Thats fucking beautiful also like you saif i like this whole progession. Thing and ya i can extend the clip upwards if need be. Also one flaw i see in this design is the barrel fitting(something i can easily take care of and you dont have to worry about). For some reason when pushing a round into the breach connecting it to 2 docking ports on each side with solar panels on each side seems to offer a more reliable more accurate trajectory for the missle. (Idk why it just does and you could probably come to a better explenation). There is one other nit-pick but again something that I can take care of and you did your job on improving the system as a whole. Thank you.
The Warmasters' Consultancy Service
- Thread starter Horus Lupercal
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Horus Lupercal
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Horus Lupercal
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Horus Lupercal
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Horus Lupercal
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Horus Lupercal
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From 'Efficiency Improvements'
https://jmnet.one/sfs/forum/index.php?threads/efficiency-improvements.3358/#post-63331
I don't understand how the original gets to orbit and lands with the ΔV and TWR as they are.
Must be my flying, but I made the Karman line easily, but couldn't get anywhere near a 31km orbit, and certainly not enough with a big enough reserve to de-orbit and conduct a powered landing.
Your design and re-usability requirements don't leave much wiggle room for improvements. Example, the size and weight of the first stage make boosters more hassle than they're worth. Which is a shame, as they'd theoretically give you an extra 200m/s of ΔV just by moving the grey fuel tanks a square out, attaching them with side separators.
The fuckery is that if you have them as SRBs, then the core hasn't enough TWR for the post booster phase, or if you make the core solid fuel and the boosters LF, the boosters burn for twice as long as the core and that really messes things up
If it were me, I'd put a second frontier and an extra 20 ton fuel tank on stage 2. And sack one of the Frontiers from stage one. That'll up your ΔV to a more workable amount and drop the thrust down so you're not wasting fuel punching holes in the sky. Unless you're throttling down until roughly 10-15km. And it gives stage 2 a just over 1:1 TWR, making that part easier as well
If you're looking for the most efficient way of putting 115t into orbit, you'll need 2 stages:
bottom stage, 2 x titans, 180t of fuel, 1000m/s ΔV
second stage, 2 frontiers and 2 b/swords, 140t of fuel, 1700m/s ΔV. (Its more efficient with 7 b/swords, buuuuut that's not a realistic set up, and there's only a few (8) tons in it)
Launch mass 476.2 tons TWR 1.28
That'll give you a rocket/payload of 4.1401 with more ΔV to play with.
https://jmnet.one/sfs/forum/index.php?threads/efficiency-improvements.3358/#post-63331
I don't understand how the original gets to orbit and lands with the ΔV and TWR as they are.
Must be my flying, but I made the Karman line easily, but couldn't get anywhere near a 31km orbit, and certainly not enough with a big enough reserve to de-orbit and conduct a powered landing.
Your design and re-usability requirements don't leave much wiggle room for improvements. Example, the size and weight of the first stage make boosters more hassle than they're worth. Which is a shame, as they'd theoretically give you an extra 200m/s of ΔV just by moving the grey fuel tanks a square out, attaching them with side separators.
The fuckery is that if you have them as SRBs, then the core hasn't enough TWR for the post booster phase, or if you make the core solid fuel and the boosters LF, the boosters burn for twice as long as the core and that really messes things up
If it were me, I'd put a second frontier and an extra 20 ton fuel tank on stage 2. And sack one of the Frontiers from stage one. That'll up your ΔV to a more workable amount and drop the thrust down so you're not wasting fuel punching holes in the sky. Unless you're throttling down until roughly 10-15km. And it gives stage 2 a just over 1:1 TWR, making that part easier as well
If you're looking for the most efficient way of putting 115t into orbit, you'll need 2 stages:
bottom stage, 2 x titans, 180t of fuel, 1000m/s ΔV
second stage, 2 frontiers and 2 b/swords, 140t of fuel, 1700m/s ΔV. (Its more efficient with 7 b/swords, buuuuut that's not a realistic set up, and there's only a few (8) tons in it)
Launch mass 476.2 tons TWR 1.28
That'll give you a rocket/payload of 4.1401 with more ΔV to play with.
