Kerbal Space Program
- Thread starter Greg0986
- Start date
Ah, thanks. I've now managed to put one of those cube thingies in orbit, and have three things docked to it.
How do you transfer fuel around between tanks? I've been watching some youtube videos which show that if you have two docked ships or fuel tanks, you can transfer fuel between them. I can't figure out how to do this, and it would be very useful for an interplanetary mission. Launch a bunch of fuel tanks into orbit, then dock my ship to it and refuel.
I've been wondering that too, just found this video which explained it quite well. Involves right clicking on the full fuel tank then alt right clicking on the fuel tank you want to refill apparently (skip to 33 minutes):
Ah excellent, thank you. I've now managed to roughly equalise the fuel in both ships connected to the station.
Edit: yes, the solar panels are just there for decoration. There's nothing there that's drawing any power.
Edit: yes, the solar panels are just there for decoration. There's nothing there that's drawing any power.
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I suck at rocket design, and SS design for that matter. How would you guys recommend I get this into orbit?
My first stage tends to be 14 orange fuel tanks with 7 mainsail engines arranged in a hexagon like this:
You can put pretty much anything you like on top of that over-engineered monstrosity, and it'll get into orbit. You really need those struts though, or it'll fly apart on launch. And RCS thrusters are pretty much mandatory if you want to be able to control its direction at all.
Edit: Here's what it looks like as a complete picture:
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Well... I tried that method, and it worked, however it was too slow due to overheating problems, so I tried swapping those tanks out for more smaller counterparts... I think it was a bit heavy! (Hovered over the pad for about 15 seconds before colliding with the station 
With my 7 engine hexagon setup, I find I have to keep it a couple of notches below full power. However, it's more than enough. Full power at launch, and when the overheating bar creeps up, drop the thrust a couple of notches. It takes a little finesse, but that first stage will almost get you into orbit on its own. The second stage (whatever you arrange your second stage to be) should be enough to get your periapsis above Kerbin's atmosphere with fuel to spare.
That's weird, when I tried it it only got me to about 7000m before running out... My top may be extremely heavy?
I've just slapped together a version of that in an asparagus configuration with a small lander. If I'd had legs on the central stack of tanks I could have landed them on the Mun with fuel to spare!
Time to start adding more rockets....!
I like to strap 4 orange fuel tanks around the sides of whatever I'm trying to get into orbit then on the bottom of the payload inside the 4 fuel tanks I put one or possibly two smaller diameter fuel tanks and a vectored 200 thrust rocket underneath. The orange fuel tanks with the 1500 thrust heavy lifter rockets are plenty to get most payloads up to around 150km (my SS orbit) then the smaller rocket is used to match the orbit of the SS and approach it.
I'll post pictures tomorrow, too late now. So far I've gotten the core of the space station into orbit then a power section which is quite large with 12 large solar panels. After that, and the most difficult I got a large orange fuel tank docked with the station. I had a tiny probe basically attached to the back for control and RCS maneuvering. Turns out the RCS was pretty much useless, translation left/right, up/down was impossible as it just swung the ship around with so much weight on the front. In the end I parked the fuel tank in a stable orbit and switched to the space station and used that to dock with the fuel tank.
The good news though is that I'd built the probe at the back of the fuel tank to be detachable thinking I'd just burn it up in the atmo after I was done with controlling the fuel tank. Instead I filled it with mono propellant from the stations tanks and the RCS boosters act as amazing rockets on something so small. Got the Mun easily with 20 of 25 mono left. Orbiting at a perfect 10.5k orbit now
I'll post pictures tomorrow, too late now. So far I've gotten the core of the space station into orbit then a power section which is quite large with 12 large solar panels. After that, and the most difficult I got a large orange fuel tank docked with the station. I had a tiny probe basically attached to the back for control and RCS maneuvering. Turns out the RCS was pretty much useless, translation left/right, up/down was impossible as it just swung the ship around with so much weight on the front. In the end I parked the fuel tank in a stable orbit and switched to the space station and used that to dock with the fuel tank.
The good news though is that I'd built the probe at the back of the fuel tank to be detachable thinking I'd just burn it up in the atmo after I was done with controlling the fuel tank. Instead I filled it with mono propellant from the stations tanks and the RCS boosters act as amazing rockets on something so small. Got the Mun easily with 20 of 25 mono left. Orbiting at a perfect 10.5k orbit now
I like to strap 4 orange fuel tanks around the sides of whatever I'm trying to get into orbit then on the bottom of the payload inside the 4 fuel tanks I put one or possibly two smaller diameter fuel tanks and a vectored 200 thrust rocket underneath. The orange fuel tanks with the 1500 thrust heavy lifter rockets are plenty to get most payloads up to around 150km (my SS orbit) then the smaller rocket is used to match the orbit of the SS and approach it.
I'll post pictures tomorrow, too late now. So far I've gotten the core of the space station into orbit then a power section which is quite large with 12 large solar panels. After that, and the most difficult I got a large orange fuel tank docked with the station. I had a tiny probe basically attached to the back for control and RCS maneuvering. Turns out the RCS was pretty much useless, translation left/right, up/down was impossible as it just swung the ship around with so much weight on the front. In the end I parked the fuel tank in a stable orbit and switched to the space station and used that to dock with the fuel tank.
The good news though is that I'd built the probe at the back of the fuel tank to be detachable thinking I'd just burn it up in the atmo after I was done with controlling the fuel tank. Instead I filled it with mono propellant from the stations tanks and the RCS boosters act as amazing rockets on something so small. Got the Mun easily with 20 of 25 mono left. Orbiting at a perfect 10.5k orbit now
It turns out you can get a stayputnik probe to land on other planets using nothing but RCS. I strapped 6 linear RCS thrusters to the underside of a stayputnik, 2 radial mono tanks to the sides, and a radioisotope thermoelectric generator to the top to stop my probe from dying. No staging, no detachable parts, that thing will lift off from the surface of Kerbin, and be able to reach Laythe with loads of mono fuel to spare.
I later found out a chap called Scott Manley had figured this out before me. He used a solar panel instead of an RTG, but the idea is much the same.
I did see your post about it. That's what gave me the idea to try it. I just like that I hadn't planned the probe to be used as a probe at all. It was just for the fuel tank control
