What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Happy 1.8, y'all, and to my own self, happy New Year! In all the hubbub I've had in the last few days I missed the clock rolling over into Year 2...guess you could say I celebrated the anniversary of Jeb's first launches by trying to land a rover on Tylo...

So after yesterday's failed and reverted attempt to land a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane on Tylo, my day began with a redesign of the Last Chance 7 emergency de-orbiting grabber probe; evidently I'd deleted the original after using it to get the TBD 7b down to the surface of Duna (the mission that established the Enchova Central outpost there now three versions ago). LSV House Corrino still in high orbit over Tylo didn't have sufficient Rocket Parts available to begin construction of the Last Chance (what with it already having used most of them to print up the Hound and all), so my next order of business was to get the ship somewhere where it could get some parts. To that end, I aimed the ship at Laythe.

Four celestial bodies in a screenshot yet again...

Corrino broke orbit and warped to Laythe, arriving at 2,337 m/s; after a single warp-back to lose speed, she settled into a 422.0 x 291.8 kilometer, 4.12° inclined orbit and powered up her mass driver. The C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe's surface then shot up replacement conventional fuel supplies, a small quantity of Xenon Gas and a full load of Rocket Parts. While I was still at the outpost, I went ahead and cleared the launch clamps that were still there from the launch of a Boop Boop 7x probe that occurred at Baker earlier this week. Corrino began printing up the Last Chance and had it done about forty minutes later, and after replacement Rocket Parts and fuel supplies for the probe from Baker, Corrino broke orbit and returned to Tylo, arriving at 2,937 m/s. Two warp-backs later, the ship had returned to orbit over Jool's largest moon and the Last Chance was released from the drydock. Corrino began printing up a Spamcan 7 for eventual release over Pol, finishing that construction job 21 minutes later. Meanwhile, the Last Chance made its way to the Hellhound, arriving at a rendezvous after about eighty minutes or so and successfully grabbing hold of the rover.

 
I still don't know how I managed to finagle the probe into the exact position it needed to be in. Ain't knocking it either.

While waiting for the rover to come into position for de-orbit at the coordinates I'd previously targeted, Corrino finished the print up of the Spamcan and filled it with monoprop. Engineer Kabert Kerman, who is destined for assignment at the Pol shipyard currently under construction, boarded the new lander and Corrino warped over to Jool, establishing herself in a 6,709.6 x 5,965.0 kilometer, 7.56° inclined orbit. She's still waiting to get into position for a warp to Pol as of this morning. Corrino herself does not need to enter Pol orbit - the plan is to bleed off as much speed as possible over Jool, warp there, launch the lander and have it enter orbit under its own power. Should be plenty of fuel to get it wherever I want to send it afterwards, whether that's to space station Polport or all the way down to the Petrobas 36 outpost on the surface. Haven't decided yet which.

Despite the addition of the Last Chance, it still took me several tries to finally get the rover down to the surface intact. Even on the final attempt, the craft ran out of fuel about 200 meters over the surface and lithobraked. My saving grace there was the fact that the Hellhound rover itself was deliberately designed many, many, many moons ago around parts with high impact tolerances - structural panels and girders  - and so while much of the lower half of the skycrane was destroyed at impact, the rover itself survived the crash.

Da Hound. Kicking butt and taking names since version 0.19.

The crash occurred about 83 klicks east of the target coordinates, so at this point I've got a bit of a drive ahead of me.

I think something's got my compass borked, though...

Got a fair amount to do at this point. In addition to getting Corrino to Pol and driving the Hound to the target zone, I've got a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft ready to launch at the Imo Pyramis Shipyards over Bop, I've got a shipyard nearing completion at Vall, and I've got a rover to begin printing on Minmus. Big plan right now is for Corrino to head to Bop after dropping off the Can at Pol; she's got tourists aboard headed to the surface and the G-LOC is also needing a pickup. The plan is also for Corrino to build the TBD 7e base-seeding rover over Bop using the Bohai 2 outpost there for support; this TBD will be establishing the outpost on Tylo, the last outpost I'll need to establish in Jool's SOI. Only have Dres, Moho and Eeloo after that; my money's on Dres for the next destination. At some point I'll probably be turning my attention back to more contracts as well. 

