KSP and Simple Rockets2 Stuff.

[TtTOtW]

I’ve broken KSP twice so far.

The first is more useful and cool I think, but I could actually replicate the second.

That's you?

 

[Space pilot]

I also wanted to download KSP.

 

[Earl]

That's you?

Yup.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Tonight, I've 4 projects to showcase here, with varying degrees of failure...

To kick things off, my first attempt at landing something without wings,

and doing a perfect Beresheet impression into the side of a crater.

I got it down on the second attempt.

Didn't think the moon mun was quite so lumpy.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Next, a single launch multi-satellite carrier, designed for a 3 piece comm and scan sat set up around Minmus

First time I'd attempted multiple payloads inside one fairing and wasn't sure it'd work as advertised. Getting the CoM balance nailed on this was a bit of a bastard as well

 

[Horus Lupercal]

I couldn't resist an attempt at a working helicopter, and especially not a CH-47 mock up.

Plus side is that is makes the right noise a CH-47 makes. I remember someone saying once that the UH-1 was the sound of freedom in the 60s and 70's, and he was right.

And in my humble opinion, there's only one other helicopter with such a distinctive soundtrack to it. And that's the CH-47 Chinook. The sound of freedom in the 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s and 20's.

Change my mind.




However. In KSP, helicopters are an absolute bastard to balance right and I've not managed any kind of manoeuvrers in this without it doing something weird, rolling over and propelling itself into the floor. Just getting it to go straight up on take-off took about an hour of trial and error with fuel loads and throttle limiters.

Sigh. It would've been so fucking cool.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Lastly, but not least-ly, yet another trip in the Worldlifter.

This time, an hour cruise to the South Pole.

The only perk of flying at night. The sky in KSP is stunning.

A very rare manned Kerballed mission.

Chasing the sunset across Kerbin

First nav checkpoint, the tip of the Antarctic Ice Shelf, viewed at about 4000metres.

Bounce off the main ice and head west towards a tiny island

Anywhere around here will do I think...

A quick low level pass before landing, just to make sure the place is as flat as the orbital scans promised

And easy landing pattern with all the space in the world and deploy the rover.

Yeah, that's right. No parachute drop this time around. I'm field testing the Worldlifters kneeling system for the first time.

And it almost goes to plan.

I swear it's never done that before, in all the static tests on the runway at KSC. I didn't even strike or damage the engines, they just dropped off without staging toys or whatever.

Well, means I'm not gonna be flying that one home.

Still, look at the bloody size of that thing.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

What's coming up in the future then?

Well I've 3 headache projects that are 90% completed, but the last 10% are utter, utter bastards to fix.

This one needs no introduction, and if you think balance is hard in SFS, getting this thing to go straight up in KSP is hideous. It has spontaneously disassembled itself at every stage of the flight, everytime for different reasons.

Ignore the partial build look, but I don't want to spoil the reveal of how good this one looks until it's flight ready. It's very much completed but I'm having front/rear weight problems (the nose won't come up without heavy RCS assistance, which isn't an option) and the engines aren't playing ball either in flight.

It's gonna be a masterpiece though when it finally works. You think I fangirl over my Concorde, the level of detail I've gone into with this is in a different league.


And lastly, a rover drop cradle, much like the one I built in SFS back before the drop pod fetish

This one is designed for the Mun, the L/V is good to go and I just need to fly/crash land it

 

[TtTOtW]

Some gorgeous machines you have there! Hey... weight reduction is good, right?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Hey... weight reduction is good, right?

Ha exactly. Who needs engines anyway, they're just dry mass

 

[Horus Lupercal]

This one is designed for the Mun, the L/V is good to go and I just need to fly/crash land it

Well, technically the L/V was ready.


To explode on the launchpad.

Anyway, after a little redesign of stage 2 (Shown below just after being separated away ready for stage 3 TMI burn), I got it into LKO...

...and into LMO...

...without much issue.

However, my selected LZ was on the dark side of the Mun and I made an absolute clusterfuck a bit of a mess up of the landing.
As in I didn't have the altimeter set to terrain, so I hit the Mun at 3000metres indicated height in complete and utter darkness, mid suicide burn doing about 100m/s. And beresheeted myself all over the impact crater.

