What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

(1.8.1) Not much to report for my day yesterday; while I have more kerballing time now than I did this time last week, it's still not much more than an hour per day. I had mentioned in my last report that I had begun one of my outstanding survey missions, a three-point survey near Laythe's north pole, with pilot Dudtop Kerman aboard the Lima 1 quadcopter. That job took up the entirety of the day, with Dudtop hitting the three points of the survey in turn and successfully completing the contract with a surface sample in Laythe's Poles.

Did catch this screenie of Lima 1 on the way to the last waypoint - just after Joolrise. Tylo is faintly visible just to Jool's right, with Vall visible well to the right.

As of this morning, Lima 1 is still landed at the last waypoint awaiting a window of opportunity to return to the C. P. Baker outpost 700 kilometers to the south. No replacement contract was offered in the wake of the survey.

So far this morning not much has happened either. The Imo Pyramis Shipyards over Bop completed the construction of the Boop-Boop 7x probe I ordered up yesterday, and launched the probe after fueling. The probe has so far completed two of three scheduled burns to put it in a final position for contract and is currently sitting at 189.4 by 54.8 kilometers at 26.6° inclination; the final burn will be reversing the direction of the orbit whilst raising (after lowering) the apoapsis to the target orbit. I'm hoping to have that done soon. In the meantime I've been finagling with the Auk XVII 24-passenger spaceplane bringing up three tourists from C. P. Baker to space station Laytheport; the plane will be hitting rendezvous at 1.7 kilometers in roughly twenty minutes. I'm still concerned about the plane's fuel status...pretty sure it'll be hitting the station on vapors and there's a chance it won't have enough fuel for the rendezvous. Keeping my fingers crossed there.

On my agenda for the next session is getting the plane docked to Laytheport and getting its passengers offloaded. The hope is to be able to get them transferred to Gilligan docked at the station and away before the scheduled final burn of the probe over Bop - which is not likely to happen seeing as that burn is a mere four minutes after the rendezvous as things are currently scheduled. Gilligan will be delivering the tourists to LSV House Atreides in higher Laythe orbit, and once docked Atreides will be heading to other destinations at Vall, Duna, Ike, Mun and Minmus along her current itinerary.  I've got a refueling mass driver shot to do for Imo Pyramis as well, but that shouldn't take much doing. I'm also hoping to be able to get Lima 1 home today, but that's going to depend on how everything else plays out. I'll let y'all know how it goes and hopefully have something more substantial to talk about tomorrow.

[Hotel26]

We started our current Orbit production world on IRL 2019-01-07, converting to v1.6.1.

In that time since, at considerable expense (and risk) , we have upgraded to v1.7.3 and are now at Y2, D226.  For most of 2019, IRL time pegged even with KSP time.  Lately, we have had to accelerate the warp a little, wholly due to (budget-constrained) RAM limits on Kerbinly activity in the meantime (too many craft).

 

This one shot is the vanguard of 8 ships about to maneuver for final adjustment for Eve.  They are just 106d into their journey, but they had to wait 2 years for that window.  4 of the ships are for Eve and a duplicate set for Moho (after refueling).

The excitement felt in KSC at this moment is "unbearably indescribable"...

We here sometimes feel like simpletons with our modest space program (we are only humble kerbals), since most of our announcements seem like "futzing around in the local system" or "inventing stuff as an excuse for not going somewhere".  We've never been out-and-back to the furthest reaches for a simple tourist contract.  But that's not so easy -- nor so meaningful -- under our rules limitations.

We are playing KASA real-time hard-core.

"When we launch, we really have to believe..."                                 This is what Realism feels like, folks: NO warp.

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Hotel26

[Fraston]

59 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

We are playing KASA real-time hard-core.

"When we launch, we really have to believe..."                                 This is what Realism feels like, folks: NO warp.

Dear god...

How much time do you throw at this project to do one thing?

[Fizwalker]

7 minutes ago, Fraston said:

Dear god...

How much time do you throw at this project to do one thing?

I tried this once back when I first started....  Mostly cause I didn't realize there was an ability to time warp yet. I'd set up a mission to the mun and then go to work and complete it once I got back. However, I found the time controls pretty soon afterwards and that put a quick end to that.  Still it was kind of interesting for the short period I tried that.

[Dirkidirk]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

We are playing KASA real-time hard-core.

"When we launch, we really have to believe..."                                 This is what Realism feels like, folks: NO warp.

why

[Hotel26]

51 minutes ago, Fraston said:

How much time do you throw at this project to do one thing?

  Very good question.

