What did you do in KSP1 today?

[DeltaDizzy]

6 hours ago, capi3101 said:

&sNIp& Imgur's not the only picture sharing option out there, but for the KSP forums it's the most popular choice. I use it.

I use discord.

[Jett_Quasar]

I was getting really, really tired of making Star Wars replicas and so I thought what is the FARTHEST thing from that?  Battlestar Galactica of course!

You can download the stock SSTO Viper HERE

 - Jett

Edited October 22, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[Boganaut]

Solved an interesting problem with my "Duna Invasion Fleet" clump of vessels (DAV, orbital lab, fuel storage and refinery, 4 comms satellites, Ike miner & 2 ore barges all bolted together with struts & couplers). Scenario is this:

Due to me being sloppy, the fleet arrived in retrograde orbit around Duna and with very low fuel reserves. There was just enough for one of the nuclear powered ore barges to shunt the miner into Ike orbit and the miner had enough fuel to land. When it cheerfully returned from the surface with a full load of ore, it refuelled the ore barge and itself. THEN things got interesting.

The ore barge broke Ike orbit with its 6000 units ore and 400 liquid fuel. I quickly found I had only a fraction of the fuel I would require to get it into retrograde orbit from Ike. Managed to get it back to Ike for a top up then performed the following excellent manouvre.....

Instead of dropping into Duna obit again, I accelerated 107m/s using Ike as a slingshot to put me on a Duna escape trajectory. At the edge of SOI, velocity was about 90m/s. I killed that to zero with a retro burn and it fell back into a needle shaped orbit. I then burned at 270 degrees to achieve the desired direction of orbit, leaving the periapsis at 23km to make use of aerobraking. After a few grazes through the atmosphere at different heights and some orbital adjustments, the ore barge finally docked with the (ahem) "Fleet". Had about 10 units fuel to spare and about 25% monopropellant remaining (I used this fairly gratuitously at apoapsis when making adjustments to aerobraking altitudes and relied on it entirely for raising periapsis all the way back up into SPAAAAAACE!!!). With the 6000 units of ore, the increasingly asymmetric clump will be able to alter to an eastward orbit for easy Ike-Duna transfers.

I've shared this little series of events in case the manouvre is of some use to someone in a similar situation. Not sure if there is a name for it... I'm referring to it as "The Arrested Slingshot".

 

[Geonovast]

14 hours ago, Thorn_Ike said:

Do I need imgur? can I not just upload my screenies?

I use CubeUpload.  I don't think they could have made it more straightforward, and unless you need to manage a lot of pictures so you can easily re-use them, you don't even need an account.  The only downside I've seen is no albums - everything's lumped together, so I just made a few accounts.

1 hour ago, Boganaut said:

I've shared this little series of events in case the manouvre is of some use to someone in a similar situation. Not sure if there is a name for it... I'm referring to it as "The Arrested Slingshot".

How about "The Boganaut Maneuver"

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I've accomplished quite a few things over the course of my KSP career. I've mined Moho, launched from Eve, landed a plane on Laythe and build a station around Pol but none of that could have prepared me for what I was to attempt next: To land on a planet that doesn't even exist!

Okay, I know, the "Dres doesn't exist" joke is getting old. Still, this is my first landing on the planet, albeit unmanned. I'd already put a science/relay/scanner satellite into polar orbit around the world but I'd never touched its surface (outside of F5F9 "simulations".)

The purpose of the landing was to install an unmanned (although it does have crew capacity that's not currently being used) mining outpost on Dres's surface. I'd done something similar on Moho but unlike that outpost this one would use full-sized drills and ISRU equipment, allowing for much quicker fuel production. It touched down without issue, using its fuel transport vehicle's rockets to lower it to the surface. Its landing site had roughly 11% ore and its drills and ISRU went to work immediately. Good thing, too, since the first ship it's going to need to refuel (the Explorer 1 science ship) is already en route. Explorer 1 is packing enough liquid fuel that it would probably be able to turn around and return to Kerbin even if the outpost mission had failed, but without oxidizer it wouldn't have been able to send its lander down to the surface, making the mission a bit of a waste.

[Julien Kerman]

The Venus station crew fulfilled this contract:

I think the payment is way to overpowered.... And I am playing with only 65% rewards.

Then I fueled up the Command Module, transferred all the remaining supplies to it and did the return burn.

