. It was easy to land on (like landing on Minimus actually!) but I did not have the fuel for a return journey to Kerbin. I need to make some kind of "Apollo" style lander, where I can return to the transfer vehicle and dock for return. As well at lean to make some good deep space probes, so much science to be done, so little time Incidentally, even with the % loss of science transmitted, I still made over 1300 science on my Ike Trip, well worth it. Duna and back next
The answer for Space probes is Science spam. I tend to put them into high orbits first, spam science till the rewards from each experiment are less than one unit, drop to low orbit, keep spamming science, and ocasionally de-orbit to get a touch more while the probe burns up. It's a bit of a waste, but usually I've got too little Delta V left to escape orbit again, so I might as well use it up getting as much science as possible. That said; Landing on Gilly is annoying. You can break orbit on that rock at 30 M/s, it actually has Less gravity than Kerbin if you're using the Hack Gravity cheat, so if ever you're designing a probe for Gilly; that's a great way of testing.
