What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Zosma Procyon]

I just wrecked another boat base. This one passed the climb test, but then I decided to try a sharp turn at 16 m/s. It rolled. It can turn at 55 m/s on water.

[KerikBalm]

5 hours ago, Steeeeve said:

@KerikBalm

The thing is that the hitchhiker storage container was that 4 tons. The reason the cost per ton to orbit was so low was because the upper stage was over-engineered. Counting the crew module & fuel that was intended to be used to rendezvous with the station, the weight was more like 8 or 9 tons. Counting in the 6 SRB's from the launch vehicle being recovered at what I remember was 5,000 a pop, and it's 70,000 for 9 tons to orbit. I didn't really need to bring the 3 man pod, but I wanted to test it at full capacity & run a tourism mission as well. If I had planned this to be unmanned with just the storage container, I bet I could've lessened the fuel in the boosters or main tank and made the mission with a smaller launch vehicle (50,000 IIRC)

I would be willing to count something like a hitchhiker can as payload mass. The largest stock SRBs are 2600, including fuel, do you have a stock way to recover them?

[Pipcard]

Launched a cargo freighter for Kerbin-Duna system transport, an Ike miner/tanker, and the first Ike base modules

[ARS]

I got weird things happened to me...

I got a glitch where the vessel loaded several hundred meters above the launchpad

Can someone explain to me what's the logic of thrust value being minus? What does it mean?

On the other hand, I'm building an interplanetary engine assembly. This high-thrust-fully-independent-multi-vector-stabilizer-articulating-superheavy engine provides a lot of thrust and very minimum fuel consumption, far more than enough for extreme-range mission. It has been tested for powered landing and thrust vectoring stability. The only drawback is... It's very large, with 5 meter diameter and absolutely heavy mass, at over 45 tons!

[djr5899]

Finished up some Mun and Minmus landing missions to get my crew experience raised and gain some more science.  Have all but 1 level 160 science unlocked in tech tree, and 5 level 300's left, all the 1000 level, and all but 2 500 level tech tree elements left.  Roughly about 10K science needed to unlock the rest by my estimation.

Now I am working on getting my satellite networks up and running since I have the most powerful relays and solar panels unlocked.

I am also trying to work on rocket recovery......trying to stop letting lower stages  just fly off and crash into Kerbin.   Not very successful so far. Since I'm just letting them free fall, I figured, I'd just add a bunch of parachutes and empty tanks would  just slow themselves down, parachutes open, tanks land nice and safe.  Doesn't seem to be the case.  Just unlocked the aero-brake, and even adding those didn't do the trick. I think I probably need to add drogue chutes to better handle the velocity the spent rocket parts are coming in.  Was disappointed that my 4 liftoff boosters, that only made it to about 10,000m in height and top speed of 300m/s, with 8 chutes and 4 aero-brakes per booster, still didn't manage to touch down safely.   Worst case, I'll attach an extra unmanned control to one of the boosters and see if I can switch to it during descent to see exactly what is happening.

Here's Urgdan Kerman on his last mission to Minmus, with Kerbin and The Mun in the background:

[Zaphod12]

Been doing some Apollo-style missions using the Bluedog Design Bureau mod, albeit in my savegame, Skylab and Apollo programs occur at the same time, and with different numbering. (Apollo 1 for example is a Apollo 8-style mission in my savegame rather than a tragic disaster on the launchpad)

These were 2 Skylab missions, 1 Munar orbit mission (Apollo 8 ripoff) and one LKO mission with a LM (Apollo 9 ripoff)

I also used this to improve my rendezvous and docking skills, which have gotten much better in just a few hours of gameplay. (Bye bye, MechJeb)

Edited July 11, 2018 by Zaphod12

[Triop]

Just completed another orbital survey contract.

I'm getting the hang of it.

 

[Triop]

I'm behind on my tourists contracts...

OK, WHO'S NEXT ?

[FinalFan]

3 hours ago, djr5899 said:

Finished up some Mun and Minmus landing missions to get my crew experience raised and gain some more science.  Have all but 1 level 160 science unlocked in tech tree, and 5 level 300's left, all the 1000 level, and all but 2 500 level tech tree elements left.  Roughly about 10K science needed to unlock the rest by my estimation.

Now I am working on getting my satellite networks up and running since I have the most powerful relays and solar panels unlocked.

I am also trying to work on rocket recovery......trying to stop letting lower stages  just fly off and crash into Kerbin.   Not very successful so far. Since I'm just letting them free fall, I figured, I'd just add a bunch of parachutes and empty tanks would  just slow themselves down, parachutes open, tanks land nice and safe.  Doesn't seem to be the case.  Just unlocked the aero-brake, and even adding those didn't do the trick. I think I probably need to add drogue chutes to better handle the velocity the spent rocket parts are coming in.  Was disappointed that my 4 liftoff boosters, that only made it to about 10,000m in height and top speed of 300m/s, with 8 chutes and 4 aero-brakes per booster, still didn't manage to touch down safely.   Worst case, I'll attach an extra unmanned control to one of the boosters and see if I can switch to it during descent to see exactly what is happening.

