What did you do in KSP1 today?

[JorgeCS]

After almost a couple months doing no KSP at all and barely coming to read and like posts, I had an idea. Probably only nostalgics (elders like myself hahaha!) will know the ship  which is still an early WIP

[TitiKSP]

A space station.

[KeaKaka]

I learned that you should not switch crafts during reentry or you will be catapulted at 20 times the speed of light and instantly incinerated by temperatures in excess of 134 million degrees Celsius.

I also updated my profile pic.

Edited October 21, 2020 by KeaKaka

[Guest]

[Vezbot]

I recovered old ksp pics from my pc and I found the original Saurus V rocket used for the KSP discord challenge to ship satellites to two planets in one mission. What a beauty.

The Saurus V (PC) is the precursor to the Saurus VI (PS4), a heavy lift rocket and a forgotten design that packs a lot of delta V. 

This rocket got me my Kerbonaut rank on the KSP discord. Unfortunately my ksp save got corrupted and the design is lost. Maybe I can remake it.

Saurus V liftoff from my KSP discord challenge

Two satellites were mounted on the rocket for the interplanetary mission. No large payload either.

[RealKerbal3x]

I pretty much finished up the design for my Jool mission.

As you can see, it's a mammoth probe carrying landers for all of the bodies in the Jool system, including the gas giant itself. As far as I can tell it's ready for its first test run...

[Popestar]

So today I set off to land my first craft on the Mun.  I altered a vehicle I already had saved and was being used as a Mun orbiter, but I stripped some stuff off of it so I could gain some dV and lose some weight.  I get all the way to the Mun, get into retrograde at Pe (which was ~6000 m above the surface, give or take a few meters), throttled up, and started to descend...into complete darkness.  I couldn't even see the lander up close, let alone the surface of the Mun.  Went to revert back to craft creation so as to not lose the entirety of the trip, and thanks to an autosave happening when I warped to a previous maneuver, reverting was no longer an option.  Had to load a saved game from just before I maneuvered to land so I could escape the Mun's gravity and head back to Kerbin.  All so I can go back into the VAB and add some freaking flashlights to the lander so I can see what I'm doing.  Which will then necessitate me having to make further adjustments to the entire rocket to get the needed dV (I'm at 2900 right now) to get to the Mun, land, and get back.

Which brings up a question I have:  Is there a repository of created rockets somewhere I can look at to get ideas on how to build one of these properly?  I'm worried about fuel consumption and not being able to get back home, and I'd like to not waste yet another trip to the Mun only to find I have to go back the drawing board.

21 hours ago, JorgeCS said:

After almost a couple months doing no KSP at all and barely coming to read and like posts, I had an idea. Probably only nostalgics (elders like myself hahaha!) will know the ship  which is still an early WIP

My dear lord!  Were beholders not scary enough in D&D for you?  Why must you threaten all of Kerbal existence with these?

[Goaty1208]

Waiting KSP 1.11, I guess

[JorgeCS]

42 minutes ago, Popestar said:

 

Which brings up a question I have:  Is there a repository of created rockets somewhere I can look at to get ideas on how to build one of these properly?  I'm worried about fuel consumption and not being able to get back home, and I'd like to not waste yet another trip to the Mun only to find I have to go back the drawing board.

My dear lord!  Were beholders not scary enough in D&D for you?  Why must you threaten all of Kerbal existence with these?

1- Have you tried Kerbalx.com? actually between my submitted crafts you can find a super cheap Apollo style craft. So to say  you can find them in my signature.

2- Yes they were scary... They were, to put them into a nice equivalence for today, as the Agents in Matrix. 'Do as we do. You run'. But that's the Odyssey ship from Ulysses 31 (1981)  not a beholder...  hahhahaha!

[NH04]

I worked on a rocket-propelled rover. Sadly, I have no pics of it, but it has over 2000 m/s of Delta-V on Kerbin  . I will be using it in this challenge: 

 

 

 

[N_Danger]

I launched a large relay antenna satellite.

But it went sideways. That's the proper technical term I think.

After some tweaking of the launch profile things went better.

And an important part of a deep space relay system is now in place. 

