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EightBit posted:Is this something that is considered hard to do? That's how I'm learning the game, basically. I'm about to add FAR and toy around with a science-plane to finish grabbing up the science around Kerbin. You're learning the game by playing solely with the starting parts and trying to unlock the entire tech tree in a single launch?
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May 13, 2014 17:22
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EightBit posted:Is this something that is considered hard to do? That's how I'm learning the game, basically. I'm about to add FAR and toy around with a science-plane to finish grabbing up the science around Kerbin. Your source of confusion is that Cerevisiae presumably meant to say "only starting parts", not "only stock parts". Stock-only is not difficult at all. Starting-parts-only is quite an achievement.
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May 13, 2014 17:24
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Zaran posted:Does it vibrate itself to bits and kill the crew like the real one likely would have? The vibration issue on the Ares wasn't even close to as serious of a problem as you make it out to be. NASA's worst case scenario was that the astronauts wouldn't be able to read their instrumentation, a problem they solved fairly quickly. You're right about the abort system, but the Shuttle wasn't any better in that regard.
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May 13, 2014 17:26
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JohnSherman posted:
Considering that the whole point of going back to a capsule on top of a rocket was to return to having survivable abort modes, it was particularly stupid that they were designing a rocket without one.
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May 13, 2014 17:54
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Luceo posted:Considering that the whole point of going back to a capsule on top of a rocket was to return to having survivable abort modes, it was particularly stupid that they were designing a rocket without one. What? No, it was cost, not "abort modes". Ares was much cheaper since it didn't need to be refurbed and also used shuttle-derived and -tooled manned-flight rated parts off the shelf. It was plain cheaper, and much cheaper than developing a new non-man-rated booster from scratch. The reason they put the capsule on top was because slinging it on the side was stupid if it were not a kludge like the shuttle.
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May 13, 2014 18:15
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Republicanus posted:What? No, it was cost, not "abort modes". Ares was much cheaper since it didn't need to be refurbed and also used shuttle-derived and -tooled manned-flight rated parts off the shelf. It was plain cheaper, and much cheaper than developing a new non-man-rated booster from scratch. Do you think the design change would have happened had Columbia not happened?
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May 13, 2014 18:23
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Luceo posted:Do you think the design change would have happened had Columbia not happened? Yes. NASA didn't need Challenger or Columbia to tell them that the Shuttle was a bad idea.
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May 13, 2014 18:38
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Wasn't the shuttle actually rather expensive compared to cheap-rear end Russian rockets? Because it turned out that keeping a big expensive and complicated thing in one piece through multiple re-entries was actually really expensive, whereas just dumping most of the vehicle and building a new one is much easier? It's no easier to launch than a rocket, and doesn't work any better in orbit, so what's the point? Try playing KSP where you have to launch a pair of really expensive wings and a cargo bay up with every mission instead of a fairing. It's not going to save you much money and it's going to add a lot more fuel to your launches. Also if you break it you're SOL.
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May 13, 2014 18:41
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JohnSherman posted:Yes. NASA didn't need Challenger or Columbia to tell them that the Shuttle was a bad idea. Yes, they did, quite obviously. If not for Columbia, we'd still be flying shuttles. Cost had nothing to do with it. The shuttle was made in a ton of different congressional districts despite that being a more expensive and inefficient way to do it. SLS will be done the same way, even though there are better, cheaper designs for many components than shuttle parts. For example, why throw away an SSME, which is a very complex engine designed to be re-used, when you could use a simpler engine? Why use solid boosters at all? For the cost of reusing a shuttle SRB, a new one can be built, and liquid boosters would be safer options.
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May 13, 2014 18:43
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eth0.n posted:Your source of confusion is that Cerevisiae presumably meant to say "only starting parts", not "only stock parts". Stock-only is not difficult at all. Starting-parts-only is quite an achievement. Yeah, that sounds much harder. Is English not your first language, Cerevisiae? That's quite a difference.
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May 13, 2014 18:43
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OwlFancier posted:Wasn't the shuttle actually rather expensive compared to cheap-rear end Russian rockets? Because it turned out that keeping a big expensive and complicated thing in one piece through multiple re-entries was actually really expensive, whereas just dumping most of the vehicle and building a new one is much easier? Yes, but let's not kid ourselves. The primary goal of the Ares program was to see how much more money the US could funnel to ATK and Boeing.