Bye Venus....I wont see you soon. The next step is obviously Mars 

 

[joacobanfield]

I named a rover the Renard Miraculeux and sent it to Iota.

The name is fitting.

[Geonovast]

Soooo I'm really really bad at shuttles.  Both launching and re-entry.  But I think I figured out a workaround for the whole ridiculously unbalanced launch thing.  Two at once!

[Agustin]

PLAYING WITH PRINCIPIA MOD..... ohhh it is so fun.... I think everyone should take a look at that Mod...

 

[Delay]

It's a mod I'm very interested in checking out, but that's not possible at the moment.

The PC I'm writing this from still runs Windows XP, funnily enough. I play KSP on a different machine and currently have a career going there (I coming back from Duna and I start to explore Eve, when should I launch?). As soon as my PC has W7/10, Principia will be the first mod I want to try.

Is it very different? Or can you use patched conic knowledge for n-body too?

[Dud3x]

Killing some kerbals.

[Zeiss Ikon]

5 hours ago, Boganaut said:

Instead of dropping into Duna obit again, I accelerated 107m/s using Ike as a slingshot to put me on a Duna escape trajectory. At the edge of SOI, velocity was about 90m/s. I killed that to zero with a retro burn and it fell back into a needle shaped orbit. I then burned at 270 degrees to achieve the desired direction of orbit, leaving the periapsis at 23km to make use of aerobraking. After a few grazes through the atmosphere at different heights and some orbital adjustments, the ore barge finally docked with the (ahem) "Fleet". Had about 10 units fuel to spare and about 25% monopropellant remaining (I used this fairly gratuitously at apoapsis when making adjustments to aerobraking altitudes and relied on it entirely for raising periapsis all the way back up into SPAAAAAACE!!!). With the 6000 units of ore, the increasingly asymmetric clump will be able to alter to an eastward orbit for easy Ike-Duna transfers.

Going way up high is the only practical way to change from prograde to retrograde (or vice versa).  Adding the aerobraking is a nice way to get from "long skinny orbit you can change cheaply" to "an orbit like ordinary people would use for ordinary purposes."  I've done it in Kerbin's SOI when I was trying to intercept an asteroid, though I didn't aerobrake because I was trying to match with the asteroid well before periapsis (it was on a collision course, I was trying to divert and capture at the same time -- I failed, BTW).

Of course, if it's an orbit around the Sun, it takes years to get that high and years more to fall back, leading folks trying to rescue a retrograde Kerbal to do it the hard way.

[Skylon]

I did some career stuff; I jumped from ~50 science to 2,500 science with a simple Minmus mission visiting the Highlands, Midlands and Lowlands. Selling that amount of science could almost pay for the 133,000 funds mission with the 'Research Rights Sell-Out' strategy. I don't play career much and never got far with any of them, so that's probably my biggest gain yet.

No pictures unfortunately (it was a standard mission anyway, so wouldn't have been of any interest).

[Jett_Quasar]

The Craft file for the Battlestar Galactica has now been posted to Kerbal-X

 - Jett

[capi3101]

(1.3.0) In my litterbox save yesterday, I launched my first Heighliner 7 craft, an Alcubierre Drive-powered ferry (a mothership, for lack of a better term):

Little Boy in HKO.

The ship was dubbed Little Boy upon reaching the drive's operational failsafe orbit. The first intended mission of the ship will be to haul some infrastructure out to Jool and put Kerbals on each of the moons out there. Rules of the challenge prevent warp drives, otherwise I'd be using this as a Jool 5 run.

I still needed to get Jeb and Val back from LKO, so I went up an Auk Ia rescue spaceplane to rendezvous with their Missing Link 7 craft, deorbit it and then transfer the two of them and whatever fuel the craft had left to the plane. The plane was then sent on a course to rendezvous with Little Boy, but owing to a foul up with the rendezvous, the plane ran out of gas in HKO. I'll now have to send a refueling tanker to rendezvous with them so they can get the rest of the way there. All in all, I'd say this was a reasonable rehearsal run for when I anticipate doing these same kinds of things later on in my career save, when I can start using the same craft for similar purposes.

Also spent some time over the weekend trying to grok the underlying mathematics of delta-v maps; I kept on getting numbers that didn't completely jive with the published maps out there. Wondering what I'm doing wrong exactly...

