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This will change when you're flying an airship in Jool's upper atmosphere.

You know you want this!

I kind of cheated by launching this via Orion, but that was just to get it to solar orbit. It's a kethane depot, currently weighing at about 49.51 tons. Orbiting Ike because gravity is easy there:

I finally have docking. Yes, I am that sad and pathetic.



The main station module has the new Wet Workshop mod as it's main compartment. The RCS tanks are from the KSPX mod (as are the short RCS tanks on the orbiters, the large SAS modules, and the large battery on the station).

Well, my Lightspeed Prototype topped out at just under 1% of c, and poor Jebediah is now screaming his way past Eeloo's orbit. I think I'll leave the Orions in the barn for now.

In other news, have now mastered orbits to the point of achieving stable orbits every time, barring some rocket-related failure. I've sent Kerbals around the Mun, the mission which showed me the wonders of the NERVA engine in the stock game. Next effort is to get docking sorted so I can go and retrieve the aforementioned Kerbals.

Is anyone else doing gravity assists, by the way? By now i tend to slingshot around the Mun on most on my extra-Kerbin missions, it just saves pretty significant amounts of delta-V.

It's not really complicated either - just put your vector so that you get into the Muns influence, but without getting captured. It's almost guaranteed to give you an extra bit of delta-V - while it's possible to use gravity assists to slow down, that tends to be lot more difficult (i'm still practicing that around Jool, using its moons to slow down).

I am just about to try it on the outbound leg of my Eve mission, actually, though I'm worried the lack of precision will mean I'll waste more delta-v than I've saved during correction burns.

Serafina wrote:Is anyone else doing gravity assists, by the way? By now i tend to slingshot around the Mun on most on my extra-Kerbin missions, it just saves pretty significant amounts of delta-V.

It's not really complicated either - just put your vector so that you get into the Muns influence, but without getting captured. It's almost guaranteed to give you an extra bit of delta-V - while it's possible to use gravity assists to slow down, that tends to be lot more difficult (i'm still practicing that around Jool, using its moons to slow down).

Pezook is right, the amount of DeltaV you buy tends to not be worth more than the extra you need for course corrections unless the timing is perfect. For slowing down, Aero-braking is very useful to complete a capture.

In real life, gravity-assists are planned out years in advance by teams of NASA astrodynamicists with supercomputers; it's no wonder that we can't do it by the seat of our pants in KSP.

TimothyC wrote:I finally have docking. Yes, I am that sad and pathetic.

To be fair, I've not docked anything yet. I've just sent up a docking testbed thing, but as ever, I'm doing everything with no plan, clue or autopilot, so it should be interesting.

I'm having another go at building my first space station, and this is the first module. It features twelve micro-rockets, each of which weighs 300 kilograms and is capable of safely delivering a Kerbal from Low Kerbin Orbit to the surface.

Well, I got Jeb to the Mun. He doesn't have enough fuel to get back off again, and I've yet to replicate the feat of entering a stable Munar orbit, but the lander's on the surface and more or less in working order.

Also, I've learned that gravity turns aren't all they're cracked up to be; if your rocket has even slightly imperfect flight characteristics it tends to result in unplanned lithobraking.

Zaune wrote:Well, I got Jeb to the Mun. He doesn't have enough fuel to get back off again, and I've yet to replicate the feat of entering a stable Munar orbit, but the lander's on the surface and more or less in working order.

Also, I've learned that gravity turns aren't all they're cracked up to be; if your rocket has even slightly imperfect flight characteristics it tends to result in unplanned lithobraking.

The main thing to do is make sure your center of drag is aft of your center of mass. Sometimes this means that you have larger fins on your first stage that you don't always need.

Huh. I thought the ideal was for the centre of lift exactly dead-on or slightly in front of the centre of mass.

Zaune wrote:Huh. I thought the ideal was for the centre of lift exactly dead-on or slightly in front of the centre of mass.

No. Think of it like a parachute - the centre of mass wants to keep going at the same speed, while the centre of drag wants to go more slowly. If the back of the rocket is trying to go faster than the front of the rocket, it is inclined to flip, making it less stable.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

Zaune wrote:Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

It follows also that you want your center of lift aft of your center of mass because if the CoL is forward of the CoM, your plane wants to pitch up uncontrollably. don't forget to think about how the the CoM changes as the fuel gets burned.

I've just landed my second rover on the Mun, after the first was destroyed in a freak handbrake accident. This is the rocket that got it there.

So... Guessing you don't have the improved aerodynamics mod installed?

No, I don't. The only mod I have is the Kerbal Engineer, to do the work of calculating rocket stats for me.

First successful Mun landing and return! Hell yeah!

Space Station Goliath is up and running. It weighs 70 tons, and was delivered to orbit by three 40-ton turborockets.

I really love the microrockets, but I can't help but wonder if the chutes don't rip the girders off when they deploy.

PeZook wrote:I really love the microrockets, but I can't help but wonder if the chutes don't rip the girders off when they deploy.

It hasn't been a problem so far. Mk 1 command pods are capable of landing with a single Mk 16 chute, and the microrockets only weigh a third as much. They just don't have enough inertia to fail in such a manner. Here's proof, from the first manned test.

Just a heads up: The next patch (0.21) is probably going to be out next week, and it will break save game compatibility. They're changing how the game keeps track of your Kerbanauts and improving the Mun terrain, so if you want your stuff to carry over you might need to do some tinkering or copying and pasting to get things working.

ASAS is also getting reworked, IIRC the ASAS part itself is going away and the function will be integral to the pods. the way it acts is also being changed so that it doesn't over react when it's close to the set heading, so control surfaces won't flap around endlessly, and it wont waste as much RCS fuel.