With the drop of 1.8 I once again am faced with the choice of ending my current career save or continuing it. While I'd like to see all the new things in 1.8 for early career, I think at this point I'm so far along - just four places left before I've got the whole system fundamentally colonized - I'll probably keep going. Who knows - I might finish things up and still have time to start a fresh career save before 1.9 drops...

 

I really oughta get around to updating my signature ribbons...

Edited October 17, 2019 by capi3101

[Cavscout74]

I continued to not get a lot done today, just 3 launches plus my second Moho Pioneer probe arrived and made orbit this time.

First up was the final major component for my Minmus Station - the greenhouse module. 

Catching the light of the rising sun at launch

Docking with the station.  Happily no slowdown in the game today

Next launch was a combined relay & lander for Gilly.  The last Eve window, I skipped trying to get anything to Gilly due to time & budget limitations.

Finally, the Moho Pioneer safely in orbit.  This one added a graviolli detector to the original design, and was able to send back additional low & high orbit science

[biohazard15]

Was wondering if you can make a variable-sweep wing with Breaking Ground robotic parts.

Yes, you can.

[Puggonaut]

Today in 1.8 I tested things that seem to work still 

[eddiew]

2 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

 

Why/how does your Minmus have this healthy green glow about it?

[DoctorDavinci]

 

[Cavscout74]

52 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Why/how does your Minmus have this healthy green glow about it?

SciFi Visual Enhancements.  Most of the other planets/moons do as well - Duna has dust storms, Laythe has rain storms, Eelee has ice crystals, Moho has fire whirls plus some others.  Duna & Minmus are my favorites, I deleted most of the others to improve performance

 

Another view from the sruface:

Edited October 17, 2019 by Cavscout74

[Lisias]

Welll… "This is Halloween, this is halloween!"

Spoiler

 

I just coded yet another Scaring Message for TweakScale today.

This thing is still in beta, the code that pick the correct KSP versions for the Add'On is still work in progress, but it carry on the task as is. I'm releasing a BETA version of TweakScale for KSP 1.8 in the next hours. [Nope, run outa time. Sorry]

(and yeah, typos. They will be fixed on the PRE-RELEASE. )

Edited October 18, 2019 by Lisias
Uh. got a bit more optimistic than I should on the release date...

[Pipcard]

Y53, D98 - The assembly of Akagi Base on Duna is complete

[McFarnsworth]

My brain, today:

 

Oh look, there's a cheap launch window to Dres, and there are some asteroids already in a stable orbit.

*don't build a giant mining vessel*

*don't build a giant mining vessel*

So I did:

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Fairly productive day to report to y'all. The day yesterday began at the Imo Pyramis Shipyards over Bop, where I finally mashed "finalize" on the construction of the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft I'd ordered up there on Tuesday. The new craft received monopropellant only from the shipyard's stores, then was released from the drydock and proceeded to dock at one of the station's ports in order to await the arrival of LSV House Corrino for the journey to Kerbin.

With a window of opportunity available to do so, Corrino warped to bleed off much of her orbital velocity over Jool and then proceeded to a flyby trajectory of Pol, arriving at 273 m/s. The Spamcan 7 lander that Corrino's crew had built was released from the drydock with engineer Kabert Kerman aboard at an altitude of of 153 kilometers.

Kabert jumping ship...

The Spamcan burned to a 194.8 x 10.2 kilometer, 86.11° inclined orbit over Pol for an initial orbit while Corrino continued along her flyby course. Eventually I was able to align the craft to within 0.17° of space station Polport's equatorial orbit and set up a intercept, which will be in about 2.5 hours. I have yet to decide if the lander will head to Polport or to the Petrobas 36 outpost on the surface; it's going to depend on its fuel status once I've conducted the Polport rendezvous burn - if it looks good, I'll have it deliver Kabert to Petrobas; the shipyard currently under construction there will be Kabert's final posting anyway, so he could just launch straight from there. That'd be the optimal scenario.

