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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Landed the advance party for my Minmus base, then started landing the modules. They've been orbiting in a holding pattern for a while, waiting for the little shuttle I use to go from the station to the surface and back to be refuelled, but now...

 

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Now I'm just waiting on the support rovers I launched to get there, and I can set up a mining rig on a nearby lowlands area and start making fuel for the shuttle... and for science return capsules, and biome hoppers, and... well, you get the idea. :D

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I delivered fuel.

 

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Special thanks to those guys who helped me make my first Jumbo64-capable cargo SSTO. @bewing , @AeroGav , @Aeroboi , @Aegolius13 , @Starhawk , @capi3101 , and @bewing in particular. I know it's obnoxious to give a shout out to so many forum members in a single post but this is a pretty significant milestone for me. I've never had a 2.5m cargo capable SSTO and it will make deliveries of fuel, larger rocket engines for orbital testing, small landers, as well as modular mothership/space station components much cheaper and more satisfying in the future.

Edited by MisterKerman
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13 hours ago, Tyko said:

Haha...that's cheating.. I was trying to get you your flyby without unlocking the Terrier.   :P    Once you unlock the Terrier it's a cakewalk to orbit the Mun and return. If you sent a scientist you could even reset your Material Bay and not have to carry 3 of them  :) 

To be honest I thought the difficulty would be getting something heavy enough in to orbit without the radial decouplers.  It was a bit wobbly but not too bad, and gave me some useful additional pointers on my both my climbout and circularisation scripts.  Bit reluctant to send a scientist without a pilot as the occasional glitch in my KOS software can mean a pilots needed to save the day.  I suppose a scientist with an OKTO as backup might be good enough.

I did however save the game before unlocking the terrier so there's always the option of going the other way.  This is a slow progress play through with a huge amount of reverts as every launch is testing software :D

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No pictures (yet), but I will do my best to paint with words.

The Program has a contract for science from the surface of Eve!  So I designed a delightful little Soviet-style lander, and was quite tickled to see it pass through re-entry with only moderate damage.  I managed to miss the large continent I had targeted however, and was heading for a water landing.  Oh well, thought I, at least with an inflatable heat-shield it will float!

Little did I realize they were inflated with lead.

Ah!  But this is excellent!  I can now 'land' on the floor of the ocean, and still use all my soil analysis tools!  If I can transmit from the ocean floor it will work!

Then at 118m everything crushed.  :|

Floating to the top of the sea, incredibly, all that survived is; the Octo probe core, 2 batteries, a communitron 16, and 1 tiny solar panel.

One survived communicating probe, ... zero science that can be done.  :(

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Today we embark to minmus with Minmal 1.

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Launch to LKO went as planned, now Jeb just has to fix his inclination perform the Trans-Minmal injection.

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The lander stage uses the "ant" engine, so it has a pitifully low TWR. It literally has a TWR of 1.7... On Minmus.

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Jeb's gonna stay on the surface for a few days, stay tuned for his trip home!

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A few days ago I uploaded the latest version of KSP (1.6.1) and MechJeb.  I put up a bunch of Sats into orbit.  I then built a Orbital Science Station and made two Crew Taxis to transport the crew to man and run the station.  As you can see I over-engineered the Taxis.

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Today I put a Scanner into orbit around Kerbin and one around the Mun.

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Tomorrow will be the hardest and most fun part.  Making tiny little rovers for scanning the surface.  Small enough to fit a few on a rocket.  But big enough to handle landing without crashing.  I kind of already picked a spot that looks good.  But I want to check the polar regions of the Mun also.  I assume future mining operations will do better with solar power available.  First will have to put a few Sats about the Mun of course.