We do not allow any warp longer than 30 minutes.  The belief is that 30 minutes is long enough to do something else interesting.  Then we run into the 8GB limit imposed by Mother Nature Board....  Expansion of the Memory Universe...

So.  It's multi-tasking.  Never "one thing".  I find, I forget the details of everything that has already been set in motion.  When a system is bigger than one human mind, how do you ratchet up to the next gear?

I have long held this keen interest in project management.  I long ago bought a book by Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, because I had read that Project Manhattan was a vast project management problem.  The book was very interesting but shed no light at all on how such a vast project may be managed.

I'd really like to kill Orbit, especially some days, because it has become such an overwhelming mess, with lots of obsolete equipment to be contemporaneously managed, but I feel that this is actually the exact challenge that KSP intends to present.

It's my mess and my responsibility.  I find I cannot yield.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Hotel26

[hendrack]

I am finally happy with my Buran-ish shuttle, needed moar wings at the front to fly ok. Since I am quite lazy with reentries, slapped on two jet engines if I overshoot too much. https://imgur.com/a/4m4nucL

 

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by hendrack

[IkranMakto]

32 minutes ago, hendrack said:

needed moar wings at the front to fly ok

Place wing inside fuselage. 

Edited April 15, 2020 by IkranMakto

[Sky Vagrant]

Landed on Pol and Bop and made this one-minute-long video (okay, took a week, but finished today):

Spoiler

 

The spoiler is in case you haven't been to these moons before. I avoid looking at pics of places I haven't been yet, so maybe others feel the same?

Edited April 15, 2020 by Sky Vagrant

[michaelbezos1]

Hi guys remote controller to my rockets arrived  today made picture of it and it works as light turn on after placing key inside. Made picture and movie of it but first launches think will postpone due to virus as marketing to stay at home is big and everyday's figure about deaths of it convince to stay at home. Moreover I have some caugh and items from nose go this same convinces to stay at home. 

 

If I was real brave I would make launches now but this virus give hesitations. 

 

Much Love:>

Keeps the things together. 

[Chris Hopkins]

So carrying on where I left off, a quick post today:

The was lots of experimenting with  larger tug craft (mainly for use in refueling)

And I found a fuel depot just stiiting around in orbit!

This was my first proper asteroid capture so I was surprised at just how useful they weren't. It turned out to be a surprisingly unprofitable venture by the time it was sufficiently low in orgit.

On that note, does anyone have any links to good resources on some KSP scripting - I fancied automating the job of: burn to reduce apoapse, wait for ISRN to make more fuel, correct Periapse, correct orbital inclination a bit, all intermixed with waiting for ISRU to workwork, repeat about 30 times!

[Cavscout74]

Now that I have a working computer again, I spent the last two days experimenting with the new Orion drive mod:

Cheated the craft to orbit and tried again:

The cockpit still had RCS, so I actually reentered with it & bailed out the crew:

Jeb & Val ended up next to the launch pad a few meters apart.  Bill landed next to the runway and Bob landed face-planted and bounced in a field to the west.

After all the explosions, to make myself feel better I built an R-7 & sent Jeb to orbit:

Jeb bailed out of the pod & managed to land before it:

Edited April 16, 2020 by Cavscout74

[RoninFrog]

I kept working on my Jool 5.  Last time, I refueled on the Mun.  Today, I'm going to Pol!

I'm gonna try to gravity assist around Tylo, and then adjust my trajectory so I'm flung directly into Pol.  It's my first time in the Jool system.    I hope I'm not severely botching this.

Hello, Tylo.  I will hopefully see you later.

Okay, Pol, you are going down!  Wow, your ore is nooooo good.  (Scanner is set to 50% cutoff)

Pol is really hard to land on.  After many quicksaves, aborted landings, and bouncing/backflipping down mountains, I settled in a basin with an acceptable ore percentage and over 1000(! ) m/s of dV left.  (Kind of refreshing after landing on the Mun with 0 left)

This is some extremely bumpy terrain.  When I got Corwin Kerman out, the central engine was suspended over 2 meters above the bottom of the basin.  It was hard to find a flat spot for a kerbal gathering as the ground goes steeply upward in all directions, but there was a small semicircular ledge a little ways up.

Alright, Tylo.  You're up next time.  You're supposed to be hard; I'm gonna find out the truth...

[SpacePixel]

Meet Carrot

[Mortimer Kerman]

I try to make with Kerbal Konstructs a

S P A C E   E L E V A T O R .

To be continued for more news...

[PTNLemay]

Came up with a fun use for the pistons today.  I noticed that the center of mass for my mining platform was drifting considerably as I filled it with ore.  Rather than move the ore tank closer to the center (which would have split apart the crew compartments) I put the RCS thrusters on little pistons.  It's not strictly necessary, because you can still dock with misaligned thrusters.  But this feels very... elegant.

