So far I've used RemoteTech and ISA Mapsat but yeah, Kerbalspaceport is the new place...there's even a message on kerbal.net saying they're closing their doors forever...90% off all brand name mods!
Fun Fact #1: if you crossfeed from liquid booster stages to a core stage, make sure all the booster stages are crossfeeding. Otherwise your rockets end up a bit tippy. Fun Fact #2: Munar communications satellites don't work if they don't have a controllable part. This is most readily discovered when the rest of your mission has gone perfectly. Fun Fact #3: I know what I'm doing Monday night, and it isn't football.
I did have some successes, though. Ascender I (I restarted my numbering for v.18) is a great lifter. That's 31 tons in low Kerbal orbit. I could swap out the Rockomax 32 for a 16 and an 8, or even maybe just a 16 if I fly well, and I could darn near put a whole space station into orbit in one go. I did make it to the Mun easily enough, using the remains of the Rockomax 32 for the TMI burn. Then I deployed my satellite and saw it listed as debris, and then I felt like pounding my head against my desk. :P
This baby delivers a satellite to Keostationary orbit, and de-orbits the transfer vessel, with litres to spare. So proud.
That nose cone isn't stock! Where did you get it from? This game is so fun , I spent 3 hours last night / this morning just modifying my standard lift rocket. Gonna see if I can get a space station going now.
Looks like the KW rocketry fairing and engine pack. I'm using the fairings and adapters though not the rockets. [Edit] Though it makes things look awesome, the fairings are fairly heavy and in some cases I have to jettison them earlier than I would like.
My wife just texted me and asked if I could have a salad ready for her for lunch when she got home. I think I've been playing too much Kerbal. :D
Lolawesome! Yes, KW pack off Spaceport. I am in love with downloading bits. I didn't realize the fairings were that heavy tho - will have to keep them for pretty photos only! I am re-establishing my kerbostationary comsat cluster. I tried for an O3b-style middle kerbal orbit comsat cluster but couldn't get the sats placed neatly so canned it.
So I'm having some trouble with RemoteTech. I simply cannot keep in contact when I send something to the Mun. At about 15k-16k meters it just cuts out even though I have a network of 5 Keostationary sats. It used to be that the smallest dishes would work to the moon but I can't make contact even with the mid sized ones now. :( I know there was briefly a bug that decreased the intended range but I re-downloaded to try to get the fix but it didn't help.
Does the bit going to the moon have dishes on it? You need to point them at The geosats (point at at least two for a good chance of a relay), done that, right?
Yep. I've even tried fiddling around quite a bit and repointing dishes on the geos toward my Mun ship and vice versa.
You only have to line up one way, ie, from Mun unit to a geo (NOT the planet until you are far away, distance: unknown). I always put a few dishes on my long range craft and line each one up to its own geo sat to ensure unbroken coverage.
I love that moment when you look at your map and see you have finally laid out four geostationary satellites in a near-perfect distribution around the planet. Had to tweak and adjust orbits to get them neat, but it was WORTH IT.
Here's my latest endeavor: A better structural framework for my growing space station. I really should have started with something like this.
Well so far I have only one of three modules attached to it. Docking is difficult in the dark...need more lights on my craft. The module on the right of the screen was my first. I made the massive mistake of facing some engines upward which reversed the control scheme when I was trying to get the thing in the right orbit. The module in the center/right pointing down was my second module. It has a single docking port and it's on a diagonal to the rest of the ship. I think "control from here" probably overrides a lot of the confusing in docking but I just realized I should try that like 5 minutes ago so when I docked this to the first module it was a huge hassle. The module in the center with the perpendicular struts was my third. I made an attempt at organizing the structure but it doesn't seem you can dock clamp-o-tron jr to regular clamp-o-tron. The new borg kube structure is riddled with docking ports and is symmetrical :) Now I just have to move Modules 1 and 2 to dock with it instead of each other.
