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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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As of last night, I'm working on the first orbital craft for my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career.  I may still start over; on "normal" difficulty, it only takes a  couple days to build a rocket (as opposed to months in "moderate").  Reasonably, one ought to play in "hard," no respawns, reverts, or reloads -- but given it was taking more than a year to build a sounding rocket in "moderate," I wonder if Jeb will die of old age before I can even build an X-1 analog for him and Val to play with?

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1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

As of last night, I'm working on the first orbital craft for my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career.  I may still start over; on "normal" difficulty, it only takes a  couple days to build a rocket (as opposed to months in "moderate").  Reasonably, one ought to play in "hard," no respawns, reverts, or reloads -- but given it was taking more than a year to build a sounding rocket in "moderate," I wonder if Jeb will die of old age before I can even build an X-1 analog for him and Val to play with?

You can probably just edit your save file and change difficulty on the fly unless you have a weird mod in there :)

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You know that Mun landing I did a few days ago?

I decided to redo that, because I found out my ladder broke off.

RIP a day's progress

So I reloaded the KAC Jump to ship save and aerobrake, but I was going too fast, so I had to slow down before hand. Aerobrake went well, but I managed to put myself in a retrograde orbit. 

After a small correction burn at Ap, I got myself a mun encounter and landed using constant altitude descent method.

Anyways, next stop is Duna, so today Ill be time warping to the launch window, since i have nothing else to do in the interim.I have a rescue contract at Ike anyways.

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I rebuilt my XRG-1 (eXperimental Rocket Glider-1) for 1.3.1 & flew up to a certain arctic anomaly.   The arctic looked pretty amazing with clouds now.  Due to some changes from the 1.4.3 version, this one flies & more importantly lands much better.   I actually still had a few liters of LFO remaining when I got to the anomaly.

First launch attempt - didn't go so great, but Jeb appreciated the last-minute addition of a pilot escape system

4eSFjFp.png?1

Escape system checks good, now just to fix everything else

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Second launch, heading for the top of the world

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Descending to the arctic ice:

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Breaking through the clouds

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Safely landed, rolling to the anomaly.  Note that KSC staff blurred out the anomaly before declassifying the image

BSDrWu2.png?2

 

 

 

 

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Jeb took up the XRG-1 on another flight, this time to check on a magnetic anomaly west of KSC.  It looked pretty rough, but Jeb thought he could make it

DhQItkz.png

As it turns out, no he can't.  But he did parachute down within 200m of the anomaly, so mission success.

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After the successes of XRG-1 and a few days worth of additional science from other missions, I upgraded to XRG-2 & had my senior engineer take it up to check on a magnetic anomaly north of the great desert.  Rather than launch retrograde, I opted for additional fuel for the booster & succeeded in putting the XRG-2 into a 180km orbit with nearly full onboard fuel.

5CAZzEi.png

I'm really amazed this thing survived a full reentry.  The only thing that got even a little hot was the ventral fin.

Z9DGGmZ.png

Gliding down to the area of the anomaly for landing

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Hmm, looks like some kind of base...

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Spoiler

Photo op at the Baikerbanur monolith

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I still have just over 1000 m/s dV left in the tanks and I've never successfully taken off horizontally in any of my XRG designs before.  Apparently Kelrik the engineer has been spending too much time around Jeb....

Fvy0zun.png

Nice view of the mountains & Mun as I'm approaching the great desert

IMybZUv.png

Didn't even come close to reaching KSC though - only made another 65 or so km before landing in the desert.

 

 

Edited by Cavscout74
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On 6/22/2018 at 1:29 AM, KerikBalm said:

 

  Hide contents

Em2pfuX.png

Now all pieces of the mission are en route to Mun, where they will refuel and await the Duna departure window

You didn't land that god damn thing on the runway did you? If you did... holy crap!

Edited by MisterKerman
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Finished flight testing of my new Poseidon transporter and pretty happy that I have three payloads for it already.  [Click first and then R-arrow for slide show]

M71i6g3.pngaJ7Zmio.pngUjdXUx0.png

cfzEVKs.png5kvMasu.pngbec8TgE.png

Specifically, it can deliver:

  1. an ATC tower to a new airfield (or be used as a hotel for 16 guests)  [Tower Poseidon]
  2. a village of 4 Hitchiker huts [Ville Poseidon]
  3. a Vodka Daiquiri fuel truck, either to service an airport, rescue an outlander or serve as a temporary ferry base for short-range aircraft [Daiquiri Poseidon]

Meanwhile having fun establishing a Kerbin-global aviation network...

(But 19 days remaining before the next Jool transfer window opens...  I'd better get busy soon!  :)  )

Edited by Hotel26
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New mission to build a station around Kerbin. Yay!