With the Spamcan away, my attention next turned to the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall, which signaled that construction of the orbital shipyard was finally complete. After finalizing construction, the new shipyard was filled with bipropellant and then launched. The booster, as it turned out, didn't have sufficient fuel to put the shipyard in orbit, but I was able to bring the shipyard's mass driver online and 380 shot up another full tank of gas to the booster, clearing away the clamps from the launch while I was there. With another fuel load of fuel, the shipyard was able to complete its journey into orbit and perform a plane change at the equator. After establishing itself at 45.5 x 45.2 kilometers and 0.48° inclination, the booster was discarded and deorbited and the drydock deployed, bringing the Non Est Hic Shipyards into existence.

The Non Est Hic Shipyards over Vall.

 

The shipyard's name, which means "it is not here", is a reference to the fact that Vall would be ejected from Jool's SOI due to the presence of Laythe and Tylo if the game was utilizing n-body physics - a stretch but it's still as good of a name as any. It was either that or make a Star Trek reference...

After taking a moment to order up a print of a Hellhound 7 rover at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus (which I did largely because it was the only thing I had left to still do that I mentioned in my previous post on this thread - thought it'd be nice to actually get everything done I said I wanted to get done for once), the Spamcan 7c lander at space station Vallport with engineer Genery Kerman aboard departed and began maneuvers to take the craft to Non Est Hic. After a 28 minute flight to the intercept point, a rendezvous burn took place that will take the craft to the shipyard in about 96 minutes. Shortly after this burn took place, I got a signal from the Tradidit Lestum Yards over Laythe that its print of a Da Luv Boht 7 emergency tanker was finished, so I went there and finalized construction. Next was a set of mass driver shots: Vermilion shot up fuel supplies to Vallport and both fuel supplies and Rocket Parts to Non Est Hic, while the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe shot up supplies of fuel and Enriched Uranium to Tradidit Lestum for the Da Luv Boht as well as replacement Rocket Parts. Thus fueled, the new craft was released from the drydock and dubbed Edmund Fitzgerald.

Edmund Fitzgerald free and clear to navigate.

Once clear of the drydock, Edmund Fitzgerald burned for an intercept with space station Laytheport. After a fifteen minute flight to the intercept point, the craft burned to set up a rendezvous with the space station; rendezvous will take place after a 37 minute flight.

With all that done, I turned my attention back to House Corrino, which I'd left on an escape trajectory over Pol; at this point the ship had escaped Pol and was headed out of Jool's SOI, so I began warp maneuvers to take her to Bop, her next destination. The craft arrived at Bop at 190 m/s, slow enough to enter orbit directly, but I got too close with the Alcubierre Drive and once again warped down to fail-safe, putting her on a suborbital trajectory. I quickly set the craft up for a radial-in conventional burn and was able to put her engines up to full throttle thanks to careful balancing of her payload, and was able to get her into a 57.1 x 39.4 kilometer, 12.57° inclined orbit (not all that bad especially considering the circumstances). Once in orbit, Roy Hinkley departed Corrino with pilot Gregeny Kerman at the stick and four passengers aboard. Hinkley burned to align with space station Bopport and then set up an intercept point with the space station, which she'll reach after a 25 minute flight.

So at this point I've got a lot of things in motion. I want to get Genery to Non Est Hic, which will bring the shipyard online and finish up the infrastructure over Vall; I'm putting Genery to work on a satellite as soon as she arrives. I've got the Spamcan carrying Kabert somewhere in Pol's SOI (probably Petrobas), I've got Hinkley heading to Bopport, and I've got Fitzgerald heading to Laytheport (her arrival there finishes up Laythe's infrastructure). I didn't touch the Tango 1 rover on Tylo yesterday after Tuesday's landing - she's still got a 75-kilometer drive to attend to - and I still haven't finished up the biome readings on Tylo (still don't know if where Tango 1 is heading will be the optimal spot for a base or not). I've got tourists heading down to Bop and I've got a landing stage to redesign on a craft that I need to get started building sooner rather than later. A lot going on right now - I'll let y'all know how much of it I got done over the weekend when I post again on Monday. Have a good weekend, y'all.

[Zedwardson]

I purchased Breaking ground.  

