What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

47 minutes ago, KerBlammo said:

Congratulations!  Docking is very satisfying although sometimes stressful.  Just get them close, get them aligned and take it slowly.

Thanks!

[Gaarst]

2 hours ago, eddiew said:

Already? I won't fly anything over 200 parts. Stations are acceptable once things are docked, but no single vehicle. This is on a high spec desktop :S 

This mod is a lifesaver  

 

Part count went high very fast (and I wasn't particularly paying attention to that when building): the shell alone was 600 parts, and I keep adding stuff on the inside. I usually don't build with such high part counts though: my main install has a few dozens of mods and fps drops quite fast past 100 parts; here I was actually surprised at how "well" stock KSP handled the 800 parts: I get like <10 fps and <50% physics processing (fps is still low up to 100x warp) but it's very stable and decently playable if you are patient enough.

I must admit I completely forgot the existence of this mod (maybe because I never used it before), but I'll definitely give it a go, thanks!

[Corona688]

Hammered out the first joystick arrangement I actually liked:

And used it to do my first proper trimmed, non-SAS, aerodynamic landing:

At least ten aircraft were destroyed in trying.

[FrostedShoe]

Had a contract to build a station in orbit of the Sun, assembled it in orbit of Kerbin then spent over 800 units of monoprop trying (and only just succeeding) to boost it into Sun orbit. I'm not sure why I didn't just build it in orbit of the Sun, it would have taken alot less real time...

[Delay]

8 hours ago, Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut said:

And there is the 2 crafts, literally, together.

Nicely done. But can you do it without RCS?

[Tynton]

[kerbinorbiter]

Nice

figured out how to maie this parts - delayed release of my ksp overhaul if everything works out new resource “solidifuim” will be added to facilitate a new modlar SRB

[Piatzin]

Today I launched my first ever Minmus base. I've been to Minmus multiple times before, to set up probes for communications and to dump random debris from passing rockets, but I've never launched a serious mission to the surface itself (with the exception of a single probe, which left soon after and then burned up in Kerbin's atmosphere). Needless to say, Minmus has often been neglected in favor of Duna and Eve (though Eve missions usually contain mishaps, such as explosions, explosions, and sometimes even explosions). Today I fixed that by launching a small research base, which I plan to expand into a mining facility for passing ships. (Sort of like a pit stop)

Five kerbals, at the moment, but I plan to expand later on. The only problem is I have little experience with surface intercepts, so landing in the same spot again will require a lot of quicksaves....

[TheKorbinjer]

It's just a "FEW" if my replicas. xd

what you see here :

P51 Mustang

Cessna Citation Sovereign

TBM 900

Beechcraft Baron

F5 Tiger

Douglas DC3

Canada CF-105 Arrow (modified)

F104 Starfighter

CF-18 Hornet

Embraer ERj-145

P38 Lightning.

le Beechcraft Baron

If you can't identify that, just leave. You do not belong here.

Edited December 18, 2017 by TheKorbinger

[Zeiss Ikon]

Yesterday, Jeb took VIP tourist Lugard to land on the Mun.

Yes, it was only the second landing ever (in that career), and the first flight of the newly redesigned lander (which still had far too much descent stage fuel), but Lugard waved so much prestige and so many funds under Gene's nose, it was hard to say no.

The flight was pretty routine, though the lander is still too tall, with the hazard of tipping it over.

But you have to say this for Jeb.  Only he could leave the descent stage upside down at the landing site.

BTW, I don't know how to display it, but the plaque on this flag reads "if you don't see a descent stage somewhere around here, please notify the authorities."  Would have been funnier if I'd done a biome hop.

 

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

16 hours ago, Delay said:

Nicely done. But can you do it without RCS?

Well, i think that i can't

Edited December 19, 2017 by Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut

[LordFerret]

Tried a build of a VTOL today, my first. 3 different designs. Finally got around to one which was balanced enough for a vertical takeoff, although it was shaky at best, and then on to horizontal flight... landing was another question, accomplished, but trashed the plane. I find it terribly inefficient, and not very practical. I also find it nearly impossible to completely stop forward momentum in KSP and come to a hover... control is too imprecise and sloppy, for me anyway.

One thing's for certain, it killed the afternoon right quick.

[XLjedi]

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Tried a build of a VTOL today, my first. 3 different designs. Finally got around to one which was balanced enough for a vertical takeoff, although it was shaky at best, and then on to horizontal flight... landing was another question, accomplished, but trashed the plane. I find it terribly inefficient, and not very practical. I also find it nearly impossible to completely stop forward momentum in KSP and come to a hover... control is too imprecise and sloppy, for me anyway.

One thing's for certain, it killed the afternoon right quick.

Those are challenging...  and I would not even try with anything less than 1.3 TWR on your vertical engines when fully fueled.  ...anything less and you just pancake every landing.

[Geonovast]

6 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

control is too imprecise and sloppy, for me anyway.

Get yourself a joystick.  Lets you have control without it being an all-or-nothing situation.

[Atkara]

With the flights scheduled for Dres fueled up, I had time to get a bunch of rescues done. Two of them were in LKO so, after getting the kerbals onboard and de-orbiting their pods, I set out for the Mun, where another one was in orbit -this, required the pod to be recovered too. Grabbed both, refueled at the refinery I maintain in Mun orbit, then headed back.

The payload being a Mk2 passenger module, meant I had to bring a MK3 spaceplane in orbit. Met up with it, transferred the 3 Kerbals, secured the module on the grabbing unit inside the spaceplane's cargo hold, then sent the rescue craft back to it's parking station. A bit later, Kerbals and module were landing at KSC.