Still, got this little picture from the unmanned lander whilst I was there

 

[Horus Lupercal]

If I'm honest, that cradle wasn't Mun ready and neither was the rover. You may have noticed the rover is now not the 4WD version in the previous teaser picture,

but the 12x12 version used in the Antarctic exploration. It's double the length and weight and thus the cradle has had to expand immensely to deal with that (and you can just see the top of the third (TMI) stage on the right of the picture with the off-centre bracing so it'd fly straight during burn).

But beyond the L/V balance I'd not flight tested or balanced the cradle itself and the bugs only started rearing their head during the Mun descent and a crash was pretty much inevitable (and killed 2 kerbals as well).

Not wishing a repeat performance, and probably going too far into MOAR CAPABILITY territory, I've completely re-designed the lander from scratch (twice) and dubbed it 'The Flying Bedstead' in homage to the British Rolls Royce TMR (Thrust Measuring Rig), the first jet VTOL craft in the world and of course NASAs LLRV (Lunar Landing Research Vehicle), which this technically is.

The mk.I bedstead was a re-hash of the original cradle with stuff just placed around existing equipment and it looked a bit badly built if I'm honest.

There's a bit more bracing and I've added reaction wheel clusters and downwards lighting but to get the balance right I've had to offset things like the relay antenna, the ladder is purely aesthetic and serves no purpose except weight distribution. The solar panels just look chucked on with glue and the equipment in the core is just...blergh.

So I deleted it and built this.

It has the same basic 6 legged adjustable based design with thud landing engines. I've kept the large amount of reaction wheels from the mk.I and added LOX powered RCS thrusters as well for stability and hovering control. The comms suite has been overhauled, centrally mounted and looks decent with direct and relay comms.
It's fitted with a drone core so it can be operated remotely, but also has space station components on the centre columns with EVA facilities and access ladders as a more permanent base station instead of a disposable landing system.
The lighting has been uprated from tiny marker lights on the legs to flood and spotlights fitted on the centre legs that are for illumination of the payload area as well as the on-rushing ground during landing. I haven't tested the light spread in the dark yet (annoyingly, the only time it's daytime at the KSC is when I need to test the lights. Every other test it seems to be pitch black, especially when I need to see what I'm doing) and may increase the lighting available.
Speaking of the ground, as you can see there's a lot of struts cobwebbed about the place. From flight testing the cradle and the mk.I, it bent like an old iPhone during load and lift as well as landing manoeuvres, and I've added these and will add a few more to the long core before delivering it to the VAB for a L/V build.
Power is sorted with a comprehensive solar and RTG set up and large amounts of battery power.

It's probably over-kill and is over twice as expensive as the mk.I, but when have I ever been subtle?

All this has brought the mass up substantially, dry mass in particular, with swapping fuel tanks for living and EVA areas whilst adding more heavy battery, power, comms and lights. TWR I'm not worried about, it's got enough thump to hover on Kerbin with a payload hanging under it, and the Muns gravity is similar to the Moon so I've plenty spare.

The hassle is available ΔV. I only need about 600m/s to get from LMO to a powered landing on the surface, but wanted a lot of extra incase I need to select a new DZ on the descent or move once landed to a better location. So inside the core tubes I've added additional LOX fuel containers next to the RTGs so it's got the same ΔV available as the first cradle despite being 12 tons heavier, with space still for more if required.

I'm not worried about launch weight, it's only 46 tons and that's well within my capabilities in KSP. The only question is will it fit under a fairing, and as you seen from the previous video (the one where everything breaks), the fairing is already enormous in comparison to the rocket itself which makes atmospheric flight...interesting.

And this one will be even wider and will need my 5 metre covers.


Flight testing the mk.II went well though, after lessons learnt from the cradle and mk.I and incorporating disposable flight ballast cos the rover is so off centre itself.

I flew it with a payload

And without one

And she's pretty stable considering, but you have to be really gentle with inputs.

I need more practice flying it.

MUCH MOAR PRACTICE as hilariously enough I'm having the same problems as Rolls Royce and NASA did in the 50s and 60s and one version has already done a Neil Armstrong and rolled over in flight.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

The Flying Bedstead goes to the Moon.

Third landing attempt on the Mun and only my second proper manned mission anywhere of the surface of Kerbin, it's time to put all the ground tests to use.

Unlike what I tend to do in SFS where I have a small number of bespoke launch vehicles that I place payloads onto depending on weight, in KSP I always build the L/V bespoke to every single payload for balance and so I can experiment further with different engine combinations and stage layouts.

