What did you do in KSP1 today?

[MisterKerman]

Just getting back into KSP again. I think I'll download the DLC since it's free and the command pods look insane.

My space program was in pretty desperate need of funding for a while until I came back from a polar Mun orbit with observational data from high, low, and each and every biome with what I had available. (Crew/EVA Reports, Goo can, Thermometer, and Barometer, and Science Jr.)

Afterwards contracts for Mun trips began to flood in at 100K a passenger. Trips to the Mun are no big deal so I designed this:

It's overkill, but I can make half a mil with each trip.

[Cavscout74]

Ok, so I solved the mystery of the missing Duna crew vehicle.   I'm rather ashamed to admit I had the "ships" icon in map & tracking station turned off accidently.  The "missing" ship was there the whole time. 

I also tested a new, larger vehicle for Kerbin SoI missions - using the 6-seat Estonian command pod by Wild Blue Industries.  Pushed by a Wolfhound engine, it has over 3300 m/s dV once in orbit.  It had a successful abort test (using WBI "Oxygen" MP engines) & a quick orbital rendezvous & docking test.  The only change I still need to make is to rotate the shielded docking port - the covers block the pilot's view.  I currently have one in the middle of a triple LKO rescue, to be followed by a Mun-orbit rescue then return to Kerbin.  Probably with dV to spare.

Estonian in orbit:

Maneuvering in LKO:

 

[Geonovast]

I wish I had some more relevant shots, for some reason I wasn't terribly trigger happy on the screenshot button like I usually am.  (It's the mouse back button, so I don't even have to think about it)

Grouped a few contracts together.  Rescue from Mun orbit, rescue from Mun surface, and dock two ships in Mun orbit (Although I found out later that it specifically wanted ships from two different launches ) .  So I went apollo style with a rover (Just Jeb in the command pod, since I was picking up two hitchhikers while out), which was good, since I ended up missing the landing zone by 16 km.

Gillo's rescue went swimmingly.  She was rather happy to go home.

Jeb ditched Gillo in the command module, and took the lander down to go pick up Benjamin.

Since ole' Benji was stranded on a pretty good crater slope, Jeb parked about 1.6km away, and Benjamin sailed over.

Back to the lander, ready to go. 

Given the gross inclination, I was a bit worried about using up too much fuel lining everything up.... but I accidentally timed it really well.  Instead of circularizing, making an inclination adjustment, and then setting up and encounter, I managed to do all three with a 104 m/s burn.

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by Geonovast

[Bakkerbaard]

1 hour ago, Castille7 said:

Today I made a Louisiana thing

It has become painfully clear to me that my imagination is severely lacking.

[Nivee~]

I accidentally SSTO'd my payload to orbit... I freaked out when I realized what I had done and reverted back to the VAB.

I decreased the size of the first stage and relaunched it. It was too soon!! *Shudder*

[BadOaks]

Over the past week I've landed several cargo dumpers in Duna's northern basin for my second manned mission to the red planet.

Wenfred, Cathat and Hangel made the trip to Duna on the DTRN Endeavor, then transferred to the KTS Saskia. Due to it's orbit, the Saskia unfortunately had to make a nighttime landing, but the morning view made it worthwhile!

The crew then spent the next couple weeks assembling the base and supporting rovers through a combination of KAS attachment, Ground Construction and OSE Workshop production. It's now finally up and running, and has the capability to produce material kits, specialized parts and machinery in-situ, meaning that I can start constructing new kolony modules from scratch and paving the way for a permanent Dunan colony.

If anyone's interested in seeing more, there's a ridiculous number of screenshots posted in the mission report.

[Hotel26]

Pegasus has just rolled out of the Lab hangar and is under-going flight tests.  It was intended to be a robust, short-haul, passenger rescue craft [long, sad story deleted...].

To get the weight and balance flyable, I had to load so much fuel in its tail, it hit me that what I had just given birth to is actually a fuel tanker.  It can go anywhere and arrive with 20 tons of fuel.  Just needs a ground vehicle with a Klaw to bleed off the fuel and transfer it...

It's also the first time I've used Goliaths.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Hotel26

[mystifeid]

Kerbals on Laythe at last - minus a couple of parts, but they don't care.

The survey scanner had shown the best ore at the poles...

So the Kerbals landed pretty close to the North Pole and ... zero ore.

Drove 30km to the Sagan Sea and didn't hit a bump. Perfectly flat.

Mercifully, there is ore beside the Sagan Sea.

[Fraston]

Well, I haven’t done anything in ksp today, so...

[TeslaPenguin1]

I organized my screenshots...

 

[djr5899]

15 hours ago, SleepingFox said:

I decided to take a “Save Kerbal from Minmus”, to make a few bucks to upgrade my science station.

Deciding to build a new cheap rocket from scratch, with an OKTO2 to save weight (unmanned).

Everything went well until my rescue-ship landed on Minmus, and I discovered I had forgot to put an antenna on the ship... and I’d landed too far away from the stranded Kerbal to “activate” him.

Ok, rescue mission no. 2 was sent off.... with an antenna.... but approaching Minmus Ap, and beginning to prepare for the burn to get into orbit, I discovered I had forgotten to open the solar panels, and there was no power onboard...

Ok, rescue misson no. 3 was sent off.... and this one succeded

In the end I could just as well have used my old expensive “science hauler with 2 crew” to pick him up....

Sounds a little bit like me yesterday.  In my newer career game, I wanted to start doing some unmanned probe missions to Mun and Minmus, so I needed to get my satellite network up and running.  Still don't have most tech items past the 90 science range researched, but "thought" the antenna I had placed on my satellite had enough range.  Got the apoapsis up to about 2.863Mm for geosync orbit, and the perapsis raised to something in that general range before I lost contact and the ability to control the satellite.  Thought it was just me forgetting to extend solar panels and battery issue but nope, the antenna doesn't have the range.