Scheduled for tomorrow, is a rescue from the surface of the Mun and a rescue & pod recovery from the surface of Minmus. While at it, I'll set the Kerbonauts and tourists I've sent on a local tour, on their way back from solar orbit.

[LaytheDragon]

Now that the wonderful Soundtrack Editor mod has been updated with glitches fixed (I heavily recommend the mod, even if you don't plan to add any more music yourself, as it comes default with more nice Kevin MacLeod tracks), I am back at KSP. The first thing to do when you have a queue of tasks in sandbox and career is of course to ignore them and instead build something micro. So I did just that, and built a mini ionic one-kerballed thing. But every payload needs a launcher, so I then proceeded to slap together an SSTO. To my surprise, it worked on the first* try on the runway, no reverting to SPH required.

It made orbit on the first attempt with almost no liquid fuel left and slightly more oxidizer, because it spent too much time at 20 km after it climbed too steeply and slowly and had to descend back to that altitude.

A kerbal entered and brought the payload to a nice elliptical Minmus orbit. However, it was discovered that to fit into the narrow section in the front behind the docking port, the helmet (but not the head) had to be punctured by the radioactive baseboard heaters, so an extension to the front with a dedicated non-solar generation compartment will be needed for the next launch.

The spaceplane was reentered, going subsonic near the island airfield. With no fuel to run the RAPIERs and with the resulting altered center of mass, the plane went into a slow stall, at speeds varying from 30-50 m/s. With some craft damage, the occupants survived, but due to the liquid surface upon which the plane landed, the landing couldn't be 'walked' away from and thus was a bad landing.

^{*Excluding a revert to launch after an 'accident' where the landing gear were 'accidentally' raised before it had left the runway}

 

[Mr. Peabody]

Among other things, I built one of my best looking and flying planes to date.

It is extremely maneuverable, has a low take off speed, plenty of range, and will likely become my all-around stunt plane.

[LordFerret]

@XLjedi @Geonovast

I used my Albatross2 as the basis for this VTOL. It's quick, and it flies great. I tried several different engines, including Panthers, Whiplashes, and Rapiers... they just didn't have the power. I eventually tried Reliants, but lack of gimbaling was not helping so I switched to Swivels... they did the job, barely. I left the air intakes in place for use with the aft main engines, if you're wondering why two sets (from the air breather trials).

 

For takeoff, I toggle out the aft main engines and throttle up the verticals. The forward engine is thrust limited to 96.5% for balance. It lifts straight up, but reluctantly because it's under-powered and needs to burn off fuel/weight for a few moments before lifting. One of the problems I encountered was, being there's two vertical engines, one on each side of the center of mass, having 'control from here' set to the plane's cockpit causes the gimbaling to fight against itself. A solution I tried was small docking port on the bottom of the plane, and 'control from here' was set to it. However, that brought about another problem altogether, which is - this is a plane, not a rocket, so forget control.

 

Anyway, it eventually did lift, somewhat gracefully. Kicking in the aft main engines gets it moving horizontal, but the nose wants to come up, so you have to work that a little until speed comes up... and as you're losing the battle with the nose coming up, you cut the vertical engines and then have to work the nose wanting to drop. It's not that bad, just a bit flaky at first until you get accustomed to it. The more refined variant now has a forward canard to help life a little. As you can see in this last picture however, fully 1/3 of the fuel for the verticals is used just to get moving. Landing vertically is a whole other story, nearly impossible (with this plane anyway); I find it nearly impossible to cancel forward horizontal velocity. I've come in low and slow, pull a ridiculous flair, switch engines and level back out, and I'm still moving forward - shouldn't be happening. And if I even get that far without running out of fuel for the verticals, I'm lucky.

 

I'm going to work on it a little bit more before shelving it... I have missions coming up that need attention real soon.

[harrisjosh2711]

Put new engines for the BFR in game today. Also learned how to do emissive animations on the engines. 

[Hotel26]

Next step in my objective to set up regional/hub networks throughout the Kerbolar system:

(About 40 clicks north of KSC, in the Walmart Parking Lot.)

This has a cupola more than X meters off the ground -- therefore, it qualifies as a hub airport control tower.  The extension I am working on will refuel any craft parked within 50 meters.    Yeah...

[Rune]

Testing unloading methods for large vertical landers under high gravity. Tylo, now I'm ready for you!

 

Rune. Also, KAS is the best thing since sliced bread.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Rune

[Kerbital]

On 12/17/2017 at 7:36 PM, Gaarst said:

Part count went high very fast (and I wasn't particularly paying attention to that when building): the shell alone was 600 parts, and I keep adding stuff on the inside. I usually don't build with such high part counts though: my main install has a few dozens of mods and fps drops quite fast past 100 parts; here I was actually surprised at how "well" stock KSP handled the 800 parts: I get like <10 fps and <50% physics processing (fps is still low up to 100x warp) but it's very stable and decently playable if you are patient enough.

I must admit I completely forgot the existence of this mod (maybe because I never used it before), but I'll definitely give it a go, thanks!

I had poor results with this mod. The welded parts usually looked wrong and lost some attachment nodes. Also, it seems to only work with stock parts. Something like NF Construction was impossible to weld with any usable results.

[ShawnPhillips]

Began working on a prototype Astro Droid.

 

 

[Magzimum]

Inspired by a toy airplane of a 6 year old, I built this:

Which to my surprise actually flies!

 

[L0ck0n]

Yakovlev Yak-130