What did you do in KSP1 today?

[soulsource]

@Overfloater: That plane is really, really impressive! Thanks for the video!

I haven't played KSP the whole weekend, since I was busy working on my GCW Zero port of The Ur-Quan Masters.

Well, that one's nearly done, so I could do another refuelling mission for my Eve lander. This leaves just one tank empty, so that ship will be ready for departure probably today in the evening. Then I'll have to refill the tankers which are already in LKO, and send up some more tankers to go along to Eve. Also the test flight of my 14000 dV ship is nearing its end. Jebbediah did some crazy maneuvers over minmus to test how usable the ship is and is now on his way back to Kerbin. The first stage is not capable of docking, so it will be burnt in the atmosphere (with all remaining fuel in it). The second and third stages fuel will be used to refill the tankers mentioned previously.

Meanwhile I think that the ship that'll go to Moho is done. The lander has relatively little dV, but it should be sufficient if the landing is done carefully. I'll post screenshots when that ship is launched.

[J4CKAL2014]

Completed my first manned mission to Jool yesterday after 2 day working in it. Lasted almost 23 years but all Kerbals returned safely don't have the heart to de-orbit the spacecraft that took them there, though

[Bishop149]

After having installed Interstellar I started a new career game. . . seemed like the thing to do.

I forgot how irritating the lack of batteries / solar panels is early on. . . when I finally manged to get Z100's I strapped 9 of them onto a ship for a mere mun flyby. . . it wasn't enough.

I now have Ox-STAT's. . . thank god.

Edit: I also miss the hell out of the small cubic octagonal strut . . . that thing is the single most useful part EVER and is WAAAAAAAY up the tech tree for some reason.

[Jouni]

I continued my experiments with SSTO rockets. Building a rocket for a 100-tonne payload is trivial, but returning the launcher back from orbit still requires a lot of quickloading. Horizontal landing would probably be much easier.

[rogu3ish]

Today I drove my Munar rover about 22km from its original landing site to scout out a good location for my first Munar base / Kethane extractor.

[SofusRud]

I put together some more of the pieces for my new Duna mission. But this isn't just any old mission to Duna! No sir, this mission will be 100% reuseable!

Everything is lifted by SSTO, with most of the heavy lifting done by my Kylon (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79535-The-Kylon-my-best-high-capacity-SSTO-so-far), which broke its own record for mass-to-orbit today, carrying a +21 ton cargo, seen here:

The mission craft, named "Tirek" is assembled in LKO

The craft currently consists of five modules as seen below. In the middle at the bottom we have the propulsion unit, which will be doing all of the burns. Above it we have the docking array, which is the only part not carried into orbit on a Kylon but rather a Thunderlane Mk-5 (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65968-Thunderlane-Mk-5-Becausethe-old-one-needed-an-upgrade) due to lenght issues (and even then it had to angled awkwardly). On the left we have the lander, a very simple affair, and pretty self-explanatory, and to the right we have the rover, known as Ice Dentist 2.1

The rover Ice Dentist is interesting because it is the result of having to have a rover that is reusable. Don't wanna leave this thing behind, and to do this i had to design a clever self-rightening mechanism. It uses the landing legs to achieve this before takeoff, as demonstrated below:

I'm still not quite ready to take Tirek to Duna yet though. The fuel tank in the docking array needs a refill, the probe on the top needs to be taken back to Kerbin, and I want to include a habitation module on the top.

[corvustech]

Today I took on the task of sorting out how to make a space station to all but replace Ground Control as my mission start point. After coming up with an elegant solution I realized my only unlocked docking port so far is the Klaw....

[smysha]

Today I launched a beghemoth lander to Mun. I still didn't gathered data from all biomes. My target was Poles biome.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/cFaA0/embed"></iframe>

[Aragosnat]

Well last night. I had fun landing close to a probe rover I had on Mün:

And here is a shot with the brave crew by the probe rover:

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3278932873103429324/CED78ABD52BA7ACD8301CD74565F358E5DFB523E/

Also prior to this. I have a Kerbal that is terrified in all situations it seems: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3278932873103469880/2B6BFCA74532352CC8053103ECC0E4B530CA6A8C/

[rennsport27]

My Sundiver probe made it back to Kerbin yesterday. It came screaming through the atmosphere at something like 11,000 m/s, a record for me. I think I ended up dipping to 20,000m for aerocapture, and it left a nice big fireball. Sadly, I didn't think to take any pictures at the time.

