What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Julien Kerman]

Venus Crew SOI switch!

Guys get ready for aerobreak!

Captured.....after a few attempts.

The Intercept with the station took a lot of deltaV. First, I had to correct the inclination (~600m/s deltaV), then I had to match the velocity of both vessels (~750m/s deltaV) and the final intercept burn took another 14 m/s deltaV. 

Using the RSSVE mod, which adds this thick cloud cover to Venus, means a docking maneuver with 9 FPS.

Look how happy they are . They are the first Kerbals to fly-by and enter into orbit around a different planet.

The first return possibility is in T-502 days. I will take it because the station has no extra docking port for resupply missions, and they will run out of food, water and oxygen in 876 days. 

Edited October 14, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[CatastrophicFailure]

42 minutes ago, Dark Lion said:

We're assuming she's off duty and George actually paid her

Ruh roh! 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

1 hour ago, invision said:

if you want some stability add 2 fins like this to the main tank <snip>

Thanks for the tip, but the thing has been stable for my purposes. The last picture might look like it's having stability problems, but that is simply the program rolling the shuttle from the belly-up orientation to the belly-down orientation, meanwhile keeping the nose pulled back a bit to keep the SMEs properly aligned with launch trajectory in case they're still burning (in this case they're not).

Edited October 14, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[LABenterprises]

I finished making what seems to be just about the ultimate supercar.

I've actually been developing the methods that would lead to this for several weeks but now that its finally complete I'm very happy with it.

You can find it here. https://kerbalx.com/LABenterprises/LAB-DESTINY

[JadeOfMaar]

2 hours ago, Dark Lion said:

 

The childhood! Right in the childhood!

[PaperAviator]

 

[Jett_Quasar]

Today I posted a hovering version of my Star Destroyer design to my Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X

 - Jett

[dvp]

Just for kicks, landed my Mun mining rig next to the first lander I put on the Mun, back at the beginning of my career save, for a photo op. (Like 30 years of game time.)

 

 

Memories... light the corners of my mind... Misty water-colored memories.... Of the way... we were...

[MoarBoostersRUS]

Did testing of my flyby craft to see if I could find an optimal route in RSS to visit all the planets, did some bouncing between earth and Venus got a random encounter with mars made it out to Jupiter then messed up the encounter and it got whipped into interstellar space with no hope of return at least it was only a simulation and no kerbals where harmed in the process. Back to the drawing board!

[ColdSpace]

I sent a craft with enough delta v to maybe get to Jool all the way to Sarnus(I have outer planets pack). It was the first time I had done an interplanetary mission relying mainly on gravity assists. How many? 2 horribly inefficient Eve assists, 2 incredibly efficient Kerbin assists, a pointless Jool assist I couldn't avoid, a second Jool assist that I used to slow myself down(apoapsis went all the way to Neidon), and 2 slate assists. this took in total about 5-8 hours and I ended up landing at Tekto. I get out to plant a flag... and Bill goes along and breaks all but 3 of my solar panels...I facepalm and to back to the space center. Thanks Bill.

[Ultimate Steve]

It's been a while since my last update on RORP-0...

Current plans:

1. Send small fleet of ships to Mars
2. Land humans on the moon a fourth time
3. Collect 8 million funds from a contract
4. Finish Lunar Space Station
5. Supervise arrival of Jupiter/Saturn probes
6. Build Mars or Venus mothership
7. Go to Mars/Venus

So, pictures:

Another module of Eclipse Station.

Unfortunately, due to a control problem I had to put people on that mission... Not the greatest idea, but necessary. The first crew was not supposed to arrive until after the station had been completed. However, having crew this early has some benefits, namely we can test the lander (not shown yet) manned. However, they do have return capability, Yonder 1 (the ship on the bottom) was supposed to be an unmanned test. Looks like the stakes just got a bit higher...

Also, a Mu IV launched Planetoid 10, which will hopefully be the first Venus lander.

Another Gravity III launching the utility module of Eclipse Station. This is module 5 of 7.

Two Gravity IV rockets were launched with near identical payloads, the Mars and Venus communications networks, consisting of four satellites and in the case of Mars a Phobos/Demios lander.

After that, Tranquility, the reusable lunar lander, was launched on a Gravity IB.

This lander is unique in the fact that it is powered by 6 RTG rockets, giving a specific impulse of 650s.

Also launched on a Gravity IB was Dream I - Planetoid 8.

It is a super heavy Mars lander which was supposed to have a huge fuel margin but it actually doesn't. It might not work at all because I didn't leave at the optimal time.

I also tried to build the smallest orbital rocket I could. I ended up at 1.9 tons, which is better than the IRL record, which is 2.6 tons.

And lastly, on a Mu V, Planetoid 9, a tiny Mars probe which will serve as a backup for Planetoid 10.

Unfortunately, the rocket strayed from its planned course. The fuel tank burnt up in the atmosphere (I call BS on that! I was at 77km doing 3km/s!) causing the rocket to collapse in on itself.