So, Horus, I have a question for ya.
Assume that I have a Spacecraft on Mercury and that I want to return to Earth. As you know, Mercury has no atmo, So we launch a little up and then fully horizontal to gain Orbital speed...
I was wondering, If I wait till Mercury is exactly south of the Sun and Its moving to the left, and then launch to the right, will that optimize my launch or not? Or the effect is So small that there's no point on using it?
Assume that I have a Spacecraft on Mercury and that I want to return to Earth. As you know, Mercury has no atmo, So we launch a little up and then fully horizontal to gain Orbital speed...
I was wondering, If I wait till Mercury is exactly south of the Sun and Its moving to the left, and then launch to the right, will that optimize my launch or not? Or the effect is So small that there's no point on using it?
Horus Lupercal
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If I'm honest I don't think it'll make a huge difference where Mercury is. It's more efficient to orbit because its the shortest distance / time doing flat across the horizon. But once your track goes outside of Mercury SOI, then you're still subject to raising your aphelion the same as you would if you were in orbit of Mercury any other way.
Unless you went truly ballistic, and aimed yourself directly at Earth and manage to create such momentum that there isn't even orbit, it's just a direct line from launch to Earth impact.
I'm not sure that'll be cheaper, though Space Stig is more the expert in this field.
I'd imagine the cheapest way would be to select Venus as a target before take off, figure out when the insertion window is directly over where you've landed, take off almost horizontal and it should appear as soon as you've left the ground. Then you can just burn prograde from 300m up, save wasting the fuel and time making LMO first and slingshot from Venus to Earth.
Should cost you...
(Lets see if I can do this orbital navigation malarky)
626m/s to make the minimum orbit to get into a circle the size of Mercury from the ground. That's the minimum orbital speed of Mercury on the surface.
527m/s to change the minimum orbit to one that breaches the SOI, which is the speed you need to be doing at apoapsis (99m/s) minus your original speed of 626m/s
290m/s, transfer to Venus for the slingshot
1443m/s all up.
On a side note, since you're on Mercury anyway, see how much it costs you to breach the SOI from just going straight up. The SOI escape velocity is apparently 885m/s, which if you're not looking at making an orbit, should be cheaper since you're looking for the fastest way out of Dodge.
Unless you went truly ballistic, and aimed yourself directly at Earth and manage to create such momentum that there isn't even orbit, it's just a direct line from launch to Earth impact.
I'm not sure that'll be cheaper, though Space Stig is more the expert in this field.
I'd imagine the cheapest way would be to select Venus as a target before take off, figure out when the insertion window is directly over where you've landed, take off almost horizontal and it should appear as soon as you've left the ground. Then you can just burn prograde from 300m up, save wasting the fuel and time making LMO first and slingshot from Venus to Earth.
Should cost you...
(Lets see if I can do this orbital navigation malarky)
626m/s to make the minimum orbit to get into a circle the size of Mercury from the ground. That's the minimum orbital speed of Mercury on the surface.
527m/s to change the minimum orbit to one that breaches the SOI, which is the speed you need to be doing at apoapsis (99m/s) minus your original speed of 626m/s
290m/s, transfer to Venus for the slingshot
1443m/s all up.
On a side note, since you're on Mercury anyway, see how much it costs you to breach the SOI from just going straight up. The SOI escape velocity is apparently 885m/s, which if you're not looking at making an orbit, should be cheaper since you're looking for the fastest way out of Dodge.
Okay, Thanks, that was just another of my "crazy ideas" anyway.
But I have another question and is not SFS related, cause SFS is a 2D game, So we don't have "Orbital planes" or whatever their name is, but I'm playing Orbiter and I would like to know how do you launch in the same Orbital planes of a target like the ISS or the Moon.
Orbiter's manual is not very clear about this.
But I have another question and is not SFS related, cause SFS is a 2D game, So we don't have "Orbital planes" or whatever their name is, but I'm playing Orbiter and I would like to know how do you launch in the same Orbital planes of a target like the ISS or the Moon.