This is no exception. Using just over 3000m/s of ΔV (of an available 4000+m/s), two Stages, launch mass at 640tons with the payload in a 5 metre fairing.
Built to place the Mk.II Flying Bedstead, a 12x12 rover and a TMI stage (138tons all up) into a 100km LKO orbit.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Every once in a while you get a new user on here looking for a blueprint for a space station as if they're capable of reaching it, even if we built them one. And we're constantly saying 'You need to learn how to dock'.

Which got me thinking, and it's confession time. I've not got a space station in KSP, cos the one skill I've not mastered yet is docking.

Yeah, I know. I build scale aircraft, do parachute drops, land rovers on the Mun, create geo-synchronous satellite constellations wherever I like. But The Warmaster has only managed a single successful dock in Kerbal Space Program.

I've attempted it in purpose built test craft

(I basically built Blocky the Drone in KSP)

and 9/10 I run out of monoprop before even getting close.

Time to change that, by designing a space station. One so massive that it simply can not be launched in one go and has to be launched in sections and assembled in LKO.

Here it is. All 2 thousand tons of it...

Well, I lie. The station itself is about 640ish tons but with the 500tons of ore and nearly 1,000tons of LOX in the refine-supply section at the back, it punches the weight up slightly.

Some sections alone (especially the LOX tank and) will be the largest payloads I've lifted yet in game and the assembled station is over 100x50x50m in size.

It's also a MOAR CAPABILITY build and has absolutely everything I could fit onto it from multiple ore conversion stations, sensor and communication suites, science labs, hydrophonics bays, docking wings, solar sail/arrays and a frankly massive central living area featuring not only copious amounts of normal modules but also no less than 4 centrifuges.



Speaking of centrifuges.

The first piece goes into LKO...

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Next up, the storage modules. The L/V is about a quarter of the weight of the centrifuges L/V, so it doesn't look quite so impressive (especially as it doesn't have the 7 engine pack on the second stage with those Skipper engines) but it's not too bad

Gets into LKO no issues. Also, it has a prototype de-orbiting engine on the second stage as I'm normally already in orbit by the time that comes away and becomes debris over the equator. Worked quite well.

Next, for the main event, and a very short video

Reason for that is there are a lot of videos before it. And a replacement module launch as I ran out of fuel doing pass after pass after pass and burnt the entire onboard supply of mono-prop (again).

So I deployed my secret weapon.

Docking ports.

You can use them as targets and control points. Set the docking port on one craft as a control point, and set it as a target for the other craft. Do the same for the other craft on the docking port you want to aim for.

Then select target on the SAS on both craft. And they'll automatically aim directly at each other.

Then, assuming you're in the same orbit at the same speed, when you burn towards your target you'll be lined up by the flight computer on both craft and will eventually lock onto each other.

And you've just docked using the main engines...

Like this.

You can see the RCS modules firing, but I'm not making the inputs. That's the SAS keeping the craft pointed at each other.

For a fuller explanation, check out Matt Lownes' "whiskey videos"...

 

[Horus Lupercal]

In the next episode.

How I got from here.

To here.

 

[Earl]

I broke KSP again!

 

[TtTOtW]

 

[Horus Lupercal]

After punting the Bedstead in a pretty standard low kerbin orbit, a transfer burn was set up, flown and arrived into low mun orbit with a few adjustments so the orbit over-flew the crater I wanted to land on.

It's not a particularly exciting video but if you're interested in how it worked, it's here

Of course, next comes the moment of truth. Landing the damned thing, take two.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Of course, I missed where I wanted to land by about 5km thanks to my 'awesome' flying skills.

Well, that's kinda why I tested the bedstead so much at the KSC, for just such an eventuality.

Fire up the engines, turn it around and fly closer.

What could possibly go wrong.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

After such a graceful and totally event-free landing, better get the rover undocked before anything else breaks.

Then a short drive and plant the flag for all kerbal kind.

That is, if his bloody head will fit through the damned door!!

An indulgence video, I make no apologies but it looks so damn good doing this...

 

[Horus Lupercal]

A fast rover...low gravity...big craters to ramp off of...

Yeah, this was pretty inevitable.

 

[Earl]

After having the Breaking Ground DLC for a couple of months, I've made my first helicopter. A bit difficult to control since I play on PS4, but I think it turned out pretty well.

Edit: I know it doesn't look like the rotor is not spinning much, but that's just because of the frame rate. The engines are just there to look cool.

 

[Blazer Ayanami]

Colonization of Proxima b on KSP

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Spent the day launching and assembling the solar array section on the space station.