This is the first failure of the Mu V - and the first failure of the Mu series in a very long time. This would be akin to seeing an Ariane 5 blowing up in real life.

Unfortunately, this failure puts Mu V at either 75% or 80% reliability. I forget how many flights it has had, but it's relatively new.

However, as the ideal transfer window is still 50-60 days away I can build another one in time for Mars, it will just arrive late.

 

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

26 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

This would be akin to seeing an Ariane 5 blowing up in real life.

In that case, sure it wasn’t an error in the flight control software?

[MoarBoostersRUS]

That feeling you get when you keep failing at something in RSS so you go land on Gilly to make yourself feel better. 

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

In that case, sure it wasn’t an error in the flight control software?

I was thinking more due to the fact that it was a lifter that had failed, but not recently. I had originally typed Atlas V, but Mu actually has failed before, but it has been reliable since then.

Ariane 5's problem was that it got to level 255 of Pac-man.

[Ultimate Steve]

Also I downloaded Kronal Vessel Viewer, spent a while snapping away, resizing photos, and in general editing a lot of stuff. I wasn't able to get the scales exactly right, but here's what I've got after an hour and a half of effort:

 

Hmm, I thought the sizes would be a lot different than they actually are. The payload capacities, however, are dramatically different, seeing as Mu 0 has a <1t capacity to LEO and Mu V has a 20t capacity...

My plan is to eventually make a chart with all of my RO rockets on it. I was going to make one for the Gravity series next. However, the game crashed upon loading the file.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Continued working on the shuttle launch script. Almost done with the main part of the script.

Latest test was doing the circularization burn...

Looks like I'll need to add a function in to pump fuel around, vary thrust distribution between SMEs, or both to account for shifting of the center of mass.

It did get within 1/10th of a degree of the desired orbit inclination however!

Thinking I might add an extra thingy that suggests (and perhaps performs the first steps of) the appropriate abort mode if the abort action group is hit.

[harrisjosh2711]

First full test run of the BFR booster return.

 

[Azimech]

Stock car, just painted.

Did some work on my extreme racer. Reduced mass with 1500kg, it's at 4.6t now. Reduced number of Juno's from 8 to 6 because the extra mass doesn't help while braking or cornering. Also made the spoilers deploy while braking. Newest trick: I angled the spoilers in such a way they reduce body roll and actually push the car in the direction of cornering if body roll does occur.

 

Top speed: 170 m/s+.
Max G while accelerating: 2.9.
Max G while braking: 3.4.
Max G while cornering: 24!

Now I need a good pilot with lightning fast reflexes. Maybe I should put something like 700 parts somewhere on the KSC to slow the game down.

 

[Julien Kerman]

Today I added the first of two solar arrays to my Space Station.....,

....placed a satellite in Geostationary orbit using an IUS transfer stage....

...and I sent a Callisto Lander Probe to the Jupiter system.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[Jett_Quasar]

Today I posted my Space Freighter to may Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X

It's based on this design:

 - Jett

Edited October 15, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[Shadowmage]

Today I (mostly) got the Unity Standard (PBR) shaders working in KSP:

That's not just texture-replacer making things reflective; its the full Unity 5 'Physically Based Rendering' pipeline, including full control over diffuse, metal, and gloss inputs.

(Follow this work / view more of it at : https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117090-wip131-sstulabs-low-part-count-solutions-orbiters-landers-lifters-dev-thread-10-09-17/&page=279 )

It has some problems with visual enhancement mods (EVE/Scatterer), but I'm working on sorting those out currently.

[scottadges]

44 minutes ago, Jett_Quasar said:

Today I posted my Space Freighter to may Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X

It's based on this design:

 - Jett

You make the best stuff, seriously dude!

22 hours ago, Dark Lion said:

 

Excellent use of the cabin with the windows for eyes. How did you do the eyebrows?

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished the plugin code for Pathfinder's "Pipeline" mass driver:

The Pipeline lets you transfer resources between vessels and craft. Well, not just resources...

You can load KIS inventory items into the mass driver, and transfer them as well. Now I just need to make the ground an orbital versions of the part...

[Leopard]

Tried to bring my "Duna Express" mission home, starting in an elliptical inclined Kerbin orbit where it returned from Duna.

after about two hours of gaming I have now given up.

Can get the craft to a nice circular LKO, but after half a dozen attempts every single time results in the game "locked" to the craft and unable to return to Kerbin so as to send up the crew return craft to meet with it.

 

Games known to be broken, still waiting for the "early next year" patch to sort this out, for over a year now..

[scottadges]

I went to Jool! At least, a series of flybys in testing for My First Joolian Mission. This is actually a personal KSP milestone, since I've only ever messed around in Kerbin's SOI.

This spacecraft is the Mk2 version of the nuclear-powered, Ion-driven probe (featuring a lot of mods, judicious use of TweakScale, and intelligent part clipping).

Edited October 15, 2017 by scottadges