Orbiter's manual is not very clear about this.
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My only experience in 3D launching is from KSP. That's where the Z comes into it. So imagine in 2 dimensions you have the X and Y, which in SFS is your apo/peri, and the shape of said orbit is your eccentricity. When the Earth becomes 3 dimensional, and you're going around it, unless you're always bang on the equator (which you're not), then you need to specify what angle you're going around the globe, relative to say the poles. Thats your 3rd axis or inclination.
So when the shuttle takes off, you notice that it does a little roll as it climbs vertically before it pitches onto its back? That's it adjusting itself so that when it hits the correct height in orbit, its inclination is correct as well.
You can adjust your inclination in orbit as well by burning perpendicular to your direction of travel (so half way between pro and retrograde, parallel to the Earths surface). That'll slide your orbit around the Earth to a different inclination
So when the shuttle takes off, you notice that it does a little roll as it climbs vertically before it pitches onto its back? That's it adjusting itself so that when it hits the correct height in orbit, its inclination is correct as well.
You can adjust your inclination in orbit as well by burning perpendicular to your direction of travel (so half way between pro and retrograde, parallel to the Earths surface). That'll slide your orbit around the Earth to a different inclination
It would depend on your launch site so you wonder why NASA uses Cape Canaveral its near the equator which is going spinning faster then north and south of it. This gives a extra boost when getting into orbit. This also effects your inclination. (Horus beat me to it with a good explination explaining how to change that)
Nice idea Horus Lupercal ! Better than just factions your initiative. Actually, I was undecided until I see your thread here. I'm following the same path as you, but I'm specializing in transport ships, huge cargo ships and orbital factories. By the way, I have an issue that I need help. I'm not too good in pad assembly to mount massive launch vehicles. Can you give me some help in this?
I have an idea in planning too, I want to build a orbital launchpad, not a regular space station, but something more 'intricate'... together with the orbital launchpad I want to couple a kind of shipyard. That thing suppose to be the building local of most of my massive transport/cargo ships. Could you help me in this?
I guess this is pure engineering...
I have an idea in planning too, I want to build a orbital launchpad, not a regular space station, but something more 'intricate'... together with the orbital launchpad I want to couple a kind of shipyard. That thing suppose to be the building local of most of my massive transport/cargo ships. Could you help me in this?
I guess this is pure engineering...
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Pad assembly comes in 2 forms really. Legal and illegal.
Legal pad assembly works using cranes (Zoddmarks Atlas is the biggest and most capable example, I have a smaller system for the Valkyrie dropship) and crawlers like the STS stack (an example is my Excaliber Shuttle launch system, which is 3 complete build screens). These involve a lot of planning and design is each piece needs to fit perfectly and you tend not to discover problems until after assembly starts.
Illegal pad assembly (or Zero g assembly) involves turning gravity off and treating the components on the launchpad as if they were in orbit and you essentially dock them like you would if you were in LEO. This usually requires a lot of space and shuffling, especially for larger assemblies as you need to keep the centre of the pad clear throughout to spawn the next section, and you need to put a bit of thought into the spawn sequence so you've not got sections laying around.
You can do this by using RCS on the objects, same as in orbit, but it means you must have RCS on every section which is high drag at launch and may not be an option for design purposes. I have several different designs of builder drones which do all the heavy lifting and just need connections to work.
There's also something called 'dock shock' that isn't apparent in orbit as you've no static reference points, but whenever you dock, the sections receive a velocity out of nowhere. That velocity is quite low (a few m/s) but if you're maneuvering a 6,000t aircraft carrier, slowing it down from 3m/s and then moving it back to the pad can take a lot of time. For this reason, all my ground level drones have engines (broadswords) as well as RCS so if something tries running away, it can be brought to heel easier.
Be sure to spawn the drones first though
Once they're assembled, move it all back onto the ground, turn off all the cheats and launch as necessary.
