|
The thing about the shuttle is that they needed a computer to do a lot of the heavy lifting. A human flew it to land, but the computer was calculating the glide path and telling the pilot what to do.
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 18:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:10 |
|
|
Cojawfee posted:The thing about the shuttle is that they needed a computer to do a lot of the heavy lifting. A human flew it to land, but the computer was calculating the glide path and telling the pilot what to do. The entire STS flight (with a single exception) was capable of being performed by computers. The only truly manual step was the switch to lower the landing gear, as a nod to the meat in the seat's necessity. After the Columbia disaster, they began including a cable that could be rigged on orbit to handle sending the gear down command, in case a shuttle had to be abandoned in orbit, so a landing could be attempted without crew.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:04
|
|
|
Nth Doctor posted:The entire STS flight (with a single exception) was capable of being performed by computers. The only truly manual step was the switch to lower the landing gear, as a nod to the meat in the seat's necessity. Yeah, the astronauts demanded that it be impossible for the shuttle to be flown entirely remotely because they were afraid that fighter jocks would be excluded from space travel.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:26
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:Ok, for some actual content: Sick.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:28
|
|
|
I am still extremely confused by the LH2 nuclear engines tho. You just put them on the rocket and they work? I get tiny tiny delta V numbers for them in the VAB.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:30
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:I am still extremely confused by the LH2 nuclear engines tho. You just put them on the rocket and they work? I get tiny tiny delta V numbers for them in the VAB. So for shits and giggles I "launched" a fully assembled version of this ship from the pad, just to see if I could. The only change was adding some 4500kN SRBs, reinforced with struts. The boosters were enough to push the stack into rarefied atmosphere/vacuum, at which point because of the absolutely stupid amounts of dV the nuclear engines produced, and the solid TWR that a cluster of 4 produced, I could circularize after going 70km straight up. The straight up part was because drag would murder the thing if you tried to do a gravity turn. Like I said, didn't end up mattering because when you have ludicrous dV, you don't have to care about things like "efficiency" anymore. I'll see if I can replicate this after work tonight.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:49
|
|
|
KSP 2 is delayed: Just like a REAL space program!
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:58
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:I am still extremely confused by the LH2 nuclear engines tho. You just put them on the rocket and they work? I get tiny tiny delta V numbers for them in the VAB. Did you forget to change the altitude settings for the calculations?
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 20:58
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:Ok, for some actual content: Looks awesome! Are you playing with life support + kerbal health, or is the habitat ring purely for aesthetics?
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 21:03
|
|
|
Zurui posted:KSP 2 is delayed: Remember end of last year when they said Spring 2020? Was WAY too ambitions even then. Totally fine that they take their time here.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 23:12
|
|
|
Zurui posted:KSP 2 is delayed: i expected this and in fact welcome it because there's still stuff i want to wrap up in the first game before the second one drops
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2020 23:17
|
|
|
M_Gargantua posted:Did you forget to change the altitude settings for the calculations? For the Near Future Nuclear engines, there is an additional mechanic that each engine has a reactor that needs to be on in order to create thrust. This appears on the surface to be problematic: they way they are balanced, they generate more heat than any reasonable number of radiators can reject. The secret is you set the reactor power to 0%. When you throttle up, the reactor will automatically scale itself to your thrust needs, and you can then leave it on forever without worrying about melting it. OldMold posted:Looks awesome! Are you playing with life support + kerbal health, or is the habitat ring purely for aesthetics? I'm using USI Life Support, which adds a consumables and habitation metric to keep track of. The ring helps with the habitation score. There's also a "homesickness," but unless your kerbals are transferring between vessels often, you can talk about them interchangeably. (Habitation is calculated per vessel and resets when changing vessels. Homesickness is calculated from the largest of vessals the Kerbal has inhabited, and acts as maximum mission time.) Ignore the expired: when you switch back to a ship, the situation is recalculated to take into account elapsed time, and if you're still positive, you're fine. You also have a 15 day grace period on consumables.  I decided to play around with a scramjet that came with one of my mods--Mk 2 expanded I think. It's unique in that it will not function at speeds less than Mach 4. On the flip side, it has a range of Mach 4 to 9.6, and an extremely high operating ceiling. So high, in fact, that I am pretty sure I could use it to make orbit on liquid fuel alone, with some burps of oxidizer on the closed cycle engines to circularize, given the right ascent path.   I suppose as part of the test flight, we can head to the Armstrong and get some work done. There's a shipment of fertilizer that needs to be loaded into the saddle mounts.    With the bags packed and the freighter deorbited, it's time to head back to the KSC to end this test flight and pick up the crew. Cue reentry porn.     This thing flies the best of my space plane designs. Plenty power to get to orbit, plenty of fuel for course correction if I'm going to overshoot or undershoot.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 02:13