Edited October 23, 2017 by capi3101

[RX2000]

A few days ago I started a brand new career with a ton of mods installed. Main ones being Unmanned Before Manned, Community Tech Tree, & TAC Life Support. So far I've sent up several unmanned probes, got a couple CommSats in orbit, & have made 1 manned launch to orbit & do a spacewalk. Thats it so far. Seems like its going well & I really like the life support mod.

[Azimech]

I've made a stock rover for the most unlikely place in the solar system ... Gilly.

This fast rover uses two ion engines pointing to the sky to help making jumps shorter.

Look at that surface speed. With a little over 30 m/s you have enough to leave the SOI.

 

There are lots of propulsion and control options. RCS all around, ion and electric motors. SAS modules have hotkeys to switch between control methods.

It's packed with tech too. Science stuff, fuel cell arrays etc. Still only 114 parts and less than 8t.

 

Those eyes ... those eyes ... I really like them!

[CatastrophicFailure]

21 minutes ago, Azimech said:

I've made a stock rover for the most unlikely place in the solar system ... Gilly.

. . .

Take it off any sweet jumps?

[The Flying Kerbal]

There it sits... it looks harmless, yet seldom has one rocket been responsible for such misery, swearing and frustration.

Underneath that seemingly innocent fairing lurks a hat-trick of satellites

There they are, that's them right there... "Pain", "Frustration" and "Heartbreak".  They look like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths while in the VAB, but these three little <BLEEPS> would give me one of the hardest most grindy sessions of KSP I've ever endured.  The idea was simple enough, launch the three little shi... launch the three little satellites into a geostationary orbit around Kerbin.  It would be fun, right?

The launch went off smoothly enough, and here we see the three devils with the fairing jettisoned, being moved into position for the first to be deployed.

The first deployed without a hitch.  Here we see it facing Kerbin as the sun rises over the planet's edge.

Unfortunately this was where all the fun and enjoyment came to an abrupt end.  I fiddled and futtered trying to get those little swine to stay in their positions in relation to Kerbin, constantly adjusting their orbits and trying to stop them wandering all over the place, but alas with no luck.  After six hours of rapid hair pulling, questioning the parentage of these satellites, and almost hopping the computer of the nearest wall in bad temper, I'd had enough, the time had come to issue the terminate commands from the Tracking Station.  With grim satisfaction and a smile on my face, I relished pressing the red button like it was a fine wine, and cleared the universe of all traces that three such evil space craft had ever existed.  I switched off the computer, and had myself a cuppa tea.  However being a sucker for punishment, I went back as soon as the tea was finished.

Forty five minutes later and we got this {shrugs shoulders}:

Edited October 24, 2017 by The Flying Kerbal
Spelling Mistake

[something]

While my carrier is still carrying out its refuelling operations, Kerbin, Sol and the Mun just rose above the eastern horizon of the flats...

 

[Tyko]

27 minutes ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

Forty five minutes later and we got this {shrugs shoulders}:

Congrats! Sorry to hear of your frustrations. setting those up can be a real pain. The trick I've learned is to determine the period for one full orbit, then set your launcher on an elliptical orbit exactly 1/3 that period with your launcher's AP at the target altitude. On the first pass you drop off you first sat and circularize it. On the next pass you drop off the second, then repeat for the third. You can also do 2/3 if that's easier. 2/3 puts your launcher on a more circular orbit meaning it takes less DV for the sat to circularize.  

Kerbal Engineer Redux has an orbital period readout - hope this helps!

Edited October 23, 2017 by Tyko

[Kosmonaut]

1 hour ago, Azimech said:

I've made a stock rover for the most unlikely place in the solar system ... Gilly.

That's kind of like the rovers and spacesuits from Armageddon.

Minus the bs physics...

[Ultimate Steve]

I attempted to design a super heavy orbital rocket.

 

[Kosmonaut]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I attempted to design a super heavy orbital rocket.

That's hilarious...

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

I tried to launch my first manned Duna mission. The mission was going ok. I placed my ship in orbit, made a Homman transfer to Duna, made a aerobrake to get me into the orbit of Duna, and  after all this i landed on Duna.

I started my trip to back to Kerbin, orbited Duna, and i made a Homman transfer to Kerbin. I entered in the Kerbin SOI, and i tried to make a aerobrake. But my fuel ended during the burn.

Now i have to get out and push, but i will try this tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Edited October 24, 2017 by Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut