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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Launched yet another Moho mission.

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I decided that it just wouldn't be feasible to modify the science ship that I've been designing to be able to get to Moho and back in one go (currently it only carries enough fuel to make the trip one-way, with its tanks almost completely empty by the time it finishes circularizing) so in order to complete its mission of going to Moho, dispatching a lander to its surface and back and processing the data from that lander in its onboard lab on the return trip it's going to have to be able to refuel at the planet itself.

Hence this mission: a minimal surface that will use a pair of Jr. drills and a small converter to slowly generate enough fuel to fill the attached fuel transport craft, which will then be able to fly back into orbit to refuel any nearby ships. Its first task will be to refuel the tug that brought it to Moho so that it can fly back home (stopping at Gilly to take on more fuel.) Using a tug with a single LV-N engine for this mission meant that my burns are going to be inconveniently long, but it also means that, aside from the rocket initially used to get the craft into orbit in the first place, every part of this mission is reusable.

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4 hours ago, Physics Student said:

Chemistry student here:

A cyclic compound with 5 6-rings. It has lots of different functional groups, but the source material might have been some kind of sugar. Should be solvable in water as well as polar organic substances.

Is there a biochemist here? Maybe it's some kind of hormone/drug/psychoactive substance type thing. 

I asked my sister-in-law who happens to be a biochemistry student. She says it looks like nothing specific, but might have carbon in it. 

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Today I did a couple of uninteresting things in KSP. What was more interesting however, was finally connecting up the little LCD display my case has (It's a Bitfenix Pandora if you're interested). I put up a kerbal picture, in the few minutes break I had between putting immature logos, pictures and memes:

TrP5Fnr.jpg

ANhFUmS.jpg

rdK27ep.jpg

mu4Klem.jpg

 

 

Edited by Stewcumber
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10 hours ago, Kertech said:

It looks like the Tantares mod (by @Beale) though it's actually 1.25m. 

If you want a bigger capsule home grown rockets do a 1.875m Soyuz replica (with retro rockets) 

@Triop

Correct Sir.

@CatastrophicFailure  0.625 fit at top and 1.25ish at the bottom. no integral heat shield.  other Stockalike Soyuz/mir parts in the mod.  Careful to add life support, not all the command modules have USI life support function if thats your LS mod. 

went to Iota twice. failed science mission, cause of not enough comms.  Remind self "Comms First".  Send second mission with massive local omni.

e7klPSH.png

Second Mission.  Few hundred dV in boosters already gone coasting to circulation. Recoverable lower stages

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Three piece Science orbiter, plus return mission built into transit bus.

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Dropped don'tstayputnik impactor and set a 150km PE, coasting to Circ.

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Back with the science.  Main orbiter still at iota, dropped mapping and used material/dust samplers

A2uwiLU.png

 

 

Edited by Bornholio
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I've been short on KSP time lately, but I managed to get some play in this weekend.

(Science Save)

Headlines read: Hero Kerbonaut Returns, leaves new "third mun" in Kerbin orbit.

After her last attempt to rendezvous with an "asteroid" during its encounter with Kerbin, Valentina had determined that the technology wasn't yet up to intercepting an asteroid in the very limited time frame (seven to twenty-some days) that it's within Kerbin's influence; she had vowed that the next attempt would take place beyond Kerbin's sphere, in orbit around the sun.

Backed up with scientist Luory Kerman, riding as a passenger for most of the long voyage, and supported by the Design Committee and the crew at the VAB, she was as good as her word.  The slide rule crowd spent a couple all-nighters modifying Far Traveler Mod. 3 (the vessel used for the last asteroid rendezvous attempt) to increase its already huge on-orbit delta-V as well as give it the capability to actually connect to an asteroid, should Val manage the rendezvous.  The first item was managed by the simple step of deleting the heavy two-stage lander, thereby reducing the mass the transfer stage had to push by about twenty-seven tonnes.  The second item required a piece of newly researched technology, a general-purpose attachment device commonly referred to as a "Klaw", which was mounted on nose of the command pod, where the docking port had been in the Far Traveler vessels.  The combination allowed the vessel to still have a transfer stage burn time of around five minutes, but, with less mass to push, the ability to make a given maneuver with a shorter burn (or at lower throttle, if the crew needed a break from high acceleration).  The resulting vessel was a little stubby, but Val's comment to the press was "I'm not flying her for her looks, I'm flying her for her legs."

Spoiler

screenshot30_zpsaasbww27.png

Spoiler

screenshot29_zpsirq9xarz.png

Launch to orbit was routine, with a standard equatorial orbit chosen in order to save fuel, and because with the mission leaving Kerbin's gravity well, tiny corrections later could make up for any inclination changes.  The new ship, based as it was on a reliable design, flew predictably, and Val had about twenty percent fuel left in the booster core's seven tanks when she reached parking orbit.  "Every meter per second counts," she told ground control as she declined to deorbit the booster core.