Here's Urgdan Kerman on his last mission to Minmus, with Kerbin and The Mun in the background:

If I'm not mistaken, I've found a fellow newbie.  Do you have a mod installed to assist you in recovering those boosters?  The game tends to eliminate unattended objects in the atmosphere after a certain time/distance.  Your comment that you were considering adding a probe control (i.e. there isn't one already) makes me suspect this is causing your losses.  

[djr5899]

3 hours ago, djr5899 said:

Finished up some Mun and Minmus landing missions to get my crew experience raised and gain some more science.  Have all but 1 level 160 science unlocked in tech tree, and 5 level 300's left, all the 1000 level, and all but 2 500 level tech tree elements left.  Roughly about 10K science needed to unlock the rest by my estimation.

Now I am working on getting my satellite networks up and running since I have the most powerful relays and solar panels unlocked.

I am also trying to work on rocket recovery......trying to stop letting lower stages  just fly off and crash into Kerbin.   Not very successful so far. Since I'm just letting them free fall, I figured, I'd just add a bunch of parachutes and empty tanks would  just slow themselves down, parachutes open, tanks land nice and safe.  Doesn't seem to be the case.  Just unlocked the aero-brake, and even adding those didn't do the trick. I think I probably need to add drogue chutes to better handle the velocity the spent rocket parts are coming in.  Was disappointed that my 4 liftoff boosters, that only made it to about 10,000m in height and top speed of 300m/s, with 8 chutes and 4 aero-brakes per booster, still didn't manage to touch down safely.   Worst case, I'll attach an extra unmanned control to one of the boosters and see if I can switch to it during descent to see exactly what is happening.

Here's Urgdan Kerman on his last mission to Minmus, with Kerbin and The Mun in the background:

Well, I am now officially stumped on why I am my rockets are not available for recovery.  I have launched 3 geosynchronous satellites using the same craft for 3 separate launches (although, I had to add some chutes and airbrakes after the 1st launch).  I actually reverted back to saves 2-3 times after positioning the satellite, returning to space center, and finding none of the boosters or main stage returned to Kerbin safely.  All of the 5-6 launch attempts resulted in ZERO percent recovery of rocket parts.  Nothing there, nothing showing in the Tracking Center somewhere else on the map, or even still floating in the air.  The rocket stages simply aren't there for recovery.

I took my satellite delivery rocket from my career save, and imported it into sandbox.  I launched the rocket in sandbox just as I would for my career game, and did the launch 6 times.....3 times watching how the 4 side boosters react when detached from the main stage, and 3 times watching the main booster that gets me 98% to orbit.

Here is my rocket shortly after liftoff.  You can see the large amount of chutes on the 4 outside boosters, as well as the inner single main stage.  You can see the aerobrakes as well:

 

Here is a shot of my 3 of the 4 boosters (in sandbox mode) returning to Kerbin at a pleasant 3.6m/s....well in line for a nice gentle landing:

 

Here is a shot of the main stage, close to touchdown back on Kerbin in sandbox mode, at a smooth 6.1m/s:

 

So, I'm officially stumped.  6 out of 6 launches in sandbox mode gave me 75-100% return of the 5 rocket pieces.  I am often seeing an issue where the 4 boosters collide as I have to engage the aerobrakes on them right before decoupling them from the main stage.  Most times they collide and one of them is damaged enough to not return, but the other 3 always remain in tact.   The main booster returned 3 out of 3 times, although one time I forgot to engage aerobrakes before decoupling, so the engine blew up due to overheating on re-entry, but the remaining attached fuel tank with chutes and brakes still returned.

I haven't altered any atmosphere, g-force, re-entry, etc settings between career and sandbox.  So, I am highly perplexed as why the same craft works and can safely return parts in sandbox, but not career.  

[CatastrophicFailure]

5 minutes ago, FinalFan said:

If I'm not mistaken, I've found a fellow newbie.  Do you have a mod installed to assist you in recovering those boosters?  The game tends to eliminate unattended objects in the atmosphere after a certain time/distance.  Your comment that you were considering adding a probe control (i.e. there isn't one already) makes me suspect this is causing your losses.  

@djr5899 too: yes, you’ll need a mod like StageRecovery, which is exactly what it says on the tin.  It allows automatic recovery of ditched stages either by chutes or power assist, and is quite configurable. 