Which means I start ALL over.   As I couldn't jimmy my save, and anyways it would be best for me to learn the parts as it unlocks and so on.

[panarchist]

I put an Aeris 4A on top of a Clydesdale SRB in the new 1.8 and launched it, for the heck of it.

(This was actually a second launch because I forgot to take a launch pic the first time. Below is the orbital shot from the first launch)

The real trick on this launch was not blowing up from overheating when trying to LEAVE the atmosphere.

[Cavscout74]

I got my second round of Eve craft heading for out from Kerbin today, a pair of remote rovers and a combined relay & lander for Gilly.  Then I tested out a new Minmus lander for crew transfers to my mining base. 

Eve remote rover departing Kerbin.  This is a remake of the first attempt that flipped and burned up.  Added grid fins to the back and some ballast in the front to hopefully keep it pointed in the right direction this time.

Eve heavy remote rover leaving Kerbin.  A larger, faster & much more capable design.  I had already launched its smaller cousin before the tech needed for this one was unlocked, so now I have 2 tries to accomplish the "land a rover on Eve" contract

Gilly Sojourner-Surveyor on its way.  The Sojourner probe at the top is packed with instruments for low & high orbit science, and can act as relay around Gilly, while the Surveyor lander (modified with new experiments & extra batteries) continues to a soft landing after releasing the Sojourner in orbit.

Minmus-5 lander launching from the desert launch site.   It's streamlined enough not to need to be in a fairing.  I would have liked to have put aerodynamic nose cones with decouplers on the bottom of the friction pads that serve as landing legs, but they have no bottom attach node, but the drag wasn't too awful.

Safely landed on Minmus.  It's pretty bad when fuel tanks with friction pads on the bottom make better landing legs than actual landing legs.  The previous lander (in the background to the right) has its landing legs retracted after one exploded randomly & launched the lander up several hundred meters.

 

[Zedwardson]

 

In my new set of Altair missions, with the goal of putting Kerbals in orbit, Jeb became the first Kerbal in orbit, felt nice since I didn't use Mechjeb on this flight and didn't even have batteries researched.  

Also earlier did quite a few suborbital flights, including for the first time knocking out a kerbal due to G-forces as one suborbital went high and came down fast.  

[RizzoTheRat]

After much frustration trying to work out the final tweaks to my Duna intercept, and then some power issues which led to software flow control problems... I've finally made it to Duna fully under KOS control.  The only button I pressed between leaving the VAB and getting in to a stable Duna orbit was the occasional F1 for a screenshot and I generally left it to while I went a made a coffee.

The script works out the time to the launch window (interestingly not 44 degrees due to the Duna being eccentric, I'd never thought about this before), and then warps to launch a few days before the window.

 

I set it to a 610km orbit to allow high speed warping  prior to the ejection burn.  I need to work on this and have the launch timed closer to the ejection window to let me use lower orbits without huge delays.

Transfer stage is using 2 Nukes, which meant a TWR of over 2 and a burn time for Duna of just a bit over 2 minutes.  This is quite overpowered but I did that burn a lot of times while testing the software so I didn't want it to take too long. 

Once it has the initial intercept with Duna it accelerates slowly to bring the horizontal component of the Pe down, and then warps to half way there before burning normal to bring the Pe over the equator.

One problem I had was that the sun gets eclipsed by Kerbin on the way there and the ship ran out of power, which means the KOS processor reboots when it gets power again.  As the transfer stage had more dV than it needed, rather than messing setting the software flow control to be able to handle power outages, or trying to minimise power consumption on the way there, I fitted a couple of fuel cells and had them set to turn on when the power dropped below 25% and back off at 30%.  Clearly they got a bit of a hammering in the later stages of the trip but it only used a bit under half the Oxidizer I put on so seemed to do the trick.  This is going to be important for a Kerballed mission as I use life support so the crew need power all the way.

 

Of course the first time I ran the full mission script I realised I'd forgotten to target the RemoteTech antenna on Kerbin, so it entered a lovely circular Duna orbit and then I couldn't control it.  D'Oh.

Revert to launch and an extra bit of code to target all antenna on Kerbin and the replacement mission worked flawlessly.