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May 13, 2014 18:44
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JohnSherman posted:Yes, but let's not kid ourselves. The primary goal of the Ares program was to see how much more money the US could funnel to ATK and Boeing. Oh yeah I get why it was tried, I daresay it would have been a little difficult to predict that you could just keep building cheap rockets for less than the shuttle cost to maintain. I also daresay that the original concept for the shuttle would probably have been a lot cheaper before they decided to make it able to glide halfway round the world and other additions. It also was originally slated for a much lower operational lifetime I think? So it's a grand thing to have tested and built, it just didn't turn out very practical in the end.
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May 13, 2014 18:47
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eth0.n posted:Your source of confusion is that Cerevisiae presumably meant to say "only starting parts", not "only stock parts". Stock-only is not difficult at all. Starting-parts-only is quite an achievement. Yeah, I missed a word in there and wasn't clear.
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May 13, 2014 18:52
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OwlFancier posted:Wasn't the shuttle actually rather expensive compared to cheap-rear end Russian rockets? Because it turned out that keeping a big expensive and complicated thing in one piece through multiple re-entries was actually really expensive, whereas just dumping most of the vehicle and building a new one is much easier? The fact that the SSRBs were also generally over budget, and could have been done cheaper with disposable solid or liquid boosters, was by comparison a much smaller part of the enormous per-launch cost. But when you consider that they were the cause of the Challenger accident, and would have been less safe as the Ares launcher than some alternatives, there was no reason to keep using them aside from politics. For more, come on down to The Spaceflight Megathread. Republicanus posted:Ares was much cheaper since it didn't need to be refurbed and also used shuttle-derived and -tooled manned-flight rated parts off the shelf. It was plain cheaper, and much cheaper than developing a new non-man-rated booster from scratch. Klyith fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 18:53
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You have to remember that the shuttle only makes sense, after the fact, as a jobs-creation program. I say after the fact because growing up watching them launch, I was just as enthralled as anyone. What a beautiful, flawed machine. I say we'd still be flying shuttles now had Columbia not went down because there would have been no reason to stop. All those expensive launches funneled money into jobs in lots of congressional districts, and what elected representative would want to turn off that pipe to their district without good reason? Columbia broke the political will to continue, though, since the public was shocked that space travel might be dangerous. Well, that, and that NASA hadn't learned much from Challenger, considering that many of the same factors contributed to the loss of Columbia. Normalization of failure was the largest, obvious culture problem that was never addressed, since tile-loss was an observed problem on every single shuttle flight. Since it was apparent that both LOCV events in NASA history might have been avoided by the crew vehicle being on top of the rocket rather than the side, a return to that design was obvious after Columbia. But without that, we'd still be launching our Pyramids into space.
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May 13, 2014 19:06
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Klyith posted:The only good place to put a capsule on the Ares was 50 feet to the side, on top of a completely different rocket. 50 feet doesn't sound far enough, unless you're very very sure to launch the different rocket before the Ares. 50 miles, maybe?
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May 13, 2014 19:11
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I was about to say my scratchbuilt Ares is totally safe, but one just broke up on ascent, fortunately only carrying cargo. Oops.
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May 13, 2014 19:22
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OwlFancier posted:Wasn't the shuttle actually rather expensive compared to cheap-rear end Russian rockets? Because it turned out that keeping a big expensive and complicated thing in one piece through multiple re-entries was actually really expensive, whereas just dumping most of the vehicle and building a new one is much easier? Well, a big part of that was the compromises made to the design. The Air Force insisted on a thousand+ mile crossrange (so that the shuttle could do a once-around polar orbit), which required big-rear end double-delta wings, which cut into the payload substantially. The shuttle had to have a large payload capacity in part because we wanted it to carry "anything" and everything (from bigass spy satellites/space telescopes, to space station modules), so we made some mass (and cost!) tradeoffs by cutting down the redundancy on certain parts. The Office of Management and Budget also - scrapping liquid boosters in favor of solid boosters (in an ideal world it would have been a flyback booster, even) - reducing redundancy in critical systems, destroying the original concept of permissible failures in various systems so that checkout could be less rigorous and service applied only when systems actually needed it - inadequate funds for SSME development and testing - Rocketdyne was forced to literally just build an entire engine and 'turn it on', "which resulted in several large fires" - meaning that until near the end of the program, the SSME was unable to meet its goal of being used several times before needing a costly engine teardown and rebuild. Luceo posted:You have to remember that the shuttle only makes sense, after the fact, as a jobs-creation program. I say after the fact because growing up watching them launch, I was just as enthralled as anyone. What a beautiful, flawed machine. It didn't just make sense after-the-fact. When Space Shuttle development was in progress, the aerospace industry was hurting pretty bad. There was a substantial downturn in demand, the American SST project had failed, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas had cut into each other with their competing L-1011 and DC-10 airliners (the former of which sold so poorly that Lockheed got out of commercial aircraft entirely), and 747 development had drat near bankrupted Boeing. Space Shuttle meant a lot of work across a lot of aerospace companies. I agree that if Columbia hadn't happened we'd probably still be seeing Shuttle launches.