Spoiler

screenshot12_zpso6myzoqt.png

She did, however, shut down three of the booster core's motors, in order to even out acceleration across the staging event in the ejection burn; this allowed a better calculation of burn time, thus better timing of the burn.  That burn was uneventful, and left the remainder of the Rockmaster Mod. 1 on course beyond the orbit of Minmus, into the sun's domain.

Spoiler

screenshot13_zpse9tr2q4n.png

Once far enough from Kerbin to ignore its gravity, there followed a series of small corrections to refine the rendezvous with the chosen asteroid, LTY-758.  One of these burns was less than half a meter per second, but changed the closest approach from more than four hundred kilometers, to less than seventy.  Unavoidably, however, the journey was a long one.  Despite choosing a target that was relatively close to Kerbin and in a similar orbit at similar velocity, Val and Luory had gone a quarter orbit around the sun before they caught up with the space rock.  Once they did so they began the process of matching velocity -- very much like docking in Kerbin orbit, only with larger distances and over longer time periods.

Spoiler

screenshot17_zpstjuaxs6s.png

Val used the same trick as during the ejection burn, disabling some of the vessel's engines during the early part of docking, in order to save RCS fuel without needing fractional-second burns for relatively small velocity changes.  Eventually, the rock was close enough to see by eye.

Spoiler

screenshot19_zpsla1iwnwq.png

By that time, Val had the Rockmaster's velocity very well adjusted, so all that was needed was to keep an eye on the nav ball and periodically nudge the RCS to reduce closing velocity (wouldn't do to hit hard enough to break the Klaw, after all this time and distance).  By happenstance, their approach was from sunward of the asteroid, so when they got really close, they could see the shadow of their own ship cast on the space rock.

Spoiler

screenshot20_zpscjcvni5m.png

One of the things about experience -- if you already have it, you don't feel like you need it.  Val made the never-before process of docking with a primordial piece of the Kerbol system look as routine as docking the lander to the transfer stage for a Minmus mission.  The grapple made contact, and locked onto the rock, and the ship's accelerometers automatically measured the rock's mass for burn time calculations: just under a thousand tonnes.  Luory went EVA to collect a surface sample from the asteroid, and then they renamed it "Valentina 1" -- completely without any false modesty, everyone present agreed Val had earned it.

There yet remained an important part of the mission: not simply to rendezvous with the asteroid (there had never been any doubt Val could do so, if her ship had long enough legs), nor even to dock with it using the new grapple system, but, if possible, to attempt to divert the rock in to an orbit around Kerbin.  Luory claimed later that Val said to him, "Heck, we've already got three first-ever achievements this flight -- why not make it four?"  A little care with the orbit plotting computer (on their own, since they were far beyond comm range from Kerbin, and had been for a quarter year by this time), and they had a Kerbin encounter with a reasonable periapsis, well within the orbit of Minmus.  The question that remained was whether the (rather cranky, due to the flexbility of the grapple connection) composite vessel could be coaxed to boost long enough in the correct direction to get them home while pushing an irregular thousand tonnes of rock.  Val had already noted that the automatic stability system tended to oscillate; she surmised this was because the reaction wheels and the flex of the Klaw combined to produce a sort of pendulum.  For the first burn, that would boost the rock into a Kerbin encounter, she chose to maneuver the cumbersome load manually.  Her light touch on the controls allowed bringing everything into line, pointed at the maneuver node, and she ran the engines at reduced throttle to reduce the likelihood that gimbal activation would fold the grapple.

Spoiler

screenshot23_zps142dryfl.png

Though she ended up cutting the burn short by a few seconds (at the low throttle, it was less than two meters per second), she was still able to obtain an acceptable Kerbin periapsis, and then had another three quarters of a year transfer time to work out how to get the ship's control systems to play nice with a thousand tonnes of irregular rock.  In the end, she found she could disable the large reaction wheel built into the transfer stage, leaving only the command pod's torque, and avoid oscillation.  On that basis, when it came time for the capture burn into Kerbin orbit she also locked the gimbals on the six outboard Poodle engines, leaving only the center engine free to steer the rock -- and it worked.  She was able to turn toward her maneuver nodes without oscillation, and boost at one third throttle (instead of the one tenth she'd used initially, to give herself reaction time for heading corrections) (though the final apsis adjustment saw some oscillation during the burn, everything held together).

Spoiler

screenshot26_zpsfrslk31b.png

Due to delta-V limits, she was forced to leave the rock in a high, eccentric, and inclined orbit -- "Pretty nasty, but it's all you're going to get," was her reply to ground control when they mentioned the condition of the orbit.  With just over 10% fuel remaining, she undocked from the rock (unfortunately, leaving it with a bit of a tumble, which will add challenge for the pilot chosen to correct the rock's orbit), backed clear, and set up the burn to drop the ship into Kerbin's atmosphere.  With their high apoapsis, she made a conservative choice of periapsis, and wound up having to wait for a second pass to fully deorbit, but otherwise, reentry was uneventful.

