What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Fearless Son]

At long last, I started my first crewed Duna mission in career.  

Countdown to launch:

Ship in orbit:

First fuel pod attached:

Forth fuel pod attached:

Crew boarding:

Lander docked:

All modules installed, eight crew aboard, fuel tanks topped off, ready to depart for Duna!  

Edited August 14, 2016 by Fearless Son

[DBowman]

Wrote up my low budget Eeloo Challenge entry. XLEeloo (Extra Lite Eeloo) - 4.290 ton, Val goes to Eeloo and back - 43 years in a command chair

It uses every propulsion type except nukes & chutes; Jet+wings, rocket, ion, gravity assists, aerobraking, EVA splashdown

[algwat]

CMS  won the contract for a second moon lander, the message received was ..." the egg has landed..." 

[dangerhamster]

The first elements of the Duna exploration arrived, namely two Deliverance carrying a mining Buggy and a pair of Grizzlers plus the Duna Ascent Vehicle (Experimental) or Dave for short. The miner Deliverance had two engineers aboard and managed a lap of Ike before Duna orbit (requests for a touch and go were politely denied). The plan was to land the miner before calling down the rovers and keeping Dave in orbit until a good base site was located. The rovers would then be sent off to collect science ready for the eventual arrival of some scientists meaning the intrepid duo would be living in a rover for the foreseeable future <insert potato meme here>.

The landing went smoothly coming down on the border of two biomes and the likelihood of good ore concentrations to the east.

Phase 2 began with them calling down the rover Deliverance which carrying on the tradition of precision landings came down 20km downrange. Ho Hum.

Undeterred the engineers set off for the site to reset the Grizzlers from awkward shipping to full bruiser mode. Meanwhile mission control decided to unpack the rovers, which ran into problems when it was discovered Grizzler 2 had welded itself to part of the cargo bay..... To cries of "it didn't hit THAT hard". 

Some judicious persuasion (repeated ramming) by Grizzler 1 managed to push the offending item away to at least get one rover clear.

Faced with a small problem the engineers considered their options.....

And promptly bashed the cargo bay with hammers until it fell off.

Niggle averted it was a simple case of rejigging the rovers.

Joedred finished comfortably ahead of Fredger and made a big thing of it until it was pointed out he had the only instruction book.

 

 

[smysha]

Faced some weird bugs

[flatbear]

tried my hand at spaceplane design

not enough fuel to get into orbit though..... D:

 

 

 

[Samtc]

Currently flying out to climb the highest mountain on Kerbin (thanks Interplanetary mountaineer), Low tech career plane, a little rover, good fun.  
http://imgur.com/a/XOrMv

Oh look a pretty sunset!
http://imgur.com/a/brbNj

Edited August 14, 2016 by Samtc

[Martian Emigrant]

15 minutes ago, Samtc said:

Currently flying out to climb the highest mountain on Kerbin (thanks Interplanetary mountaineer), Low tech career plane, a little rover, good fun.  
http://imgur.com/a/XOrMv

That's so......Kerbal.

Awesome.

With 3 Stars on it.

Whistles and bells.

[Samtc]

9 minutes ago, Martian Emigrant said:

That's so......Kerbal.

Awesome.

With 3 Stars on it.

Whistles and bells.

Haha Cheers,

yea I have been playing for ages but I've never really done a Kerbin expedition and i haven't unlocked cargo bays yet.

Kerbin terrain is actually stunning, I've been having a ball with this.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Samtc

[Vermil]

Well, it was time for a significant mission.
Gilly. The first manned mission to Gilly's surface and back. It doubles as the first manned mission to do an encounter with Eve.

Dr Horst von Kermin, Mission Control, Bill and Jebediah carefully went through the Ikaros rocket to create the Ikaros_I version. A special version for Gilly, modified from Ikaros_H, which like all other Ikaros versions is normally for missions to Duna. First, Ikaros_H was worked over. Wise from the recent rescue operation with Lensman to Mun, the ladder system was examined. As suspected, subtle fluctuations had also affected Ikaros and the position of several ladder elements needed to be adjusted. Jebediah relentlessly test climbed the ladder until he was satisfied. Next, Bill insisted on that the staging sequence should be looked over. And quite rightly, several funny things were discovered. The two first stages had switched places, and then ejections of the heat shields had somehow sneaked into the sequence, - in disastrous order. Apparently the contractor now delivers heat shields with integral ejection. - Why FFS? as Dr Kermin diplomatically put it.

As glitches - brought in by fluctuations and changes to specifications - were progressively fixed, Dr Horst and Mission Control got down to the modifications to produce the I-version from the H-version. Basically, the Duna-landing-parachutes were removed, and considerably increased RCS control nozzles were installed. More lights were mounted and the rovers were exchanged for the special, new Hover-Rover.

The crew was the one picked well in advance. The second senior team: Valentina, Madly and Kimene.

 

The gals were absolutely delighted to be on a big expedition again. And this time, the first to set foot on Gilly.