My new probe launcher. Easily capable of Mun or Minmus insertion, possibly Duna and beyond as well. Unmanned so far.
So I fixed my satellites last night: Ascender I still gets lots into orbit: 31.5 tons of orbital/munar injection stage and fuel, plus a Nerva stage with a Rockomax 16 so I could, I dunno, go to Jool or something after I drop the satellites off in Munar orbits. I accidentally made a debris belt by smacking a test Ascender I into its final booster stage, in an attempt to deorbit them both, so I stayed beneath that. 1m30s to the TMI burn, and I get a nice sunrise picture. The burn yields a nice Munar orbit that ought to bounce my boost stage off into Kerbol orbit, where it won't bother me. I want an inclined orbitâthis way, whenever the Mun is between Kerbin and the satellite, the satellite is high enough over the Mun that communications can reach it from Kerbin. The satellites release without any problems. I didn't get them directly opposed because I wasn't willing to sit around and wait for the apoapses to match up any better than this (it would have taken four large circular Munar orbits). They're close enough right now, though; they'll both be on the high stage at about the same time. Now I have two more missions to carry out before I attempt manned landings: a polar-orbiting mapping and communications satellite, and a robotic lander and rover.
I love building cranes for my rovers. Got another one guilt using trusses as a base element for it and then sticking on fuel and gantries and whatnot. Pics tonight, maybe a video too. Hmm. I should build my own cart from scratch - but I believe landing gear is exceptionally heavy!
I think there is something funny going on with remotetech. As I posted to the forum thread: This is odd. I'm sure this worked in the past, but right now I can't get comms back to Kerbin from my Munar Explorer. It's entirely remote controlled and, in theory, has all the dishes and whatnot it needs, but beyond a certain range I lose comms and that's that, no remote control. VERY ANNOYING. I have pointed all the dishes at the planet, at the geosats, at KSC, I've pointed the geosats at the Mun Explorer, I've tried everything - and I'm sure this process is no different from what I did in .17. My craft have the remotetech aerial, a monopole antenna, and a selection of large dishes that have been updated and have the appropriate config settings, I believe.
Yeah that's exactly what I was about to say. I was having the exact same problem until last night when I finally realized that, no, none of my dishes were activated. :P The dish activation is, as far as I can tell, new to .18 which is why I was doing "the same thing as .17" but getting no results.
Seeing @Calistas' constellation reminds me that I'm eventually going to need more communications satellites around Kerbin, particularly because the ones I've got up there now will only range out to about Minmus. How does comms range work, exactly? Is it a half-the-sum sort of thing, or do both sides have to have a dish with a listed range long enough to reach the other?
Beats me...I didn't even know how to turn dishes on until yesterday :P I'm struggling with an annoying glitch right now though. I just launched a ship with four mini sats but when I decouple them they just disappear completely. :( [EDIT] This might be caused by the bracket keys (next ship/prev ship) When I quit/reload it fixed the problem.
ARG. One has to right-click activate the dishes? DAMN FUCK the developers of these plugins need to document their shit! Never mind, relaunched that ship without RemoteTech and with mechjebs instead.
I learned pretty quickâmy first 0.18 rocket had the 9,000km extending antenna, and it fell back to the ground when it got about three kilometers off of the surface, because it didn't have any other comms and I didn't activate the antenna. :P
Ya! Does anyone want a guide on an easy way to place four geostationary sats equidistant around the planet? It isn't precise, but it is eyeball accurate and quite easy.
Good luck! I am eagerly awaiting the first live run with my sky crane for the same rover. I am hoping I have enough fuel to de-orbit the Mun and land safely. I am pretty sure I could do so on RCS alone, but one can never be quite sure... And yes, I think any symmetrical orbits should work for my method. Maybe.