Edited by ValleyTwo
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My biggest news for today is my Duna Flyer II arrived, entered Duna's atmosphere and then..... IT FLEW!!!!!!!!   I had already dropped a rover near a high-ore location in the highlands west of the western canyon entrance & I was able to land near the rover on the side of a hill.  Then I took back off & flew down to the mouth of the western canyon to check the ore there.  At nearly 4km (in the highlands) I landed at only ~32 m/s.  Second landing (at ~1.2 km) was at 25 m/s.  Could probably go slower, but I wanted a little safety factor on the first few landings.  This is the first time I've ever operated an aircraft of my own design in Duna's atmosphere (successfully anyway)

Entering Duna orbit

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About to enter Duna's atmosphere as Kerbol & Ike climb over the horizon

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I might land if I can find the ground.  Another surprise - the 4 little electric fans will push this bird to 200+ m/s at full throttle on Duna.  And it does NOT like to slow down in the thin atmosphere.

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Circling back to the rover after overshooting, still looking for a good landing spot.

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A little flatter here, lets try it

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Success!!!!

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I taxied back up to the rover before attempting to take off

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First takeoff on Duna - heading for the canyon entrance

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The second landing in the flatter canyon entrance didn't get a fresh screenshot.  It was actually pretty simple, especially since the sand storms stayed away long enough to land.

Sadly the ore concentration dropped from 12.5% in the highlands to only 5.1% in the flatter canyon entrance.  I'm trying to find a place to put a mining base.  The rover found a mostly flat spot (only a ~1 degree slope) but it will be pretty tight to fit the base.  Actually, REALLY tight to fit the base.  I may have to run some "simulations" in sandbox before I try it in career with no quickload.  

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Had a busy day... Got started on my ore drilling rig for my Minmus base...

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Maucal was quite proud of the rig, even though it's not fully completed yet.

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Bringing over another ore tank from the cargo lander...

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There's the rig...

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"... what the... I swear I had those bolted down..."

 

Turns out, the Kraken took a liking to it, proceeded to smash it into the terrain, then absconded with it entirely upon reloading the last quicksave. :mad: So, I have to launch another cargo mission. This time, I'm putting it near the base; lower ore concentrations are not as big of a problem as the rig vanishing.

Maucal and Val decided to end their surface stay after the incident with the rig, and they returned to the station to await the crew swap...

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There is a total of 5 seats on that TKS-Lite... three in the capsule and two in the orbital module. It took some shuffling in the crew compartment, but everyone swapped between the crew transfer vehicle and the station in two round trips and about a third of an orbit. Less than 20 m/s of RCS dV was burned in total, which, given the ranges involved, I'm quite happy with.

And, the transfer was completed just in time...

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All told, the CTV spent less than 2 hours in orbit around Minmus, due to some fortuitous orbital alignments and some skilled transfer burns. Mighty fast work, if I do say so myself. Now, the returning crew has a fairly standard 8 day coast home, only interrupted by a mid-course plane change burn to bring the ship into an equatorial orbit for much less dV than would be normally used.. After that, the crew capsules that the outbound crew left loitering on orbit will come and pick up the homebound crew, and they'll be returning to Kerbin with quite a bit of experience... all 6 are now 2-star ranked. :D 

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A conglomeration of several days worth of Kerbalish stuff... 

First off, new computer! :D
...promptly killed the old one...
Followed shortly (after a marathon of overtime) by a new monitor! :cool:

Spoiler

35" Curved ulta-widescreen, i5-9600K 3.70gHz OC'd to about 4.46gHz, Thermaltake Core P3 "case," 16GB RAM, Radeon RX 580 and my 1.2.2 modfest still taxes it
Still to come: lots and lots of cable management! 

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Now with MOAR empty desk space for the collection of Crap™!
...that one speaker won't even give me the time of day anymore...

500GB NVMe m.2 "drive"

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It's so tiny!:lol:I still remember when I had two huge 150 megabyte ESDI drives sitting on the floor for storage... anyways...

So, to test it all out, I've been faffing about a bit with 1.6, tried a New Glenn-ish fly/boostback booster thingy...

Spoiler

 

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Boost, and separation!

