What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Tekaoh]

TLDR: Sank to the bottom of the ocean for science!

I spent most of yesterday trying to get the "landed on water" science. I had read that the two ways to do it are to find a tiny island in the water biome to land on, or else reach the bottom of the ocean in a heavier than water rover. I downloaded the Field Research mod which gave me waypoints in a contract to some island suggestions, but they were all near the poles. I figured that it would take too long to get there by plane, and that the islands would be too small to hit by rocket. So I started trying to design a heavier than water rover. After several hours and even more failed prototypes, I finally got one that could travel underwater but it still had problems. The rate of travel was SOOO slow (0.3m/s-1.1m/s) and used up so much power that I couldn't make it past the shores biome. Then I had an idea... I could build a heavier than water craft with none of the frills like wheels or batteries or solar panels (which are all apparently buoyant), use a rocket engine to get it over the water biome, then just let it sink! It took only a few tries to get the design nailed down, but this ended up working out way better than my stupid rover designs.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Tekaoh
Added screenshots

[AngrybobH]

2 hours ago, Tekaoh said:

I'll post some screenshots when I get home...

Please do. I have a very hard time with underwater stuff for some reason and lack the patience to trial and error it. I'm always interested to see water crafts of all kinds so I can 'borrow' design concepts.

[RizzoTheRat]

I have a contract to test some parts in Ike orbit, they're currently sat on a ship in orbit waiting for a Duna window

After fast forwarding a year to a launch window for Eve, and sending 2 probes on their way to scansat map Eve and Gilly, I discover that not only had I fitted the wrong antenna to the satellites, so I can't control them beyond Kerbin SOI (RemoteTech), but the IKE test missions had expired.

 

I may have rage quit.

[Tynton]

@Kebab Kerman It's an interstellar mod in-development.

[Tekaoh]

7 hours ago, Tekaoh said:

I'll post some screenshots when I get home...

 

5 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

Please do. I have a very hard time with underwater stuff for some reason and lack the patience to trial and error it. I'm always interested to see water crafts of all kinds so I can 'borrow' design concepts.

Done! Check out the original post

[Fearless Son]

21 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

I got a couple of points of science from my Eve mission that finally returned home

"A couple".

[Starman4308]

So, many achievements in space in the span mid-1951 to my current game clock of November 1952.

Previous record of 1.16 Mm was surpassed at 5.6 km/sec by Shockwave VI, to a total altitude of 4.4 Mm! To propel this massive 40 ton rocket to space, for the first time we utilized radial staging, with a pair of RD-100 engines flanking the core A-4 engine. The second stage uses a full 7 Aerobee sustainers, with the final stage carrying a single Aerobee.

Spoiler

The RD-100 is basically a Russian copy of the A-4, which, if viewed in a historical light, leads to some interesting questions about why they're both being used.

Engineers responsible for under-engined Shockwave V have been sent to Alaska to attend remedial courses on rocket science and the Oberth effect, funded out of their paychecks.

We subsequently sent Kerbals into space on the Bad Idea Terrific Spaceship I, propelled first by a cluster of SRMs and then the throttleable XLR11 motor:

Spoiler

The craft file is named "Bad Idea"

This was additionally evolved into the Bad Idea II Awesomer Spaceship II, which sent brave Valentina to 200 km above Earth's surface.

Rumors that the manned space program are on hold for "unacceptably high G-forces sending Valentina to the ER on recovery" are patently false. Now smile for the cameras Valentina!

The greatest achievement has been the Sputnik I satellite, which orbited the Earth several times before decaying to a too-low perigee of 132 km.

Sputnik II will use a higher launch trajectory and stronger RCS thrusters to permit more closely aligning with the horizon before firing the SRM stages; setup prior to the initial attempt was rushed, and no course corrections were possible with the unguided final SRM stages.

Rumors that this has been delayed due to a recent Reality Upgrade are utterly unfounded.

Now, out of psuedo-RP land: to help out practicing launch profiles, I downloaded the flight simulation mod Test Flight. Those familiar with Test Flight are probably either scratching their heads, or are seeing exactly where this is going.

To fulfill a sounding rocket contract, I launched another Shockwave VI out of a secondary base in Palmach instead of KSC. It suddenly veered to one side, and then semi-stabilized, and I was scratching my head, and then the core A-4 went out, so I checked the F3 log.

It was at this point that I discovered Test Flight is a part failure simulation mod, not a mod to simulate test flights. Basically every one of my designs up to this point had liquid engines running sometimes beyond twice their rated duration, leading to inability to replicate my prior efforts. My second launch of my original Sputnik design was the one that tipped me off to not just the random part failures, but also the rated burn time issues.

I still want to get a satellite to orbit on equipment from the first three nodes only, so Sputnik II is being redesigned with the rated burn lengths in mind... which has converted the already-6-stage launcher into a 7-stage monster, with 2 RD-100 engines on the first stage, 10x AJ-10 engines in stages 2-4, and 15x Baby Sergeant motors in stages 5-7.

