What did you do in KSP1 today?

[qzgy]

Several hours of fiddling and I finally got into orbit in RSS/RO. Harder than I thought it would be, and made harder by career mode restrictions.

This also makes me realize how much I love stock for its general "eh that'll do"-ness.

Edited April 1, 2018 by qzgy

[Urus28]

I'm in the beginning of a new campaign and I placed on Minmus my first rover

And this was a bad idea... The small wheels and the big body gives a terrible result on Minmus.

[RizzoTheRat]

Modularised my kOS work so far in to a function library which is called as the vessel loads on the launchpad.  Now a basic script to do an orbit and land somewhere near the KSC looks like this

 

set KSC to latlng(-0.0972,-74.5577).
Set Launchbearing to 90.  //bearing to launch on
Set TurnVel to 50. 		//velocity for grav turn.
set targetalt to 80000. 
set MaxQ to 23000.	
Set EngStages to 2.		//Number of stages with engines
Set staged to 0.	
set DeorbLng to 57.      //58 for KOS3, 57 for Tourist1

Preflight.
Launch.
BasicClimb.
FinalApo.
Circularize.
Deorbit.
ChuteLand.

I also have a QClimb function as an alternative to BasicClimb which limits MaxQ, and a PowerLand function which can replace ChuteLand

 

Next task is to work out how to get to the Mun...

[kerbinorbiter]

 

soon RTLS

[Damon]

I made Energia reusable... 

[Weltenbrand]

Mun Ground 01 got its habitat module.

Imgur album

[Tw1]

I was told once the test was complete, there would be cake.

Instead there is just fiery death.

The platform keeps moving, forward and down. Did I do something wrong? 

Or was it a lie?

Edited April 1, 2018 by Tw1
The bigger question is if people still get the reference

[GDJ]

Nothing right now. Playstation 3 maintenance (PRAM battery, new heatsink grease, vacuuming and cleaning, etc...)

[Hotel26]

XP Luna Luxury Liner, for no good reason.  It's VTOL.

It feels like it's missing a few things...?

But the Kerbals think it is quite funny to fly.

The Mk-2 fuel fuselages are balanced with a couple more Terriers in the service bays.  As the tail fuel tanks run out though, CG moves forward.  Then the Kerbals switch on an extra Spark they put in the for'ard service bay.

Or pump fuel back.  Or play with the thrust limiters.    So many knobs and dials in the cockpit.

See if it makes orbit next...

Edited April 1, 2018 by Hotel26

[LameLefty]

Last night, really ... 

Fooling around in Sandbox, testing Laythe lander designs and techniques in preparation for an upcoming Jool window in my Career save. 

(this design doesn't work, BTW - explodey overhearing kerbality late in descent. Ended up having to totally encapsulate the rover and land via a top-mounted skycrane, but this screenshot was just too good).

This design works fine, but landing legs in 1.4.2 are insanely touchy, tending to explode by "colliding with terrain" at even 0.5 m/s touchdown speeds. Something is quite messed up at present. 

 

[DerekL1963]

Development testing on a new dirigible using the Heisenberg mod.  Here, a static balance test...  It shows -2.1 degrees in the picture, but after a bit of oscillation it eventually stabilized at -0.6 degrees.

[Mark Kerbin]

Today I Have Been Enjoying The Nyan [Woooo Nyan Everywhere]

 

April Fools Everyone

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

Development testing on a new dirigible using the Heisenberg mod.  Here, a static balance test...  It shows -2.1 degrees in the picture, but after a bit of oscillation it eventually stabilized at -0.6 degrees.

Hey Derek? How does one open those info screens? I can seem to find them, but they look so handy. =(

[Cavscout74]

On 3/31/2018 at 5:22 PM, Delay said:

In other news: Two spacecraft arrived at Duna today! The first one being a lander. I took 3 attempts to nail the landing as something broke on the other two, but it became my first landing on another planet in KSP.

Congrats!!!  That's always a big step & really big feeling of accomplishment!

Edited April 1, 2018 by Cavscout74

[Magzimum]

I made a Kerriswheel.

* beams brightly, cackles gleefully *

It is jet powered. So Kerbals get barf bags. Stock except for Airplane Plus mod for the cabins.

[Mark Kerbin]

2 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

I made a Kerriswheel.

* beams brightly, cackles gleefully *

It is jet powered. So Kerbals get barf bags. Stock except for Airplane Plus mod for the cabins.

A regular Danny2462

Also your screenshot seems to have captured two different frames. Thats kinda cool

Edited April 1, 2018 by Mark Kerbin

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

How does one open those info screens? I can seem to find them, but they look so handy.

The HLAirships one is from the Hooligan Airships mod.  The other two are from MechJeb.  The Vessel Info screen is stock, the Airship Info screen is a custom screen (see MechJeb for Airships in my sig for details).

[Mark Kerbin]

15 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The HLAirships one is from the Hooligan Airships mod.  The other two are from MechJeb.  The Vessel Info screen is stock, the Airship Info screen is a custom screen (see MechJeb for Airships in my sig for details).

Ohhhhh Ok, that make sense. Good thing i have all those. =)

Aircarrier is coming along nicely

[Zeiss Ikon]

I went to my sandbox save to let Valentina play around in @SuicidalInsanity's autogyro.  After about ten crashes on takeoff, I more or less got the hang of flying the thing -- control altitude with throttle, direction with roll, keep yer bloomin' fingers off the yaw keys, and use pitch only in short taps, generally to raise the nose if you get into a dive (usually from letting roll go too far).  Flew about 15 km out to sea toward the Island Airfield, realized I probably didn't have enough fuel to get there, turned around, and flew back to KSC.  Almost managed to land the thing on the grass alongside the runway -- a half dozen more flights and I might manage it.