The stock game deletes anything that goes below 22km (over Kerbin) once it leaves physics range of your focused vessel, around 2.4km. There are mods to extend this range, too. 

[djr5899]

8 minutes ago, FinalFan said:

If I'm not mistaken, I've found a fellow newbie.  Do you have a mod installed to assist you in recovering those boosters?  The game tends to eliminate unattended objects in the atmosphere after a certain time/distance.  Your comment that you were considering adding a probe control (i.e. there isn't one already) makes me suspect this is causing your losses.  

So, some questions:

• I don't have any mods specific to booster recovery installed.  KER, Docking Port Indicator, [x] Science, Surface Lights, and RCSBuildAid are the only mods I have installed.
• Are you saying I need a mod to successfully recover the parts, or a mod is causing the issue?
• Is this new, where the game eliminates unattended objects? I'm on 1.4.4.   I've been playing on PC for a little less than a year, with one or two point releases before Making History (1.4.1 maybe first build for me) and I don't ever recall seeing the issue before. I never really consciously made efforts like this to save boosters, but I can recall numerous past missions where after returning to the Space Center, I would find boosters and other parts on Kerbin that survived re-entry and landing, and were available for recovery.

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 minutes ago, djr5899 said:

Is this new, where the game eliminates unattended objects? I'm on 1.4.4.   I've been playing on PC for a little less than a year, with one or two point releases before Making History (1.4.1 maybe first build for me) and I don't ever recall seeing the issue before. I never really consciously made efforts like this to save boosters, but I can recall numerous past missions where after returning to the Space Center, I would find boosters and other parts on Kerbin that survived re-entry and landing, and were available for recovery.

IIRC, they added a “pseudo-physics” range increase recently, sometimes parts might reach the ground before you move too far and they get deleted, but it’s not very reliable.

[RealKerbal3x]

8 minutes ago, djr5899 said:

So, some questions:

• I don't have any mods specific to booster recovery installed.  KER, Docking Port Indicator, [x] Science, Surface Lights, and RCSBuildAid are the only mods I have installed.
• Are you saying I need a mod to successfully recover the parts, or a mod is causing the issue?
• Is this new, where the game eliminates unattended objects? I'm on 1.4.4.   I've been playing on PC for a little less than a year, with one or two point releases before Making History (1.4.1 maybe first build for me) and I don't ever recall seeing the issue before. I never really consciously made efforts like this to save boosters, but I can recall numerous past missions where after returning to the Space Center, I would find boosters and other parts on Kerbin that survived re-entry and landing, and were available for recovery.

1. You don't necessarily need a mod to recover the parts, if you time launch and orbital insertion correctly. But you need a probe core in order to land booster stages (of course, unless you use parachutes) and the game despawns any craft with a probe outside 30km (I think). I'd recommend Flight Manager for Reusable Stages to land stages.

2. No, it's not a new thing; it's been in the game for ages. The game will remove any control-able ships within 30 km of your craft when you're in an atmosphere. This won't happen in space though. Could be that those parts didn't have a probe core and just used parachutes to land. I'm not really sure.

[FinalFan]

12 minutes ago, djr5899 said:

So, some questions:

• I don't have any mods specific to booster recovery installed.  KER, Docking Port Indicator, [x] Science, Surface Lights, and RCSBuildAid are the only mods I have installed.
• Are you saying I need a mod to successfully recover the parts, or a mod is causing the issue?
• Is this new, where the game eliminates unattended objects? I'm on 1.4.4.   I've been playing on PC for a little less than a year, with one or two point releases before Making History (1.4.1 maybe first build for me) and I don't ever recall seeing the issue before. I never really consciously made efforts like this to save boosters, but I can recall numerous past missions where after returning to the Space Center, I would find boosters and other parts on Kerbin that survived re-entry and landing, and were available for recovery.

You don't need a mod to recover in principle, but in practice you do for boosters that separate in the lower atmosphere.  CatastrophicFailure knew more than I did about the threshold details than I did:  if it gets more than 2.4km from your ship and also below 22km altitude it's toast.  If you've had stuff survive before perhaps it hit the ground before getting that far away from you.  

As you may know, you are not allowed to switch away from a vessel flying in the atmosphere.  So the trick is to get to space before your booster goes poof, switch to it, land it (remember you're stuck after you switch to an atmospheric vessel), then switch back to your main ship which is hopefully still in space.  If you have more than one booster you want to recover, you probably need a mod unless you carry them up and deorbit them separately.  

5 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

1. You don't necessarily need a mod to recover the parts, if you time launch and orbital insertion correctly. But you need a probe core in order to land booster stages (of course, unless you use parachutes) and the game despawns any craft with a probe outside 30km (I think). I'd recommend Flight Manager for Reusable Stages to land stages.