Ah, so assemble a decent sized shipyard at say 100km orbit? How large are you thinking cargo ship wise?
Legal pad assembly works using cranes (Zoddmarks Atlas is the biggest and most capable example, I have a smaller system for the Valkyrie dropship) and crawlers like the STS stack (an example is my Excaliber Shuttle launch system, which is 3 complete build screens). These involve a lot of planning and design is each piece needs to fit perfectly and you tend not to discover problems until after assembly starts.
Illegal pad assembly (or Zero g assembly) involves turning gravity off and treating the components on the launchpad as if they were in orbit and you essentially dock them like you would if you were in LEO. This usually requires a lot of space and shuffling, especially for larger assemblies as you need to keep the centre of the pad clear throughout to spawn the next section, and you need to put a bit of thought into the spawn sequence so you've not got sections laying around.
You can do this by using RCS on the objects, same as in orbit, but it means you must have RCS on every section which is high drag at launch and may not be an option for design purposes. I have several different designs of builder drones which do all the heavy lifting and just need connections to work.
There's also something called 'dock shock' that isn't apparent in orbit as you've no static reference points, but whenever you dock, the sections receive a velocity out of nowhere. That velocity is quite low (a few m/s) but if you're maneuvering a 6,000t aircraft carrier, slowing it down from 3m/s and then moving it back to the pad can take a lot of time. For this reason, all my ground level drones have engines (broadswords) as well as RCS so if something tries running away, it can be brought to heel easier.
Be sure to spawn the drones first though
Once they're assembled, move it all back onto the ground, turn off all the cheats and launch as necessary.
Ah, so assemble a decent sized shipyard at say 100km orbit? How large are you thinking cargo ship wise?
100km is high enough.
Something around 500m long, little less little more, each one. That ships would be used in distant trips to carry mount parts to orbital stations and colony bases at ground. And maybe to carry another little service ships, Landers, rovers and so on. The initial plan must be this. As I had my skills increased at this kind of constructions, maybe i'll start belics ships.
Something around 500m long, little less little more, each one. That ships would be used in distant trips to carry mount parts to orbital stations and colony bases at ground. And maybe to carry another little service ships, Landers, rovers and so on. The initial plan must be this. As I had my skills increased at this kind of constructions, maybe i'll start belics ships.
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100km is a good height. Gives you several parking orbits underneath but doesn't need a huge Dv to get to.
That's huge. My 1:10 scale Komodo L/V is slightly shorter than that (400ish metres), and that's 5 build screens tall without the payload.
Are you intending on launching it sectionally and then assembling at the dockyard?
That's huge. My 1:10 scale Komodo L/V is slightly shorter than that (400ish metres), and that's 5 build screens tall without the payload.
Are you intending on launching it sectionally and then assembling at the dockyard?
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Assembly won't be difficult. Lag will be your issue.
I have an idea then that may reduce the dock size, whilst allowing you to build multiple ships. The requirements of your dock is a fixed area to assemble on, somewhere to store the upcoming components and a fuel area to replenish the drones/ship before they continue on.
What have you got in the way of launch capacity at the moment?
I have an idea then that may reduce the dock size, whilst allowing you to build multiple ships. The requirements of your dock is a fixed area to assemble on, somewhere to store the upcoming components and a fuel area to replenish the drones/ship before they continue on.
What have you got in the way of launch capacity at the moment?
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Yeah, you're gonna need to be pushing at least 500-1000t into orbit for something of that size.
Avoiding heavy duty enclosed docks. More of a T shape, with attachment points on the flat vertical end with enough separation between to build a pair simultaneously and allow a drone to move between freely. The attachment points on the horizontal tail end are for the sections awaiting fitment onto the cargo ships and later fuel tanks for re-fuelling before onward voyages
Avoiding heavy duty enclosed docks. More of a T shape, with attachment points on the flat vertical end with enough separation between to build a pair simultaneously and allow a drone to move between freely. The attachment points on the horizontal tail end are for the sections awaiting fitment onto the cargo ships and later fuel tanks for re-fuelling before onward voyages