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We'll just forget about Val in the capsule for a moment, she can take care of herself...

Quick flip, followed by a boostback burn...

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You can change the control direction with a click now! Perfect!

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Except for the part where it totally misses the space center. Multiple times. Like, lots and lots of multiples...

 

So, trying again, separating a little lower this time...

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Stay on target!

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Stay on target!

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Once the wings bite into the air it actually flies surprisingly well for a booster going backwards. Can easily maintain a flat glide until it runs out of speed. Which is rather the point...

 

On target this time! Mostly...

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Now, to land... I got this...

 

 

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...still got it...

 

little bit moar...

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OK, so... gave it the old Stock try, but might have to resort to Trajectories and MechJeb... :P

Now, to collect Val while she's still suborbital and...

.

.

.

oh... poop... :wacko:

 

 

Edited by CatastrophicFailure
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To day launched my DunaExperimentalTransferVehicle(all of the stuff I post in this thread is in career) :

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"Who's there?"

The only problem is that I went out of comms range so I lost all the precious science:(

So I decided to focus on Minmus and the Mun so does any body have anybody have any ideas/suggestions for exploring the Mun and Minmus's biomes 

Edited by MiscelanousItem
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4 hours ago, MiscelanousItem said:

So I decided to focus on Minmus and the Mun so does any body have anybody have any ideas/suggestions for exploring the Mun and Minmus's biomes 

What I do is get a polar orbit, get "above the moon from space" data (I think?) tighten your orbit until you're close enough to get "above biome from orbit" data, and let the moon rotate under your craft untill you've got all the experiments that are appropriate for those conditions complete. All that's left is to land on each biome in single purposeful missions or hopping. That should give your scientists quite a lot of valuable data.

Just leave this wiki page here. I'm going to re-read it too... I just came back from a break from KSP and my terminology is obviously rusty.

The "Activities" section is probably what you'll be most interested in, in regards to performing as many different experiments in different conditions goes.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science

EDIT: OMG you can do a gravity scan high in space for each biome... how did I not notice this before??

Edited by MisterKerman
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 I am cautiously excited.

I flew a test flight this evening.  The experimental airplane weighs 125t, fully-laden at take-off.

It carries a total of 15,325 LF and 1,815 OX (ignoring what the Gryphon carries).  Within its tail cargo ramp, it transports a Gryphon II universal refueler.  It's able to dock with rovers, with small airplanes, with medium airplanes and with heavies.

For me, this system has been the Holy Grail.  The duo constitute a pop-up mobile fuel depot to be used to establish/supply outlying airports.

If this works, the following vessels of mine will become obsolete: Pegasus 1, 2, 3, 3G and 4, Chrysalis, Aquarius, Gryphon 1, Harp Gryphon, Vodka, Vodka Daiquiri, Vodka Lite, Vodka Pterodactyl, Valkyrie Daiquiri, Valkyrie Vodka and Daiquiri Poseidon.  It's a regular MASS EXTINCTION.

It's making me feel quite verklempt thinking about it...  :(

 

UPDATE: I was keeping it under wraps for a bit, but since you asked, @MisterKerman, here is the experimental and a reprint of Gryphon II:

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Note that this is a collaboration and more details (including credits) will be published when the project is fully concluded.

So, behind the cockpit is a Mk3 rocket fuel short fuselage.  Next back is a Mk3 jet fuel long fuselage.  Then the cargo ramp into which the Gryphon packs.

The Big S wings each carry 300 LF.  A couple of strakes at the back, 100LF each.  And the engine stack tanks are T400s (I theenk?) with the OX empty, thus allowing OX in the center fuselage to be pumped backward for fine trim.
Rotation is after 40 m/s although with full fuel, very little climb rate will be available at that low speed.  I flew a predecessor version of this level, speed diminishing to slightly above 20 m/s and then touched down at 18!  (NOT my design!)

