Nice, I have struggled with space planes, may have to steel that. The issue seamed to be fuel balancing, as the fuel drained the center of mass and thrust went squirrely and that was that.
Just finalizing my tech tree. I got it mostly from Minimus and the mun, but got bored of grinding landers down and up from the mun to the orbiting space lab (ship manifest mod is awesome) , so I went on a fly by to the sun with a probe. I transmitted some science for a reasonable haul and then worked out an encounter back with Kerbin. Alas I didn’t make the encounter close enough and didn’t have enough delta V to slow down to get into a capture orbit, so that was that.
Time for a Duna manned mission I think. Although I may send a full kerbal sized lander with a probe core attached first. Just to make sure.
The plane does start pulling to the left at around 23,000 meters just before switching to rocket mode, but it’s smooth sailing after that. If you do copy the design, just be aware that it’s actually got four intakes and not two - two mounted on the front of the engines and two mounted on the sides of the fuselage.
Is there any point to the control surfaces on a rocket? I’ve just been using the thrust vectoring engines, and they seem to keep the rocket steady with no problem.
It depends on how heavy your rocket is and how quickly you need to turn it. There are four different ways to turn a rocket - RCS nozzles, rocket thrust vectoring, control surfaces and gyroscopes. Any or all of them can be used in combination to steer your rocket.
Only a tiny bit, if you’re already burning. The efficiency of a burn in producing forwards thrust is equal to the cosine of the angle between your direction of travel and the direction of burn. Even burning at a 30 degree angle is still 87% efficient, and thrust vectoring only goes to 3 degrees (99.86% efficient). That’s why it’s more efficient to slowly slope into your orbit instead of just burning straight up, turning ninety degrees and burning sideways.
Have you worked out an approximate measure of how inclined the ship should be as it’s going up?
My rule of thumb when launching with rockets has been to point it at the same number of degrees Eastward as the apoapsis is in KMs. That is, when the apoapsis is at 10KM, I point about 10 degrees East. When it’s at 45KM, I point about 45 degrees. 90KM, 90 degrees (i.e.: horizontal). That’s been my likely suboptimal rule of thumb but there must be a better way.
How much more efficient is a perfectly angled ascent compared to the straight-up-then-turn-90-degrees method?
I usually tip over about 10 degrees as soon as I’m moving, then to about 45 degrees at 12km or so, then perform a horizontal burn once I’m out of the atmosphere. Your method certainly might be more efficient than mine.
In other news, I am developing a new rocket - intended to be a mobile space station for a Laythe mission. The docking ports on tubes are intended for a squadron of SSTOs, while the six attachment points on the side are for a heavy lander and rover. I’ll probably send it to the Mun first, just so that it’s still easy to reach if I need to send a rescue mission.
HELP! Ok, just got back into KSP, loaded up Interstellar mod and patched the game. A couple of problems:
How does science mobility work? On a manned mission to Mun, I had a couple of goo containers and Sci Jrs on lander, but not on return capsule. Now it appears that I can’t bring the science back. So . . . crew reports, surface samples and EVA reports can be stored in capsule, removed from capsule and transferred via kerbal to another capsule, but other sci (Goo, Sci Jr, etc.) must stay with the part and either transmitted or returned?
MechJeb isn’t doing anything at all, nor the flight engineer. Mods I’m running: MJ (of course), Interstellar, KAS, Alarm Clock, protractor. I usually start all over after installing a mod. On previous games, I noticed MJ offering more features the further I progressed, so am I just too early to use it? Still, it should do something at the point I can install the part on the ship, else what is the point in offering the part? Flight engineer doesn’t seem to do anything at all. I can’t even see TWR at ship construction.
Hmm, sounds like my design wasn’t flawed then. What you’re describing isn’t working though. However, it occurred to me that Interstellar and Alarm Clock were just recently installed, while I’ve had MJ/Protractor/Flight Engineer for quite a while and just patched the client for KSP. I think I need to make sure all mods are latest versions when I get home.
Yeah after every major update you pretty much have to redownload the mods after those have been updated.
Engineer redux still doesn’t seam to give me data when I have the bag arse boosters on though, once I stage them off then everything is good.
I really really recommend the ship manifest mod to shuttle the science around between units, saves a lot of tedious spacewalking. ( well I find it tedious because I am crap at it)
I have my refueller working. It is capable of loading my spaceplanes with either a satellite or an ion engine, and can also use the vertical docking port to refuel the plane. This makes the spaceplanes completely reusable, able to fly to orbit and deploy a satellite then return to Kerbin, rearm and refuel for another mission.
Thanks for the input guys. My intuition was correct, got everything updated last night and started career mode over. MJ, protractor, flight eng . . . looks like everything is working. Just installed KAS, so I’m sure it’s latest version, though I haven’t used it yet. Parts are showing up in tech tree, though.
About transmitting Science; does this result in a total loss of potential research? Say a given environment grants 100 potential Sci for a Goo Container. Transmitting would result in only 40(iirc) sci for KSC. But, could return missions get the other 60 eventually or is it lost forever. TL;DR – Do non-returning probes simply leave some science laying around for later or do they “destroy” it?
There is a finite amount of science for everything except asteroids. Any individual asteroid has limited science, but it appears that every new asteroid has new science potential.
Oops, didn’t really answer the question. There’s always science left to physically return to KSC. Transmitting doesn’t destroy or reduce the limit on potential science.
The science is still there for the taking. Beyond a certain point you have to physically recover the data, but transmitting results early does not hinder that.
Thanks, that’s good to know. I was tempted to shoot off non-returning probes to get some quick transmitted science, but was prevented by anxiety that this would gimp the long-term sci potential.