 

The journey was flown by hand as usual, and tricky, requiring repeated aligning burns. But eventually they became the first to see Eve with their own eyes.

 

Nor was insertion into Gilly orbit much easier. But the gals had plenty of propellant and Valentina could do it step by step, and still have almost one fuel tank left.

 

Landing operations feel pretty safe, but also take a lot of time. Both things due to the extremely low gravity. There was a glitch in the inertia-nav map-view, which almost fooled Valentina to fly straight into Gilly, believing she was much higher above the wildly undulating terrain.

 

But everything went well, and Valentina managed to put down the rocket on a somewhat horizontal  piece of ground. Not something that is exactly abundant on Gilly.
The gals then did some research thingys, dined & wined and rested in the low grav. Tomorrow they will go out & down and feel the surface. But now, rest.

 

[Guest]

I made a rover delivery system, and rovers, and then put them on the Mun. The real deal is Duna but I want to refine the design a bit first.

My one innovation with the rovers themselves over the most obvious version is that I wanted a longer-wheelbase than you'd get just by sticking wheels on the box, so I added a couple of box girders to each end, and stuck the wheels to them. Top is covered with solar panels. Sides have important scientific instruments and batteries.

I'm quite proud of my delivery system. I stuck two clamp points on a Rockomax adapter and a probe core on top. Each clamp point carries a rover connected with a small decoupler. Then I put four of those small but punchy engines on the rim of the adapter and a couple of Oscars to the sides for fuel, and even added landing struts. The idea is that the delivery system lands like a normal lander, and when the roverse declamp, they gently roll down off the lander, ending right side up.

Had to make a giant aerodynamic fairing to stop the launcher from flipping over, it looks rather hilarious, like a giant... mushroom. But it definitely got the job done.

The whole system is also very lightweight; I'm pretty sure I can get it to Duna. My first attempt at landing there was -- technically -- a success, as my lander did land and transmit back its science, but in reality it was a near catastrophe, due to a stupid mistake I made -- I had a structural adapter connecting the heat shield to the rocket that brought me there, and a decoupler below that, rather than above it. The upshot was that it was aerodynamically unstable, and my lander went out of control post atmospheric entry; I lost my lander's engines and landing struts but miraculously the sciencey bits plus a battery or two and a solar panel giving it a trickle of juice survived, so there it is, sitting on its side in the Duna polar regions, still working, kind of. 

Guess what? The rover lander system worked great.

Then I got a bit overexcited and started driving really fast, went over a ridge, and flipped. :sigh:

Here's the system in orbit, with the fairing discarded -- all the solar panels are on the rovers so it's kinda important. Yes it's an unnecessarily big rocket.

Preparing for landing. The munar stage, when fully fueled, should be enough to get me to Duna.

Just about to touch down.

Landed. Would you believe it, I forgot to extend the legs?

Rovers deployed. Went without a hitch!

Exploring the Mun. There's rocks. Lots of them. Mostly rocks.

For my next trick, I will repeat this exploit on Duna.

[eddiew]

Trip to Eve with a nuclear wessel. Spent a while in orbit to figure out where the oceans were via Scansat, then dropped the DMagic science probe for some bathymetry data. Turns out heatshields are really buoyant, and the probe mostly wanted to be upside down - which was fine as far as the bathymeter was concerned.

 

Gave Surface Experiment Package a go on Mun   Great concept, shame that half of them exploded randomly due to various krakens ^^;  Jay and Llew Kerman are pleased that no injuries were sustained, and each non-splodey package yielded about 100 sweet science to take home.

Nearest thing to an Apollo-style mission I've done, since it left the base on Mun, but a glitch in Tweakscale gave the upper stage over 4km/s of delta-v which rather ruined the point of bothering...

Redesigned without the accidental cheats and with better visuals, sent to Minmus!

Dang that departure burn looks good (aside from the ladder)... 

Naturally it's very overspecced for a Minmus mission. Jay and Leo Kerman visited 3 different biomes, including one that required 5 waypoints for a survey. Almost all the SEPs worked without exploding, resulting in a total of 2500 science from this visit! However, Kerbal R&D totally sucked this up and delivered Oscar tanks with 20% more fuel and Spark engines with 10% better efficiency!

Which turned out to be convenient, since there were two contracts for Ike, and the Duna window was only 33 days away   Time for an IKE!! mission. The added efficiency resulted in a superbly tiny siamese probe that required only 2.3 tons to be delivered to LKO. (Launcher was slightly overspecced and donated 250m/s to the interplanetary burn, but it turned out to be unecessary.)

Lander has ~730m/s left, not sure whether to biome hop, or take it to orbit for a crew to collect the full data from...

Also, proved that Dres does not exist. Fortunately the boffins at home got some good data from the space it should have been.

[flatbear]

2 hours ago, Vermil said:

Well, it was time for a significant mission.
Gilly. The first manned mission to Gilly's surface and back. It doubles as the first manned mission to do an encounter with Eve.