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May 13, 2014 20:01
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Captain Postal posted:Actually, and this is a really dumb question, how do you get the kerbals back into a lander? The ladder only goes so far to the ground, and the lander legs are longer than that. Do they fly up with their EVA packs? They can jump, too.
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May 13, 2014 20:28
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Captain Postal posted:Actually, and this is a really dumb question, how do you get the kerbals back into a lander? The ladder only goes so far to the ground, and the lander legs are longer than that. Do they fly up with their EVA packs?
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May 13, 2014 20:50
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peepsalot posted:EVA pack is the easiest, jumping and aiming for a ladder is a massive pain in the rear end on very low gravity bodies such as Minmus. Another technique you can try, depending on your lander design, is to retract the landing legs after landing, lowering your craft a bit more. Also be careful if you've landed on an incline. It can get...messy.
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May 13, 2014 20:52
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You can fly with the jetpack on any body smaller than Duna (so everywhere except Laythe, Tylo, Kerbin, and Eve) so it's usually the best way unless you want to build a long ladder down the whole side of your ship.
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May 13, 2014 20:57
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Obviously the solution is to land on your capsule.
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May 13, 2014 21:09
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We're adding more development to 24. Wasn't quite where we wanted it to. Read more if you'd like to. Kudos to the well crafted arguments provided by our exp testers, Illectro included.
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May 13, 2014 21:12
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Ceciltron posted:Obviously the solution is to land on your capsule. That’s what I did before I unlocked ladders. It’s not like ærodynamics or survivability matter in KSP. It’s annoying not to have a central engine and it looks dumb, but placing the capsule at the bottom of the lander works. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 21:53 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 21:17
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I've never found it that difficult to just mount the landing legs on higher so that the ladder reaches, but maybe thats just my designs.
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May 13, 2014 21:36
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Maxmaps posted:We're adding more development to 24. Wasn't quite where we wanted it to. Read more if you'd like to. Kudos to the well crafted arguments provided by our exp testers, Illectro included. I'm both dismayed and relieved. Sure I would have wanted more content sooner, but I'd rather have high quality content at the price of time. You guys have the right mindset when it comes to game development. Just look at how many AAA titles are released broken with day one patches and months of damage control. You're doing the opposite and that's awesome. shortspecialbus posted:I've never found it that difficult to just mount the landing legs on higher so that the ladder reaches, but maybe thats just my designs. What if you don't have the extendo-ladder or are using an LV-N? 
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May 13, 2014 21:41
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Maxmaps posted:We're adding more development to 24. Wasn't quite where we wanted it to. Read more if you'd like to. Kudos to the well crafted arguments provided by our exp testers, Illectro included. For anybody not following the link, 0.24 is being pushed back to include the budget system, because Squad determined that contracts weren't interesting without it. In other words, 0.24 will see the game become drat-near feature complete.
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May 13, 2014 21:49
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Platystemon posted:That’s what I did before I unlocked ladders. It’s not like ærodynamics or survivability matter in KSP,. It’s annoying not to have a central engine and it looks dumb, but placing the capsule at the bottom of the lander works. Or you could do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CENrhhXqjg0
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May 13, 2014 21:53
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Eve landings and returns are hard, but has anyone ever attempted a Jooldive and return? As in: slow horizontal velocity, dive into the atmosphere to an appreciable distance (but higher than the altitude where most ships are destroyed) and blast right the gently caress back out of there and return to Kerbin by an orbital return stage or whatever. Is it even possible?