Build station, get into orbit, notice the mission has disappeared. Also seem to be getting connection from a ground station, even though I've got them turned off.

Notice some additional relays around Kerbin, which turn out be copies of the previous mission's antennas.

 

y6Cs261.png

 

A buggy day in general.

Edited by DJWyre
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1 hour ago, MisterKerman said:

You didn't land that god damn thing on the runway did you? If you did... holy crap!

Yes, I did, I always recover them on the runway. Sometimes I land on the grass and then taxi onto the runway. On that particular one, I landed on the runway, veered off a little (it has no steerable gear), and then taxied it back on the runway for 100% recovery (hence the angle relative to the runway)

Did another piggyback carogplane launch, the last one was for Duna, now its companion Rald:

Spoiler

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My surface base was nearly in the dark as I would need it for refueling (Mun moved to where minmus was, 3x rescale, tidally locked, so super long days). I also wanted to move it anyway to a place where I could get water from drills. So I had moved the ISRU earlier. It finished refueling, went up to orbit, refueled from the orbiting tanker, landed and picked up a module, refueled again, and took it down to the new surface base location. The 2nd module had the kerbals aboard, notably the engineer, so ISU refueling could go much faster. Then I landed the fuel tanker to fill it up again.

Spoiler

OqkkHrQ.png

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Then lastly, I had a tug rendezvous with the greenhouse module for the Mun base (it had been running on consumables for several dozen days, but its down to 40 days of oxygen, and if I turn on the carbon extractor, then I loose CO2 which I would need to produce more food, although it has a lot of food supplies), and by luck it rendezvous'd right when the Munn greenhouse module was near the sub I had launched earlier, so I picked them both up and sent them to Mun (I did need to top it off with some fuel from KSC, because I didn't do much aerobraking to get the tug back to LKO after it dropped off stuff at Mun).

This is my first time in career actually sending a sub somewhere... subs in deep space... its new to me, I've only tested them on Kerbin or alt-f12 cheating/hyperedit before.

mYUWxYB.png

JolH6nF.png

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Seems that Olei managed to give the Mun a case of high inclination syndrome due to n-body weirdness…

http://oMyG3a0.jpg

Now it will be much harder to use the mun as a gravity assist in order to get to the other moons...

Luckely i am quite done with the Kerbin system anyway. Here i come Jool!!!

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Not posted in a while, still don't have eggbox gold for taking screen shots.

anyway, contract for a Duna flyby kicked off the Duna exploration programme in this save

 

Duna-1: flyby mission, large antenna to act as a relay, managed flyby on first flight - as hoped this provided the "orbit" mission so the same craft then braked to orbit. Mission: Success

Duna-2: science return mission.. a new one for me, never brought anything back from Duna so interesting. Went with a nuclear bus and a small probe on top able to returning to Kerbins surface. stuck the whole lot on my usual mun-lifter, got to Duna, entered a stable but high orbit, SCIENCE!, then came home.. it worked, space dV as well. Mission: Success

Duna-3: "enter the atmosphere" mission, went with a small probe, and gave the same bus used before a larger second relay satellite. reached Duna, entered a sub orbital profile from far out, idea was to release the atmosphere probe, aimed to skin the upper atmosphere (only) do SCIENCE, then using its onboard engine stables into some for of orbit to beam the science back.

the decoupler force put the little probe onto a surface collision orbit, which I didn't notice until too late. Mission: Partial Success (the relay sat is in orbit)

Duna-4a: "science from the surface", "flag on Duna" and a science recovery mission combined, this was to be a manned land & return. the previous bus vehicle was considered capable, a light lander based on my early mun-landers was added. For $reasons the lander launchers eyeballs out - first launch failed to make orbit, the pilot and capsule survived (poor launch profile)

Duna-4b, second attempt, made orbit then the controls went banananannnanans with a constant end over end leading to structural failure (suspect a trim problem but couldn't reset it), pilot survived reentry

Duna-4c, third attempt, successful flight to Duna, landers engine destroyed upon landing, Bill is sitting next to it on Duna awaiting eventual rescue.

Duna-5: second mission to cover the science return elements, lander adjusted to put greater ground clearance in, safe launch, transit and landing. Ascent successful (this is the bit I was worried about), had minimal fuel in orbit but brought the bus closer, docked and came home - poor return profile used too much fuel so nearly got to high Kerbin orbit, but failed - recovery mission launched to bring the luckless Kerbal home, pick up in solar orbit (first time for that as well), landed safely back at home...

 

net result was burning a lot of cash to upgrade the tracking station to level three ahead of when I wanted to, but got there - think Duna-6 will be changed slightly (dropping the landing heatshield to be a lot thinner mostly) and trying to time the return better which should provide the dV to get home.

