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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Started work on the IVA for the Discovery. Very much a work in progress, but downloadable now

Looks nice. I don't know if it is possible to use different typefaces for the text, but it would look more convincing if you could. The correct typeface for the large three-letter acronyms on the displays would be Microgramma (or Eurostile, they're essentially indistinguishable, bold extended) and the signage is generally Futura. The smaller text on the displays is a monospaced font; OCR-B is close but any monospaced terminal-type font would do.

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I had fun reading through player.log in order to figure out which of my installed addons was causing missing parts and planets after switching vessels...

Afterwards it was reentries. Dozens of them. My goal was to find DRE settings that were still easy enough not to be annoying, but also hard enough to make careless reentry fatal. Well, I'm still not happy with them, so I'll probably just go back to the DRE default settings, although they are not really deadly, as long as you don't do crazy stuff like aiming at the center of Kerbin when coming from the Mun...

Afterwards I did a rescue mission and tested several parts. RealChute is an awesome mod for recovering rockets used for "test in flight" contracts.

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Rammed the VAB with a plane at 200 m/s; the VAB won. The buildings are pretty resilient...

I also went back to 0.24.2 barring updates to some of the mods I prefer to use - notably LoadOnDemand, without which 0.25 has been interminably slow and prone to crashing on my box. I built my first successful VTOL aerocraft, landed it on the VAB helipads, then took off and landed it on the runway. Overall a successful test of the design. I still wonder how I can use VTOLs for a practical purpose, though...perhaps if I were to replace the vertical Basic Jet Engines with something else (RAPIERs, perhaps), I could make a design capable of landing on Mun or Minmus. That'd be something I'd never tried before, an interesting personal challenge...

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Yeah...

I guess they will always win until the new update actually comes out. :D

Er......0.25 came out on Tuesday. I was in 0.25 at the time of attempted ramming. Didn't clarify that. The game crashed as soon as I attempted to revert the flight, so I went back to 0.24.2 for the rest of my shenanigans.

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Well I did something I didn't I would do for awhile, but in an attempt to make things more challenging for myself I installed Near. I tried FAR but I had trouble with the readouts and formulas, basically it was written in Pig Latin or drunkenese and did not know what to do with them (and with college classes and other things I do not have the time to spend learning currently). The thing I find odd though is people complain that using MJ is just making the game too easy, and yet in NEAR, and using the same rocket to test in FAR, I had to do nearly nothing while launching (just a small bit of tipping to get it to start turning). It almost made it boring :huh:

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Moth landings! First, I'll cover the launch and rescue.

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You can see here the modifications made to put the dry, cargoless CoM ahead of the CoL. This also gave the Moth more torque than I really knew what to do with, which was useful, but became a little awkward later on as I didn't turn on fine controls. The takeoff needed the kick of the end of the runway, largely because the CoM when full is so far forward of the CoL. I carefully watched the thrust levels on the basic jets to figure out when to shut them down, after testing the radial parachute (on the Mun ship in the cargo bay).

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Got to orbit, shutting down the turbojets individually (disabled the top one, and later toggled all three to keep as many turbojets running as sustainable). After rendezvous with Hanwise, I tried to get him in the cockpit, only then realising that I hadn't transferred Jeb to the Mun ship yet. So, I opened the bay doors, internally transferred Jeb, closed the doors again, and got Hanwise into the cockpit with Bill.

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Decided to get the Mun ship out on the day side, because the images would look better. Jeb used the vast majority of his monopropellant to start his transfer, then completed it with the LFO transfer engine. I'll come back to him later in this post.

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Before quicksaving in orbit, I transferred the fuel to the foremost tanks to put the CoM further ahead of the CoL for reentry. I managed to land on the second re-entry, despite running out of fuel long before the runway. However, disaster struck Jeb, as you'll see later, and I quickloaded... to before landing the Moth. Whoops.

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Fortunately, it only took another two attempts to land it again. This time, I quicksaved after landing. Still had a little fuel, probably because I didn't burn it off with the rocket engines.


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Things seemed to be going well on the way in. The first sign of a problem was when getting orbit - the transfer stage ran out while circularising to 25km, when it was supposed to also act as a crasher stage. I believe that the increased mass of the parachute and added docking port and RCS thrusters over the ship I had based it on were the primary causes of the delta-v deficiency, though perhaps the Round-8s were more mass than they were worth in fuel.

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Jeb grabbed some reports and made to land in the Midlands. Unfortunately, the impact was too hard for the engine, so I quickloaded. I thought the 48-7S was tougher than that, but apparently not. It was, however, the only piece of the ship that got destroyed.

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After the second Moth landing, I made orbit with Jeb and quicksaved. Then, reports, a landing, more reports, a surface sample, and an extremely optimistic flag message based off faulty memories and no calculations. As you can perhaps guess, Jeb wasn't even fine to get to orbit, let alone get back to Kerbin. Perhaps with a perfect flight, orbit might possible have been an option, but return would take get-out-and-push to ridiculous degrees.

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Quickloaded into orbit, and landed a bit higher up, out of the crater. Reports, flag, sample, pictures, good. Now... orbit?

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Yeah, just about.

So, Jeb needs a hero. With about 73m/s left on the engine, a return would be almost entirely push work... but this is probably an opportunity to put a refueler/satellite mission together on a reasonably low budget and tech level. Sounds fun. Sit tight, Jeb, and be glad you have a docking port on you. Fuel is on the way, someday soon I'm sure.

Edited by Concentric
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Today started gloriously, but turned sad halfway through for Kermankind. After mapping all planetary bodies, and landing numerous times on Mun and Minmus, the first Kermanned mission, Ares 1 left towards Duna.

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The beautiful rocket made a perfect gravity turn through the NEARly real atmosphere, and after circularisation and a perfect interplanetary burn, Bob, Shelmund, and Tanner had a great time counting down the days until their arrival to the red planet. The orbital injection was perfect, and a half orbit later, Bob decided to go for landing. The target was a highland region, as the dV capability of the lander/return ship was only 10% above the requirements... Aerobraking went fine, thanks to the nice inflatable shields and the well timed parachutes.

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Ares 1 landed just below the thin cloud layer, not far from the edge of the long canyons, with great views towards both the lowlands and the mountains. The rolling clouds made the scene really photogenic. After unpacking and claiming the planet, they posed for a group picture.

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Back on Kerbin the Kerbals flooded the streets and partied for hours. It was a truly historic event, celebrating their three heroes. Fast forwarding to the opening of the homeward transfer window, the atmosphere in the command module changed. Bob was told that the lead scientist at the VAB miscalculated the length of their mission (calculating from leaving Kerbin to leaving Duna, instead of from leaving Kerbin to arriving back to Kerbin...), and they don't have enough (TAC) Life Support, to make it home. They have to choose: either two of them sacrifices themselves to save the life of the third Kerbal, or they will all die 200 days from home in the cold and empty interplanetary space. After days of silence in the command module, Shelmund and Tanner went on EVA to check the integrity of the ship, but they never returned...

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Bob left Duna orbit alone, in deep depression.

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Thanks to the real heroes who gave their lives for him and for Kermankind, he had enough resources to make it back to Kerbin, and thanks to the long psychiatric treatment from mission control on the way home, he managed to avoid a Deadly Reentry, and land safely on Kerbin.

Bob resigned from active duty and took a desk job at the safety department of the KASA. He recovered from depression after two years, and contributed to a much safer VAB, resulting in a 89% drop in accident in the coming 5 years. Shelmund and Tanner were remembered forever. In 50 years, the first interstellar mission would be named after them...

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Today I successfully completed the asteroid redirect tutorial (both parts). Once I got Jeb's Rock into orbit, there wasn't anything left to do except try to drop it on KSC. Well, I missed, but what happened when the asteroid hit the ground had me laughing like a goof in front of my computer. I was expecting an explosion and disintegration... maybe a puff of dust... I was not prepared for the rock to simply stop dead, while the ship attached at the rear blew up against the rock, with a few surviving pieces bouncing into lovely parabolas, which then blew up when they finally hit the ground. It took me a minute to stop giggling like a madman.

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Landed on Duna manned for the second time, this time using a "Mars Direct" like thing. (Done in sandbox)

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Jeb with a flag and the Duna Landing Vehicle.

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Jeb looking at the Duna Ascent Vehicle, which will get them home at the next Duna-Kerbin transfer window.

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Tried to come up with more junk to send to Laythe.

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Got the hardware: 2 "containers" will be loaded using a utility tug.

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Climbing on the old & stalwart "Ramp Mk.2" ;]

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Yeah I think we're good to go...

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That was only training procedure, real mission will take place in my other save, where I did all my previous Laythe/Duna deliveries.

Right after i'm done procrastinating.

Edited by Overfloater
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