 

 

 

[kerboknaut]

Started a new game to see how far I could get without upgrading any buildings, accepting any contracts, and only using the runway instead of the launchpad. I have never really built a functional plane before so this was a bit of a challenge. The first two flights I think were just rockets launched from the launchpad. After that it was just sub-18 ton/30 part planes down the bumpy runway ... and I made it to the point that I was actually unlocking a fair bit of research, and built a few planes that can travel to different kerbin biomes. I was trying to think of how to make this into some kind of challenge but I'm not sure yet what the goal is or how many restrictions there should be.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I found the Minmus randolith, but no bonus tech unlock followed. Do you need to bring a Kerbal along to ‘discover’ them?

 

@Popestar there’s a mod called Where Can I Go that can show roughly where any craft in the editors can get to based on its delta-V. It’s not perfectly accurate (especially for spaceplanes) and you can easily exceed its predictions with a more efficient launch profile, but I find it to be a useful tool when designing my vessels as it can also show return predictions after landing. It also works in Kerbin orbit.

You could also try landing on the light side of the Mun rather than the dark side, it tends to be much easier to see where you’re going that way . Lights won’t help you see the ground, their range is dismal.

[Popestar]

@jimmymcgoochieYeah, I'm trying to do as the tutorial says, but when I get to the Mun my Pe is on the dark side.  I guess I could just orbit until me Pe is on the light side.

[jimmymcgoochie]

34 minutes ago, Popestar said:

@jimmymcgoochieYeah, I'm trying to do as the tutorial says, but when I get to the Mun my Pe is on the dark side.  I guess I could just orbit until me Pe is on the light side.

It’s been a while since I looked at the tutorials but I think they say to capture into a pretty low altitude and circular orbit before landing? In a fairly circular orbit you can land from any point you like, just burn retrograde so the periapsis shifts to the light side then land there.

You could also try increasing the ambient light settings or the brightness of your screen (or using the minimum ambient lighting mod) to make it easier to see in the dark.

[Vezbot]

On 10/18/2020 at 6:39 PM, Hotel26 said:

The cleverly-named Dandelion, which I just built, inspired by your idea, has TWR:1.55 on the Mun, and can be landed.  At the time of this shot, it still had 6.4 km/s.

 

Day-flying only...

I finished my RADKOR lander designed for the Mun. I had to lower the mass and increase the power generation without sacrificing the design of the lander, which resembles a hornet.

So I named it the RADKOR hornet, turns out the lander doesn't work too well on the Mun. I fized the electricity issue but it's too heavy. I need to get the mass from 1.4 tons to 0.7 tons for Mun landings to be viable. It works well on Minmus however.

I'd say your design is probably the best for low mass ion engine landers due to the solar panel placement. I would have done the same but I didn't wanna copy lol. 

My lander design has three small ion tanks, one dawn engine, 4 PB-Nuk radioisotope thermoelectric generators, an antenna that looks like a hornet stinger, and 2 symmterically placed 1x6 solar panels. It inspired me to name it after a hornet due to it's final design. I need to take non-important parts off the design, including the third xenon tank.

[Hotel26]

2 hours ago, Vezbot said:

4 PB-Nuk radioisotope thermoelectric generators

First of all, feel free to copy away!!  And adapt how you like.  I'd love to see what your ideas are, and also please show a screenshot, if you like, as it would be most interesting.

You need 13 RTGs to power one Dawn at full thrust.  that's a lot of weight which is OK for bigger ion-powered craft but won't work here.  I use this solution in my DSRN V, as an example

Or a combination of fuel cells and LFOX will work: see my Terrapin for the right ratio of fuel cells and LFOX to Dawn.

In the early days, I used solar because it's 'free' energy, I thought.  (e.g. Gossamer Anisoptera)  I rarely use it now actually.  I fell back to it for this craft because the payload (65kg Kerbal) was so light that it needed only a very light craft.  The big disadvantage with solar is that you had better know where the sun is at all times and this can restrict your maneuvering; don't fly into shadows in e.g. canyons; and no night-flying (except through darkness while in stable orbit).

As you can tell, I love ion-power.  People assume that 'little thrust = little ship'.  Check out my Magellan Cruiser, which is scaled up but still has the TWR to manage landings on the Mun.  Or Coulomb.  Finally, in deep space, TWR doesn't matter much if you can tolerate long 'burns' (I can).  So you can use few Dawns on a bigger ship resulting in pitiful TWR but still accomplish magnificent things at the other end of the solar system.  High-energy transfers are a good example of that.

fwiw, I added a third tank to Dandelion and got over 9 km/s but lost the scooter feel, so my initial instincts on this one seem right to me.

