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Your Finest Hour in KSP


AlamoVampire

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There are threads dedicated to many aspects of KSP that range from Your first hour in KSP to what you did today to what made you face palm to missing debris. I would like this thread to be a place where we can share those moments where inspite of things taking a direct collision course for disaster you stood firm and though courage, skill and maybe luck you pulled success out and made a moment a legendary moment. 

 

Let this thread stand as a place where inspiration can ignite the imagination!

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Hooh boy, so many things come to mind.

I'll share a recent one though, since I happen to have pics of it; Was doing a double mission with a new Shuttle, had to pick up a Kerbal who had been rescued and was hanging out at my FuelDepot (It had been the closest place at the time and his rescue ship wasn't fitted for re-entry) and grab a piece of debris before bringing both back home, seemed easy enough, and a perfect test run for the newly designed shuttle. Seemed.

So everything was going swell, had my Kerbal, got my debris; was headed home.

Spoiler

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Now this particular shuttle wasn't meant to land anywhere but the KSC, and it isn't capable of long term atmo flight either so precision is key when landing, luckily; I've been playing long enough to be pretty good at that. Or so I thought. Got a little distracted and wasn't paying as much attention as I should have and before I knew it two things were happening; I was coming down on the dark side (WHY? WHY ALWAYS THE DARK SIDE?), and my cargo which was never autostrutted after capture, was going absolutely bananas in the cargo bay because I went to x4 physics warp. Before I knew what was what, the entire shuttle was spinning end over end, all over the place and completely out of control! I over shot the KSC in my panic, heat bars shooting up all over the craft as I fell out of the sky in pitch black conditions, barely managing to pull the shuttle out of it's stall/dive. Now; I was over the ocean, how far from the KSC I had no idea, in what direction was the KSC? No idea.

I had lost all my speed, most of my altitude, it seemed hopeless..then I saw it...twinkling in the distance, lights! The space center! But....could I make it? Did I have the altitude?

Spoiler

(These pics don't quite do the direness of the situation justice btw, obviously I didn't have time to snap any till I was well on my way back! At first the KSC was only the faintest twinkle in the far off distance. I really didn't think I was gonna make it!)

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I held my breath as I coasted in, dead stick. Such had my confidence been at the outset of the mission, I had never saved once. Two hours worth of work swayed in the balance!

Spoiler

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To my surprise the hefty shuttle glided quite well, although I still just barely made it. Touch down never felt sweeter.

Spoiler

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I have two from recent memory, both while assembling Atlantis Station.

The first involved a docking node. As I was removing it from the cargo bay of Boreas--a member of my Anemoi SSTO spaceplane family--with a KMU (Kerbal Maneuvering Unit), the module exploded, flinging the it and the operator, Sonvis Kerman, away from the station at high speed. My first thought was to save Sonvis; I pointed the KMU retrograde to the relative velocity to the station and thrusted until it was killed. Once that was done, I assessed the situation, and realized the explosion left a debris field around the station. So I got Sonvis back on board Atlantis, put Anemoi on a lower orbit to prep for reentry, and moved the station to a lower orbit.  I also had to raise Olympus Station's orbit as the field crossed over its orbit. Once I had landed Boreas, I got back in the SPH and found that the Clamp-O-Tron Sr. docking ports on the node where clipping into the bay. I fixed it by offsetting them inwards and made a note to do proper fit checks on every payload before flight.

The second invovled Zephyrus (another Anemoi) on reentry and landing. It had delivered its payloads to Atlantis successfully--a second node and a cupola. While on final approach, I landed it hard and broke the runway. I punched the throttle immediately, pulled up, and raised the landing gear. Once back in the air, I realized the only option I had was to ditch. The Island Runway was too short, and I was not about to risk running off into the broken end of the runway on a go around. (In retrospect, I could have landed on the grass next to the runway. Ah well, heat of the moment and all that...) I brought it out over the ocean and carefully managed my vertical speed. I had tested ditching with Anemoi before and suffice to say it wasn't successful. But against all odds, Zephyrus landed in the ocean unscathed. While Zephyrus' engines would need an overhaul after being exposed to the sea salt, full recovery was possible, and it would live to fly another day.

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My proudest achievement and contribution to the community:

b4RJMTL.jpg

On 6/14/2016 at 8:39 PM, Majorjim! said:

I have never even had the thought! I am constantly amazed by what people come up with and this is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen made!

Edited by cubinator
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First one that comes to mind...

So I have an ultra-heavy air-breathing SSTO lifter, good for 300 tons payload or more. It's called the Rukh, and it's powered by, I believe, 24 RAPIERs in four giant pods slung under enormous wings stuck to a very skinny fuselage. The payload hangs underneath in three 3.5 m diameter fairings. It's an entire surface base plus orbital support stuff headed for Laythe.

When I decouple the payload, the Kraken bites. The Rukh starts shaking, and shaking, and shaking, until one of the engine pods breaks loose and flies off with a big chunk of the wing gone with it. This offering pleases the Kraken, and things quiet down. The Rukh is now minus six RAPIERs and a chunk of wing.

I decide to bring her down anyway. Jeb never was one to balk at a challenge.

And it works. Re-entry and transition to aerodynamic flight are white-knuckle but she stays under control. I eventually have to switch on a couple of engines in the single pod on the starboard wing to correct for the aerodynamic asymmetry -- there is a bit of fuel left for that -- but the bird flies, and makes a perfect return to KSC.

Then I send up a mission to recover that pod with the six very expensive engines.

That works too.

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There's something about managing a part of flight and finishing with razor thin dV margins... returning to eve orbit with 3m/s left in the tank, ascending from tylo, rendezvousing with the orbital craft with 10 m/s left... landing a mining vessel on Mun (done in 3x, with Mun moved to where Minmus would be) with no dV left.... the engines cut out just as I was setting down, and it dropped a couple meters but was fine...

Those really make you feel like you pulled something off.

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My finest hour has got to be my accidental on-purpose rendezvous at Mun orbit. I was building a Mun station in my previous career save and launched the second or third module quite unplanned to LKO. I didn't pay any attention to Mun's orientations regards to KSC (I never do straight to Mun launches so it doesn't really matter), just started doing my usual routine: vessel to LKO, transfer burn to Mun, circularize, rendezvous with station. I messed up the transfer burn a little and had to do small plane correction midway. After the correction burn I started to plan circularising at Mun and lo and behold! I had a rendezvous with the station with about 1km separation at my transfer orbit's Mun periapsis! I have never had such luck before or since. Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot and I messed up the docking so I had to revert and try again. The second time wasn't quite as lucky, but still pretty good, as I got the rendezvous within the first orbit around Mun. This time complete with screenshot.

https://imgur.com/dv7jaFqdv7jaFq.png

 

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17 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Sharpy Dare i ask how many mods it takes to get 7085 patches from module manager?

I'd need to check, but the number isn't all that staggering if you get *the right ones*. Tweakscale, Interstellar Fuel Switch, Pathfinder, and a couple mods that provide a plenty of parts (Mk2 Stockalike), and you're quickly going into thousand as nearly each part (stock or mod) is getting one or more patch from every of the 'improvement' type mod, so you quickly get num of parts  x num of extra feature mods as number of patches.

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I am currently working on putting together a demonstration video for an SSTO I designed during my KSP Interstellar playthrough. After much engineering, tweaking, and testing I think it's finally done. Single stage spaceplane that can refuel itself, has a full science suite on board, room for six crew, and...

... is Eve-capable. 

Eve surface to stable Eve orbit with ~900m/s delta-V remaining. 

I recognize this probably isn't the greatest achievement ever, but I'm quite proud of it. Mostly because of how refined and functional the resulting craft feels. I'll make a separate post about it once the video is done.

Looking forward to hearing more tales of others' heroism!

 

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There are a lot of milestones, like building my first plane that was not terrible. But it was a real thrill to have one of my first challenges selected as a Challenge of the Month, and it was (and is) even more of thrill to see people still attempting it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Klapaucius
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My finest hour? Unlike many it wasn't my first orbit or even Mun landing. I chose an Apollo-style mission for my first Mun landing, and it only took me a couple of tries to actually land. However, the rendezvous in Munar orbit afterwards was the most difficult thing I'd ever done in a video game (at the time). When I finally managed it, I jumped out of my chair and shouted "YES!". That was an awesome feeling...and I couldn't have done it without the help of this awesome forum :D

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