I deployed the ScanSat to it's polar orbit using the RemoteTech flight computer as I've not sorted out code for  that yet, then uploaded my resonant orbit code to deploy the RemoteTech Kommsats.  I have managed to do that fully automated in the past but it's a pain, the only way I could think to do it was to have the transfer stage drop off a satellite on each orbit, and the KOS modules on the individual satellites continuously rebooting and counting the number of engines, and only boosting to the orbit height when they've only got 1.  Far simpler to just load the code to each module as needed.

3rd Komsat (the transfer stage) about to boost itself from the resonant orbit in to the correct position. 

 

I now have until the next transfer window to perfect the code and hardware for some kind of Kerballed mission.  I'm thinking maybe an equatorial ISRU base and a single stage lander capable of suborbital hops and returning to the base to refuel...should be a good test of updating my precision landing script to work in atmosphere...

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Been playing with KOS programmed SpaceX style flyback boosters this afternoon.

This test rocket lofts a fairly small payload to the velocity needed for an apoapsis of 80km, disconnects, turns round, burns to get enough horizontal velocity to get back to the KSC, but continues on to the Apoapsis before dropping down virtually on top of the KSC.  air brakes get it down to about 200m/s so the suicide burn doesn't really need that much fuel.  I reckon with some grid fins (Kerbal Reusability Expansion) for steering I can probably put it down reasonably accurately.

Ultimately it's pretty useless as the payload carries on to apoapsis and then crashes in the sea as I'm not landing this quickly enough to switch back to the upper stage, but it's an interesting testbed for precision landings in atmosphere. 

At the moment I'm bodging the required velocity to get back to KSC by doubling what it would need without drag, so I need to spend a bit of time working on drag calculations to try and get something that works without random scaling factors in the mix.

 

In theory with KOS I should be able fly a pair of them back so long as they stay within physics range of each other.

[Levelord]

Just arrived at Eeloo with a rover to gather some of the last bits of science. It has special staging sections which allows for the shedding of the remaining tanks and wheels plus it's science module (after data collection and storage) for ascent. Then it can rendezvous with the mothership.

 

 

[papuchalk]

i did my second gameplay video today

MIssion to Duna, with 3 kerbals, rover, surface experiments, collecting data from 2 biomes

What i am really proud of - amount of delta v for each stage is just what is needed. Not a wasting over-engineered mission at all

any comments appreaciated

 

 

[panzer1b]

booted up 1.8 finally (wanted to do it earlier, but was way too busy...

 

Seems that everything works fine, duna is beautiful even if buggy (EVE was updated to 1.8, but i need to redo a few things with my mods to make it better)...  That and no scatterer, very rage inducing ...

Its just ages better then what we had b4, really makes the game much more immersive especially for those that actually land stuff on planets (had to launch a new skytower, since the old one got blown up).

And in other news, more space combat, seems the ship i tested my tri-fighter on didnt even survive the point defense weapons (pretty sure the primary shipkillers would be overkill).  Didnt have mods enabled here as i just realized EVE was a thing for 1.8 like 5 minutes ago...

 

[Zedwardson]

still early in my game, so using my cheap, inexpensive Altair rocket:

Made a lifeboat of sorts to rescue some of the kerbals that keep finding themselves in orbit.  On a cheap rocket they are actually quite profitable contracts.
Made a tourism craft that can toss two tourist into orbit for 14,250 and land them without passing out.   Which is also profitable.

These contracts are going to allow me to pay for the science oriented Altair missions so I can unlock stuff.  Upgraded the R&D so I can do soil samples, and need to get some cash to upgrade the VAB and to do science missions to earn unlocks.  Right now I am saving up for the basic solar cells so I am not watching the batteries like a hawk.  Trying to avoid the MUN for now  till I have some bigger rockets then my current pea-shooters.  

[Zedwardson]

 

 

Decided "just a few minutes" to make a Scout Rocket with the new 1.8 boosters, it actually not bad if you want to launch something smallish to HKO, it has a ton of fixed deltaV that you have to use.  In sandbox I launched a small probe (manually) to Minmus.  

