What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Poodmund]

33 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Not going to lie, I'm not really satisfied how my mockup turned out - true, it was thrown together in 40 minutes or so - but seeing praise for what I could do much better on just feels weird.
I did end up spending more time on it and making a completed part, but the point of this thread is feedback on the official part, not the progress of a user created alternative; If Squad wants to see renders, I'll post one here, but otherwise I'd rather not step on the toes of Squad's art team.

20 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

*snip* Screenshot preview of Mk2 Lander Can concept

I feel you're doing yourself injustice and good visual feedback like this representing the common thoughts of the KSP community is exactly the kind of feedback that should be present to the development team to kind of say, "here's my representation of the community feedback". I hope you reconsider; you're capsule looks great.

[capi3101]

15 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

Today I went around installing mods for my next playthrough, and this is the message I get on loading

Module Manager : 745 patches applied

Perfectly normal message - it means that you probably installed the mods correctly; the game has recognized them and is ready to use them. Rare is the mod that installs just one patch; I think I have somewhere in the neighborhood of three dozen mods I use and my count is about 5400 patches give or take.  

And as others have pointed out already, 745 is not a particularly impressive number.

[Cavscout74]

My floating base landed on Laythe today, so it was time to move Jeb & company over to man it for a while.  As it turned out, Jool was looking quite spooky this dark Laythe night

Leaving Lancer-Laythe  base

At the floating base, after a ~15 km over land trip followed by a 45km boat ride at 15-16 m/s

I also tested out  @XLjedi's Krakonian Marauder, another craft I downloaded ages ago but never got around to testing.   It flew quite nice, and landing was incredibly smooth

[FezCool]

I docked a fuel tank to a space station so that's cool.

Edited November 5, 2018 by FezCool
Idk

[XLjedi]

39 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

I also tested out  @XLjedi's Krakonian Marauder, another craft I downloaded ages ago but never got around to testing.   It flew quite nice, and landing was incredibly smooth

That was a bit of a silly one... but there's a sillier one coming!

[Cavscout74]

4 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

That was a bit of a silly one... but there's a sillier one coming!

Looking forward to it!!!  

[Angelo Kerman]

I fixed a bunch of bugs today in my plugins, continued my refit for the new KAS/KIS, and then took a break and launched the drydock component of my Minmus Station expansion project:

Minmus Station has one more expansion module awaiting construction, then I'll have to fly crew up to the station to finish setting it up and expanding it.

[KestrelAerospace]

10 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Ho, that's an interesting idea. How much thrust does the Wheesley give in reverse-thrust mode?

Also, yeah some stock props would rule. I would love to do proper aerial exploration of Eve but that's just not feasible pure stock. A prop on the other hand...

-- By the way, I had my first brush with something that could possibly be developed into a K-drive. Was driving a rover into a cargo bay up the ramp, but it was a bit steep and it got stuck. So I figured I'll just raise the ramp a bit to shake it loose. Rather to my surprise, the entire aircraft levitated up, up into the air, before majestically flipping over and disappearing in a giant ball of fire. If that effect could be harnessed controllably, it would make for some highly efficient propulsion... and it might, because the deployment angle of the ramp is smoothly adjustable, and the effect is tied to that. I'm not inclined to put in the work though, but if there are K-drive enthusiasts here who aren't aware of it, there you go.

Well, as far as I can tell... The Wheesley actually produces close to its full thrust even when reversed. This makes it possible to go quite near Mach 1 in that Spitfire lookalike I posted last night. I've delved quite deep into creating stock 'prop' craft, as they're proving pretty practical for general use, and here are some screencaps of my results: 

Here's a Marlin Twenty, or what we in the industry call a "blatant Cessna Caravan ripoff'.

And here's a snazzy little Marlin Thirty-Five. Or maybe a knockoff King Air. Really, it's up in the air. 

 

[Guest]

Those look really good! I am going to shamelessly steal this idea, because I also like to make small retro aircraft although I don't ever go for recreations of specific planes, at best Kerbalised riffs off some of them. Because of the lack of props I've been doing early-jet-age planes but this will give more possiblities.

Maybe you can recognise the inspirations for these...

[KestrelAerospace]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Those look really good! I am going to shamelessly steal this idea, because I also like to make small retro aircraft although I don't ever go for recreations of specific planes, at best Kerbalised riffs off some of them. Because of the lack of props I've been doing early-jet-age planes but this will give more possiblities.

Maybe you can recognise the inspirations for these...

I see some '40s British jets there! I always liked how the earlier jet era designs blended curved shapes with newer technology. 

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, KestrelAerospace said:

I see some '40s British jets there! I always liked how the earlier jet era designs blended curved shapes with newer technology. 

Yep, the inspirations are the Gloster Meteor and the de Havilland Vampire, respectively!

[Guest]

Okay @KestrelAerospace, which one is this based on?

[KestrelAerospace]

2 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Okay @KestrelAerospace, which one is this based on?

That's probably a Mosquito! Or perhaps a Beaufighter? Difficult to say. 

[Guest]

Yep, the Mosquito was what I had in mind. The BAK Beaulover would look more like this -- different wing and tail geometry and stumpier engine nacelles:

(Hard to make rounded wingtips without way too many parts...

