What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Wasn't terribly busy over the weekend. Having unlocked Panther engines, I had Val fly a pair of upper-atmospheric pressure surveys in the vicinity of KSC and clear a pair of contracts in the process, earning enough science in the process to unlock Landing (there were better nodes to choose from but quite honestly I was tired of being told all my planes had "experimental parts", mainly). Next up was a test of a stack decoupler splashed down - I built a really primitive VTOL rig using a KER Balloon as its lift source and a Juno engine for forward momentum. I performed the test successfully, though it turned out the rig wasn't terribly buoyant and I wound up setting a record for a 240 depth before everything was said and done. Wasn't quick on the screenie button or I'd have something to show y'all this morning. Picked up/did a Structural Pylon test done and then finished up two sat placement contracts along with the early Munar flyby contract, returning Jeb safely to Kerbin. Upon his return, Jeb was sent to do surface EVA reports and crew reports up on the northern ice shelf:

Isn't this the part where the sub breaks through the ice to refuel Clint Eastwood's plane?

Bad Idea 2 landed and completed the mission without incident. I then had Jeb take off to another surface waypoint mission northeast of the crater rim, which required multiple reverts didn't go as smoothly though he did land safely with his plane entirely intact, and on the first try too. Jeb will be sent to conduct another three aerial surveys at various points across Kerbin pending the success of a satellite moving contract, whose burn is coming up in the next half hour (game time). I'll probably have Jeb tend to those flights after the sat's been dealt with, hopefully later today.

Edited July 31, 2017 by capi3101

[selfish_meme]

 

[RoadRunnerAerospace]

First duna landing of the season! woot!

grav. turn

heading off!

Batten down the hatches!

Good chute, jettison heat shield

its so twitchy!

duna dusk

 

those are the strongest solar panels i`ve ever seen

Edited July 31, 2017 by RoadRunnerAerospace

[MrWalrus123]

Hercules 4 became the first mission(s) to land a kerbal on Iota.

I always used the direct approach method on Iota/Mun missions, but I wanted a challenge. 

First a lander is sent up to an orbit around Iota

It goes to Iota, with the transfer stage left on

Then the crewed Hercules CSM goes up to Iota, with enough fuel to dock to the LM

About to dock

Leaving for Iota

Note next time I'll probably just do a direct approach, or I'll do something in-between, but when I send Kerbals to Ceti (like Minmus but Mun sized), I'll probably have to use this method.

[joacobanfield]

I launched a really ugly satellite to a polar Gael orbit.

Not only did the launch vehicle (Really just an 800 fuel tank, swivel, and winglets) rip itself off halfway to space, I had to burn the sat´s engine for a long time while inside the atmosphere just to just get it into orbit!

At least one solar panel survived...

[Kertech]

I initially tired EVE basic configs, and wow did it look pretty

 

Didn't affect my performance at all so did a brief saunter to the mun and back in the kerbalX

 

With everything looking soo nice I thought hey let's max it and get those massive files from SVE and SVT and my god it's pretty!!!

 

Might have just spent hours ogling the scenery!!

[Curveball Anders]

Sent a craft from 75x75km orbit to kissing Kerbin SOI with gravity assist from Mün using 847 m/s dV.

I was mighly chuffed.

 

[ptr421]

Launched a low-tech Lunar mission, or rather its beta version in the sandbox. I've started playing the new RP-0 tree using a mixture of Russian and American hardware launching from Alaska. There's an awesome spreadsheet that computes launch windows to the Moon from higher latitudes, however it assumes heading directly east, which would mean dropping stages on BC/Continental US. Though it also outputs LAN of the desired orbit which is fairly easy to reach after a couple of test flights in sandbox. 

LR89 1st stage, RD0105 2nd, Altair solid rocket motor for the transfer. The last one limits the TLI capacity, the LV could obviously bring up more. 

300x250 km orbit at 64,5° inclination. Well away from the west coast. Bit too high, I can't really fly high-thrust ascents properly. 

Overburned slightly, using onboard supply of N2O to correct. 