[Concentric]

One burn.

Specifically, FourJade's mid-trajectory adjustment burn, so the FourJade ship now has only a little over a year and a half until its Jool-Laythe encounter. I had to redisable fuel crossfeed on the docking ports, because it had somehow turned itself back on and started to drain the Laythe lander component.

Also, some messing about with rovers that never really got anywhere, and some fiddling with my most recent spaceplane to try and move its dry centre of mass closer to its centre of lift - hopefully I'll be able to practice and land it properly at some point.

[Mister Kingdom]

I took a probe I've had in orbit since I started the save file, and put it somewhere less troublesome, namely a geostationary/kerbostationary/keostationary/standy-still-orbit/whatever we call it now orbit. I managed to get it from 72 k orbit with only an ion engine, one single battery and 8 static solar panels, over about an hour. I left my session as the new "gliding rocket" (space vehicle that can theoretically glide in atmosphere, and has the bonus of looking like an X-Wing) was in orbit, ready to test my capabilities with the inline docking port on my disembodied engines orbiting Kerbin; a full report of the mission will eventually be available when we finish the mission, for those who are sufficiently brain dead and/or high to be able to read such drivel as is available from a sleep-deprived kerbal.

[Duke23]

The mission: bring up a new Scansat for higher resolution imaging of the planet, using my new SSTO courtesy of Spaceplane Plus. Bonus: Retrieve the old Scansat.

Off to find this satellite. I have to say, compared to the (few) other spaceplanes I've built, this thing handles like a dream. Just don't pull up too hard right after take off and you'll be fine. Except for this flight where something else happened that I didn't anticipate. I had done some tweaking to the design which not only messed up my action keys but disconnected one of my fuel lines running to the center. I didn't even notice it until I switched the the NERVAs and then it started pulling the fuel out of one side and leaving it in the other. Once I figured out what the heck was going on it was a simple enough fix (just periodically balance the fuel until there's enough to put it all in the central tank).

Target acquired, and deployment is succe-- DARNIT. The Ion engine separated from the probe when it decoupled. Oh well, I guess it'll just have to stay put.

Rounding up the old probe...

While this mission was a success in principle, it failed on a technicality. I successfully captured the old probe and closed the bay doors on it, but as soon as I timewarped to select where I'd deorbit the plane, it clipped and escaped (as I should have expected). If I had thought to bring a KAS winch this would have been a complete success. I think from a roleplaying perspective alone I'm justified (this time) to deorbit the ship and delete the probe it was supposed to pick up, because if it wasn't for physics on rails I would have completed it without a hitch.

Edit: Or maybe not. Guess I was assuming I landed safely, which didn't happen. I came down over the ocean and was going to fly to KSC but I lost control. The nose pitched up and caused a stall and spin. It wasn't pretty... RIP Calory and Thomprim.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Duke23

[GeneralMDBK]

I spent all day today and yesterday and the day before that going through the entire forum since I haven't taken a look at it since my laptop went belly up on me, and I just now was able to remember my login. Plan on starting fresh with a brand new desktop in the beginning of next month. Until then I shall continue to torture myself with the desire to fly with Jeb and the gang by being on this forum every single day. Lol.

[McFarnsworth]

Built a reusable 20t to LKO jet-assisted SSTO rocket. For lighter payloads it can even do a powered landing, but for the full 20t payload it needs parachutes to land safely. Ironically, if I remove the parachutes I might save just enough weight to do a landing without them, but I don't have the balls to cut them from the design. (the parachutes, not the balls)

Should come in handy once budgets become a concern, depending on how they'll implement them.

I also went through my crafts folder, and updated and optimized some of my older ships while deleting a lot of prototypes and crappy designs. It was fun going through all of my designs from my early ksp days and seeing how I've improved. I kept a few terrible ones for nostalgia's sake.

[RobertR]

I sent Bill on a trip to Jool with the intention of landing on one of the moons. Unfortunately I didn't send him with enough fuel and ran out just after I got into orbit around Jool. This is the first time I've sent a manned mission to Jool so I think I did alright. I'm planning on sending a rescue mission eventually but I decided to start assembling a space station first. Bill's mission changed from landing on a moon to taking pictures for several years.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[brianorca]

The rover Ice Dentist is interesting because it is the result of having to have a rover that is reusable. Don't wanna leave this thing behind, and to do this i had to design a clever self-rightening mechanism. It uses the landing legs to achieve this before takeoff, as demonstrated below:

http://i.imgur.com/VCDtEg7.png

http://i.imgur.com/mwC08ez.png

http://i.imgur.com/nUX0KiT.png

http://i.imgur.com/eK2NXQ6.png

Sit, Rover. Good dog.