The whole time I was trying and failing, as well as flying the thing pretty successfully there at the end, it seemed as if the rotor was spinning much too slowly; the receding blades were actually flying backward relative to the air (in a real world autogyro, the forward speed is limited by the need for the receding blade to still have enough "forward" motion relative to the airfoil shape to produce lift).  Possibly related, I'm used to seeing autogyros built with negative pitch on the entire length of each blade; this gives similar effect to the washed out tips on this one, but without the excessive drag of the positive pitch inner sections of the blade.

I haven't tried any other autogyros in KSP (because they all seem to need mods), but I'm tempted to pull this one apart and mount one rotor on each wing of a conventional-ish airplane (might have to build the second rotor to rotate the other way to avoid excessive gyroscopic effects).

[Geonovast]

I stretched KSP across all three monitors and snapped a picture.  If I can manage to get them all lined up perfectly, I may start playing like this.  (Ideally I'll get three monitors that are the same size...)

[Hotel26]

Chief Test Pilot, Bob Kerman, approaches Luna Mesa Moonport in a second prototype of the XP Luna Luxury Liner.  [Click first shot to enlarge; then R arrow to slide show.]

 

UPDATE: I'll be uploading this to KerbalX because it is so rad to fly.  (Bob really wants wings (and a tail wheel) on it so he can land it at KSC with a flourish, but some things are never meant to be...)

Edited April 2, 2018 by Hotel26

[Lisias]

Destroyed the KSC`s airstrip while landing a spaceplane.

Well, any landing you can walk away is a good landing, but in this one Jebediah had to wait the ground to stop burning before walk away from it. :-)

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Testing a Catullus Ascent Vehicle. It failed miserably -- I went too light on the air-breathing engines and it suffered truly immense drag by design. 

More boosters (warpjets) and a bigger reactor should fix that right up.

(Flare Replacer for sunflares.)

  

[Drakenex]

SDI Satellites! Fear my pewpew!!!

[Ace in Space]

Today I took a good long look at the situation I got myself into last night. With the Drill/Hub in orbit, I decided to take advantage of the situation by slingshotting it past the Mun and onto a path into solar orbit, so I could play with some maneuver nodes until I got a Dres intercept. I found that my delta-v requirement was, in practice, a little higher than what the internet had told me it theoretically was - likely because I'm not launching in the absolute most optimal conditions possible, and because I wasn't necessarily able to find the absolute most optimal maneuver node positions possible. Having gotten my numbers, I terminated the Drill (and waited for Mortimer to stop having a seizure over the wasted funds). Then it was back to the drawing board for further optimization to meet my new ~5167m/s requirement. Again, I'm only doing the math for the final, vacuum-optimized portion of the crafts - the intricacies of delta-v calculation in an atmosphere still elude me.

Craft	Old Delta-V	New Delta-V
Drill/Hub	4049	5172
Fuel Tank	5802	Unchanged
Converter	4113	5289
Habitation	4033	5211
Science	4256	5198
Rover	4130	5161 (+50)*
Comm Sats	2447 + 1305**	2893 + 2331

* The rover will likely run out of fuel just shy of its target, but has 50m/s worth of monoprop on board, so this should cushion the margin for error. Actually, all but the comm sats and hub have lots of monoprop, but this is the only one I bothered to calculate delta-v for.
** The comm sats have two vacuum-optimized stages, a Terrier-fueled stage and a smaller Spark-fueled stage. I had initially forgotten to update the comm sats for delta-v, so these numbers are for the version sent to Duna.

I don't think I've done this much math for a video game since I (badly) optimized my World of Warcraft character's damage output. Let's hope I'm a better rocket scientist than mage.  

As before, the Drill/Hub was a particular struggle to improve, and once I'd increased the performance of the travel stage, the ascent stages were no longer sufficient, which required many, many redesigns and a lot of testing. Finally, I found a design that worked... when I rearranged the first stage to have not twelve but sixteen Kickback SRBs. What have I wrought?

After that abomination was in LKO, I launched three other components as well (with plenty of time spent tweaking them too): the rover, the science lab, and the habitation module, each carrying a kerbal. I decided it would be wise to spread them out so that if any one craft was lost, I wouldn't lose all my kerbals - not putting all my eggs in one basket as it were. These three intrepid astronauts are Hairy, Anger, and Buzz. If that doesn't sound like a miniboss trio from an oldschool RPG I don't know what does.

One of these crafts - I believe it was Buzz's science module - actually got into orbit with some fuel left to spare from the ascent stage. On the other end of the spectrum is Hairy's habitation module, which, appropriately enough, sort of looks like it could be Rapunzel's tower.

Spoiler

On a tangentially-related note, I've found that I just really love watching sepratrons peel spent stages away. It's just so very satisfying to watch.

The ascent stage ran out of fuel with the periapsis just a couple dozen kilometers short of 70, so Hairy had to tap into the travel stage for a small amount of fuel. Given that this module ever-so-slightly exceeded my minimum delta-v requirements and can fall back on its significant supply of monopropellant in a pinch, I think it should still be okay. I hope.
Otherwise my brave astronaut will find herself in a rather hairy situation.

Tomorrow, the unmanned fuel tank and converter modules, as well as 4-5 comm sats, will join them, and they'll hopefully set out on their journey to Dres.

[invision]

Jeb, Bill, and Bob were on a mission to Minmus...........

 

 

to study what Kerblin and the Mun look like from far away...............

 

 

they didnt think to bring a shower, the stink leaks from the craft.

 

 

and terraforms Minmus.............