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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Nobody's Fuel

After a long hiatus, I came back to a fresh install of KSP and decided to start off a sandbox mode session with some fresh designs rather than resurrect my old saves.

Surprisingly, my first attempt actually made it into orbit. Inspired, I began my usual process of sending up fuel tankers and linking them together with docking hubs to create basic space stations.

After creating fully-fueled cruciform stations at 500km, 5Mm and 25Mm orbits above Kerbin, I realized/remembered the nuclear engines I was using for all exoatmospheric flight don't use oxidizer. And here are all these space stations loaded with more oxidizer than liquid fuel.

Kaboom! All stations deleted. Goodbye everything, hello next round of designs omitting oxidizer and featuring a LOT more exoatmospheric delta-v.

10/10, would screw up again. :cool:

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46 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Are you using drooping wings there instead of flaps??

Nope, and there's no angle of incidence anywhere. The wing assembly (wing segment and tailfin) are ahead of the CoM and CoL so the fin swings the opposite way on control input.

ojDAAe4.jpg

Edited by JadeOfMaar
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So after maxing out the tech tree on my second career after barely leaving Kerbin's SOI, I started a new career on higher difficulty.  No reverting & buying parts after unlocking the science nodes is quite a bit more of a challenge - and more fun.   This morning, I had both my first launch abort & my first time nursing a damaged rocket to orbit. 

Launch 1: A lander intended for Mun with 1 freshly added kerbonaut & 3 tourists aboard.  The launch vehicle was a new 2.5m body with 4x1.25m Fulcrum engines from MOLE along with 2 short radial 2.5m boosters with Skippers.  The radial boosters had stock radial decouplers & a SpaceY seperatron nose cone for staging.  Unfortunately, the nose cone imparted so much spin on staging, the skippers caught 2 of the 4 main engines.  I had the thought that if only 1 was hit I might have still made orbit, but with 2 gone my TWR was down to ~0.7.  Much to my surprise, the abort worked flawlessly & all kerbals survived for round 2.

Launch 2: Same design, same victims er passengers.  I just set the nose seperatron thrust limiter to 50% & moved the decoupler down a little.  Launched again & discovered that my redesign wasn't quite enough as one of the main engines was still destroyed.  On the plus side, I was right about being able to make orbit on the remaining 3 & managed to complete the missions.  Except for actually planting a flag on the Mun.  Maybe 3rd time will be the charm, just need some more volunteers.

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6 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Getting to the point in my latest (1.3.1) campaign where it starts to get interesting...  prepping asteroid rendezvous missions, circum-Munar flybys, and the first interplanetary probes are arriving at their destinations.

Interestingly, Kerbin captured a C-class asteroid without my having to do anything, so it appears that we have a new moonlet.  Trying to come up with an appropriately Kerbal name for it (Miniminmus has been rejected by the Kerbal Astronomical Union).  Definitely will make the asteroid rendezvous a bit easier.

This happened to me once, even turned out to be a magic asteroid too.

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First fly test for my Duna mothership.... Just to check that it does not explode directly.

The ship is 107m long for mass of nearly 700 tons and almost 1000 parts. The final ship will be little bit bigger since 4 rovers and two tugboats were missing in this test.

The test was a success ! The ship can move and fire its nuclear engines without twisting and bending (thank you autostruts).

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The other night I returned the Seal spaceplane tanker from orbit.  Overshot the KSC because I tried for too aggressive a descent but lacked the oxidizer pull off the full burn.  Ended up over the ocean with just enough liquid fuel to get to land.  Realized too late my flaps were extending the wrong direction during breaking, flipped the craft nose-up, came down hard on the back end.  

Fortunately it lithobreaked effectively.  Lost a couple R.A.I.P.I.E.R. units but the thing fell over onto its wheels, otherwise intact.  Managed to recover it and recoup most of the hardware cost.  

Decided to tweak the design incorporating these lessons.  I had a surplus of monopropellant but maneuvering with it was sluggish, so I doubled the number of RCS ports.  That lets me use up excess monoprop doing long-burn maneuvers to set up rendezvous without spending oxidizer and liquid fuel.  Removed the breaking from the flaps, but I added a couple pairs of A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. to the rear of the craft, as I lost some control during descent and it took me until just a few thousand meters above the ocean before I could recover control.  Rendezvous and landing should be easier next time.

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Made a lucky pair of high-speed encounters:

intercept-race.jpg

I was on-course to rendezvous with a kerbal to rescue in 1h30m, then Proto Station some hours later.  Switching to their wreck, I realized it would pass Proto Station by 7km in 26 minutes!  My rescue craft burned 240m/s to get there first and accomplish the entire flight plan in one swell foop.  That's the fastest I've ever flown a spacesuit anywhere...

