What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Zosma Procyon]

I just ran test to see if my plan of landing my Eve sea plane on Eve's oceans inside a fairing would work, and the answer is a resound no. The folded up plane does fit inside of a fairing, but deploying the fairing while floating on the sea summons the kraken rather explosively. The best result I achieved is pictured below.

The new plan is to blow the fairing around 10,000 meters, and land using parachutes. I was going to include parachutes on the actual plane anyway to enable more pin point landing.

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

3 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

 

The new plan is to blow the fairing around 10,000 meters, and land using parachutes. I was going to include parachutes on the actual plane anyway to enable more pin point landing.

Why not just fly it down? Robotics not strong enough to deploy the wings in time?

[Zosma Procyon]

1 hour ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

Why not just fly it down? Robotics not strong enough to deploy the wings in time?

Eve's atmosphere is insanely thick. I'd prefer to shield my plane from it as long as possible. And anyway without the fairing, there is no reason to fold the wings.

[The Space Dino]

Added a new module with radiators and ISRUs to my space station, it was making liquid fuel painfully slow previously but now its a lot faster. Unfortunately now the station makes the game run at 14 fps so I will have to find ways to cut down the part count

[iamn00b]

On 9/25/2020 at 5:33 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

We all had to learn to do that.

Space is difficult and you’re going to make mistakes, but as long as you keep learning from them you’ll be doing Mun landings in no time, and landing on other planets shortly after that. There are plenty of people on these forums so if you need help, just ask!

aight brudda thx!

On 9/25/2020 at 6:23 PM, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

Hell, putting them on the Mun isn't a problem, it's bringing them back

 

Welcome to the dark (green) side, my friend

haha lol true

[jimmymcgoochie]

@Zosma Procyon have you tried flying that plane in Eve’s atmosphere with the wings still folded? It would require some of the outer control surfaces to be either disabled or reversed, but with the thicker atmosphere it should be possible to at least glide it down rather than messing around with parachutes or trying to pop the fairing on the surface.

[Okhin]

Lost a Minmus base to the kraken. I was drilling nearby (less than 200m), and warping waiting for those ore tanks to fill up, when the base blew up. Ok, technically, the small rover next to the base blew up, sending debris to the base which then blew up. Luckily, noone was inside. But still.

I tried to move my space base on a class E asteroid. But 0.02 TWR is really not enough and it seems that I'm very slightly misaligned with the center of mass (even if I target locked it when grabbing it), which makes the whole thing not really maneuverable. I tried three times to have a perfect alignment, but it still very slightly misaligned. And there's not enough wheel authority to compensate for the drift. So I guess I'll let this station there and find a way to evacuate the crew.

I did some crew rotation though.

I had an off balance miner rig around Minmus, with a Bill stuck inside. So I brought him back into Kerbin. The thing was tough, it mostly survived reentry (it broke on the surface though), and I EVA'd Bill to land with his chute. I think the crash would have been survivable, but I didn't really wanted to try. There was a lot of aerobraking involved to avoid exploding the station. But I lost wheel authority and solar panels early on, so it was a bit of a funky reentry, trying to position itself with only the Nerv.

It's been replaced by a well balanced mining station. The one that was around Mun for some Ore contracting. And a free "expand a base" contract. It almost have enough EC for the Minmus night. I think next iteration of the design will embed fuel cells, I've never really used them yet.

And, to continue on Minmus infrastructure, a new outpost have been deployed.

On the launchpad, aiming for Minmus.

Fairing deployed. It basically is a lab, a cupola and a landing can. With ISRU and ore extracting capabilities. And a lot of science, since I'm aiming to land this outpost on one of Minmus poles, which I did not really explored yet.

Going south, searching for a good landing site.

And here we are, landed, deployed and mining.

 

[Fraktal]

I don't normally do IVA, but this time I figured to take a peek while Jeb is on his way to the Mun for the first time in my new save.

Nice vistas to be had.

[Grogs]

My experienced kerbal pilot took a group of 5 Munar virgins down to earn their flag-planting wings. I decided to try and land near one of the munar arches to make things more interesting.

Spoiler

Mechjeb helped me get within a few km of the arch, but I had to manually fly the landing to get close. I was rather surprised with how well I managed because I nearly hit the arch on the way down.

 

I probably should have landed on the other side rather than the 15-degree slope of the crater rim. It was a bouncy landing, but nothing the lander legs couldn't handle.

 

The crew piled out and posed for a proper flag planning ceremony right at Munar sunrise.