So, a short tutorial on how to get four geostationary satellites up around Kerbin: Some facts: The Keostationary position is 2868.7km out from Kerbin, although getting an orbit with AP and PE at 2868 should be enough. I posted a sample launcher earlier. Hidden behind the fairings is a 'transfer' vehicle made of a one man pod and, a 1m fuel tank and four Orbital Sytems tanks around the that tank, piped to the central tank. In other words, you'll need at least two basic 1m fuel tanks to get out far enough and then deorbit the transfer vehicle. You should install all the RemoteTech parts from kerbalspaceport.com to make this have any point. DON'T FORGET TO RIGHT CLICK ON EACH DISH AND ACTIVATE (or do it via action groups). So here's what I do. Get a satellite and transfer unit up into orbit at 100km. When KSC is approaching (but not quite yet at!) the other side of the planet I burn prograde until my AP is out at close to 2868 (within a couple of Km). Looking down directly above the planet helps with lining stuff up. Whiz out to the AP and burn prograde until you have the orbit at 2868 AP and PE. You'll find you can't do this in one burn as as you get the PE close to 2868 the AP will start to move. I use MechJeb to watch both distances and cut thrust as soon as the AP starts to jiggle. You'll have to warp around to your AP again to push it out those final few Ks to get it neatly circular. Use RCS to minutely adjust your orbit as close to 2868.7 as possible So there's your first satellite in position! Deploy dishes, disconnect your transfer vessel and burn it back into the planet. Next: Get another unit into a 100k orbit. Imagine a clock face. When the first geosat is at the 12 o'clock position (or as close to) put your transfer vessel at the 6pm position and burn prograde until your AP is out at 2868 again. Accelerate time, by the time your vehicle gets out to 2868 the first geosat should have moved around to the 9 o'clock position. Go through the process of circularising your orbit. Repeat this, two more times, using the last launched geosat as your "sat at 12 o'clock" marker. You should now have four relatively neatly lined up geostationary comms satellites. Go through each sat and point the dishes at each other and KSC and enjoy watching the RemoteTech comms path. Now, at this point you could stop as you probably have an entirely suitable comms relay network. Or, you could investigate setting up a Molniya orbit comsat or two to guarantee comms coverage should future vessels have a planet or moon between you and Kerbin. But, if you're like me, you'll want to make your orbital arrangement as neat as possible and evenly distribute satellites. To do that: Work out which satellite is out of alignment (too far ahead, too far behind) and focus on it. If the satellite is too far ahead you want to burn prograde at any point in your orbit so you create an AP 20 or 30k further out than it should be. You will now end up travelling further than the other satellites and this satellites position will fall back a little. One full orbit should be enough to tidy things up - burn retrograde at the PE to drop the AP back to 2868.7 - adjust with RCS as required (you can even do this entire thing with RCS). If the satellite is to far behind, you want to shrink your orbit a little by burning retrograde until you are 20 or 30k inside 2868k - one full orbit will push you ahead few degrees and hopefully line things up. Burn prograde at the AP to return the PE to the right dsitance. RCS as required. Once you get this process down it's pretty easy to set up four geosats neatly around a planet without any need to worry about maths, timing or whatnot. Hope this helps.
Well my payload fairing setup almost worked although the launcher was too long and wobbly and would have required some height modifications. The real problems with this particular design were that the command module was on the top of the stack (for looks) and it needed to be decoupled and redocked which just turned into a hassle. The fairings honestly don't add anything to the game other than aesthetics at the moment. They don't add any rigidity to your delicate payloads which tend to wobble inside the fairings, bump into them, and then explode outward comically before launch (I'm looking at you small lander leg!)
If the fit is tight enough I believe it does reduce wobble, but only in a good, snug fit, which is hard to achieve.
I'd like to see something where anything enclosed by fairings essentially inherits the stability of the fairings themselves. Clearly in real life these kinds of payloads get strapped down or strutted in. I'd also accept a strut that can be detached via an activity group but that's a bit fiddly. </entitlementgamer>
Yes. In the nova punch pack there was a frame ring thin I would place on top of a fairing stack and I could then tie the top of a payload to the ring before putting a cone on - that worked ok - but special rules would be very nice!