It's a Gilly miner, hence why the whole thing will be able to balance on a single claw.  Or at least I hope it will be able to.

[Kazkar]

What I did? Nothing.

But Jeb took a day off, boarded the first (and so far the only) aeroplane designed in our KSP, and headed for a morning walk on the Overshoot Island.

After raising a flag to honour the ones before him, he was in so pensive mood, that he forgot to turn the camera on, when he landed the plane back at KSC.

This time he even landed without any explosions, and precisely on that dusty path, which some dare to call a "runway". For me it was a clear proof that he crashes only when he wishes to.

[Delay]

The Klaw is done, and I'm unhappy with it. That's probably more because of the poor resolution of the original than my own fault.
In addition, it give off a wonderful demonstration of TU's planet shine!

[Guest]

I sent the Duna Crew home. Images here: https://kerbalanders.wordpress.com/2020/04/17/getting-ready-for-massive-moho-mission/

 

[RoninFrog]

I continued my Jool adventure, which means landing on Tylo as promised.  It took all of a Pol morning to replenish the tanks in 13% ore.  I brought some ore up to orebit with me and refined it there for an extra dV boost.  I really have no idea what to expect from Tylo, so I'm preparing for the worst.  Transferring to Tylo:

Well, look at that.  Not gonna get an intercept like this.  Fortunately, only a 47 m/s burn was required to get a good intercept.  I'm not shooting for an equitorial orbit, so the intercept is less finicky to adjust.

Oof, should've included a screenshot of the M700 scan, because it was incredible.  Everything above 60% cutoff, and several promisingly equatorial places above 80.  Hoping to break my record of 14.68%.

Landed in the early morning with 749 m/s left.  Gagarin Crater has officially beat the Munar Lowlands with an ore percentage of 14.78 (0.1% higher)!  The landing wasn't too hard on the piloting, but it was intense.  I killed my speed 25 km up and then just dropped straight down, not the most efficient, but it's easy.  I nearly impacted at 600 m/s, but hit the throttle barely in time to stop about 10 meters above the ground.  All you people talking about your Tylo landers exploding at absurd speeds, I have a one word solution.  "Mammoths." 

All my kerbals kept sliding around even though the ground is nearly perfectly flat.  Come on, guys, that's not a crescent!  Even Jeb slid about a meter from the flag before I could get a good screenshot.  It's honestly kind of freaky how switching away from a kerbal causes it to immediately turn and face the same direction.  They look like a bunch of mind-controlled zombies with their identical facial expressions (except for Bob there, building a sand castle).

Am I overconfident to try to go to Vall next time?  A fully fueled Sauron has about 5150 m/s vacuum dV and a Tylo TWR of 2.  By my calculations I would have a margin of error of 10 m/s.    Ok, maybe I'll just go to Bop and try to find the kraken.

I'll probably group the future landings into the same post to avoid spamming my stuff all over this thread. 

[cpcallen]

I finished the Orion III spaceplane I started a long time ago.

[Lewie]

I am proud to announce that for the first time, I have visited the Neil Armstrong memorial on the Mun!’

[AHHans]

13 hours ago, PTNLemay said:

It's a Gilly miner, hence why the whole thing will be able to balance on a single claw.  Or at least I hope it will be able to.

In case you are wondering: no a claw will not grab onto the surface of Gilly. It is possible though to have a craft rest on a claw on Gilly and keep it straight while you use the ISRU equipment to refuel. (Been there, done that, deleted the screenshot in the meantime. )

[purpleivan]

Just finished putting a Dawn engine'd little speed demon out into the universe, lofted into orbit by a mini spaceplane, for the "Fastest Rocket in KSP available" challenge.

11952m/s from a standing start, for a 5 ton vehicle.

If I trimed off some of the liquid fuel and replaced it with Xenon, I could probably get an extra couple thousand dv out of this thing.

[Space Nerd]

Built my first Eve lander prototype, flies like a charm when the SAS holding at radial out, but flips over as soon as I started the gravity turn, don't have the picture now but it has a terrier stage 2 with 3 Flt-200 tanks, vector stage 1, and 8 aerospike booster with a single standard carnard on it (using asparagus staging of course).

It has 8040 m/s of dv (vac), around 2000~3000 m/s at 5 ATM (I think) , and take off Eve TWR of 1.17, the test run is starting at ~2500 m.

Any help from this would be appreciated, and if not I will take pics and start a new question in the gameplay questions subfourm with pics tomorrow.