Dcseal

Besides being sick as a dog right now, I just have this issue right now where I hop on KSP, spend an hour building a rocket, it flips on the first launch & then i’m burned out and done for the night

STS-4/4r REDO The mining operation has begun! Minmus STS-1

Whoops. I totally wipe my screenshot drive religiously. I'll just run that one again soon. Anyway, after (many untold hours) of playing roulette with COL/COM markers I have come up with the powerful, odd & very blue Dolphin: It's designed for use in Minmus missions, but it might have more range than that! More importantly though, it's stable as hell on takeoff & reentry. Success feels good.

My biggest issue with shuttles is going into a complete/flatspin or just straight up turning into a leaf on the wind as I move into the lower atmo. I can wrestle the controls back at about 4000m or less above ground, but unless i've just perfectly nailed reentry over the KSC (I don't) that doesn't happen. I'm experimenting with a new design that can leave LKO and get somewhere meaningful and I'm running into the same issue. Reconfiguring COL/COM it just seems like regardless I'm like a leaf on the wind. I empty all my tanks on the orbiter & then configure the stability for the orbiter completely dry, and I drain any extra fuel at the end of a mission as I come into reentry.. maybe the dry mass means instability?

STS-5 - STS-8 Commander! (The following submissions are all stock parts, they've been recolored/retextured with TURD and Restock, the same goes for STS-4/4r) I still suck at reentry landing, although I think i've identified the instability issue as lying with a heavy COM at the back of the shuttle, however that seems to be inherent in the design of a "realistic" styled shuttle so when I start the next set of missions i'll be sure to make something wacky that just works better. Anyway, sticking with the coastal towns theme, here's the photo albums detailing the four-shuttle launch construction of Humboldt Station. STS-5: Core Module STS-6: Science Module One STS-7: Science Module Two STS-8: Final Hab Module Where should I head next? I'm split between Minmus or the Mun.. but it's definitely time to break out some modded parts because stock is getting a little stale..

STS-4r Commander. The KSC gets a call that a recent publicity stunt has gone horrifically long with six disgruntled product influencers now stuck in a highly inclined orbit in a defunct shuttle. The shuttle in question: They report that their Experimental-All-New-Fuel-MixTM didn't work out as planned. Mission Photo Album

I was having way too much fun with the repaint mod, and I just happened to glance through the flags I modded in a while back - now we have this.

STS-3 Commander! Let me tell you I facepalmed when I re-checked my orbiter's COM/COL balance and realized I don't have to drain the main tank before re-entry, and infact instead I could use the fuel for that little kick to KSC since I keep overshooting. It was a little difficult to aim from such an inclined orbit.

Okie-Dokie. Here it is. This mission finally got me to install BetterTimeWarp, pretty much directly after I realized my argon-thruster ship had a TWR of >0.1 That was fun. Could I get another one, please? Stock system, modded, let's say hard mode. Just pray to Kraken no SSTO's.

Spin the Challenge Wheel: 1000 Units of Dres Ore to Minmus Alright, so here's kspnerd's spin the wheel challenge. I was tasked with taking a wingless, kerballess ship to Dres, mining 1000 units of ore, and hauling it to Minmus. Near Future Tech really comes quite in handy here. I decided to build an argon-fueled ISV using the "Repulsor" Pulsed Inductive Thruster, with extra large solar panels & a nuclear reactor to boot. After construction was complete, the Orpheus was ready to fly. We had just under 20km/s of delta-v, ugly radiators that clipped through the solar panels, a full probe & antenna suite and a not-yet-empty upper stage, which meant we could start our Dres injection burn with at least some meaningful power. I plotted a course for Dres & began the burn! The upper stage was emptied after completing roughly 20% of our injection burn, and upon powering up the reactor, PI thruster & radiators, all of the Orpheus's mighty flaws came to show all at once. Firstly, I could only run the reactor at half power, due to the two radiators not providing sufficent enough cooling. Secondly, and more importantly, our TWR was stupidly low. (Something like 0.04) The injection burn was going to take about forty minutes, so I turned on hyper-physwarp and sat back. Braking at Dres took another excruciatingly long burn (50+ minutes, not 4 days, I had the thrust limiter at >1 for mid-transfer corrections) but eventually we were in LDO. Our brave lander undocked, descended to Dres's surface, and began the months-long mining process. I hadn't packaged a survey probe, large drills, ore sampling equipment or anything of the like on the trip. Since I'd have to wait for the kerbin transfer window anyway, the lander could afford take it's sweet time mining at something close to 0.003 ore/s. After a long wait, the tanks were full: 1001 Dres ore, ready to be hauled to the Minmus surface. I fired up the engines again: Arriving at Kerbin... Because of the obscene efficency of the argon thruster, I opted to just entirely cirualize to a somewhat eliptical orbit (below Minmus's orbit), fully correct inclination, and then burn again for an encounter. Annnnd we're down. 1000 (and 1, bonus points) units of Dres OreTM succesfully hauled to Minmus, with just roughly over 100m/s of DV left in our lander. The Orpheus was de-orbited into Minmus's surface shortly after. W/ UI

