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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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This is my wallpaper at the moment and I feel compelled to share.  :)  It's the look on Kerman's face that tells the story, I think.

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This is a Snark VTOL "Doodlebug", which I have since refitted to operate on a lone Juno to produce the Rodeo, a kind of personal jet-bike.  I have also been able to sling two of these wee beasties into the Mk-2 cargo bays of my Aquarius transporter, which means they can be transported far afield efficiently.  Range is 180km and cruise is about 180 m/s.  (My appreciation to @Snark.)

Edited by Hotel26
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In the Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation the crew went upstream from the coast.

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Then they needed fuel, so a SMIRF dropped by from orbit.

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While they admired the view.

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To top it off, Bob took the rover to the peak of one of the lakeside mountains, only to wish he was on top of its neighbour.

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Edited by purpleivan
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2 hours ago, Loskene said:

With no fuel tanks?

I don't know what's underneath or on the inside of that thing. Better let Doodle answer my question I guess, as well as yours.

I realize you need fuel and an engine to hop. Sometimes people clip parts.

He has multiple experiments of the same kind on that thing so they would be best used in multiple biomes seeing as it's an unmanned craft with no on board scientist to reset them.

He has spent parachutes which means it touched down probably using those alone, which means if it was a hopper it would still have a full tank of fuel for a hop. Landing close enough to another biome might make the necessary fuel required reasonably low. I've done things like that before myself, just without part clipping generally.

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Inspired by a video I saw once, along with last night's semi-functional experiments, I went about building and flying a supersonic, ultra-low altitude drone.

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As it turns out, SLAM* piloting is actually incredibly fun, howling along at 2-3 times the speed of sound hugging the ground, at night flying north from Woomerang, it's a strange mix of relaxing and exciting.
I apologise for the lack of artistry with the screenshots but when I'm flying that low and that fast, one doesn't usually have much time to compose a shot, especially when I need to keep an eye on where the ground is. A couple of times I got really low down, once even kicking up a dust cloud from the jet exhaust and on several occasions, lighting up the ground but such passes were over in the blink of an eye (I think the picture above was taken a fraction of a second after one such pass).
That said however, more often than not, these close calls would wind up being a bit too close. It turns out that spearing into the ground at mach 2+ isn't good for the structural integrity of … well, anything.

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My last flight today was probably my most successful, clocking a bit over 7 minutes of flight time before the engine overheated and exploded (I had ramped back the power for a while to avoid one overheat already but this time it was too little, too late) and reaching the polar mountains (these have some great valleys to fly down).

*SLAM = Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (Technically it's more of a "disposable drone" and isn't designed to hit anything but I liked the acronym).

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Turns out that the VAB was under siege by the Kraken, so in order to launch some engineers sallied out a rocket and defeated the kraken with the launch button.  Not to waste a good rocket they decided to test it and go to the Moon

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turns out the rocket just wanted to go sunbathing (literally)

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This is the currently-running O.T.A.M.A.J.A.K.U.S.H.I project:

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It's a 6t test bed for the magically mysterious Panther engine.  (My lab Kerbals claim building a plane is much more 'scientific' than reading boring performance graphs.)

Performance at sea level (or "slightly above it", as I took particular care to word it when briefing test pilot, Jeb Kerman) is pleasantly phenomenal.

"It's a kick to fly and a trick to land", Jeb reported after the first work-out, looking quite flushed.

 

Edited by Hotel26
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I sent Jeb up to visit an anomaly detected near the north pole - to hasten his trip, I put 4 small SRB's mounted vertically on a CF-01BP Venom jet & launched from the Woomerang launch pad.   Rather than bother with pesky runways, the 4 SRB's are sufficient to lift the Venom off the launch pad long enough for it build up sufficient speed to start flying.  From Woomerang, it's only about a 7 minute flight to the northern anomaly. 

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While Jeb was off freezing on the icecap, Val & Ambera hopped over to Mun for some exploring of their own:

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Finally, the much delayed Mun Surveyor was launched & arrived at the Munar north polar region and made a safe landing.   Its duplicate Minmus Surveyor actually arrived & landed several days ago.

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Now I have a probe on Mun that can actually maintain comms with KSC and send back science from the surface of Mun. 

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I launched a station to Minmus in an early career that has tons of fuel and some docking ports (Why yes it was for a contract how'd you guess?) and I didn't give it any monoprop or line the docking ports up or anything because I figured, anything that will dock to it will have that.

Then I launched a little lander and for design purposes (I tell myself) I put the docking port on the side, not the top. And I didn't put RCS on it either.

Now I need to dock these things together to fuel up the lander.

This may be my final transmission.

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I've been tinkering with a new Bon Voyage equipped mobile base that I might send to Eve for the last week or so. It uses the 5 pairs of the largest landing gear to hold most of its weight so there is less strain on the drive wheels. It also has under half the parts of my first mobile Eve base. Anywho tonight I decided to try an insertion test. I used all the cheats to find trouble spots without having to start over. Long story short the drive wheels need more protection and a shallow insertion vector would be ideal. Also since I didn't actually choose my landing spot, rather just ran the deorbit stage for 30 seconds, the test article ended up going down over a body of explodium, so I couldn't test it on land. Here are a few pictures.

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This is an earlier version.

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It stayed pointing in the right direction most of the way.

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Right after I took this picture I tried to fast forward to when it hit the water, and it krakened. So that was the end of the test.

Edited by Zosma Procyon
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3 hours ago, Stratzenblitz75 said:

Today, I went to orbit using only jet engines: 

Another work of genius (yes, I am a bit of a fan of these creations)

What did I do today?

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A bit of background: With this career save, I discovered I have a tendency toward shallow launch trajectories, reaching orbital velocity before I leave the atmosphere on a number of occasions. This happened on the first flight of this craft (the Orbitan I mission) which gave me an idea.

For the second flight (the one I did today), I decided to not bother pushing the apoapsis up and fly around Kerbin in the upper atmosphere at orbital velocity. It wasn't as hard as it looked and while regular corrections were needed, it wasn't that difficult (although aside from the novelty and that theoretically it would be a bit quicker than a proper orbit, it wasn't that interesting). In the end, I managed 3 "orbits" at 60km, 55km and 50km (or thereabouts) before running short of electrical power and returning home via space (the pilot was new, needed the experience and was practically there anyway).

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