Spoiler

screenshot28_zpsv6nldsmt.png

Despite carrying no instruments, Luory's surface sample, along with their various crew and EVA reports, brought back some useful data -- and the asteroid now known as Valentina 1 remains in orbit around Kerbin, at least if someone goes out and gives it a little push before it encounters Mun and gets ejected from Kerbin's influence.  That will be quite some time (the orbit is close to 3:1 resonance with Mun, and not presently close to encounter), so there's no great rush.

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24 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

@CatastrophicFailure  0.625 fit at top and 1.25ish at the bottom. no integral heat shield.  other Stockalike Soyuz/mir parts in the mod.  Careful to add life support, not all the command modules have USI life support function if thats your LS mod. 

Hmm, seemed bigger. What about that OKTO (HECS?) with the window on the side?

I don't know why I'm even asking. My game is already so over-modded it's pushing 12 gig and crashing at every scene change. :rolleyes:

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13 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Hmm, seemed bigger. What about that OKTO (HECS?) with the window on the side?

I don't know why I'm even asking. My game is already so over-modded it's pushing 12 gig and crashing at every scene change. :rolleyes:

Hmmm. maybe Ven's Revamp (lots of the visual changes are because of that), or SETI.

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Had a jool capture and crashed the lander into tylo, while trying to land. Now I know how ESA feels. Probably hold a press conference on how much we learned from miscalculating our trajectory. (There is no F9 in real life)

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The maze is finished.

I wanted to make it a cube, but that would be too complicated...

FuIGBDM.png

The goal is to get to the escape "rocket" on the 5th floor and get the kerb out of there.

v2qMBrt.png

who wants to go first ?

EhHqZA7.png

^_^

Edited by Triop
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I helped my sister go to minmus in a completely overbuilt rocket.

She eventually killed both kerbals while on eva

She is not ashamed.

Edited by qzgy
pictures really doesn't like going into my posts
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Just some playing around with FASA...

A Gemini spaceship launched from the KSC this night. Where is it going?

kLU4QqV.png

To the Mun!.. Well, no. Minmus is easier to land on,  plus we have a tourist who wants to see it. To Minmus!

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Ready for TMI

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Why bring the solar panels when Gemini has a perfectly good fuel cell? Because with our multiple landings we'll need all monoprop we have! (That, and someone forgot to fill 2 large monoprop tanks out of 3)

mRxKgsJ.png

Orienting for a retro burn...

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Low Minmus orbit. Very low. Seeing every single rock on the ground while traveling at orbital velocity is fraggin' scary. Who cares that it's less than 160 m/s, it IS orbital velocity!

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Who needs a lander on Minmus, anyway?

h3TB9BG.png

Jeb boldly goes where only Val has gone before. He really wants to qualify for Grade 2 pilot.

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Open your eyes, Mr. Tourist, we're coming home! You certainly won't die today - or even this week. Also, it is pure coincidence that we'll land on day eight.

KSuw6Ll.png

[Pics of a very rough ballistic reentry should have been here, but Jeb was too busy saving himself to reach for his camera. Yes, Jeb, you are a good pilot. A bad one wouldn't survive a reentry maneuver screwed up so badly]

And there he is, the decorated hero of Minmus! The tourist was too happy to be alive to show up for a memorable photo, though.

x8wmxWl.png

Edited by TK-313
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I made a Saturn Shuttle in a few minutes by removing the last stage and slapping 2 Oranges and a shuttle on it!

95e0dbf642618d7fcb659d7a2df5a60c.png

I am 99.9% sure it can get to at LEAST HKO. Just need to disable the gimbals of the shuttle itself during ascent. Which I haven't set up yet, but I'm too tired to do it now so...

ALSO, crashed my base assembly ship. So uh, theres that.

Edited by Spacetraindriver
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26 minutes ago, Aphobius said:

Well, it took a little more than just "today" to make it, but here it is:

I've also made THIS TOPIC if you have any questions or you want to say anything about it.

The sheer thought of someone making a clock in a rocket simulation game blows me away. A mighty tip of the fedora for you, sir.

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Today, a manned mission to the Moon assembled all the parts of my first lunar base in my RP-0/RO carreer.

The base consists of a habitation module, a RTG based power plant, a pressurised rover, two LSTVs (Lunar surface transfer vehicle) that can transport crews to and from orbit, a fuel depot for the LSTVs and a fuel truck for refueling them. It cost the taxpayers lots of funds, but it should prepare our kerbalnauts for an eventual missions to Mars.

Michal.don

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20 hours ago, Triop said:

Made a demo video for my upcoming maze. :cool:

You should try 1st person view, might be easier?

 

7 hours ago, Aphobius said:

Well, it took a little more than just "today" to make it, but here it is:

I've also made THIS TOPIC if you have any questions or you want to say anything about it.

Bizarre. +2 points there. :cool:

 

17 hours ago, qzgy said:

I helped my sister go to minmus in a completely overbuilt rocket.

She eventually killed both kerbals while on eva

She is not ashamed.

Wait... were they male or female Kerbals?? I sense a disturbed mind here. :huh:

 

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