What did you do in KSP1 today?

[RizzoTheRat]

16 hours ago, Puggonaut said:

thanks for the information , Now all I need to do is find a way of making the rings spin.......................one day..................hopefully

Infernal robotics?

14 hours ago, magimix said:

I did a manned Mun landing for the first time!  Very stoked about that. 

Now, things didn't go *entirely* as I'd hoped, because the lander doesn't have enough fuel to return to Kerbin. 

First landing's a great feeling isn't it

First few times I went I wasn't particularly efficient getting home, you can do it from the surface with under 900dV.  However if you can't get your pilot home it gives you a great excuse to mount a rescue mission.

[magimix]

6 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Infernal robotics?

First landing's a great feeling isn't it

First few times I went I wasn't particularly efficient getting home, you can do it from the surface with under 900dV.  However if you can't get your pilot home it gives you a great excuse to mount a rescue mission.

It certainly was great.  I was also coming out of, as it were, a dark patch of missions not really panning out, because I'd not really progressed far enough in terms of building better vehicles.  That said, with Jebediah on the Mun, that leaves me only a single remaining pilot!  And bearing in mind I need (or feel I need) the prograde-assist that L1 Pilots have for my gravity turns, I think I should spend some time engaging with the rescue-kerbin contracts before sending Valentina up to rescue her colleague.  Hopefully fill out my roster a bit.

[Evanitis]

8 minutes ago, magimix said:

(...) that leaves me only a single remaining pilot!  And bearing in mind I need (or feel I need) the prograde-assist (...)

Keep in mind that advanced probe cores also have SAS. If I remember right, the first OCTO is on a 16 sci node - that should cost like nothing unless you are playing a very hard grindy setup.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Evanitis

[Workable Goblin]

3 hours ago, Evanitis said:

Keep in mind that advanced probe cores also have SAS. If I remember right, the first OCTO is on a 16 sci node - that should cost like nothing unless you are playing a very hard grindy setup.

More like 90...bit of a pain early on if you like not risking your Kerbals, but not a problem if you can get to the Moon.

[BloodDusk]

Trying to deal with CKAN shortcomings at the moment.

[Puggonaut]

Got some bits of it too spin , not the rings as yet , but some of it at least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx6fuzltswk&feature=youtu.be

[JoeNapalm]

8 hours ago, Proteus said:

today i was derping with opt planes and tested new bird than did scansat of laythe,going to send space plane over there.

 

 

Been out of the loop, awhile...what mods did you use for that?!

 

-Jn-

[TrooperCooper]

 

In my current RSS / RO / RP-0 career, I launched an unmanned lander mission to Callisto, the most outer moon of Jupiter. First time ever landing anything beyond Mars for me. The mission was launched to gain more science (and thus technolgoical advancement) and profit from the financially large contract rewards for such a distant landing target in order to fuel my manned Mars program. It also served as a test bed for the Nexus class lifter, successor of the Eclipse class launch vessel that propelled my Apollo program. This new heavy lifter is able to deploy a 250 tons payload into Low Earth Orbit. The conic resemblance to its predecessor is quite obvious. With some advanced strutting technique, this design style has proven to be a pretty stable layout with barely any wobbling and easy scaling. Though it is not the most efficient one in terms of mass and cost. But considering that with activated part unlocking in my current career, tech progression is the main cost factor and the prices of the vessels themselfs are not as important as I am used to...

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[Red Shirt]

A frustrating day. Grabbed an older ship with a lander and orbital scanning satellite from an interplanetary mission for a survey and flagging of Minmus. Overkill but its built. First launch forgot to limit the gimbal and while it was amusing to watch it spiral out of control, that is not what I was going for. Second launch, the boosters hit 2 of the fins causing uncontrolled tumble. Third launch, throttled way down at booster separation. Made it to orbit but sloppily. Headed for Minmus but after the transfer stage dropped and the nuke kicked in my intercept got lost. What? Made about 4 correction burns before making a simple Minmus intercept. (sigh) Then realized I was coming in on the wrong side. Had to do one last correction for proper orbit and circularized. Uncoupled the satellite and made polar orbit easily. Only to discover I forgot solar panels. Are you kidding me? After two years of mission and I forgot solar panels? Sent another satellite. Got it in the proper polar orbit at 250K. Now why won't Scansat work? It worked on Mun with the same setup. Didn't it? All I want to do is locate anomalies (pretty sure there is only one). Did some research and still have no idea what I am doing wrong. Suddenly Eve is seeming simpler. Walking away before I intentionally smash into Minmus at full throttle. Pretty sure Jeb said thanks as I exited to the space center. 

[GarrisonChisholm]

59 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

A frustrating day. Grabbed an older ship with a lander and orbital scanning satellite from an interplanetary mission for a survey and flagging of Minmus. Overkill but its built. First launch forgot to limit the gimbal and while it was amusing to watch it spiral out of control, that is not what I was going for. Second launch, the boosters hit 2 of the fins causing uncontrolled tumble. Third launch, throttled way down at booster separation. Made it to orbit but sloppily. Headed for Minmus but after the transfer stage dropped and the nuke kicked in my intercept got lost. What? Made about 4 correction burns before making a simple Minmus intercept. (sigh) Then realized I was coming in on the wrong side. Had to do one last correction for proper orbit and circularized. Uncoupled the satellite and made polar orbit easily. Only to discover I forgot solar panels. Are you kidding me? After two years of mission and I forgot solar panels? Sent another satellite. Got it in the proper polar orbit at 250K. Now why won't Scansat work? It worked on Mun with the same setup. Didn't it? All I want to do is locate anomalies (pretty sure there is only one). Did some research and still have no idea what I am doing wrong. Suddenly Eve is seeming simpler. Walking away before I intentionally smash into Minmus at full throttle. Pretty sure Jeb said thanks as I exited to the space center. 

*frowns, offers a sympathetic glass of Romulan Ale*

This'll make it all better laddie.

[Delfinus]

Me? Well, me and Jeb have been doing... um... well.... uh... y'know... important stuff...

[Evanitis]

A pretty plane flies in the pretty sunset bringing parts for a pretty boring circumnavigation mission.

[Francois424]

Today for the first time since god knows how long (My Moho expedition around x-mas I think), I decided to play KSP remotely seriously and started working on an electric plane powered by a nuclear reactor (the one I developed for my Tharsis reproduction of last week).  I've since then rebalanced the reactor where I felt satisfied with it's performance versus weight.

So I build the plane, test it, retouch it, test it again.... test landing, rigidity, climbing/balance, test optimal altitude (~3000m from lack of surface wings)...  And decide to test it by going to the north pole.
Well, halfway thru I ran out of memory.  I had quicksaved remembering too well the memory crashes of KSP 0.25,  So I reload and fly some more due north...  Nope game crashes 30sec in now.
Reason?  Out of memory.  So much for playing KSP a tiny bit seriously.   Oh well, looks like I am grounded to VAB until 1.1 hits, and boy it can't come quickly enough.

On another note, I think my crashes might have something to do with the electric propellers or maybe ground scatter (again).   I guess I'll forget electric planes for now and concentrate on reliable regular rovers... umm I sense a Vall exploration coming up.   Keep you guys posted.

Oh and sorry no picture, but I can't leave you empty-handed... ummm... Oh yes!  I have something representative of my afternoon session

Quote

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Firespitter.engine.FSplanePropellerSpinner.OnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.ModulesOnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
 
(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Firespitter.engine.FSplanePropellerSpinner.OnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.ModulesOnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
 
(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Firespitter.engine.FSplanePropellerSpinner.OnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.ModulesOnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Part.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
 
(Filename:  Line: -1)

PQSCache: Increased PQ Cache by 256 to 4352
 
(Filename: C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 56)

DynamicHeapAllocator out of memory - Could not get memory for large allocationCould not allocate memory: System out of memory!
Trying to allocate: 963216B with 32 alignment. MemoryLabel: VertexData
Allocation happend at: Line:489 in
Memory overview

**** Crash! ****

 

Edited January 22, 2016 by Francois424

[GarrisonChisholm]

Well, last night I accomplished my second most expensive boon-doggle, as only about 20 pieces of the 666 part (yeah right?), 1999 ton "Mars II Stack AC Heavy" vehicle were recovered on its staging test launch.  Unwise controller commands to attempt lateral movement broke the decoupler inside the fairing, resulting in a failure of staging and nearly complete destruction of the craft 20km west of KSC, after attaining an altitude of 140km.  Total cost, ~ 950,000 $f, second only to the failure to make Jool orbit of my 1.1m $f Jool Orbiter (high cost due to its 9 probe-landers, each with 3 complete science suites).

With only 3m $f left in the kitty and no slots available for contract prospecting, I think I will have to really dial it back until the next set of scheduled launches returns some rewards.

Everyone have a great weekend!

And here's hoping for an approximate Planet Nine addition to OPM!

Edited January 23, 2016 by GarrisonChisholm

[The Optimist]

On 1/21/2016 at 4:33 PM, magimix said:

I did a manned Mun landing for the first time!  Very stoked about that. 

After getting some good advice from people, I've been trying to pay more attention to how one builds the vehicle (actually thinking about what you want each stage to accomplish).  I also recently learned that you can tweak the thrust of solid boosters, found a great series of GIFs that went over how gravity turns work, and found a delta-V map.  Altogether, and with some additional flight practice (gravity turns; easy to read about, hard to pull off, initially), I built a manned Mun vehicle, and after only *two* build iterations, landed on the Mun on the second attempt.  Ex!  Ell!  Ent!

A second iteration of the vehicle was needed because initially a lack of struts meant the vehicle would flex and wobble during the initial tilt into the gravity turn, and once SAS was trying to follow prograde, you could get some very wasteful resonance.  A second attempt at landing on the Mun was needed because on the first attempt, at 50m above touch-down, I clicked the wrong thing, SAS'ed into a tumble, and the lander landed on its side, blocking the hatch.

Now, things didn't go *entirely* as I'd hoped, because the lander doesn't have enough fuel to return to Kerbin.  But that aside it all came together really well.  It was very heartening that for the most part every stage (lift of and turn, initial orbit, transfer burn, landing) was free of surprises.  That said, there were some other wrinkles.  My gravity turn was slightly off heading, so when sorting my initial orbit out, I also had to tweak its inclination.  Following that (maybe related, maybe not), my initial liquid stage didn't have enough juice to do the *entire* transfer burn.  

Not something you'd see just from a screenshot, but the outer ring of the first solid-booster stage was set to 70% thrust, and the outer ring of the second solid-booster stage set to 50% thrust.

 

That's a pretty overengineered rocket if I've ever seen one, but congrats.

Today I corrupted my long-time sandbox save file! Time to shift those craft files.

[NovaSilisko]

I started up KSP for the first time in forever and built a lander and sent it to the mun. While landing my orbital velocity went to NaN m/s while still flying. Then I went to IVA mode, and was greeted with a black screen and the deletion of all my UI. Quickloading deleted the universe.

KSP relationship status: strained.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, NovaSilisko said:

I started up KSP for the first time in forever and built a lander and sent it to the mun. While landing my orbital velocity went to NaN m/s while still flying. Then I went to IVA mode, and was greeted with a black screen and the deletion of all my UI. Quickloading deleted the universe.

KSP relationship status: strained.

Ah, the Hell Kraken.

[NovaSilisko]

I'm fairly confident KSP just doesn't want me to play it. There's always something that, every time I give it a shot after a break, ruins the entire experience...

[Frybert]

KSP still hasn't forgiven you for that time it got a haircut and you didn't notice.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, NovaSilisko said:

I'm fairly confident KSP just doesn't want me to play it. There's always something that, every time I give it a shot after a break, ruins the entire experience...

I think it's bitter about you not giving it all of those planets...

BTW, can you give me the link to the Imgur album about the development of the planets.  It's the one with those huge crystals as terrain scatter.

[luizopiloto]

Sent a new deep space ship to orbit... it's now in stand-by to carry a return vehicle to Eve... :P

 

[Proteus]

7 hours ago, JoeNapalm said:

 

Been out of the loop, awhile...what mods did you use for that?!

 

-Jn-

opt space plane mod,best space plane mod in my opinion.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/87956-105wip-opt-space-plane-v18-test-release-available-08012016/

[kotomikun]

Launched an oversized craft on a mission to Urlum (OPM Uranus), and it's already been more of an adventure than I bargained for.

The Kerbal public, to say nothing of the Kerbonauts, had grown bored of all these overly-practical missions with only one scientist, one engineer, and a single-seat lander. So, this monster mission's got four kerbals (two scientists, an engineer, and a pilot who probably won't actually do any piloting), and a lander able to carry all of them, so they all get to bounce around on the surface of extremely cold rocks orbiting an equally cold ball of gas. Their supplies, factoring in the greenhouses, should last about 20 years, which with any luck will be overkill.

 

 

The ship had about 4,000 m/s of mammoths for reaching orbit, but the ascent had to be very slow to keep it under control, and as soon as I started the gravity turn, the crew sections and lander started to wobble. Somehow everything stayed together; that is, until the two scanning probes started crashing into their fairings (?), smashing one of their radiators. Ran out of intended ascent fuel, and started burning off the lander's fuel... which worked until it fell too far into the atmosphere and flipped over.

Moved all the crew to the lander, preparing to use it as an escape pod. But, somehow, the whole ship managed to glide backwards through the atmosphere for about 1/4th of an orbit, and flew back out towards an 85 km apoapsis. After circularizing, and rescuing the probes that clipped through their fairings, the launch was technically a success! Now I just need to send a resupply ship with some fuel and a large number of struts...

[MaxwellsDemon]

Continuing to plug along on my rebooted grand career (with KCT), and quite enjoying myself...  I'm quite pleased with my two-Kerbal orbital utility capsule, based on Nertea's work... launched by two S-1 SRBs and a Skipper, it's nicely stable and nearly flies itself to LKO with only the lightest touches on the stick at appropriate moments.  After a LKO checkout mission, I sent a crew to Munar orbit and back, and a mission's on Pad Alpha ready to go to Minmus in the same way.  

Pad Alpha, the Tracking Station, R&D, and Mission Control are all fully upgraded; the VAB is in the process of being fully upgraded; and all other structures are at 'Level 2.'  

The Kerbal complement (currently totaling 23) is a little too weighted in favor of pilots, so I've been concentrating on acquiring scientists and (especially) engineers.  I've only hired one so far; the rest I've picked up on rescue missions.

Design studies are ongoing for the Munar lander/orbiter complex; not all of the required techs have been discovered yet, but I've been designing and tweaking a little as a time as I can, and they'll be ready to go once I have everything in place.

Edited January 23, 2016 by MaxwellsDemon

[Workable Goblin]

I designed a light VTHL SSTO for use as part of a family of space vehicles capable of taking on pretty nearly any mission. It had exceedingly "fun" flight characteristics on launch, and quite honestly was unflyable by hand (fortunately I was using MechJeb). For instance, the base version had to be launched 'upside down,' because on engine ignition it would fall 'backwards,' which would cause problems if 'backwards' wasn't towards the direction of flight. It was also a bad idea to try to roll it so that the part you normally think of as 'up' on an airplane was facing 'up,' because this would make it wig out and you'd lose quite a bit of delta-V in the process.

Then I built a version with a couple of strap-on Kickbacks to reach higher orbits, and oh man. So, the vehicle needed to launch with gimbals at 100%, or else it would fall over and you wouldn't go to space today. But, if you left the gimbals at full after you started your gravity turn and finished the roll (did I mention that in this version you definitely needed a roll, unlike the other one?) it would start wigging out, and you also would not be going to space (as efficiently) today, so you had to very quickly turn the gimbals back down to 50% (or so) once you were oriented correctly. Fortunately once you did all that MechJeb could handle the rest.

Fun!

It wasn't quite the set-it-and-forget-it machine I wanted...