|
|
|
Thats badass! After 1200 hours in-game, I'm finally doing my first manned expedition outside of Kerbin local system. The KSC Rhea, crew of 4, TACLifeSupport for 3 years + Kerbal Health to require microgravity, embarking to Duna:  Assembled in orbit out of just two peices: the crew section with habitation, c&c, and lab, and the drive section.  184 tonnes, 5.7k of dV, on its 270 day journey to Duna.  Bon Voyage!  Small problem discovered ~20 days into the journey, I only have 1 year's worth of fresh water on board, and the single Universal Storage water purifier does not seem to be keeping up  Now researching better drives so that I can send a re-supply vessel on a faster trajectory to meet it when it finally gets to Duna. Then will have to figure out how to do resource transfer without any accessible docking ports. D'oh!
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 05:01
|
|
|
OldMold posted:Then will have to figure out how to do resource transfer without any accessible docking ports. D'oh! THE KLAW. Or, you know, include a RCS tug on the resupply ship so you can pull one of the modules out of the way long enough to dock properly. But the kerbal way is to impale the hull with a space harpoon and pour fresh water through the hole directly into the sleeping quarters! 
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 07:01
|
|
|
Using KAS/KIS you could haul the parts to make a permanent addition to the craft too, or just weld a fuel port on the side, run the resupply ship along and connect them via hose. Using the claw is way easier than this.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 12:33
|
|
|
I just did my first elliptical orbit of Duna and escaped with 1200dv left. According to online calculators, I only need between 450 and 600 to get home. But it's taking me close to 800 just to encounter Kerbin and then another 700 or so to get captured. Over budget! How do I do it?
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 17:45
|
|
|
Waiting for a better return window. This is sort of where having MechJeb in-game is useful, so it can calculate the porkchop plot of how much time to wait to match up with your dv budget.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 17:50
|
|
|
Ograbme posted:I just did my first elliptical orbit of Duna and escaped with 1200dv left. According to online calculators, I only need between 450 and 600 to get home. But it's taking me close to 800 just to encounter Kerbin and then another 700 or so to get captured. Over budget! How do I do it? Better return window as Sage said, and also aerobreaking if you're not already doing that. Atmosphere is basically a free* circularization burn. *Terms and conditions may apply, not liable for rapid unplanned disassembly due to compression heating.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 19:06
|
|
|
I didn't know that transfer windows affected dv, I thought they were just the timing needed to get a rendezvous. I wanted to get out of Duna asap because my very elliptical orbit kept bumping into Ike.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2020 23:57
|
|
|
You can get a rendezvous any time you want, it just becomes prohibitively, and then ludicrously, expensive in terms of dV requirements. Transfer windows are times/configurations when the dV required is minimized.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 00:31
|
|
|
Think about it another way: if you had unlimited dV, you could go at any time. You would continuously burn towards the target at constant acceleration in a more or less straight line for the first half of the trip on the way there, then flip and spend the other half of the trip under constant deceleration so that you arrive and capture, regardless of the distance of the planets between each-other. Since dV is limited, you have to trade off travel time versus dV budget, so its advantageous to wait until the distance is favorable.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 00:44
|
|
|
I don't get the science behind that. Intuitively, lowering your solar periapsis from Duna's level to Kerbin's level should take the same amount of juice regardless of the positions of those two planets in their orbits.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 04:17
|
|
|
So for my next trick, I blindly burned an OMS stage into a suborbital trajectory. After dropping the payload, it had 1.2kdV left, but I didn't think anything of it. Turns out, the thing just happened to land 11km from the KSC.  Tonight's work was largely centered around reconfiguring the Armstrong for a more balanced transfer stage. I need to be able to carry a lander after all. While less than ideal from a control standpoint, KAS heavy duty cables are useful for keeping loose sections from floating away while working.   For the lander itself, I got creative with struts and offsets, since the centerline is blocked by the Karbonite drill.  We're going to do an easy trip to start things off. Duna, land, do science, come home. 20 minutes until injection burn. 