[Enceos]

4 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

What a cutie! :3

[Whackjob]

I actually played around a little bit for once.

 

She doesn't have a name or enough delta-v to get to the Mun properly, so she'll be getting a catchy name and some boosters that should double or treble her thrust.  Might hit a million with stock parts.

So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

[Hotel26]

My very first encounter with... the "klaw"!   [NOT PICTURED]

Everyone, please allow me to go first and call myself, Hotel26, a complete NOOB!    (I actually prefer the title "rookie", though.)

[I'm working on Mining 2.0 to replace my archaic original designs.]

Just to include something pictorial in this post: my new rover, the Jeep Boxster:

Spoiler

Yes.  I know...  It's F-f-f-ugly [tm].  "Form-follows-function".  And it's called a "spoiler" because of what is does to your lunch...  apologies!

Edited January 25, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

I discovered this

and it changed everything. In almost an instant, it took off my hands, the entirety of manual driving I couldn't find the nerve to do again for my current career.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Atkara

[RizzoTheRat]

46 minutes ago, Atkara said:

I discovered this

and it changed everything. In almost an instant, it took off my hands, the entirety of manual driving I couldn't find the nerve to do again for my current career.

While I can see the point of that, I'm finding my rover drives are starting to look a bit like a BJ Baldwin video and I'm deliberately aiming for the bumpier terrain :D.  I think I need to play with suspension settings a bit more though as my current rover lands very nose down on big jumps meaning it can roll, and reducing the sideways grip for a bit of under steer or over steer would be good too.

 

 

[Atkara]

15 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

I think I need to play with suspension settings a bit more though as my current rover lands very nose down on big jumps meaning it can roll, and reducing the sideways grip for a bit of under steer or over steer would be good too.

I've partially solved that, by slaving the reaction wheels to SAS. When it's off, they're off too. When the car eventually does a big jump in low gravity environments, I turn on SAS (along with the wheels) and adjust it's touchdown attitude & orientation if necessary. Been doing this since 1.05.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Atkara

[RizzoTheRat]

How do you set that up?  I tried just fitting a reaction wheel but of course as soon as I press W or S it tries to pull a wheelie, I didn't realise you could set the reaction wheels to only work when SAS is on.

[Geonovast]

Just now, RizzoTheRat said:

How do you set that up?  I tried just fitting a reaction wheel but of course as soon as I press W or S it tries to pull a wheelie, I didn't realise you could set the reaction wheels to only work when SAS is on.

Right click on the wheel in the SPH/VAB.  One of the menu settings will let you select SAS only.

[Atkara]

1 hour ago, RizzoTheRat said:

How do you set that up?  I tried just fitting a reaction wheel but of course as soon as I press W or S it tries to pull a wheelie, I didn't realise you could set the reaction wheels to only work when SAS is on.

Back in 1.05, I would disable the rover's/car's reaction wheels in VAB/SPH and map their toggle function to the SAS action group. That way, the reaction wheels would go live only if SAS was engaged.

Apparently and as Geonovast mentioned, there's a more straightforward solution in the game nowadays. I admit I always wondered what 'SAS only' did. But my cars remain largely unchanged since 1.05 and the action group assignments got carried over, upon migrating from version to version. So I still use my old 'solution'

Edited January 25, 2018 by Atkara

[Fearless Son]

1 hour ago, Atkara said:

Apparently and as Geonovast mentioned, there's a more straightforward solution in the game nowadays. I admit I always wondered what 'SAS only' did. But my cars remain largely unchanged since 1.05 and the action group assignments got carried over, upon migrating from version to version. So I still use my old 'solution'

You can also right-click while in-mission and change this.  This also applies to pods, cockpits, probe cores, anything that provides rotational torque.  The settings are "Normal" (SAS and directional control), "SAS Only" (only used for maintaining orientation), and "Pilot only" (only used for changing orientation.)

I am fond of adding a lot of reaction wheels to my rovers and setting them to "SAS Only".  I find that (on level terrain at least) it makes them a lot more reliable with SAS engaged.  I can do things like floor the breaks hard or make a sharp turn and keeps the rover from fishtailing (since the reaction wheels fight forces which are not otherwise directed by the pilot.)  I do have to periodically toggle the SAS off and back on again while on rough terrain though, otherwise it has a habit of not keeping its orientation flush with the ground when going over a gentle slope.  Need to let it get all its tires back on the ground.

[Atkara]

37 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

I find that (on level terrain at least) it makes them a lot more reliable with SAS engaged.

Indeed. After setting the desired throttle/power/pedal (call it however you like) level via the forward trim (Alt+W for anyone who may not know this, Alt+X to reset it) I enable SAS again and let it coast. This, when gravity is around 0.1, like what you find on the Mun, Ike, Eeloo and Vall. On planets like Moho & Duna, I can leave SAS off. This also applies to other bodies with obviously higher gravity, like Eve, Tylo, etc.