Stage-1 Kickback with the wings
Stage-2  Thumper and two control wheels
Stage-3 Shrimp 
Stage-4 Mite (and some small control wheels)

Inside the faring is a small sat with some monopellent engines to finish the fine course corrections,

 

[SlinkyMcman]

Assembled my Duna Fleet. Assemble!

The assembly crew in the drop pod almost died on re-entry. But found a crystal so I guess it worked out in the end?

Nice textures, the ground has curves, pretty fancy.

Complements to the lawn mower. Also shadow in first pic, pretty nice.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by SlinkyMcman

[NHunter]

Moved one of my mapping satellites to Hadrian.

[Cavscout74]

This weekend was mostly spent testing new air & space craft.  I also updated my Steam version to 1.8, but haven't done much other than a quick trip to Mun in that.  First up for my 20% science career was the new 3.75m Granok MPV-1, with 6 seats for larger operations than the smaller Dawngrazer & Girroc MPV's.  The crew vehicle has 2700 m/s of vacuum dV, and typically has a few hundred dV remaining in the mid stage in LKO as well.

Night launch from KSC of the first manned flight.   I probably need to add some extra sepratrons to the escape tower - it barely pulled the capsule away during the escape test.  Granted, it was trying to out-accelerate a large SRB that was pushing over 2 g before the capsule separated, but it was still not very impressive.

In orbit, just after sunrise.   The Granok MPV test vehicle was used to perform a double LKO rescue after making orbit with no problems.

Preparing for reentry, which went smoothly & safely splashed down west of KSC

Next up was testing of a new light jet design.  The first flight went reasonably smoothly - especially considering an "oops" when I accidentally grabbed one of the inner ailerons & when replacing it, I didn't notice it wasn't in mirror symmetry.  It got up to mach ~1.67 at low altitude before turning back to the field to see how it handled approach & landing.

It turns out it's one of the nicest handling high-performance jets I've made a low speed.  I was able to maintain control down to under 40 m/s before stalling in landing configuration (idle thrust, gear & flaps down).  The only hiccup was a tendency to roll left during stall due to the missing aileron, but both attempts were recovered rapidly & returned to level flight without spinning.

Second flight, with the correct number of flight controls this time and a few other tweaks.  Elrie Kerman was at the controls this time.

Sadly, his attempt to buzz the R&D center ended in disaster, causing the first fatality of this career and causing half a million in damage to R&D.

Finally, I did some experimenting with reusable launchers, rebuilding my old Nexus design and flying a few test flights in different configurations.

Spoiler

The reborn Nexus reusable launch vehicle can loft a nearly 29t payload to LKO and return.  Pictured here on its first launch, the initial design is powered by four 1000kN Boar engines (from Restock+, just a single version of the stock Twin Boar)

Circularizing into an 80x71km orbit.  

Reentry.  The need to deorbit the payload cost me some dV for the landing phase, but not too much.  My deorbit burn was too late & too shallow, however, and I was going to overshoot KSC by a lot without anywhere close to enough dV to correct, so it was time to cheat a bit for this test just to see how the landing would go. 

Using the Hyperedit landing feature, I set it to 10km above the runway to test the actual landing.  The 6 parachutes got it down around 11 m/s, and a quick burst of power got it under 4 for touchdown.  That only needed around 50 m/s.  After the first test,  I modified the design, with a payload bay on top for extra batteries, an antenna, a small landing fuel tank (disabled for launch, then transferred to the main tanks for landing) and a monoprop tank.  A ring of 4 linear RCS ports was added around the top & bottom to improve responsiveness in orbit & upper atmosphere.

Test 2 went a little smoother. .  Separating the payload - now that I know the Nexus can get the payload to orbit, it's just easier to jettison it before circularizing orbit.  The added RCS made it easier to move the booster clear of the payload

Better aim this time:

Finally, a third test was performed with 4 Vector engines instead of the Boars.  Despite being slightly heavier (4t per Vector instead of 3.5t per Boar), the total dV came out to be about 100 m/s higher.  Cost is higher too, but since it's reusable, that is less of an issue.

And this one also came down close to where it should:

I'm thinking about trying a simpler Mammoth-powered version next.