 

but for the first time ever I've had a Kerbal walk on Duna and get home to live to tell the tail

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Sometimes the runway wins.

And sometimes, you just don't use it.

I've been fighting with the FAI "contract" for first crewed mission past the speed of sound (arbitrarily set at 350 m/s for judging purposes -- I doubt there's a mod that adjusted the value of Mach 1 for temperature and pressure, nor is it really needed).  I've had the parts to build an X-1 analog for a good while in my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career game, and had the craft built and on the runway several times -- but between the bumps in the runway (ridges all the way across the tarmac, nearly as high as the diameter of the wheels on small landing gear) and the tendency for the craft to veer left at around 50 m/s, plus the need to go significantly faster than that to get off the ground when laden with rocket propellant (the beautiful rifle bullet shape of the X-1 fuselage is, behind the cockpit, just a big tank loaded with Ethanol 75 and liquid oxygen, providing a four minute burn at full throttle for the XLR-11 rocket engine).

I blew up that little spaceplane (and reverted) at least a dozen times, possibly as many as fifty (wasn't really counting).  Meanwhile, I was flying sounding rocket missions, building better and better sounding rockets, culminating in an Aerobee 350 analog (it'd look better if we had a Nike solid rocket motor, but I made it work with a cluster of six Tiny Tim boosters from the original WAC Corporal).  The science from those missions had gotten me access to the Castor 1 solid rocket motors, in a couple styles (these are mainly used as strap-ons on a variety of orbital launchers).

A single Castor 1 has plenty of thrust to launch the Hyperfly vertically to around 15 km, and some big fins offset the Hyperfly's wings way up at the nose.

Didn't think to take a VAB or pad shot; sorry.  And once I had the HyperFly separated, it was a handful to control with the keyboard until I got the elevator trim set, so I forgot to take pictures while it was actually supersonic.  I did, however, get a few glide shots:

v8pstNa.png

That's the Florida coast below the HyperFly; I tipped the launcher over to the south from Canaveral, and followed the coast all the way to Miami.  Doesn't take long at up to 500 m/s (almost Mach 1.5).

dCLE5U2.png

A different, somewhat better lit angle.  Note that's a glide, at 200+ m/s.  Air airliner altitude.  This craft is very, very clean.

oryLdmm.png

The little bags on the sides of the cockpit are parachutes for landing.  Small landing gear isn't very robust, in my experience, and this was a cheapish craft (what you see here costs about the same as a high altitude sounding rocket) -- and I wasn't taking off from the runway anyway, so I just left the landing gear off.  When Val got low enough, she looked for an unpopulated location (on the edge of the Everglades, I think) to drop the airframe, separated the cockpit from the now-empty tank and wings, and descended under parachute.

C4fPTuI.png

And now I have the technology to launch Kerbals into space.  Jeb was the first to go, and almost got burned up coming back down (the RCS on the cockpit couldn't keep the heat shield forward); Val went up in a kind of Dyna-Soar analog, but it wasn't up to the heat, either.  More science and funds, however, and now I've got actual space capsules -- and Jeb can make a proper suborbital flight!  It's about time; the clock is ticking on the "First Orbit" contract, and FAI has a couple open prizes for "crew of two in space", "spend a (crewed) day in space", and so forth.

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Situation Nominal: All Kerbal'ed Up

EAE64A4AE93ABE6484ECE5513E121B7E5C3E3621

Tombo there lost the front part of his aircraft when he hit the reverse thruster to slow down after he landed on the Island Airstrip. Unfortunately, the Wheesley had enough excessive thrust to cause the plane to try and take off backwards, which caused a panic reaction that scraped off the nose and front landing gear of the plane. But, with the magic of reaction wheels, He was able to get the nose high enough so that he could take off again without the front landing gear and head back to KSC. Unfortunately, he came in a bit too hot and this time scraped off his cockpit.

RIP, Tombo.

(Well, until I hit "revert to launch" anyway...)

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I made a seaplane. But it didn't splashed down exactly as I envisioned... :/ 

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ADDENDUM:

Well, I think it's an improvement… :P Now I just have to find a way to save the engines. :D 

tkeczUJrfSfMl5oLEOsry0vNli2jDqH4IdmtmWif

Edited by Lisias
typos….
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Only Kerbals would do it this way in real life... 

I've been landing a lot of heavy equipment lately.  I've taken to marking the runway elevation on the threshold flags.  After I've lined the flags up on approach, I set the a/p to a height of something like just 10m above that elevation.  Just before the marker, kill the engines and auto-pilot.  Doesn't take a lot of skill after that...  :)  But I'm saving a ton on insurance costs.

Edited by Hotel26
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