What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

Bob's scouting mission was ve-e-e-ry tedious and involved lots of driving, but was successful: he planted the flag for Mun Village in the Northern Basin. The spot is flat, ore concentration is about 10.5%, and things are looking good. The Kertoise performed well; there was however one unscheduled rapid partial disassembly event, where it lost its protruding docking port and autonomous control unit. It reached sustained speeds of well over 40 m/s (144 km/h), literally flying over the Munscape. Whee! And also sent back a bit of Science.

After some more trials, the Very Heavy Lifter performed its mission flawlessly. Mun Base One with its over 35 ton payload (dry) is pushing it to its limits, however, especially as I am being somewhat conservative about delta-V since I really want to have some room for manoeuvre in the final stages of the descent. The rocket proved easy to control even with six SRB's strapped and strutted to it, and Mun Base One is now in low polar Mun orbit, waiting for the Mun's rotation to bring Mun Village under it. There is still a bit of juice left in the heavy Mun booster used to carry the payload there; that will be used to kill as much of the orbital velocity as possible. The final descent will be hectic, but I'm confident Valentina is up to the job. <gulp>

Edited August 23, 2016 by Guest

[something]

Built two almost identical probes to explore Eve and Gilly some months ago. Two probes, one launch vehicle - easy peasy. Yesterday, they finally entered Even SOI and when being in orbit I discovered that, some engineer thought, it would be wise to change the staging of the two satellites. So he detached the chutes from the satellite meant for Eve and attached them to the satellite meant for Gilly. Point is, he did not change the position of the heatshield...

Needless to say, re-entering Eve without heatshield is a fun challenge for itself. However, apart from a set of four landing struts, I have been quite successful. Comparing that to my first Duna landing, when I lost the engine of the probe upon impact, due to an overestimation of the Dunian atmosphere, this one went pretty well...apart from a dozen quickloads or so...

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

Thank goodness for that!

Normality resumes, and the laws of physics remain unadulterated  

Do you have an archive of these kerbal comic things?

[Zer0Winds]

I killed a Kerbal, almost crashed into a crater on the Mun, missed the transfer to Minmus which ultimately led to landing on Ike.

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

Do you have an archive of these kerbal comic things?

Er, they're all hiding in my imgur: http://nekozji.imgur.com/

Though I didn't really intend to turn them into comics, I just enjoy taking 10 minutes at the end of a sesh to log what happened  

[eddiew]

45 minutes ago, Zer0Winds said:

I killed a Kerbal, almost crashed into a crater on the Mun, missed the transfer to Minmus which ultimately led to landing on Ike.

Ah, the old classic  

17 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Mun base project update.

Nice little (big) rover   But can you turn off the torque when it's ride-side-up on the ground? I've had issues with torque-enabled rovers in 1.1.x  

Also...

...I have zero active contracts, and I am still not sure this one will pay off...

Edited August 23, 2016 by eddiew

[Sharpy]

Okay. I did today only what I post below. Not even in orbit for real, just hyperedit simulation.

Now your turn. Guess what am I trying to do?

[GwynJHawke]

Started a new career game a few days ago. Sent my first probe to Eve. Managed to arrive quite safely in less than 50 days. Got into a circular polar orbit to mine the planet for science with the gravioli detector. Tried to land on one of the ejecta blanket fields, but over shot. Thankfully that was the sole failure of the mission. Landed on the shoreline of a bay near local noon. Transmitted all the science home and left a lonely and dutiful unmanned lander on the surface.

[JadeOfMaar]

4 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Okay. I did today only what I post below. Not even in orbit for real, just hyperedit simulation.

Now your turn. Guess what am I trying to do?

Looks like you've got epic concepts for orbital utility (or sport) vehicles.

 

Getting back to the stock Bug-E Buggy that I sent to Mun, I sent the Missionary Vessel carrying Jebediah, Bill, two lady engineers and a starter supply of MaterialKits and SpecializedParts RocketParts. Buggy's mission was to find terrain with < 1° slope, and succeeded with 0.4°. With just drips of fuel it had to nudge over as much as the drips allowed, to that small magical patch.

Spoiler

I rather like the idea of those tiny colony ships in Sins of a Solar Empire.