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 04:18
|
|
|
Ograbme posted:I don't get the science behind that. Intuitively, lowering your solar periapsis from Duna's level to Kerbin's level should take the same amount of juice regardless of the positions of those two planets in their orbits. You're part right, I think; the minimum energy transfer between two orbits, without gravity boosts etc, doesn't really change. But a rendezvous isn't just the change of orbit, the phase angle matters, too. You can still manage to brute force a rendezvous, but it will take either waiting for a chance encounter or spending more dV.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 04:31
|
|
|
Ograbme posted:I don't get the science behind that. Intuitively, lowering your solar periapsis from Duna's level to Kerbin's level should take the same amount of juice regardless of the positions of those two planets in their orbits. Correct, but lowering your solar periapsis just down to the target orbit (and no further) will only get you an encounter if the burn is done at the right time, i.e. the right orientation of the two planets. To get an encounter at a non-optimal planetary alignment, you must 1) burn more for the transfer itself, and 2) burn a LOT more in order to capture at the target planet, because your velocity relative to the target planet is much much higher with a non-optimal transfer. In order to get minimum relative velocity and therefore optimal efficiency, you have to do your transfer at the right alignment such that the encounter is made by your vehicle's orbit just barely touching the target planet's orbit, as opposed to intersecting it at a severe angle.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 04:33
|
|
|
El Jeffe posted:Correct, but lowering your solar periapsis just down to the target orbit (and no further) will only get you an encounter if the burn is done at the right time, i.e. the right orientation of the two planets. To get an encounter at a non-optimal planetary alignment, you must 1) burn more for the transfer itself, and 2) burn a LOT more in order to capture at the target planet, because your velocity relative to the target planet is much much higher with a non-optimal transfer. In order to get minimum relative velocity and therefore optimal efficiency, you have to do your transfer at the right alignment such that the encounter is made by your vehicle's orbit just barely touching the target planet's orbit, as opposed to intersecting it at a severe angle. Or, in other words, just because your periapsis matches Kerbin's doesn't mean Kerbin will be at its periapsis when you get there.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 05:13
|
|
|
As explained fairly elegantly in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fturU0u5KJo&t=1316s The whole thing is worth watching, but the 22 minute mark is where he starts getting into the orbital considerations.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 11:40
|
|
OldMold posted:Think about it another way: if you had unlimited dV, you could go at any time. You would continuously burn towards the target at constant acceleration in a more or less straight line for the first half of the trip on the way there, then flip and spend the other half of the trip under constant deceleration so that you arrive and capture, regardless of the distance of the planets between each-other. So we need a mod for an Epstein Drive? There has to be one already. It would be hard if not impossible to fully use in KSP without other mods for regulating thrust and trajectory though...