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May 13, 2014 21:58
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OAquinas posted:Or you could do this. The  lights strobing on the surface of the Mun from orbit is the best part of this video
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May 13, 2014 22:01
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DStecks posted:For anybody not following the link, 0.24 is being pushed back to include the budget system, because Squad determined that contracts weren't interesting without it. In other words, 0.24 will see the game become drat-near feature complete. Kinda, but we still have a couple unannounced features up our collective sleeves. Mind you, Beta is finally a thing we can now, you know, look at in the future.
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May 13, 2014 22:09
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Maxmaps posted:Beta 
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May 13, 2014 22:14
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Oh dude, we know! We're beyond hyped to join the proud and few club of 'games who went into early access and worked out okay'.
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May 13, 2014 22:16
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ArchangeI posted:I would think the opposite, with tutorials awarding science and tied in with the contract system (First contract: place a satellite in orbit before the Koviets, or, Jool help us, the Kinese manage to get to it). I can understand contracts that lead to progression, but I really don't like forced hand-holding tutorials. They can disrupt the pacing and sense of gameplay, especially for people that just want to play for a short time. Some people just want to make crazy rockets and/or figure it out on their own.
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May 13, 2014 22:18
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Heres a dumb question: I still can't figure out why my flags aren't showing up, so I decided to play around with spaceplanes. Is it perfectly possible to do SSTO low-tech style? It seems difficult to get past the first stage of soup and blast your way up, and the my idea of burning hard in-atmosphere to get some speed first didn't really work out with the basic jet engines. Can you just add engines and get a high percentage of necessary orbital speed? To be frank I basically brute-forced my SSTO delivery plane ages ago with B9 parts and big engines and wings, and that's a bit up the tree! e; nevermind I misunderstood the module fuel tanks read me! VVV - by burn hard I just meant get real high and get as much speed as possible, not diddle around at 180. I just wanted to make a plane while thinking about my flag thing, then it became "must make this work!" Synnr fucked around with this message at 22:34 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 22:20
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It's possible to make a SSTO with stock parts, yes, especially now that you have the rapier engine. Put on a couple of those and as many ram air intakes as physically possible. You can't "burn hard" at sea level thanks to the thick atmosphere, so fly like a plane up to around 15km and level off until you get close to orbital speed (or your intake air runs out, hopefully these will happen at about the same time) before switching to rockets. That said, stock SSTOs are a boondoggle even by KSP's relaxed standards and there's probably a better way to accomplish your goal unless that goal is entirely "build a stock SSTO". haveblue fucked around with this message at 22:31 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 22:28
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haveblue posted:It's possible to make a SSTO with stock parts, yes, especially now that you have the rapier engine. Put on a couple of those and as many ram air intakes as physically possible. You can't "burn hard" at sea level thanks to the thick atmosphere, so fly like a plane up to around 15km and level off until you get close to orbital speed (or your intake air runs out, hopefully these will happen at about the same time) before switching to rockets. With .24 and the Kerbals successfully researching "Currency" on the tech tree, an SSTO will be a huge benefit for orbital refueling. Assuming that you get credit for reusing the returned ship, anyway. Though, yeah, with current parts its a bit of a pain to make a good SSTO that's more than a puddle jumper in capacity. MaxMaps mentioned spaceplanes getting another dev pass; here's hoping .25 has some plane love.
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May 13, 2014 22:40
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OAquinas posted:With .24 and the Kerbals successfully researching "Currency" on the tech tree, an SSTO will be a huge benefit for orbital refueling. Assuming that you get credit for reusing the returned ship, anyway. space planes only save you money if you land them safely, which is a pretty big if with only a few places you can safely land and no precise system for aiming your trajectory.
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May 13, 2014 22:57
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Maxmaps posted:We're adding more development to 24. Wasn't quite where we wanted it to. Read more if you'd like to. Kudos to the well crafted arguments provided by our exp testers, Illectro included. While I'm sad that .24 won't be coming out next week, I'm very excited to hear that budgets are the reason why. I was concerned about the contracts system not having budgets from the get-go, and I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one.
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