 

I had nearly forgotten about these guys, but luckily Kerbal Alarm Clock reminded me. My asteroid moving crew arrived at Minmus with a Class C space potato in tow and promptly put it into Minmus orbit.

 

Nice reward! As thanks for the job well done, the Atlas XL crew gets to head down to KEO station, refuel, and get ready to capture a Class A asteroid that's due to enter Kerbin's SOI in about 10 days. Given the ease with which they handled this Class C rock, I don't think they'll have much trouble.

 

[Zosma Procyon]

10 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

@Zosma Procyon have you tried flying that plane in Eve’s atmosphere with the wings still folded? It would require some of the outer control surfaces to be either disabled or reversed, but with the thicker atmosphere it should be possible to at least glide it down rather than messing around with parachutes or trying to pop the fairing on the surface.

The main reason I don't want to do it that way is it would take a long time to glide the plane down to the surface. I'd much rather smash through the upper atmosphere like a battering ram and not deploy the plane until it's deep enough to actually fly. And anyway I though of an even cooler way to deploy it. The fairing with parachute down into the Eve troposphere, at around 10 m/s. Then at around 13000 m I'll blow the fairing, leaving the plane hanging nose down from the fairing base. Then I'll unfold the wings and engines, decouple from the fairing base, and fly down like a bat.

[Commodore_32]

So today I tried out BDB for the first time, I don't regret it.

 

[Clamp-o-Tron]

Need a quick commsat? Try a Carrack launcher (ETS) with a communications system integrated into the Agena upper stage!

By using solid rocket motors, minimal launch checkouts needed, and storable hypergolic propellants (unrelated plug: check out my indev stockalike hypergol mod with BDB support out of the box! https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/197128-any01stockalike-hypergols/&tab=comments#comment-3860908)

Korolev Cross kinda?

Nice fairing cam picture as the vac-optimized Castor-120 SRM.

The flat Kerbin society claims that since this picture is taken with a fisheye camera, they all must be.

A nice look at the actual commsat.

The SRM has more then enough to boost to GTO.

Separation of the AIC stage.

A small retrograde burn to match apoapsis with KEO altitude.

Circularizing at a period of exactly 1 day

On operational orbit, with close to 3 km/s of dV for extensive orbital maneuvering.

Use the AIC/Carrack combo for cheap, fast, effective results!

Only 20,000 funds!

 

[Guest]

I got a few suggestions to do missions. but here is on my scratchboard for missions. I don't know which one is first but if you have a suggestion on any of these I would like to hear them

• Submarine program

• Terrain glitches looked into (popular idea)

• Round 5 demo (next)

• Eeloo fort (Start working on it)

[Servo]

I finished a short-term project of mine. Work started Friday evening and finished just a few hours ago, so I threw together this little teaser trailer for it:

 

1:1 scale, fully stock SR-71. I love it

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, Servo said:

a short-term project of mine

Sheer talent.

[Spartan Nat]

On 5/21/2019 at 8:22 AM, James Kerman said:

Welcome to the forum @Spartan-B312.

One trick that helps with ion burns is to start the engine burning, hold down alt and press full stop (.) 3 times. This will enable time acceleration under thrust at 4 times normal speed.

Oh yeah, that's what I was doing all that time ago

[eatU4myT]

Hopefully these images work, I've not tried linking from Imgur before.

My first Kerbal-ed inter-planetary mission.  The Discovery is setting off for Duna, and if everything works out it will be refuelled when it return to Kerbin and then head off to other planets.  9 Kerbals in the crew, and I've installed Kerbal Health for the first time, so I'm hoping that the design is capable of keeping them in one piece!

 

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

After losing a BUNCH of work on my long term Mun colonization project, it was time for something completely different. I rejiggered my KRV spaceplane for cargo instead of passengers, and designed a cool Russian themed Duna probe based around the newly "invented" Umbra nuclear reactor and some Universal Storage parts:

I'd never used the Dessert launch pad, so I sent Frovis and "The Other Val" there with the KRV-C and the Duna Explorer.

Dropping the probe off in high Kerbin orbit.

The Other Val and Frovis flying off into the sunrise for a semi-sucessful water landing (still working on my piloting skills)

And the Duna Explorer firing the xenon engine on its way out of Kerbin. It's heatshielded up front, so the plan is to make a fairly aggressive aerobrake at Duna, then use the remaining DV to swing around Ike and orbit Duna for a bit before a swan dive to the Duna surface. It's reasonably light, so I'm hoping that the two radial parachutes will be enough to land without scattering radioactive debris all over the surface...