|
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 16:10
|
|
|
BitBasher posted:So we need a mod for an Epstein Drive? There has to be one already. It would be hard if not impossible to fully use in KSP without other mods for regulating thrust and trajectory though... There are a slew of mods that add "torch" drives, though I haven't personally used any yet. I'm holding myself back on RoverDude's interpretation by telling myself I need to "discover" Karborundum first before I can research his drives.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2020 16:50
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:Ok, for some actual content: This made my day. we have all been this situation. Warmachine posted:
Good work buddy, now I'm inspired to play again.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2020 10:08
|
|
|
If you ever played Alien: Isolation and thought, "Hey, I would really enjoy this game more if it took place on a realistic ISS style space station and also I want to play as the malfunctioning AI instead of the plucky female horror protagonist," then I have a game for you! Observation is on sale on steam. If you play KSP you'll be yelling at the screen about orbits and reaction mass a couple times but otherwise it's surprisingly accurate to what modern spacecraft look like. It does suffer from the classic space movie problem that everyone talks like horror movie characters instead of astronauts but I enjoyed it. It's not monster horror like Alien; it's got much more of a 2001 or Annihilation vibe. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 23, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2020 21:19
|
|
|
Time to start building a base, but how to transport big heavy sections into place and connect them all together? Meet the tracked crawler bot!  Lining up a prototype test rig section  Success! Fully unkerbaled process with no engineer needed to hook stuff up. I think this may just work! 
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2020 04:28
|
|
|
BitBasher posted:So we need a mod for an Epstein Drive? only if it uses tiny kerbals as fuel
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2020 07:41
|
|
|
Oh god. I finished my computer upgrade and the difference is staggering. No more slideshow ships. KSP just got even more fun! Maybe I'll land on Duna tonight...
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2020 03:03
|
|
|
Maybe you'll crash into Duna tonight! 
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 00:48
|
|
|
Zesty posted:Maybe you'll crash into Duna tonight! 260-odd days ago the crew of the Armstrong left LKO for Duna.   Getting close...  For convienence/aesthetic sake, we're going to gravity assist off Ike and snag some science on the way past.   I imagine Deremy is going to make this into a post card when they get back.   With Ike behind us, it's time to finish the Duna capture...    ...and release the lander.   No kill like overkill when it comes to parachutes. 4x drogue and 4x regular brought the lander down to 20m/s. A small burp of the engines was enough to safely touch down in the Midland Sea.     
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 05:44
|
|
Warmachine posted:Oh god. I finished my computer upgrade and the difference is staggering. No more slideshow ships. When I did that a few years ago a number of my space planes that worked really well became impossible to fly and had to be rebuilt outright! When time moves at 1/4 speed during launch because of a slow PC it's much easier to do course corrections than when it's running in real time and my planes become uncontrollable!
|
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 15:03
|
|
|
BitBasher posted:When I did that a few years ago a number of my space planes that worked really well became impossible to fly and had to be rebuilt outright! When time moves at 1/4 speed during launch because of a slow PC it's much easier to do course corrections than when it's running in real time and my planes become uncontrollable! Better Time Warp gives you the option to make fractional physics warps! Slow time down to 0.1 for a real slow-motion experience! And, with a higher performance ceiling, I'm starting to see where some of the bigger processor overheads are. Things like ScanSat or MKS with lots of background calculations can still do a number on you if you aren't careful. I have a theory that one of the reasons the version of my craft with lots of smaller tanks was such a pig is that each tank has a separate insulation calculation requiring electrical input. Reducing 56 insulation operations to 2 (as well as other assorted physics and resource calculations) was a major performance boost. I was going to do my ascent from Duna last night but I ended up aborting because a physics bug of some kind caused the Armstrong to shear at the structural connections between the gravity block and the reactor assembly, and between the science module and the service/saddle bag truss. The log said the parts joining those sections "overheated," but I have no idea how. Kerbal Engineer doesn't show anything weird when the ship is in focus. edit: I just realized that I forgot to detach and stow one of the winch cables I was using during the command section reconfiguration. You can see it in my screenshot of the lander detaching. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 15:48 on May 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 15:44
|
|
|
1.1 is coming out before Kopernicus updates for 1.09
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 19:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:10 |
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:1.1 is coming out before Kopernicus updates for 1.09 You're optimistic.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2020 19:35
|
|