[TrooperCooper]

Restarted the career with some mods (mainly BTSM, combined with KWR, DRE, FF, Kethane and some others) a week ago or so. Today I finally had the tech together to start goofing arround Duna.

Unmanned probe SoftEx IV arriving at the red planet...

Beginning to release the probe, shortly before entering the atmosphere...

Gathering data and transmitting through the huge antenna while hanging on the chutes at high, speed... no problem

Somehow it made it to the ground in one piece, though it kept rolling like forever. But who cares, doesnt have to look pretty, all we want is the science.

After that has been done, I am now beginning to plan and design for a first Kerbal-landing and return trip. I am probably going to have three seperate launches with a crew-travel vehicle, a lander and a service module that will all come together in Duna orbit at some point. Here is the lander atop its travel-stage on a test launch with a new lifter for the job.

The launch and lifter worked nicely. The following re-entry test of the lander didnt look as promissing though.

But I expect it to behave slightly better within the thin atmosphere of Duna.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I did a Grand-Flyby-tour around Duna, Jool, Vall, Tylo and Laythe with a Science-Lab and all instruments available. Laythe kicked me way beyond out of Jools Orbit and timewarping till apoapsis took about 500days... 10 minutes of max. Timewarp

Well... I did the dishes and the laundry in the meantime

But the whole Thing gave me about 4000 science Points.

[Mitchz95]

Prepared the U.K.S. Renown for its mission to Eeloo tomorrow. My first visit to that particular rock. Looking forward to it.

[soulsource]

I finished refueling the lander for Eve. Well, at least the refueling before it will go to Eve orbit. When it's there it will be between 10 and additional 15 refueling missions, depending on how much fuel is needed for the transfer of the lander and the tankers (of which probably 10 will be sent along with the lander during the next transfer window). When talking about tankers: I deorbited all the empty tankers that were parked in Kerbin orbit, since I realized that it's rather useless to send up non-reusable tankers to fill the tanks of other non-reusable tankers of about the same weight...

Afterwards I played around with a space plane design that is supposed to be able to lift small LV-N powered ships up to LKO. While it does take off (aka "stays in the air after the runway ends") and flies more or less, I still need to make sure it doesn't stall as easy as it does now (it didn't make it to orbit in my test flight yesterday).

[Duke23]

I tried to chase down an anomaly for a while. First I dropped a Kerbal in a capsule over it from space because that sounded like a winning idea, except I missed it by about 30km. At least that part was fun! ...Don't ask.

So I sent a rover to the Kerbal, except I screwed that up too and missed by almost 80km this time (obviously using a newly configured joystick instead of the MJ module which would have been easier lol). After sending the rover, it got stuck under the repurposed Minmus lander so I had to use the "emergency" decouplers on the lander. Meh. After finally getting the rover to the Kerbal I got almost to the anomaly (about 5km away give or take?) and flipped the effing rover! GRR! No screenshots of that because I was irritated, and it might sort of give away the location I was poking around in, no one likes a spoiler.

After giving up on that I made a variant of the SSTO with the crew cabin for 4 to test and sent it up to my station to be refueled. Tomorrow it's going to Mun to collect 3 idiots who decided to run out of fuel while circularizing... I didn't realize this ship was quite this big, I had it at a 90 degree angle on approach and almost took out my solar panels with a wing. Well I guess it's about 37 tons at takeoff so it has a right to be kind of big. Anyway if all goes well (as in I'm not sending a third ship to rescue all 5 of them) I'll be sending a SCANSat next trip.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Duke23

[nli2work]

Tried to probe the depth of the oceans on Eve. Eve did not take it kindly.

[Danish_Savage]

I have returned from the dead to this forum.....

(that counts as something right?)

What updates have we had. I left right before the Asteroid thingy

[MR4Y]

First off, here's TOMRV (The Orbital Mockingbird Rescue Vessel), made with the awesome SP+ mod. It's capable of (theoretically) rescuing up to three Kerbals from LKO and taking them back home "safely"

Here's is it during an attempt ascent:

And a nuclear SSTAO (Almost Orbit) plane. I'm yet to test how much payload it can carry: