I will be when I unlock it.
Yep, the money wall on career mode is the building upgrades. Once you unlock the manuver nodes and the last launchpad “The sky is the limit”
I can’t seem to find a way to open parachutes on my first stage SRB’s. Is there a way to reuse them?
In theory yes. In practice it is hard. After you jettison them you can switch to them ([ key is easiest). I am not 100% sure but I think you have some unmanned probe core on each of them in order to activate the parachutes. However the biggest problem is having to keep all of the components with a few KM of each other. Watching the great Scott Manley do this he flew pretty much straight up, switched to the booster/1st stage pulled the chutes, than switched back to his orbiting vehicle.
I don’t think I’d bother with booster even Kickbacks are only 2700. It is tempting to try something with first stages which cost even the early ones cost in excess of 10K. My main cost saving trick is to eliminate instruments on tourist flights, and I make a point of landing my upper stage (generally a T45 terrior, and T800 tanks.)
This is fantastic. Thank you so much strollen. Long time ago it used to be you could have parachutes open on SRB’s right as you detached them if you grouped them together. With enough lateral inertia there wasn’t a problem. But they obviously changed that.
They used to dissapear if they hadn’t touched ground after you reach some distance, so i just just stopped using chutes on the first stage.
There is a mod that simulates using them called Stage Recovery that you can use.
I have a mission that is kicking my butt. There is an EVA report I have to do on other side of world near north pole. How do you get yr space flight so perfect so y can land on/or near the spots? A craft design idea would be great, and instruction on how to ill the off cause I’ve failed 30 times in a row!
The mod Fishbreath mentioned up-thread (Trajectories) is really helpful for hitting precise spots. It doesn’t autopilot it for you, but it will tell you where you’re going to impact.
Or, conversely, build a science plane. For all sub orbital missions that’s what I used. Especially when talking polar landings, as you are going far enough to nessecitate sub orbital, but also need to get over 100,000.
Planes take longer than rockets, but are very reliable. And cheaper.
I never do those missions in Kerbin, they are hard to do in a rocket and in a plane it takes ages.
Do you have to do a EVA on the ground or just over a specific spot in space. If it is on the ground, or below the atmosphere, I think I’d just give up. I basically ignore all the ground based missions cause its do hard too land (except for minmus) in an exact spot and rover, planes just take too long. A perfectly place polar orbit will cover every spot on the ground so then its just a matter of waiting for the Kerbin to rotate.
Can you show me a design of science plane? All my plane designs have failed thus far. I have all level 4 research upgrades unlocked but nothing else.
Jeff, have you ever heard of Google? :P
Qt3’s signal-to-noise ratio is miles better. :P
I was going to take a picture of my science plane, but I forgot before I left for work. It takes moderately advanced aerodynamics parts anyway.
Mine would probably be pretty comparable, tech wise, to what he has available. It’s an ugly thing, basically a cylindar with an engine and big wings. But it is stable, and can fly at 30.000 pretty much around the planet.
I haven’t actually tried before, but can you transfer designs? I think you can, right? If so I’ll just see about uploading my ship design for you tonight Jeff.
Awesome thanks guys. I have read the “airplane guide” on ksp but they don’t show am actual designs with real KSP parts,mmjust drawings, so there is one thing I’m screwing up in my airplane that is making it unflyable but I can’t figure out what. I had another placne earlier, that would only take off if it hit a bump! Then I could fly like a cracked up fruit bat for about 20 seconds then crash.
Well my current plane was the result of testing. The first few variants had a tendancy to flip nose up when I applied lift. Highly unstable, would fly well on a plane, but not when steering. Simply by tweaking the wing forward/ backwards I was able to go from flying disaster to supremely stable.
The trick to designing a stable airplane is the relationship of the center of lift to the center of mass. There are two things you have to do to design a good one:
- Picture your plane balanced on its center of mass. The lifting force pushes upward through the center of lift, and the whole plane pivots around the center of mass. If you have a center of lift a little ways behind your center of mass, your plane will slowly nose down in flight.
- The center of lift is also the center of parasitic drag (that is, drag created by the wings generating lift). Think of how a shuttlecock or an arrow flies: the center of mass is far forward, and the center of lift is far back. Putting the center of mass ahead the center of lift is naturally stable. Putting the center of mass behind the center of lift is naturally unstable.
So, ideally, you’ll have a plane that has a center of lift behind the center of mass, so it has the same dynamic stability as an arrow or a shuttlecock; but not too far behind the center of mass, so that it has good static stability, too. Remember to test your plane at different fuel loads, too! If you have heavy components at the front and fuel at the back, your carefully-tuned center of lift might end up moving forward past the center of mass as your fuel tanks empty.
Fishbreath - I finally figured out my Achilles heel. I only had 2 wheels to choose from. LY-01 fixed wheel and LY-05 Steerable. I’d been putting the steerable on the front nose cone of course, but until I tried to design a craft with ultimate lift like the U2 spyplane (after upgrading my runway) I did not realize the LY-01 was not supposed to be attached to the fuselage. So the wheels were never perfectly upright, but at a slight angle on the ground and when I’d get near liftoff speed something would break. But with the cascade of destruction always happening so fast I wasn’t able to zero in. Then today, while I was prcrastinating from finishing my taxes - I was in game and accidentally clicked the wheels on the far end of my U3 spy plane and DOH! Oh my goodness, all that time I wasted just because I didn’t figure out those wheels were not intended for the fuselage.
Here’s the plane that set it all right for me.