With the Bonus Supply Lander touching down (after 3 tries and right on the flat patch) I was wowed and got down to business. Since it's still way out of reach of KAS pipes I elected to design an expansion vessel which enables mining and fits within the Missionary's initial build limit of 5.3 tons dry mass, followed by an expansion to help the lights stay on during Mun's dark time. (That's actually not enough battery though.)

Mission Control is ambitiously looking to deploy a station mostly or entirely from Mun's surface.

Spoiler

This is getting really good. Maybe I should do this over but with life support??? o.o

[Fireheart318]

I flew a SPLICER fighter jet around that big krater using Scatterer and E.V.E.! My computer is melting and I'll be sure to share a link to the video once it's done. I've got around 2.5 hours of footage right now. Editing WON'T BE FUN!

[regex]

Made orbit today in my career using a technique I'm not at all familiar with, but instead of the "bucket 'o' solids" I opted for a single solid motor and a proper upper stage.

This is the Eaglet 1s (stretch) which differs from the Eaglet 1 sounding rocket by virtue of the A-7 engine (as opposed to the A-6) which allows it to carry more fuel in the lower stage. The upper stage is unchanged from the previous rocket and sports an AJ10-37. Finally, the probe stage uses a Baby Sergeant plus two sep motors to spin and make orbit.

Looking at that orbit, and Principia's navball based on an Earth-centered inertial frame, I can tell getting to the moon from Svobodny/Vostochny is going to be a bear.

Edited August 24, 2016 by regex

[Guest]

5 hours ago, eddiew said:

Nice little (big) rover   But can you turn off the torque when it's ride-side-up on the ground? I've had issues with torque-enabled rovers in 1.1.x  

Sure, I've keyed the reaction wheels to the RCS action group. Hit R to toggle them. RCS on = reaction wheels on, RCS off = reaction wheels off.

Driving it at speed on the Mun requires a lot of that. When it's on the ground pointed in the right direction, RCS off and accelerate. When it leaves the ground, RCS on and use the keys to control attitude. When you want to change direction, get off the gas pedal, RCS on, and adjust where it points with A/D and keep the wheels on the ground with Q/E, then RCS off again and WWWWW to accelerate. After a bit of practice it became quite easy. I did have one nasty crash before I had it properly figured out though, but once I did it was easy-peasy, and the thing took massive leaps into and out of craters with panache.

Without the option to toggle them the rover would be 100% uncontrollable; under Mun gravity accelerating with the reaction wheels on, it does a somersault. I, er, used a lot of reaction wheels. But it is really controllable!

The same control scheme would work on a rover equipped with actual RCS thrusters by the way. I had some on a prototype but ended up dropping them; I'll probably add them for a mission to Minmus or some lower-gravity body. There is room in the chassis for a few little tanks...

[adsii1970]

I created a nearly ugly... ok, it's so ugly it is beautiful transport aircraft. In spite of it's looks, it is extremely agile, can take off and land in just a quarter of the runway of the Searwing (stock aircraft for comparison purposes) and uses a Mk 3 air frame. It literally takes both hands to fly... one on the keyboard and one to operate a mouse (for IR), but she flies smooth and fast and seems to be able to haul a good amount of cargo. Had a small tilting accident on my second landing in front of the SPH and broke off the starboard tail wing, but was still able to control the craft.

 

 

 

[Francois424]

Today I travelled to Tekto.  A sage named @Galileo apparently detected some clouds there yesterday, even tho the "SVE Telescope" never noticed any before... Had to check it out.

 

After a long trek, we start seeing Sarnus (to the left of the ship):

 

Making the Tekto encounter burn :

 

Ha here's Tekto... What amazing clouds indeed! The green hue is very Kerbal-ish... Let's decelerate and land on it !!

 

Crossing into the very slim orange layer...

 

Still falling... The green clouds are back, and pretty thick :

 

Engine module jettisoned and Parachutes semi-deployment.  Still can't see a thing.

 

Parachute fully deployed... is that ground I am seeing ?

 

Yes, it is the ground... My is the Sun shy or what down there ! 

 

Touchdown !   Bob, you forgot the lights again didn't you ?

 

Jeb's first flag on Tekto... He's quite happy to have made the trip.

 

That's it.

Galileo, I loved every bit of it and you made Tekto justice. 
The clouds could start much higher in the atmosphere tho.  I don't know if it is possible to do well, but fist green layer ~80k, orange at ~60k, then re-green at ~45k all the way to about 1-3k from the surface or something. 
At any rate this is gorgeous. I sense an extensive exploration of Tekto is coming with my vacations this year.