Edited November 5, 2018 by Guest

[Interstellar Yeet]

https://imgur.com/a/2czqHrH Technically yesterday, I did my first attempt at docking! And it went well. I landed on minmus collected a ton of science, then I docked with my lab in low orbit around Minmus and i maxed out my 750 data lab! So i'm getting aaaaall the science. Then I did the same thing today, except on the Mun. I even flew the exact same rocket! I got the game like about a week ago and I've got 60 hours and 2 dockings under my belt. I feel so proud today. What I'm gonna do next is empty both of my labs for science, upgrade my research building so I can get those 500+ science nodes, and then I'm gonna build a brand new ship with loads of room in it so I can fly to both Moons and get all my kerbals back to kerbin for a well deserved break. 

[Cavscout74]

10 hours ago, KestrelAerospace said:

Here's a Marlin Twenty, or what we in the industry call a "blatant Cessna Caravan ripoff

If that tail was painted purple, I'd feel right at home with that.  Been working on those for 15+ years

[Cavscout74]

My first Laythe explorers of this career are just about ready to come home.

Final morning on Laythe

Loading up the Pumera spaceplane for the trip back to orbit

Climb to orbit

After transferring to the PCC-02 Babylon, the crew headed to Vall for a quick exploration trip to the surface.  Here, docked with the Vall lander

On the surface of Vall for some anomaly exploration.   After returning to orbit, they're heading for Tylo next.  No landings at the other moons for this crew, however - just some fly-bys, then the long trip home

[Guest]

One thing I've never done in KSP is build a long-range SSTO plane. You know, one of those things that rides jets to the sky, then flies around the system on a Nerv. I never saw the point -- why make something that has to lug those useless RAPIERs to Eeloo and back again, if you're never going to use them once out of the atmosphere?

Anyway, I cobbled together one and ... wow, there is an appeal there. This little thing has enough dV to make it to Eeloo, all on its lonesome. That's pretty amazing, when you think about what an operation that is, normally.

I don't think I'd ever be using these in career mode though, they're just too inefficient what with all that dry mass. I love spaceplanes and use them a lot for all kinds of missions, but from where I'm at they're strictly for shuttling stuff to and from orbit -- specifically, Kerbin, Laythe, or Duna orbit. Using them for interplanetary missions just seems wasteful.

[Sharpy]

Yesterday, I explored the Valentine system. Unfortunately the warp drive slows the game down to a crawl after use. Finished the contract to 'explore Valentine', that's the end of my 1.4.4 playthrough.

I'm not installing the KSPI or 'Near Future Energy' ever again. The way the nuclear reactors are nerfed is horrible, and I never got the beamed power and ISRU to work. Seriously, couldn't it use like 4 bands - microwave, infrared, visible, UV, X, and instead go into 5-6 sub-bands and a disparate part set for each? And the propellant system, like 20 different propellants that just differ with parameters, availability, and parts. Maybe some people like this. Not me.

 

 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Sharpy said:

I'm not installing the KSPI or 'Near Future Energy' ever again. The way the nuclear reactors are nerfed is horrible, and I never got the beamed power and ISRU to work. Seriously, couldn't it use like 4 bands - microwave, infrared, visible, UV, X, and instead go into 5-6 sub-bands and a disparate part set for each? And the propellant system, like 20 different propellants that just differ with parameters, availability, and parts. Maybe some people like this. Not me.

Yeah, I have to agree.  KSPI was fun as heck...  But KSPI-E just has too many moving parts and too much complexity.

[Athen]

I built (and landed, although a few feet off the runway) my first shuttle today. I still need to work on creating more lift on the Shuttle though... Do I need the center of mass in the front or the back?

[purpleivan]

Yesterday I released my first parts mod; a small collection of junkyard parts (Honest Purple's Land O' Junk) that enables you to put together things like this. I'll be adding more to the pack over time.

[Zosma Procyon]

 I added the third segment to what I'm calling the "Minmus Long Base"; I know, a brilliantly creative name. I accept all of your implicit adulation. The idea is to see how long a base can get before either the curvature of the moon becomes a problem, the game slows to the point movement in the vicinity is essentially impossible, or it summons a Kraken. If something doesn't go wrong, I intend to keep adding to the base every time a contract to do so pops up until is stretches across this section of the Minmus lesser flats...and I deliberately chose a narrow point in the flats to build it.

Here is the third section landing. Yes I use MechJeb, it makes space travel more realistic. As a genuine astronautics engineer I can tell you that even with manned spacecraft computers do most of the flying. Anyway I only took this screenshot because for a few seconds it looked like the transfer stage of this spacecraft was going to hit the base. In the end it missed by a safe, roughly 100 m margin (!). The landing stage in this craft has massively more fuel than was required to land. Even after 155 years I'm still not good an estimating how much fuel I need for landing. After landing the landing stage was jettisoned using 16 sepatrons per side on trajectories leading far away from the base to reduce the amount of clutter.

This is the base so far, the newly added third segment is on the far left.

And here is a better angle.

 

[Xurkitree]

Today I went from Eve to Moho in my Grand Tour run - 

Take off from Eve to Moho low orbit.

My respect for Ion Engines has vastly improved - from something I never tried, to something that got me to Moho so goddamn easily it makes my earlier grand tour look like a noob in comparison

like seriously, I went from eve to moho in less that an hour, real time.And my Ion ship has 1/2 of its fuel left, and now can land on Moho

meanwhile, my earlier grand tour took over 2-3 weeks to get into moho orbit, then ran out of fuel, so I had to spend a week to send another refuelling mission to it damn

Edited November 6, 2018 by Xurkitree

[MR L A]

4 hours ago, Athen said:

I built (and landed, although a few feet off the runway) my first shuttle today. I still need to work on creating more lift on the Shuttle though... Do I need the center of mass in the front or the back?

FRONT... well, in front of your centre of lift anyway