[Maj Solo]

On 9/29/2020 at 10:54 AM, The Space Dino said:

Added a new module with radiators and ISRUs to my space station, it was making liquid fuel painfully slow previously but now its a lot faster. Unfortunately now the station makes the game run at 14 fps so I will have to find ways to cut down the part count

that is not much ....... you will have to find a painful way to get money and buy a new computer.

Like mow the lawn of all neighbours in a 9 mile area for the entire summer.

dang it is autumn .... you have to wait till next summer.

[Commodore_32]

Mün mission with BDB Saturn V

 

[Misguided Kerbal]

Today I started a new save, and a new mission report!

 

I also completed the first launch today of that mission report today, a Saturn 1C-esque from Eyes Turned Skyward. For this, I installed BDB for the first time, and it is AMAZING! Only complaint is that things are really hard to find.

 

 

[oyster_catcher]

I've been trying to emulate Falcon 9 landings and finally the SN8 Starship skydive manoeuvre with Realism Overhaul. I'm using the StarShip Cargo model from EDB Mods (Raiz Aerospace) plus some B9 Procedural wings fitted sideways! so I can emulate the movement of the starship control surfaces. With the procedural wings controls I can make the control surfaces acts of airbrakes differentially fore and aft to change pitch in the skydive, unfortunately setting them to work differentially both left/right and fore/aft to change yaw doesn't seem to have much effect. Anyway I can achieve a stable descent and forwards and backwards movement.

I'm using the trajectories mod to steer going up and in aerodynamic descent than I use my mod, HopperGuidance to do the flip and the final landing. I got it to work after numerous tries. Enjoy

 

[eatU4myT]

Well.  We'll call that a learning opportunity, shall we?!

For a variety of reasons, the crew of the Discovery are now sitting on a very crowded station in LKO, awaiting recovery.  The main reasons being 1) I apparently forgot everything I knew about aligning CoT with CoM, 2) The SAS/RCS system was hopelessly inadequate, and 3) I forgot rule one of clustered Vectors - lock the gimbals!  In short, the ship started spinning beyond its ability to recover, and the Vectors trying to fix it ended up ripping the back third of the ship off.

So, here is the... Discovery II? Not settled on that yet.  More strutting, better balance, more comprehensive RCS:

 

I thought I was being clever mixing ion power for dV and chemical power for TWR before, but I think that was just making things complicated.  So, four Colossus engines, four Hermes reactors and a whole hunk o' Lithium.  TWR is only 0.2, but dV is in the region of 19k:

 

We're just heading to Mun this time, we'll do things properly and test the ship out before doing anything irrecoverable!

 

I reduced the crew to 6, and discovered I could cut out nearly half of the living space, all of which I've kept in-line this time.  I've also balanced the lander with an equal mass of drop-tank, I'll have to move fuel back and forth as the mission progresses:

 

Question - I was surprised when the radiators got up to about 75% during engine burn, despite resting at 16% with the reactors just generating EC.  Does that mean the reactors get hotter when under higher load (despite unchanged generation amount), or does it mean the engines are getting hot enough to need their own radiators?  Either way, I'm glad I put two radiators on each reactor even though I only expected to need one!

[NHunter]

11 minutes ago, eatU4myT said:

Question - I was surprised when the radiators got up to about 75% during engine burn, despite resting at 16% with the reactors just generating EC.  Does that mean the reactors get hotter when under higher load (despite unchanged generation amount), or does it mean the engines are getting hot enough to need their own radiators?  Either way, I'm glad I put two radiators on each reactor even though I only expected to need one!

IIRC, big lithium engines indeed produce noticeable amounts of heat (though, don't trust me, I rarely ever use them so can remember things wrong).

[Grogs]

51 minutes ago, eatU4myT said:

Question - I was surprised when the radiators got up to about 75% during engine burn, despite resting at 16% with the reactors just generating EC.  Does that mean the reactors get hotter when under higher load (despite unchanged generation amount), or does it mean the engines are getting hot enough to need their own radiators?  Either way, I'm glad I put two radiators on each reactor even though I only expected to need one!

Could be. I don't know anything about those engines, but I find radiators are just buggy sometimes too. Sometimes I'll shift focus to Minimus Station and find the radiators are at 100% despite the fact the ISRU unit is idle. Over time they'll slowly drop back down. My guess is that it's some sort of time warp bug and it's never caused me any actual problems.