What did you do in KSP1 today?

[sandroxil]

I can't play KSP today, cause my wife wanna play «Life is strange» in PS4, and she needs my help for playing. 

[Andem]

2 minutes ago, sandroxil said:

I can't play KSP today, cause my wife wanna play «Life is strange» in PS4, and she needs my help for playing. 

Well it's LiS. Come on. You can't deny LiS. 

[Crocket]

3 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Afterwards I built a low-tech sci-mobile and sent Bob around KSC to collect Goo, Materials and Thermometer readings from the low-level local biomes, and also took crew and EVA reports. Gained enough science to unlock three 90-point tier nodes, gaining (among other things) barometers, fuel ducts and the OKTO probe core in the process.

Now take the barometer around KSC for moar science! I still haven't taken my science around KSC due to a disturbing lack of wheels.

[capi3101]

16 minutes ago, Crocket said:

Now take the barometer around KSC for moar science! I still haven't taken my science around KSC due to a disturbing lack of wheels.

Sci-mobile used the bush-plane gear with a Juno engine for propulsion. You know, like a sucky plane, but without wings - which I guess makes it an even suckier plane...

If you replicate this methodology, I suggest tweaking down the engine to about 25% and keeping it under 10 m/s. Might've just been the fact that Bob was at the helm but it was not easy to control even at low speed - probably could've stood to widen the axle track a bit up front. The thing with Bob is that he can get out and clean the experiments, so you don't need to bring along more than one of each sensor.

I might wait to do another KSC sci run until after I've got a few more instruments unlocked and need to squeak out those extra points or two; that Minmus mission I'm planning is liable to load me up with more sci than I can work with if it goes according to plan (given Level 1 R&D - the mission may take long enough to complete that I can upgrade it a time or two in the interim).

Edited August 19, 2016 by capi3101

[Guest]

Today was a good day for most of my Kerbal Space Program. I'm not sure how Jebediah feels about it though.

My return probe to Eve... returned, bearing over 700 science in addition to what was transmitted over the course of the mission. Only real hitch there was that because I did a bunch of gravity brakes on the Mun, I forgot to pay attention to which way I was going and ended up on a retrograde orbit. A very nice one, mind, but still retrograde. So I couldn't use the PSRS I had left behind, because that was going prograde and neither had the fuel to flip them. So I had to launch a new one. Minor hiccup though, as that part of the mission was the only one that felt more or less routine.

In other news, Jebediah touched down on Ike, planted a flag -- named it Jebediah's Landing and claimed Ike for himself, he must've gone a little nuts in that tin can all that time -- did important science and gathered surface samples and what have you. Unfortunately one of the slide rule guys had misplaced a decimal point somewhere and it turns out Jeb doesn't have the delta-V to return to Kerbin after all.

Jeb will have to stay here for a while... 

He has company, though, of a sort, and not that far in cosmic terms: Rover Carrier I-D2 arrived in the system. It had unfortunately no fuel left to spare, although there was a docking port for just this type of contingency. However, it performed its mission flawlessly, and RC I-D2 is now safely landed on Duna's highlands, with Courage and Stupidity zipping around exploring and transmitting scads of Science. Then Dunar night fell, their solar panels fell silent, and they must sleep until morning, as must I.

Rover Carrier leaving Kerbin.

Atmospheric entry.

Aeroshell and heat shield jettisoned, chute deployed.

Final approach.

All in all, I netted nearly 2000 science today. I am now fully kitted for my infrastructure project, named in honor of Jebediah Kerman and the sacrifices he has made for kerbinkind. We'll be back for you, Jeb, don't worry! 

Courage, Stupidity, and Rover Carrier I-D-2 in a family portrait.

Edited August 19, 2016 by Guest

[MaxwellsDemon]

3 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

RC I-D2 is now safely landed on Duna's highlands, with Courage and Stupidity zipping around exploring and transmitting scads of Science.

