Kerbal Space Program - Reusable Space Program - Episode 14

We land the Home habitation module on the mun, Launch a new fuel tanker, start building a comsat network around the mun and go for a drive in the rover.

This was supposed to be posted yesterday but Sony Vegas messed up.

[scottmanley]

Well as your Ap/Peri diverge your orbital location will librate back and forth along the orbit, at some point it will be ahead, at others it will be behind. So, while getting everything with the exact same SMA makes sure they stay in phase, minimising the eccentricity reduces the oscilation in the phase.

[shadow]

Scott, you amaze me. I struggled to launch three different duna launchers, only one made it. You kept track of 6 probes, mun rovers, and landers. You sir, are extremely impressive.

[scottmanley]

I need that really high TWR to lift off from kerbin. Remember I don't have the same margins of disposable stages that many designs need.

[BingusTheWockis]

for you people who don't use mechjeb: T= 2*pi*sqrt(a^3/GM) Where: T is the orbital period, a is the semi-major axis, G is the universal constant of gravitation (6.67*10^-11), and M is the mass of the parent body. I know, math. Who does that in KSP anyways!? I suppose I'll never be a cool cat using way more dV than I have to to get to stationary orbit....

[TonboIV]

This one applies it's attitude forces to the station hull, which move it directly, which is resisted by the gyroscope of the rotor and applied back to hull at 90 degrees, so that the final movement is an unpredictable combination of precession and direct response. This is exactly the sort of thing WWI fighter pilots had to deal with in their tiny planes with giant rotating engines. Many of them died before figuring out how to manage it.

[TheSkyRender]

Just FYI: you can keep DEMV rovers from doing crazy pirouettes when they hit a sharp edge like that by turning on SAS while on level ground and leaving it on. They'll actually do a really good job of keeping level with the ground and with wheels facing downward that way when they do hit a crazy curve. It won't prevent damage entirely, but it will keep them from performing low-gravity ballet.

[jaredlwg]

Scott - I have to say this is THE BEST KSP lets play series on YouTube. I think that all the idea's you have had are amazing and I think making it 99.999...% reusable had made it tons more awesome. Keep it up!

[SteelFyire]

Out of curiosity, I just did a test of two ships identical aside from their engine: one mainsail vs a cluster of 7 LV-T30s, burning straight up at full power. The thrust is practically identical (1505 vs 1500) though the cluster weights an additional 2.75 tons. That said, it seems to make up for it by supplying ~20 additional seconds of thrust, which corrosponded to an apoapsis some 30, 000 meters higher than the mainsail rocket.

[robdave]

As someone who can barely get a single encounter in KSP, this project is astonishing! truely mind blowing stuff, good work!

[Arakash]

The idea of zero g sports really gets my imagination going, though i can remember some memorable ones from sci fi. I remember seeing one which really stuck in my mind, in a (quite old now)space anime, where two people were in zero-g connected by a cord/rope and had lances/spears, and they lunged at each other and got points for hitting and the like. Basically a form of zero-g jousting. Like a lot of earlier sports on earth, it simulated and trained combat, in this case zero-g space combat

[wilkins]

Scott for the tanker ideas it would be good to bring a second up there at a later date so you can always have one filling up on the mun and one at the station delivering fuel

[pringleman]

semi-major axis will govern the period, and thus set them to be orbiting in the same amount of time.

To put it more simply (I guess) would be that the semi-major axis will make sure they are orbiting in the same amount of time, Pe and Ap keep them from passing each other due to eccentricity. So really all three values need to be the same between two craft to have identical orbits, just separated by some number of degrees.

[scottmanley]

It's installed, I built a ladder truck to let kerbals repack chutes on returned launchers, you just haven't seen that.

[jaredlwg]

was just playing KSP: tried to get to the moon without getting into orbit. missed the window, but accidentally got an encounter with minmus. was adjusting my encounter and then saw i got an encounter with the mun on the swing back to kerbin. awesome.

[Vsor]

This is easily my favorite LP on Youtube.

[Drazzuhmas]

you could drop a crew habitat on your rover and still use it as a 7 kurbal crew transport, and therefore still get some use from it. Maybe even a bus for supplies to a holiday destination at the Armstrong monument!

[scottmanley]

I did test with them but decided against them, I can't remember why. Maybe they would put me over my mass budget.

[TonboIV]

Scott! Gyroscopic precession as an orbital plane change! Why has no ever tried to explain it to me this way? I'm finally starting to understand something that's always been simply incomprehensible idea to be accepted only because I can observe that it happens. Thank you sooo much!

As for the helicopter, real ones apply their attitude forces directly to the rotor which then gets a pure gyro response and drags the whole vehicle along with it at 90 degrees to the applied force.

[Stukov]

Scott, there's a mod on the Spaceport that adds radial torque wheels, which consumes electricity, but make turning big heavy stuff much easier.

[scottmanley]

No the tylo lander doesn't have enough delta-v - look at the rocket I took to Eve and back, it had dozens of stages.