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On 11/18/2017 at 4:02 AM, carmenara said:

The chin radome reminds me more of the Tu-142

 

========

Here's a simple cruise missile / drone. Stick it on a truck or make a modern containerized antiship missile out of it.

y7d7cVb.jpg

Download : https://kerbalx.com/pandoraskitten/D-10C-RPV

 

What mod adds the military base style KSC?  It looks really cool, especially for taxiing with aircraft.

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9 minutes ago, HeliosPh0enix said:

What mod adds the military base style KSC?  It looks really cool, especially for taxiing with aircraft.

IIRC, it should be kerbinside.

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Sent a 3-module (engine, fuel tank, crew module) spacecraft to Duna orbit. Crew was Jeb (obviously), and Bob & Bill. Before the launch of the crew, realized that I'd need more life support stuff, and sent up a small probe along with the crew. Ended up using around half of the life support :P

Later, during the return to Kerbin, the ship got in a weird polar orbit with an apoapsis of ~3,000 km and a periapsis of ~80km. Received 1260 precious :science:

Maybe I should make that ship reusable. Oh well.

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Module A has finally, finally, FINALLY arrived in orbit around Minmus.

min-station.jpg

With it I should be able to simultaneously satisfy about 4 contracts - build a base around minmus, explore minmus, plant a flag on minmus, etc, etc.

Not pictured, a rocket rover rover already enroute to the surface.

Also, figured out a way to fuel long-distance things.  They'll pay me 40,000 to do a simple LKO rescue.  For that I can send up my super-long-range rescuer, which includes a ton more fuel, dock it, and keep that fuel for other use.

Edited by Corona688
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My name is wumpus and I overbuild.

Last night I needed to scoop up two scientists (the training run was the big project of the night), so I grabbed an off the shelf "rescue rocket".  Since I needed to rescue two I added a landercan.  I, uh, had enough delta-v to rescue both of them (was running a little low on monopropellant just from the mk1 capsule) without adding any more fuel or boosters. Yes, my stock "rescue rocket" has enough fuel to handle twice the mass to LKO and rendezvous.

[my "record" for overbuilding was probably a [sandbox] Duna mission where I didn't need *half* my delta-v.  The thing had a NERV and tons of fuel.  I may have needed the NERV for capture (but not Kerbin-Duna transfer) but KSP deleted it while orbiting Duna (possibly because it was between Duna's atmosphere level and Kerbin's?).  I still managed to get home on the fuel in the lander.  In my defense, I think I was running stock at the time thanks to an upgrade and my mod stack crashing the "new improved KSP".]

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Flying out and playing around at Old KSC, I put some runway marker flags up. I decided, maybe runway lights would be in order; So, I built a bunch of little rovers that would be used for runway lights - red, green, blue. I built a big cargo plane, Goliath powered, flies great, good for heavy loads. I parked off the end of the runway at KSC and dropped the ramp and proceeded to load its belly up with runway-light rovers. I parked them neatly, putting their parking brakes on. 2 hours later, I spun up the Goliaths and taxied the jet around back up onto the runway proper, and I proceeded to take off. Takeoff was no problem, flies just like any other heavy, but as I retracted the gear the mayhem ensued. Someone lit off some fireworks or something in the cargo hold... lots of explosions. I promptly turned around and landed, only to discover my cargo hold now held parts and rubble. Damn. :/

Now where did I put that drawing board?

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End of last week I spent yet more time tweaking my SSTO Rocket Plane.  

5uCxc8t.png

I am learning to manage the re-entry better than before but instead of overshooting KSC I ended up with not quite enough energy to land on the runway.  Thanks to the tanks being empty and the big wings I was able to gently touch down in the soupy lower atmosphere.  The design needs a bit more work, but it is getting there.

Nak6JBa.png

I then had an idea for a modular big Sci-Fi type space ship.  I spent most of the KSC time this weekend and yesterday designing it and launching it in 4 big chunks on super-heavy boosters & assembling it in orbit.  Overall I am happy with it as a fun sandbox project, but it is not the design I will use next time I fly Kerbonauts to other planets.  Currently it is in low orbit around Minmus

r16MEiB.png

evzQMia.png

 

 

 

 

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16 hours ago, SwissSpace93 said:

I "launched" the Moho-2 Lander for my 1. Manned Moho landing

The pictures says more than 1000 words :huh:

tNVuWO6.png

zzCEk7R.png

actually i think the word 'krakens' sums up the pictures :P 

i love how the forum renames my term for bovine testiballs to 'krakens' :D 

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