Dr Horst von Kermin, Mission Control, Bill and Jebediah carefully went through the Ikaros rocket to create the Ikaros_I version. A special version for Gilly, modified from Ikaros_H, which like all other Ikaros versions is normally for missions to Duna. First, Ikaros_H was worked over. Wise from the recent rescue operation with Lensman to Mun, the ladder system was examined. As suspected, subtle fluctuations had also affected Ikaros and the position of several ladder elements needed to be adjusted. Jebediah relentlessly test climbed the ladder until he was satisfied. Next, Bill insisted on that the staging sequence should be looked over. And quite rightly, several funny things were discovered. The two first stages had switched places, and then ejections of the heat shields had somehow sneaked into the sequence, - in disastrous order. Apparently the contractor now delivers heat shields with integral ejection. - Why FFS? as Dr Kermin diplomatically put it.

As glitches - brought in by fluctuations and changes to specifications - were progressively fixed, Dr Horst and Mission Control got down to the modifications to produce the I-version from the H-version. Basically, the Duna-landing-parachutes were removed, and considerably increased RCS control nozzles were installed. More lights were mounted and the rovers were exchanged for the special, new Hover-Rover.

The crew was the one picked well in advance. The second senior team: Valentina, Madly and Kimene.

 

The gals were absolutely delighted to be on a big expedition again. And this time, the first to set foot on Gilly.

 

The journey was flown by hand as usual, and tricky, requiring repeated aligning burns. But eventually they became the first to see Eve with their own eyes.

 

Nor was insertion into Gilly orbit much easier. But the gals had plenty of propellant and Valentina could do it step by step, and still have almost one fuel tank left.

 

Landing operations feel pretty safe, but also take a lot of time. Both things due to the extremely low gravity. There was a glitch in the inertia-nav map-view, which almost fooled Valentina to fly straight into Gilly, believing she was much higher above the wildly undulating terrain.

 

But everything went well, and Valentina managed to put down the rocket on a somewhat horizontal  piece of ground. Not something that is exactly abundant on Gilly.
The gals then did some research thingys, dined & wined and rested in the low grav. Tomorrow they will go out & down and feel the surface. But now, rest.

 

did you post this on reddit/r/kerbalspaceprogram? it looks really familiar

Edited August 14, 2016 by flatbear

[Dogenutt]

Landed on Eve for the first time! 

 

 

[Tortfeasor]

It was originally supposed to be an orbital Moho probe.  But I thought I had enough fuel to land it.  Turns out I was right, by 67 m/s.

 

It was also the first thing I've landed on Moho!

[Randox]

Tweaked the plane I was working on before. The main wings were massively oversized before, and looked dumb, so I redesigned them, and then put some angle on them for giggles. Shrinking the main wings allowed me to change the tail back to the parts I was originally using. I'm not sure it looks better, but the spade tail was certainly not conventional, and this version has more maximum control authority. Even with the reduced lift, it can still stay airborne at speeds at least as low as 70 m/s, with the landing flaps down. Probably the easiest plane to land I have ever come up with, doubly so now that the wingtips have been raised.

 

Edited August 15, 2016 by Randox

[magnemoe]

Looks like Gilly starts to have buds. 

 

[Fearless Son]

"Alright crew, collect any experimental data, tape down any loose objects, collapse the solar panels, strap yourselves in, and pray to Kod that this thing holds together, because we are about to aerobreak at Duna!"

[flatbear]

finally got my space plane into space.  should a space plane have rcs thrusters to dock or should it not have them?

 

[Corona688]

So, nuclear rockets.  The latest batch of tourists get to ride one.  I'm not sure what to call it so 'flying potato squid' will do for now.

Naturally for anything combining nuclear with tourism it had one heck of an escape system on the way up.  Now docked at Station C's north gantry for complimentary crackers and refueling before the trip to Minmus

[eddiew]

Realised I forgot this beauty shot from my Eve landing...

Stock Visual Enhancements is probably the culprit for the greening... odd, but I like it!

[Corona688]

It makes sense.  Eve's clouds reflect the red and the blue, leaving behind the green.

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

It makes sense.  Eve's clouds reflect the red and the blue, leaving behind the green.

Or does the atmo absorb the green, which is why it's purple from space?  (That said, my Eve is not very purple from space... quite white from certain angles.) 

[smysha]

Legends say that those who fly up the mountain never return. Valeria decided find the source of that problem.

Why don't they come back? Well, the answer is simple. Because trying to land on the tallest mountain on Kerbin in helicopter is a pretty dumb idea. Air is really thin up there, you know.

[elpollodiablo]

As i unlocked enough science recently for bigger engines, i had to use them to create my new workhorse. The "Long John" with its height of 130m weighs around 4700 T on launchpad and is designed for payloads up to 100T to ~500km LEO. Only 1.7 Mio Kredits(?) to boot.

Not convinced with its upper stages (TWR around 0.85): As you can see from the next pictures from the cloud formation below, it takes quite a while to insert into orbit, which doesn't really help to achieve the desired inclination. But with this there soon will be enough science for even bigger engines and therefor another complete new design anyway