Finally: there is my avatar... 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Hotel26

[Popestar]

4 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

It’s been a while since I looked at the tutorials but I think they say to capture into a pretty low altitude and circular orbit before landing? In a fairly circular orbit you can land from any point you like, just burn retrograde so the periapsis shifts to the light side then land there.

You could also try increasing the ambient light settings or the brightness of your screen (or using the minimum ambient lighting mod) to make it easier to see in the dark.

Getting into a more circular orbit and then altering for landing worked (I've got a copy of the game saved just before the maneuver, so I can revert at least back to there to try that out).  Now I just have to land without bouncing and tipping over.

[T-20000]

https://imgur.com/a/xCNbSZt

Edited October 22, 2020 by T-20000

[Vezbot]

7 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

First of all, feel free to copy away!!  And adapt how you like.  I'd love to see what your ideas are, and also please show a screenshot, if you like, as it would be most interesting.

You need 13 RTGs to power one Dawn at full thrust.  that's a lot of weight which is OK for bigger ion-powered craft but won't work here.  I use this solution in my DSRN V, as an example

Or a combination of fuel cells and LFOX will work: see my Terrapin for the right ratio of fuel cells and LFOX to Dawn.

In the early days, I used solar because it's 'free' energy, I thought.  (e.g. Gossamer Anisoptera)  I rarely use it now actually.  I fell back to it for this craft because the payload (65kg Kerbal) was so light that it needed only a very light craft.  The big disadvantage with solar is that you had better know where the sun is at all times and this can restrict your maneuvering; don't fly into shadows in e.g. canyons; and no night-flying (except through darkness while in stable orbit).

As you can tell, I love ion-power.  People assume that 'little thrust = little ship'.  Check out my Magellan Cruiser, which is scaled up but still has the TWR to manage landings on the Mun.  Or Coulomb.  Finally, in deep space, TWR doesn't matter much if you can tolerate long 'burns' (I can).  So you can use few Dawns on a bigger ship resulting in pitiful TWR but still accomplish magnificent things at the other end of the solar system.  High-energy transfers are a good example of that.

fwiw, I added a third tank to Dandelion and got over 9 km/s but lost the scooter feel, so my initial instincts on this one seem right to me.

Finally: there is my avatar... 

That's a good idea, and yeah I share that favoritism for ion engines. When I did asteroid rendevouses I didn't have to worry about gravity wells and I mainly used ions to push those asteroids around wherever I wanted them to be. The first design I used when it comes to high Dv missions like rescuing kerbals in heliocentric orbits or moving asteroids was a radiation powered ion craft, cleverly named RADKOR (radiation core) because that was the primary energy source cause I had to adapt it for Jool missions. Solar ain't too good that far out. I made multiple iterations of the design to explore the kerbol system, starting with the RADKOR V1, then RADKOR with a claw (advanced grabbing unit, it's funny when you grab a stranded kerbal like in a claw machine and then sail millions of kilometers to get home with the kerbal in the claw.), then a design used for close Kerbol flybys which has about twice the Dv and three times the power. Anything lower than an orbit is tricky however, and I'm still testing a functional design.

I'll get screenshots of the craft later on when I get to my PS4.

[Zosma Procyon]

I'm flying my Eve Airplane, which I have renamed "Brabazon Base", a few hundred km to a new biome. Did you know that flying long distances in KSP is rather boring? I keep forgetting that. So here is a cool screenshot of Brabazon Base from the front.

[Guest]

Video processing right now here is a teaser

[Guest]

Made the new video. People have been requesting a new KSP video for a while. So I might make them more often we'll see

 

[Miguelsgamingch]

I Put 10 Starlink satellites in a starship today.

[Kebab Kerman]

I made a bootleg morgan and an airborne aircraft carrier. The carrier can carry 7 microfighters, possibly up to 10, but I don't have a screenshot of them right now. On a side note, I found out you can stack the missile rails from BDArmory.

Edited October 23, 2020 by Kebab Kerman