[Cavscout74]

I finished my quadruple rescue mission this morning.  The Estonian picked up all 3 rescuee's from LKO then transferred to a retrograde Mun orbit for the final rescue.  All debris was cleared by the mission engineer with properly placed KIS C-4 charges.  After returning from Mun, I still had >900 m/s dV remaining in a 90x120km Kerbin orbit.

Launch from KSC:

In Mun orbit, after rendezvous with the final rescuee.  I'm REALLY curious how a scientist got into Mun orbit in an aircraft cockpit, but she's not talking. 

High altitude braking burn with the capsule's Oxygen monoprop thrusters.  I landed just to the north & west of KSC. 

[RealKerbal3x]

Attempted to do an RTLS abort in my space shuttle. I failed

[Cavscout74]

33 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Attempted to do an RTLS abort in my space shuttle. I failed

IIRC, that was just about the expected outcome of a RTLS

[CatastrophicFailure]

22 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

IIRC, that was just about the expected outcome of a RTLS

When a couple of the greatest pilots ever just flat out refuse to even try it...

[Zeiss Ikon]

2 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

All debris was cleared by the mission engineer with properly placed KIS C-4 charges

You do realize, don't you, that all that does is make the debris too small to track?  Put another way, that would be a great way to turn a discarded upper stage kick motor (casing and nozzle) into a shotgun blast of aerospace grade shrapnel...

My career is (slowly) working on cleaning up the sweet part of LKO (85 km, approximately, equatorial) the old fashioned way -- rescue missions grab (with a Klaw) and deorbit the new recruits' modules.

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

When a couple of the greatest pilots ever just flat out refuse to even try it...

As I recall, there was never an abort mode for the STS that had a high degree of confidence, with the possible exception of "abort once around" for return to Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg.  If you needed an abort to a downrange landing, you were going to have to land without most of the computer and guidance assistance you'd have on a landing back at Canaveral or Vandenberg (though Shuttle Down by Lee Correy is an entertaining read), and RTLS was never anything but an excuse to pull out the ejection seats.  It was only even theoretically possible after SRB separation, and if your orbiter was intact enough to consider it at that point, an abort once around or abort downrange was a far better option.

[Triop]

On 6/3/2018 at 5:20 AM, Wrench Head said:

Went to the track!

 

[Cavscout74]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

You do realize, don't you, that all that does is make the debris too small to track?  Put another way, that would be a great way to turn a discarded upper stage kick motor (casing and nozzle) into a shotgun blast of aerospace grade shrapnel...

I do, but I also appreciate the sometimes over-simplicity of KSP in cases like this.   Plus the explosions are nice

Seriously, I'm aware using the C-4 & the Tac Self-Destruct charges is very unrealistic, but my game time has limits & recovering space junk isn't the highest priority use of my time.  It's the same reason I've mostly stopped using reusable boosters.  My "normal" rescue procedure once I have the claw is to use that to recovery everything, but I mostly wanted to try a quadruple rescue this time.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Cavscout74

[Triop]

Spoiler

 

On 6/2/2018 at 10:16 PM, RoboRay said:

I came up with a new concept for a Mun-lander design, so I built it and took it to the Mun.

Hey, that's Farside Basin down there!  Can you believe that after playing KSP for five years, I've never landed in Farside Basin?  Turn around!  We're going to Farside Basin!

Humph...  It looks like pretty much everywhere else.  Oh, well.

I almost forgot the flag!  Ok, let's get out of here.

 

The Grasshopper lander stays docked in munar orbit for reuse by the next crew.

 

THANKS FOR POSTING 21 PICTURES

[MisterKerman]

23 hours ago, Pipcard said:

The Emerald-1 atmospheric probe arrived at Jool

That thing is so damn cool...

[TeslaPenguin1]

Got Fuffle Station into orbit!

[imgur]http://imgur.com/a/BHdhQzi [/imgur]

Named after my dead cat  

EDIT: Album not working, how do I put it in?

Edited June 5, 2018 by TeslaPenguin1

[Trann]

I have a LOT more contracts than usual today...

(I quit the app and relaunched but the problem vanished; since it wasn't reproducible, I didn't file a bug).

[GeneralMDBK]

I decided to spend an hour designing a small craft that would only set-up a small refueling outpost for now with the help of KIS and KAS. The outpost would be left for future ships and the craft could go collect more cargo for another mission.

The first version required some clipping to make it all fit. I threw this out later after testing the assembly of an initial outpost due to the fact that the clipping bothered me.

Here is the outpost during the day in its first version, the small probe bottom right is suppose to be a work light.

Night time.

Then once I saw that it wasn't too tricky to setup a decent little outpost I tweaked the design and gave it some extra stuff cause why not.

I will possibly use this in mission mode to set up temporary bases until I land proper modules since this set up would be nice and cheap and could get the job done perfectly fine.

[mystifeid]

4 hours ago, TeslaPenguin1 said:

Got Fuffle Station into orbit!

[imgur]http://imgur.com/a/BHdhQzi [/imgur]

Named after my dead cat  

EDIT: Album not working, how do I put it in?

Wow, a one degree AoA. And I thought it was bad having to use 3 degrees at times.

[michal.don]

11 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

As I recall, there was never an abort mode for the STS that had a high degree of confidence, with the possible exception of "abort once around" for return to Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg.

Well, sort of... There was an ATO abort mode, the "Abort to orbit", which was even used on a real mission once - the STS-51-F. One could argue it wasn't a "real" abort, since it meant going to a lower orbit than the originally planned one intead of hauling the thing home as soon as possible, but it was the safest, and if possible, the preferred abort mode for STS flights.

 

Michal.don