I've definitely gotten tired of the stock KSP ost, and tried out some different soundtracks. So far, i've really liked From the Depth's & Surviving Mars's OST, but what works absolutely the best is Hardspace: Shipbreaker's OST. The twangy, americana/synth music just works very well while flying huge interplanetary ships. Let's add to the pool! What are you listening to?

Alright, after about fifty more tries I finally got a configuration that re-enters and can glide stable. Took about three hours of tries but here it is.

Yeah, it was a rich tourist deal with the kid’s dad. I’d imagine a suborbital sit-still-and-watch flight is doable, but day-to-day orbital living might be extremely difficult on a youngster

I have fond memories of doing just this during in-person learning over COVID (the school had a brief period of personal laptop use instead of the $5 chromebooks) I managed a full moon mission to and fro all while ignoring some Macbeth up on the monitor, if I remember correctly. Good times. My buddy was turning around to look at me because, as it turned out, my laptop fan was obviously on full blast and people had been turning around confused. Whoops

I'll take a reroll please. Stock system, normal, I've got near-future etc installed.

Took a shot at STS-2a too. Same problems on re-entry with an uncontrollable dive, but we finished with a soft water landing instead of rough terrain landing. I interpreted the instructions of this mission as "get your shuttle to above 200km in orbit, and deploy two geosats" so I assume the satellites having their own thrusters to burn to the GEO orbit is okay.

Okay! I'm giving these a shot because shuttles are fun, and very challenging to make, and land, as exemplified by this first attempt: Here's my mission report for STS 1-A:

Ooh. I've never succesfully even launched a working SSTO. By orbital assembly allowed, you mean multiple SSTO launches?? I might take a reroll here.

Alright, i’ll try this. I assume the easiest way is to put the station SAS off and just send it spinning? I’m actually not even sure if it matters if the docking craft needs to be spinning at near or same velocity to dock or if it’ll just plug in regardless.

Spin my wheel! Normal difficulty, please, stock system. I hope Near-Future tech is cool and good? Big fan of those magneto-plasma-something-or-other interplanetary ship configurations.

I'm just wondering. The poor little guy never gets any attention. There has to be some big science jackpots, right? Or is there another reason?

Cool challenge idea. Alright! Here's my go with a plane called the "Koeing". It's got 64 passenger capacity, so it's heavy class. I got some inspiration from some old passenger planes with engines on the top, and I decided to make it a little more kerbal. TWO Engines on the top! Pictures: Scoring: Bonus Points: Can't tailstrike +20 Stalls at 20m/s (That's some serious power) +60 Needs only 4 of it's 6 engines to fly +5 Doesn't need SAS to fly stably +20 Airbrakes +10 Can ditch in water with no damage +20 Needs the whole runway -20 Main Scoring: Max Distance: (Not enough to even score it. It runs out almost instantly, but i'm proud of it.) Passengers: 64 capacity = 12.8 points? (I think I did the math wrong.) Flight Attendants: 2 = 1 point? (I probably just did the math wrong again.) 135 bonus points + 12.8 + 1 = 148.8 (Welp, I think I did the math wrong.) The base scoring needs a little explaining, as it doesn't make much sense to me with some calculations containing *'s and others with other characters.)

I remember a pretty tragic moment, I was flying a new State Of The Art experimental jet I had made, and while trying to land on the island base, I clipped a wing on the ATC and watched helplessly as the plane plummeted into the ground. Oh wait, we can rebuild Jeb.

I love your sense of humor, and thanks for the help. I do have one of those weird rodents and I'll try to fix it later. Thanks!