2. No, it's not a new thing; it's been in the game for ages. The game will remove any control-able ships within 30 km of your craft when you're in an atmosphere. This won't happen in space though. Could be that those parts didn't have a probe core and just used parachutes to land. I'm not really sure.

Wait, so you're saying that if it DOESN'T have a probe then it can potentially land safely with disregard to the vessel deletion mechanic?

[RealKerbal3x]

6 minutes ago, FinalFan said:

Wait, so you're saying that if it DOESN'T have a probe then it can potentially land safely with disregard to the vessel deletion mechanic?

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'll have to look it up; the debris is probably deleted in the same way a controllable craft is.

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'll have to look it up; the debris is probably deleted in the same way a controllable craft is.

That’s right. Anything beyond the 2.4/22km zone gets deleted, with some unpredictable exceptions I still haven’t quite figured out (doesn’t help that I don’t play 1.4.x much ). 

You can get away with the ol’ “ditch the boosters high and fast enough to circularize then switch back and recover” switcheroo, but in actual practice that gets old fast. 

Theres a reason SpaceX uses a computer to do this.  This is not that reason, but there is A reason...

[djr5899]

10 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'll have to look it up; the debris is probably deleted in the same way a controllable craft is.

While I mentioned using probe cores, I never actually did....so it would seem to delete in the same way with or without them.  Thanks for all the feedback everyone.  Learn something new every week with this game.  

[FinalFan]

32 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

That’s right. Anything beyond the 2.4/22km zone gets deleted, with some unpredictable exceptions I still haven’t quite figured out (doesn’t help that I don’t play 1.4.x much ). 

You can get away with the ol’ “ditch the boosters high and fast enough to circularize then switch back and recover” switcheroo, but in actual practice that gets old fast. 

Theres a reason SpaceX uses a computer to do this.  This is not that reason, but there is A reason...

I suppose you could circularize first ... the practice my noob self developed was to recover in between leaving atmo and circularization.  It depends when the booster drops, I guess.  

[Zaphod12]

Aaaand finally did a Apollo 11-style mission, sending CSM+LM to Munar orbit, landing the LM on the Mun like Buzz Aldrin's fist on the face of that conspiracy nut and safely returning the crew home.

Maybe I might do some planetary flyby mission later on, after some more landings... (As considered by NASA for the Apollo program)

[Lisias]

 

WELL² (or sort of). 

After this and this, I give it yet another try.

I made another beautiful take off (I'm detecting a pattern - perhaps I should try some horrible ones?):

 

I set the course for K2 in order to rescue that climbers after delivering the tourist to Island (tried to bill an extra for the view, no success - cheap stand-up guys! ). Ok, some good 20 minutes to K2 - I set the bearing, climbed to 4300 meters (more or less) and then a friend called on the phone.

On my way back to computer, I realized that I forgot to set the timer while hearing that already familiar sound of explosions… Yes… I managed to hit the highest peak of K2 aiming from the Island! (Time to play some naval battle game, I think…).  

 

(open the spoiler for animation)

Spoiler

Miraculously, the blimp was still able to fly back to KSC this time. But I landed on the grass, the TARMAC was still shining new.  

Edited May 4, 2022 by Lisias
fixing the image links!

[juanml82]

I've suddenly realized I completed my MKS base at Minmus. I was expanding it with EPL and suddenly, I had nothing new to add. I guess I'll continue to add a few ranger agricultural modules so more kerbals can go live there but, for all intents and purposes, it's done

[ARS]

Easy Breezy...

[Cavscout74]

I haven't had much KSP time the last few days, but I did manage to get my first few Duna probes launched in my newest career.  And one Voyager-ish probe managed to get a Minmus encounter while leaving Kerbin SoI.  I've never had that happen before - Mun I'm used to dodging, but Minmus is a new one. 

I also broke out my RG-3 rocket glider design for a contract near the north pole.  The glider performed wonderfully, although I misjudged the course & barely had enough fuel to correct.

I also tested a new parachute setup for the Mk1-3 pod, although I didn't get any good shots of the test.  I saw the idea on here somewhere - put radial chutes on top of the pod, then a decoupler with radial drogues, then a decoupler with a docking port.  Once low enough for drogues, stage the decoupler, docking port & drogues.  Once low enough for the mains, stage the other decoupler with the drogues.  On my test, the decouplers weren't wanting to leave the ship easily, but the chutes still opened so it works.  Jeb was disappointed that he didn't get to try his personal parachute.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Cavscout74

[Lisias]

I finally learnt, after yet another crash on landing, why I was having so bad times. On Blimps, you need to align the CoM and the CoT to minimize the pitch tilting when accelerating/decelerating. (sigh)

Well, this explain something.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Lisias
I was meaning CoM , not CoL...