"Courage" and "Stupidity"!!!   ROFL!  

[Crocket]

Remember the rescue mission I mentioned a while back? Well, I plan on launching that today, recovering the crew of the Munmuncher and their delicious, delicious science! Not that the science is more important than the crew...

[Fearless Son]

7 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Come to think of it, I should probably turn off gimbaling.  SAS doesn't like it when the engines aren't below the CoM.  (Ever seen 30 tons spinning end-over-end at 600RPM?  Try two thuds at the top of a rocket.)

No kidding!  I once had a big heavy drill-bearing lander that was powered by two vector engines mounted on either side of it above the center of mass.  The excessive gimble range on those had it shaking side-to-side as it thrust.  

I named it the "Duck Driller" because of the way it seemed to "waddle".  

[Guest]

Dawn's launch involved the placement of a Kerbin-SOI freighter into orbit, meant to transport fuel and crew members. It's got a frontal heatshield and a payload space in the centre, and further serves as a testbed for interplanetary design sensibilities. I also want to try out a puller design with the payload tethered at the end of a cable — handy since there would be no limit on the payload's dimensions, but it would require its own shielding rather than that of the ship. In conjunction with ballutes though (see below) it might actually make for a very simple way to deploy bases in one drop. Presently the craft still awaits fuelling and any particular mission.

 

Here the main engine (a single Rhino) is still hidden for the time being due to the ample fuel remaining in the Mainsail's tank.

 

Next up, payload capacity trials for the Sword Mk 11-1, with several improvements to propulsion efficacy. I also took the opportunity to load it with ballutes from riocrokite's mod.

It looks like a giant space monster about to consume the ship... you don't really get a sense for the scale of these things until you actually deploy one and move the camera around it in the 3D scene. Anyway, I only had a plasma trail for a few seconds; the device seems very capable of allowing the recovery of entire upper stages, and as a nice alternative to heatshields which I find awkward to place on my designs.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Guest

[CatastrophicFailure]

Accidentally made a kangarover:

 

[suicidejunkie]

Packing up the rover for a drive to Jeb's place.

Hope we didn't forget anything!

Edited August 20, 2016 by suicidejunkie
Unmangled text

[regex]

Started up a new RP-0 save with Principia, launch site of Svobodny/Vostochny.  It's ... a pain, somewhat.  Test Flight gives me rated burn times while all the biomes are hard to reach, plus there are very few tracking stations up there I can use.  Actually managed to get one early sounding rocket over the poles biome but I couldn't transmit data...  Anyway, made it to the Redstone engine so I'm feeling alright about things, now I'm just waiting for Early Avionics to finish.  Here are some beauty shots (really enjoying my new laptop for this, much better than thrashing my work computer).

[Maverick_aus]

Finally wrote and posted the next chapter of the Elcano challenge...Help Sails On Its Way!
Highlights include:
-Secret rescue sailing ship is revealed!
-A son pays respects at a fallen father's last location
-The Waarn: Protector of the Waterways sails through Kraken-infested waters to un-flip the Dolomedes Triton Elcano discovery vehicle!

[TheEpicSquared]

I got a Habitation Ring docked to my space station (it's the 4 smaller rings at the bottom)

It was for my KSP Megastructures mission report/story type of thing.

[John FX]

5 hours ago, regex said:

Started up a new RP-0 save with Principia, launch site of Svobodny/Vostochny.  It's ... a pain, somewhat.

I also started a new RP-0 save, started with reduced payouts and 0 funds. I`m currently at the point where I have 0 funds again although I have some craft being built and I need the couple of built rockets to make some money so I can do the contracts I have got advances for...

I`m quite enjoying it.

[Van Disaster]

12 hours ago, String Witch said:

Which sun texture(s) is that? I'm after a new one.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

Which sun texture(s) is that? I'm after a new one.

The Eden flare. I removed the 'dirty lens effect' by changing ghost3.png to a 1x1 black image.

[eddiew]

Built my first rover since 1.0.5 and had more fun with it than expected 

Cheerful, but not very cheap once all the science packages were on board, so mission control decided to attempt to bring him home. This also gave them opportunity to test out the physical requirements for departing from @KerikBalm's Rald before sending a crewed mission. (Numbers and planetary data in spoiler.)

Spoiler

Transfer from Kerbin to Rald: 680m/s
Insertion burn: 350-500m/s
Orbital velocity: 900m/s
Recommended de-orbit: ~100m/s, very shallow to allow for atmospheric braking
Brief rocket burst + parachutes for landing
Ascent to orbit: ~1900m/s
Return to Kerbin @35km PE: ~240m/s

Pressure ASL: ~10% Kerbin
Oxygen: yes
Gravity ASL: 0.33g

Behaved much better than expected on the ground. Usually I eschew the RoveMate due to its lack of SAS, but what with all the wheel changes I decided to have a go at a torque-less rover. Despite Rald being about the size of Duna, only once did Fido lose his footing, and that was my mission control's fault for turning at speed on a slope. Faced with a steep climb, he just went straight on up it without complaint, which was a very pleasant change from the 1.0.x days. For the full 14km round trip, his low centre of gravity kept him completely secure, even when braking heavily.

Reuniting with the mothership was a little tricky, since Fido's tail magnetometer pops up a bit higher on Rald than Kerbin and kept obstructing the docking port, but he made it eventually. A little tap of the mothership's engines completed the connection, and his precious science packages came home full of data.

Following the success of the Fido mission, full funding is granted to set a crew down upon the surface of this mysterious moon.

Unfortunately at this point my game bugged out repeatedly. Orbits changed, revert stopped working, and F9 took me to an earlier quicksave for a different ship, discarding all my progress. After the third time this happened, I rebuilt the Badgerald's launch stage and the bugs went away. And now you know why it's the mk II.

Landing was a nervous moment for the crew, since Rald's atmosphere is wispy thin and parachutes alone are not enough. A quick tap of the lander's engines brought them to a just about survivable graceful 5m/s touchdown, and beers were opened as the view of an alien coastline filled the cabin.

Three flags were planted, although two of them fell over immediately. The green Rald-goo upon which the Badgerald II came to rest turned out to be the slipperiest substance in the known universe, setting the ship on a gradual descent 50 metres down the slope to more level ground. With the crew disembarked, the goo realised its mistake and returned the ship back up the slope to where it started, with the engineer chasing after it to try to extract the surface science packages from its locker. After a while, however, gravity prevailed and the Badgerald II settled into a shallow rut. 

Fortunately, these peculiarities did not spoil the mission, and after a few rehearsals, all six science packages actually survived deployment!

Primary mods used in this mission: Near Future Propulsion, DMagic Orbital Science, Surface Experiment Package and Tweakscale. Clouds and sunset are probably improved by Stock Visual Enhancements. I really need to make a mod list that I can copy-paste into these footers...

Edited August 20, 2016 by eddiew

[Corona688]

16 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

No kidding!  I once had a big heavy drill-bearing lander that was powered by two vector engines mounted on either side of it above the center of mass.  The excessive gimble range on those had it shaking side-to-side as it thrust.  

I named it the "Duck Driller" because of the way it seemed to "waddle".  

This was somehow even worse...  The momentum of the ship(a big upper heavy lifting stage, not the canned lander), the reaction speed of the SAS, placement of engines, and gimbal range were all perfectly mismatched to the point it didn't just resonate, it oscillated in phase with the motion.

In English, if you didn't hold it stable, it would overshoot so hard it would turn a full 180 degrees...  After which point it'd be spinning so fast, any SAS correction would arrive 180 degrees too late and push the wrong direction.  If it'd just locked the thuds in the "correct" direction it should stop it, but SAS doesn't seem to work that way, not when the engines are above the center of mass.  It was a Chernobyl of rocketry, designed so poorly its brakes accelerated it.  I am not kidding about 600RPM, I tried to clock it, it was amazing.

Since the effect was so dependent on momentum, the phases started to match up properly again when the stage ran low on fuel.  Unfortunately that was supposed to be my circularization burn.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Corona688

[Bogen]

2 hours ago, Corona688 said:

This was somehow even worse...  The momentum of the ship(a big upper heavy lifting stage, not the canned lander), the reaction speed of the SAS, placement of engines, and gimbal range were all perfectly mismatched to the point it didn't just resonate, it oscillated in phase with the motion.

In English, if you didn't hold it stable, it would overshoot so hard it would turn a full 180 degrees...  After which point it'd be spinning so fast, any SAS correction would arrive 180 degrees too late and push the wrong direction.  If it'd just locked the thuds in the "correct" direction it should stop it, but SAS doesn't seem to work that way, not when the engines are above the center of mass.  It was a Chernobyl of rocketry, designed so poorly its brakes accelerated it.  I am not kidding about 600RPM, I tried to clock it, it was amazing.

Since the effect was so dependent on momentum, the phases started to match up properly again when the stage ran low on fuel.  Unfortunately that was supposed to be my circularization burn.

Do you have the craft file? I want to test fly this beautiful disaster.

[Mjarf]

Decided to return to KSP after a long break, with a fresh start with only KER installed and all old saves deleted. Before my break I got a wee bit too consumed by KSP, and also kinda ruined the game for myself with OP mods. Now I wanna go "oldschool" again, we'll see how long it takes before i install a bunch of mods again. Oh well, here's a pic of one of todays launches in my fresh Science save:

[Guest]

Designing an outpost. 

After several false starts, I settled on a modular design based on an autonomous mobile platform with standardised docking ports. I think I can develop the lifting capacity to loft one or two modules at a time. I'll have to assemble them after landing, which means I'm going to have to get good with landings -- up to now, hitting the right planet has been about accurate enough, but this way if I'm more than, say, ten klicks away it'll be a royal PITA to drive the modules together.

I've currently developed the "core four" modules of my mining outpost: drilling, processing, storage, and command, which also supplies power -- the panels on the other modules aren't sufficent to keep them running indefinitely. I have yet to attempt a landing/docking on the fuel module; I'll have to test how it's affected by the jetwash. I might have to drop in a couple of lightweight connector modules so I can offset it a bit from the rest of the base. 

I will likely add a science module somewhere along the line. Preliminary trials on Kerbin suggest I might also want to land more drilling modules to keep the processing module happy.

I've got the ensemble working well enough, but the big question -- how to get them there -- remains as yet unsolved. It was hard enough to get to this point!

I'm toying with a number of ideas on deploying them. Most likely I'll go with a skycrane solution of some type; I experimented a bit with that and proved that it can work, although either my piloting skills aren't up to scratch or my skycrane design was inherently unstable; either way it was really hard to control and I mostly just made big fireballs -- I did post a successful landing or two as well though. Those roof-mounted solar panels would have to go though...

Current work in progress looks like this -- the fifth "module" is just a dockable rover base of the same type I used to build the others, slightly damaged from reckless driving.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Guest

[Mikki]

I launched a rocket from the old KSC...

I made a truck (...KEMAZ 8x8 Superduty... ), and a ICBM style launcher on a trailer and flew it to the island.
The rocket is actually excellent, about two tons to low Kerbin orbit 100x100 with lots of dv left.

The plane is a dummy with the same fuselage like a another laythe-spec SSTO, just for testing...
Mk IV for STOCK!!!

Edited August 20, 2016 by Mikki
typoooooooooooooooooo

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Not really IN KSP, but related
 

Hope you all enjoy. It was a very exciting day.
More to come.

[Crocket]

@MalfunctionM1Ke That's amazing!