Thank you.

[Maltman]

Just another routine trip to the mun. Bob made a loop on a free return trajectory bringing him home for a smooth re-entry. 

Feels good coming back to rockets after messing around with planes. Its like going back to ice cream after a day of eating salad. 

[Sharpy]

4 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Looks like you've got epic concepts for orbital utility (or sport) vehicles.

 

Utility. But for what purpose? Hint: the full set consists of the first vehicle and four copies of the second, differing by light colors and action groups.

[Galileo]

I made new city textures this evening

Edited August 24, 2016 by Galileo

[Joco223]

Today i have made a Venom FB 4 replica

Flies surprisingly good. Everything is stock except the wings and the 1m Panther (Tweakscale there) and the camera at the back. Takes off at about 70-80 m/s and it can glide up to 40 m/s. Note that it has all been tested in FAR and it can reach up to 290 m/s but i suggest not trying to turn at that speed (Ripped the wings a few times like that)

[rokkilbot]

Hey guys!

I was looking for a mod Convair Nexus and I couldnt find it anywhere. Can you guys help me? 

[Red Iron Crown]

5 minutes ago, rokkilbot said:

Hey guys!

I was looking for a mod Convair Nexus and I couldnt find it anywhere. Can you guys help me? 

Try here: 

 

[rokkilbot]

Thanks

 

 

When I went to that page yesterday it didnt work but now it does. Thanks for the reply

[eddiew]

Took on the Duna Programme from Strategia, and two Anomaly Surveyor contracts, resulting in a powerful monetary incentive to get some boots on the dusty red ground. Despite sinking nearly 300,000 roots into the Dunaworrybehappy, so far it's returned more than twice its own cost  

Since Flight's nightmare about a 118 year return mission, the engineering team has been instructed to be extra doublecautious in their designs. As such, the Dunaworrybehappy arrived with a significant excess of fuel still in the transfer stage. While it had always been the plan to leave a fuel depot in orbit for the return transfer, it seemed a waste to separate it from the large tanks of the outbound stage - so it wasn't.

This has resulted in a very unexpected situation! Having already visited the Face of Cydunia, the Dunaworrybehappy is once again brim full of fuel, as is its return tank. The chutes are repacked, and all transmissible science has been transmitted. Since the return window is still months away, this leaves an exciting opportunity that mission control is keep to take advantage of   Not least because they've been offered a cool half million roots to plant another flag. Why does this sort of offer only happen after the first mission? 

As for why Duna looks so spectacularly pretty, I'm laying that on Stock Visual Enhancements and Stock Visual Terrain ^^

Also... turns out that if it's a cloudy day, just timewarp a while and it might clear up. I did not know this, I thought it was always rainy 

Edited August 24, 2016 by eddiew

[Guest]

I landed the Mun base.

Never again. Er, at least not without major improvements to the landing system. It was incredibly squirrelly due to insufficient strutting, the mix of monoprop and fuel+oxidant engines made resource management really tricky, and being on a polar orbit I wasn't quiiite above the target when landing. I also didn't have enough delta-V on my orbiter to do most of the braking with it, which was my intention (careless launch). I ended up missing my intended landing site by about 4 km but the one I ended up in is not materially worse so I didn't bother driving. 

Compared to that, disassembling the stack and dropping the modules one by one was easy.

In any case it's there.

Next up, building a reusable lander that's able to refuel at the base and ferry passengers and materiel between Mun Base One and Mun Station One.

But... well yeah, I think I'll stick to simpler designs from now on.

Final approach.

Landed.

Lenfurt and Bill -- the survey team -- on the Kertoise rover, Valentina and Bob -- the base lander team -- next to the base.

Overview. Everyone's inside, celebrating.

[SmashingKirby148]

Changed some settings. Best choice I've ever made.

[GwynJHawke]

Built, launched, and completed my Magellan mission, a 7-Kerbal mission of two pilots, 1 engineer, and four scientists.  The mission took all seven Kerbalnauts to plant flags to the Mun and Minmus, and then pop outside of Kerbin SOI before burning towards home, all in a single go. This was a XP preamble for a 7 man mission to Duna called.... well, the PR people are still working on a catchy name for the mission.