This one (code-named "Manta") might touch down a little faster but it floats like Mohammad Ali and has to be aimed at Terra Firma in order to get there.  A better pilot than me could probably land this thing on top of the VAB except it's too long to fit...  :)

Cruise is around 1,100 m/s but some gentle coaxing required to get there.  Range is...  Range...  Well, range...  How do you define range?  The Vee-hickle in question is intended to deliver 65t of fuel somewhere, so if it just stays up, circling the block looking for the delivery address...  well, it could probably circle Kerbin 80 times, you see.

Edited by Hotel26
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I love this:

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Exploration mission that went to Jool, Sarnus and Urlum visiting and landing on almost all their moons! (it's my KSP-IE career):)

Some pics from the trip:

Jool

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Sarnus

Ye, I smashed some radiators on my first landing (which was Pol If I remember correctly), but hopefully the remainings ones were juust enough to maintain the reactor heat to correct values..!

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Urlum

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Some landing shots:

Spoiler

Ovok

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I believe it's Priax there, with its deeep craters!

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Tal

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Today, in order to properly explore the Mun I decided to put Sats around it.  My first failed.  You can see it had some issues.

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And I tried another version.  But that one also failed.  

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After many MANY failures and retries, and a rebuild, I had a working delivery system for the relay Sats.

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But once the four were spread out...shouldn't they be talking to EACH other also?   Oh well...

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Anyway, I landed a tiny mini-ore-lander in the Highlands, close to the North Pole.  I picked it because I wanted someplace with a short night-day cycle and also, from orbit, looked like it had a good amount of ore.  The landed mini-scanner showed 10.42 %.  To be honest I am not sure that is good or bad.  Due to the landscape I think I may have to send a crewed mission just to check the place out (in day light), take samples, find a flat spot.  Maybe with a rover with another scanner to pin down a nice spot.  Before the mining starts anyway.

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Or should I try to find a better spot?  

 

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I added the 6th segment to my Spindle Station, making it over 130 meters long, I think. I actually hit the kraken limit this time because I was using the wrong autostructing. So I had to go through the station switching the whole thing to grandparent autostructing, and it held together.

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43 minutes ago, ValleyTwo said:

But once the four were spread out...shouldn't they be talking to EACH other also?   Oh well...

It is becauce you are using the wrong type of antenna. The antenna you are using can only transmit directly to Kerbin or to a relay antenna, but it is not itself a relay. The relay antennas tend to be heavier, non-extendable and cost more, but can talk between other antennas(not only other relays). The non relays that you are using are better for landers and such that are ment to be lightweight and dont need to re-transmit signals. And as they are landed there is a higher chance of it being blocked by the thing it has landed on, so you need relays in orbit as you already figured out.

The green antennas are relays, the blue one is a low-range relay antenna that can be extended and dont reach to any other planets. But since you are around the mun any of them will do. I suggest the one in the bottom right.

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If you rightclick on the antennas you can see if it is a relay or not and you can also see its range (see the link below for more on that)

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The wiki has a nice page on how far you can reach with each type of antenna: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet

 

If you want to you can use the narrow band scanner to get a more detailed look at where the ore is(it gets better if you have done a surface scan nearby as you already have done;)).

You can drag around the little cursor to find a place with good ore. You might want to click the color button so it becomes easier too see the difference. And then click the waypoint button to put a marker in map on the selected spot. Then it is easy to land where there is good ore.

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Edited by Eriksonn
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Testing a KOS script for a free return flypast of the Mun, but then realised that wouldn't take me low enough for an "in space low above the Mun" science package, so modified it to do a flypast ahead of the Mun and then have to burn a bit retrograde to to be able to re-enter Kerbin.

 

I had a typo in the code...

 

I set the Mun periapsis altitude to 1000m...

 

The highest terrain on the mun equator is something like 3400m....

 

Luckily Jeb was only testing the software in the simulator so he had the option to revert and try again tomorrow.

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