Burning for orbit. The probe is a variant of my early egg orbiters with lighter avioncs and N2O tanks instead of batteries. 

Captured in a 12h orbit. 

Edited July 31, 2017 by ptr421

[VenDei]

The P-K 04 "Jenny Lind" after some experimental builds and shakedowns is finally in productive use!

[spacecookie]

I cheated to get elegant screenshots

 

[SpecialSpock]

I finally completed my "sequel" to Danny2462's Secret Agent Kirrim, after bypassing the date that I originally promised to upload on due to a hospital visit. Here's the video if you wanna watch it! 

 

[invision]

got a mission to expand the party station and forgot how bad it cripples my fps

i use this to send retired kerbals to after they perform years long science trips for me

[XB-70A]

Today was soft and gives the opportunity to end the tests of Ariadne.

Like the first model built I decided to fit her with dual LRB and SRB, making her looking like the real 44LP variant :

Payload mass increased to 11.35 tons instead of the 7 of the first 40-like variant. The targeted orbit altitude also was increased, rising from 20 000 km to 60 000 km. These small change made it necessary to "upgrade" the launcher.

 

Just like the precedent craft built a year ago I decided to make an Ariane 44LP, which mean dual P.A.L (Propulseurs d'Appoint Liquide - Liquid Boosters) and P.A.P (Propulseurs d'Appoint a Poudre or Solid Rocket Booster). Even if my favorite variante (and the most powerful of all) is the 44L, I decided to make the 44LP once again as it gives to possibility to switch to any other variant easily and quickly by using the hangar Angle Snap.

 

Engines also were reviewed, as both P.A.Ls now are equipped with a Reliant and a Thud, giving to each a thrust of 31 tons and a burn time of 70 sec at full trust but for an individual cost of 3720 funds.

 

P.A.Ps for their parts still consisted of the original Thumper boosters, both reduced to 90% of their full thrust. This reduction gives them about six seconds more of burn, the price for its part being of 1125 funds. Just like Ariane 44LP their ignition happen after the mains stage and liquid boosters had started.

 

P.A.Ls separation at the good time. Each of them features a Sepratron with just 0.8 of solid fuel, enough to ensure a good and quick clearance of the main stage.

 

First stage shut down and separation at T-02:13, at a speed of 1500 m/s and an altitude of 49 km. The super thin atmosphere made that, at the opposite of real life, the fairing was separated at the same time than the main stage.

 

Second stage lighted. With dual Swivel trying to imitate Viking 4B and three FL-T800 forming it, it get enough punch to push the satellite to a speed of 2400 m/s.

 

The two Terrier still are present to take care of the load. Despite a small lack of power they still are making their job pretty well. And after all, the real life HM7B also is not really what we could call a punching rocket engine.

 

The rest of the flight just was normal with a thirteen days transfer to 60 000 km, the whole system needing around 200 m/s more to complete a nearly nice circularization.

Still 635 m/s available but once again the third stage was separated, leaving the ugly 11.35 tons payload all alone.

 

However with a more than 60 000 funds launch price, this kind of Ariane 44LP replica can't be used as a good light/medium launcher. Something which is not going better as the payload has to be built with 1.25 m, limiting even more the possibilities. Unless ugly and ridiculous 2.5 m parts are built on. To me it didn't count so much more as Ariane 4 is my second most loved launcher, just after Zenit. But in a hard career mod it nearly had zero strategic values.

If somebody want to try it the craft file has been uploaded on KerbalX.

[Spaceman17]

made a flight with CST-100 cargo

the upper stage can easly put it in orbit of 150,000 m above kerbin, and with it's engines, it can increase to 200,000 m and get back home, anyhow, it only can be 2 days in independet flight on the cargo version, in manned version is undefined, it can also dock to any space station, that commony puts in 100,000 metters orbit

it's usefull for crew rotation and food deliver, in cargo version, after food was delivered, it fills with trash and deorbits for being destroyed in the surface

[qzgy]

Lots of dogfighting. Lots and Lots of it.

