Kottabos Space Program EP7 - De-Orbiting My Space Station

Welcome to the Kottabos Space Program home of the fastest growing space exploration program on Kerbin (and fifth safest to boot). Come and see as we launch our brave (and not so brave) Kerbonauts into the heavens on a shoe string budget.

In this episode I decide that I'm done with my test space station. So we head up to orbit and bring back down our station crew safely and then bring down the station in fiery glory.

- - - - - - -
OTHER EPISODES:

- - - - - - -
LINKS:

- - - - - - -
FOLLOW KOTTABOS GAMES:

- - - - - - -
Music:
Produced by the talented Kevin MacLeod

"Enter the Party"

[lhagiduty]

I am lucky that I found this video. I was looking for deorbiting of Mir SS. And now I am going to buy this game!!! This just made my day!

[lhagiduty]

Yes sir. I will be following your videos for tips and guidance. Thanks. Keep up the good work

[HeldigDansker]

Kerbal Space Program have to be the most satisfying game ive ever played :D

[HeldigDansker]

ohh well :D maybe ISS orbiting the Mun could be a cool project :P

[cto]

Was waiting him to realize he had no parachutes

[heinrichagrippa]

Your being a physicist, I assume you realize that due to the two things docked on either side of your cubic node being of different mass, relative to your thrust vector, your CoM was more offset towards the heavier extra return vessel than the robotic-practice-docker-thing on the opposite side, causing the thrust of the engine to torque the station. Had this been a problem, the practical, if somewhat boring solution would have been to un-dock both from the station and dock them to each other, and then de-orbit the two now-cylindrical vessels separately. The robot-docker didn't have a fuel tank, but if it had an empty one, another possible solution would have been moving fuel to it from the docked return vessel, potentially bringing the CoM back in line with the centre engine.

A more fun and crazy solution would be to carefully calibrate the thrust of the other engines so that they perfectly counteracted the torque from the main engine, though adjusting the throttle of individual engines wasn't implemented in this version of KSP and even now is difficult to do “on-the-fly” without the use of mods. It would also be a nightmare to continuously adjust the throttle of the individual engines by hand to compensate for the ever-changing CoM as fuel was being burned. Using automated throttle-balancing by mods such as “Throttled Controlled Avionics” or “Davon Throttle Control systems” would give the best chance for success.

[Shadowkey]

7:01 I hope you realize now that the whole "Mech Jeb putting your ship into a spin on launch" thing at 7:01 was probably an error in the way you built your ship and was not MechJeb's fault. because I use mechjeb alot, and whenever it flips my rockets over, it's usually because either it's center of mass or thrust is off, or it's not structurally sound and wobbles all over the place. Or because the spacecraft I'm launching is so friggin' enormous, that it's weight is such that, when MechJeb begins a Gravity Turn, the spacecraft's weight causes it to flip over. Which is why my big rockets are the only ones I don't completely trust MechJeb to fly.

[HeldigDansker]

You should have sent the space station to the mun instead :D

[mdcynyay]

My first rendevou took me less than 30 minutes, sorry, i dont know how to write ''rendevou''