But I always keep an eye on the vehicle's velocity and apply brakes as needed, since overspeeding can and will result in... interesting situations, to say the least. Ah, if I could only count the times I've had the engineer EVA out of the car and repair it's wheels mid-"flight"

Edited January 25, 2018 by Atkara

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey Kerbalmaniacx.

 

Yesterday did a few things.

One of them was playing caveman style. Bob wanted to do an EVA report from space.

Since we don't have the capability to go on EVA from space he got out on the launch pad....And left his fate in Jeb's hands.

 

Bob was luckier than good.

 

Also orbited a dummy Spacestation with 4 reverse engeneered @Brikoleur Juno Midge. As proof of concept (I have added a separatron for the re-entry).

 

I love the little one wheeled beast. Cheap, low tech, open cockpit, flies well, good autonomy when missing the KSC, easy to takeoff and land plus it looks good.

 

I will be making more variants.

 

ME

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Martian Emigrant

[XB-70A]

I killed a lot of hours trying to reproduce the Rosetta-Philae mission today... 

It starts with the add of a "comet" with the Ascension mod:

Crazy trajectory and enjoying a gravity of 0.001 g to be precise. 

However the worst was to try to imitate the European probe and its lander... really.

 

The problem was that I started to build the probe first, then once it was the turn of the lander I discovered how stupid I was for not having made the Rosetta-like bigger.

Anyway, I decided to keep it like this. The probe got around 2.1 km/s available for the further maneuvers, while the lander is having around 1.8 (way too much for its mission).

 

Once again, it's still the good old Ariadne 5 which had to kick the probe to the spaaaaace.

 

A 103 157 funds BBQ.

 

The launcher was a bit reworked too, with a better SRB separation and a light relooking (again).

 

After 5 minutes and 14 seconds of burn the first stage was finally shut down, having placed the Ap to 504 km perfectly.

 

Wow... I was complaining months ago when I launched my first probe to Jool because there was 4 years of waiting before reaching the system, and here it is 15 crazy years!

Well, we'll see what it will be... I would bet already that the probe will not have enough communications power at the time of the encounter.

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, XB-70A said:

killed a lot of hours trying to reproduce the Rosetta-Philae mission today... 

 

FWIW, the target comet of the real mission wasn’t nearly so extreme in its orbit, it goes from inside of Earth’s to just beyond Jupiter’s.  Might take less time to get there...

[Guest]

I had a terrible day.

Trying to loft things into orbit and things just aren't cooperating. All kinds of mysterious failures, some due to krakens, others due to my incompetence, lack of patience, or immature/marginal designs. The latest disaster was that for no reason I could tell, a chunk of wing and an engine pod came off my lifter when I decoupled the payload in orbit. It wasn't even an engine that was close to the payload, I wasn't manoeuvring, and nothing was moving faster than a fraction of a m/s, so I really have no idea what went wrong. Engines don't usually just come off like that.

I tried re-entering with the asymmetrical plane but it went into an uncontrollable high-G spin, lost the rest of the wing, and hit the ocean at about Mach 0.85. RIP Valgas Kerman, you died a hero... and I had only just recruited you.

I think I've got my Laythe Kosmodrome designs fairly finished, the remaining bit is to get them there. Not trivial, as things are bulky and hard to pack into fairings, which means I'm going to do a fair bit of brute-force lifting. It is really annoying that there's no way to speed up low-TWR burns; an atomic thruster would not be big and would get everything there nicely, but just the thought of burning for Jool at 0.1 TWR makes me want to trade places with Valgas, at least he got some excitement at the end.

[Atkara]

59 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

an atomic thruster would not be big and would get everything there nicely, but just the thought of burning for Jool at 0.1 TWR makes me want to trade places with Valgas, at least he got some excitement at the end.

Yeah... even at 4x physics warp, the burn would still be quite long.

Splitting the burn by heading for Ike, refueling and then going to Jool would keep things well in range of a LOX transfer vehicle, given what you seem to have to carry there. But I'm not sure if it would be an acceptable tradeoff -and that is, IF you have any kind of infrastructure in the system.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Atkara

[Castille7]

Today I was filming for a project and thought I would share this. Often I build craft that are just throw together stuff to get things done for filming and many times they never get released. This craft was made to haul a load of Kerbals to be off loaded for a film scene. I see things like this and they rarely get shared.

[XB-70A]

6 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

FWIW, the target comet of the real mission wasn’t nearly so extreme in its orbit, it goes from inside of Earth’s to just beyond Jupiter’s.  Might take less time to get there...

Indeed, it took around 9 years if my memory is not betraying me once again. The problem was (and still is...) I haven't found any other comet mod available. I'm pretty sure at one time someone posted a nice comet model emitting a green tail (or maybe another color), but I don't know were it ended.

Also, if I'm not making any mistake, Angel-125 had made a super nice comet creation mod about a year ago, but as it was modding the stock asteroids it was not possible to orbit them.