[selfish_meme]

Resurrected this tool for KSP 1.3 by @Dasoccerguy , still needs work

I did this picture in a previous version of KSP, many of you might remember @zekes @Starwhip and @esinohio's renders as well

Edited August 1, 2017 by selfish_meme

[CaptainTrebor]

Built my largest ever working SSTO, weighing 62.81 tons at launch, and flew it to Minmus and back.

[capi3101]

In the middle of fabricating the first expansion for a card game I'm working on, and on getting the core game ready to print. It's eating up a lot of my spare time at the moment (and since I'm making the expansion by hand, my hand aches quite a bit right now...).

Yesterday I'm moved the Beep-Beep 7 probe to a new orbit for contract, relabeling it as comm relay Kerbin Gamma once that was done. The proceeds went to upgrade the Astronaut Center to Level 3, putting me at the halfway mark for facilities upgrades to full. That was all I was able to accomplish...

 

Earlier this morning I was able to send Jeb out to do two aerial surveys on Kerbin aboard Bad Idea 2, this from a spot in the Grasslands northeast of the crater rim, where he'd finished up a ground survey in the area (after having done a similiar ground survey up on the Northern Ice Shelf the day before). He cleared both contracts handily before returning to KSC 27 with an 18% fuel reserve (for the record, Bad Idea 2 has three Mk1 fuel tanks and two Panther engines, and was running on afterburner a good portion of the flight). In the process, he circumnavigated Kerbin at altitudes below 20,000 meters (I seem to recall there being a challenge for that sort of thing at one time or another). In the wake of his return, I picked up another aerial temperature survey on Kerbin and two LKO rescue contracts. Since I now have four LKO rescue contracts, I plan to do some changes to the Kerbal Tour Bus to give the thing more delta-V and then send it out to pick up all four rescuees at once. Will let y'all know how that goes when the time comes.
 

[Spaceman17]

more testing of the capsule given me to thatm it's enough powerfull to go to an orbit of 400 km and back, even better.

anyhow the both capsules, won't have SAS after 2.5 days, but the crew version is still working after that

here are the pictures

they are happy but i had an issue with parachute and they are K.I.A.

[StupidAndy]

2 hours ago, Spaceman17 said:

<SNIP>

what version are you using, it looks older

[kerbinorbiter]

he is using 0.90 he told me in the discord invite you can see below...

[Brownhair2]

I now have quite the fleet of rockets on its way to Duna!

This is gonna be my first base on another planet! Well, moon of another planet. But still! I'm excited! 

[Daeridanii]

Started working on a (stock) replica of the Marvel Quinjet. Autostruts abound!

Unfortunately, part clipping leads to headroom issues...

[Flamingo]

I sent two spaceships towards Jool today, well one spaceship and one space station. Having a station around Jool has been a dream of mine for a while, so it's great that I have finally gotten it done, now I will just have to wait for it to reach its destination.

The picture I got of the station is quite horrible tbh.
The burn took a bit more than 10 min, but it is also a quite heavily loaded ship.

 

Here is the ship that is carrying most of the crew that will man the station, and later some bases and other stations around the Joolian moon system. I think I have 6 kerbals aboard the station, and 15 aboard the ship, mostly pilots and scientists. 
This picture was better, you can even see Minmus, Mun and Kerbin down in the right corner, Kerbin is only a few pixels tho. 

[Ultimate Steve]

Remember when I said Stargazer 6 was successful? And had a "dummy" upper stage that was not needed?

So, I launched Stargazer 7, the goal of which was to take Bill Kerman to Low Lunar Orbit. However, upon return, I realized that I had neglected to fix the upper stage.

So now he is stranded around the Moon with 52 days of life support left.

I built Stargazer 8, which is mostly the same as 7 but without the science experiments and LES, and with a working upper stage and a probe core for the capsule. The only problem is that it will take 81 days to build.

So, I clicked on the "rush build 10%" button, like, 7 times and now it will be ready in 26. But it takes five days to roll out for some reason. Now, let's hope I can save Bill!

/run dramaticvoice.exe

Bring. Him. Home.