What did you do in KSP1 today?

[eberkain]

I suffered a kraken attack.  

I sent this perfectly fine rover to the mun to go investigate some anomolies. 

And after a BV trip I load it up to see this mangled mess. 

 

[Rakete]

Today's KSP works:

 

Built a golf cart for Jeb in order to play some golf and smash some windows at mission control (Jeb says "It wasn't me. The window was broken before..." yeah...)

Also built some kind of glorified KSC-Fly-around-Hangglider-Thingy with (you guessed it) electrically powered propellers, solar cells (not sufficient) and fuel cells for two kerbals side-by-side. Unfortunately I have no photo at hand, as I just turned off my computer. The glider only does 120 m/s, but more would result in a strange hairdress for Valentina (you know... helmets are overrated...)

I'm currently enjoying planes, fuelcells, propellers in my new clean savegame. Doing some plane-evolution from gliders and propellers to really fast things. At the moment it's more fun to me, than the 10th duna landing.

Also built a kerbal-interpretation of a fireworks launcher based on a bunch of small SRBs, as this year fireworks are not for sale in my country. (forbidden this year by law due to the corona situation and the already filled hospitals).

Edited December 29, 2020 by Rakete

[BadOaks]

I had Tati and Zelba do a fly-by of Minmus today on Azimuth 7.

And after the Azimuth 5 fiasco, I made sure they had LOTS of oxygen.

[Srpadget]

Today's mission did not go exactly to plan.

Landed in the Mun's East Crater, set up a Deployed Science station (controller, solar power, Goo-viewer, and one of the new deployable lamps).  Turns out that the lamp on the tall stand is subject to physics, and its tripod legs are NOT wide enough to successfully deploy the lamp on even a fairly gentle slope (the lamp overbalances and falls over).  Lesson learned:  use the short lamps that sit on the ground in the future, unless on Minmus's flats.  I was eventually able to make it work, but it took way more fussing about than I expected.  It also turns out that a kerbal can't carry deployable science while wearing a jetpack.  Not a big deal, but I was kinda surprised--I've always just assumed that the backpack contained the suit's air supply and life support, as well as the jetpack--so it was really weird seeing them wandering around in hard vacuum with no backpack!

I also got annoyed by the "flags fall down when deployed" bug.

But neither of those is really the reason I say things did not go exactly to plan.

See, the landing was from an equatorial orbit, so the new science station was near the crater's north rim.  And Bill claimed to have seen something weird on the crater rim during the landing, so after all the official science-y stuff was done, Jeb went off-script and decided to go check it out.  (Dammit, Jeb, this is why I usually assign Val to the big "first time" missions--SHE can focus and stay on-task!)  He popped back into the lander, grabbed a jetpack, and ZOOMED his way north and up the crater wall.  Triumphantly "discovered" the Arch, and claimed the right to a percentage of the profits from any tourist attraction ever built there , by staking his claim on a plaque he left there next to a flag that he ... um ... laid on the ground because the flagpoles don't stick in the dust properly.

That was when he checked his gauges and saw he'd used over 4 units of jetpack fuel to get there, and therefore had less than 1 unit remaining for the return trip.

So...a couple hours of keeping the W key pressed while Jeb trudged more than 9km back to the ship, on foot, over rugged crater-wall terrain.  And did I mention it was late afternoon East Crater time when he pulled this stunt?  By the time he finally got back to the lander (jetpacked most of the last km or so with his remaining fuel, and landed on fumes--the gauge read 0.00 when he touched down; that becomes important later), it was very nearly dark (not that I care about Jeb walking in the dark, but I do care about having enough battery power for the reaction wheels at launch). 

And then Jeb couldn't climb the ladder properly--he got stuck at the top of the deployable ladder and couldn't transfer over to the ladder built into the Hitchhiker (Jeb says there's a bug in the "don't fall off the end of the ladder" safety catch; I maintain he was too tired after his walk, and he should have done more squats and fewer snacks).  And he couldn't go with the usual Plan B in event of ladder issues, because he was all out of jetpack fuel.  (I said that'd become important later!)  After several attempts and with daylight fading fast, he had an idea!  Bill stuck a fresh jetpack in the airlock, Jeb swapped his depleted one for the new, and with a fresh load of fuel, he could fly up to the hatch.  HOORAY!

The rest of the mission went uneventfully--nothing wrong with Jeb's piloting, just his judgment/impulse control.  And yes, he's going to be grounded for a while.  Again.  Next time, Mission Rule Number One will be NO UNSCHEDULED SIDE EXCURSIONS.  For all the good that's likely to do....

[Hotel26]

Shots like this make me exquisitely happy.  This one is destined to be wallpaper at work...

I've decided to give a Mun interplanetary departure point a go.

The reason is because I can now get more fuel up off the surface of the Mun than I can from Kerbin^[1].

So I've shifted MX6 Pole Star and MX2 Nova to a 250 km orbit and combined them.  (Neither station were designed with RCS, so this dock was very far from easy.)

                                                                                                                               

I contemplated using a trailing orbit at the Mun's altitude, or possibly slightly elliptical to bring station and moon closest together twice every six days.

But I think 250km is a good balance to get some Oberth from the Mun and then again from Kerbin before ejecting SOI of both but not have too much orbital latency.  (I chose 250 km because its orbital period is just over 2h.)

Another advantage of using the Mun is that my Escort interplanetary transfer injection boosters typically burn-back for a capture by the Mun for subsequent refuel.

We'll see what the Kerbals think...

[1] I use an Atlas miner to boost the fuel to 6.5km orbit.  A nuke Crab (12 NERVa) towing an Egg spherical tank will then lift the fuel to this 250 km orbit.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Hotel26

[Fulgora]

Shameless plug but I finished my Shuttle Station build for the Challenge

It only took me 3 years to complete

 

[ConArt70]

15 minutes ago, Fulgora said:

Shameless plug but I finished my Shuttle Station build for the Challenge

It only took me 3 years to complete

 

Nice, thought you were going to lose it there on touchdown! I've been playing two years and have yet to build a shuttle. 

[Fulgora]

5 minutes ago, ConArt70 said:

Nice, thought you were going to lose it there on touchdown! I've been playing two years and have yet to build a shuttle. 

I have to admit that neither of the landings is very good - I knew that i could land it easily with SAS on so I skipped on trimming the Shuttle.

Designing the first Space Shuttle system (especially NASA style, not Buran) can be quite painful but its rewarding when it finally flies. I am not sure how much time I had to put into this but its certainly a notable amount of hours.

The craft file is for download if you like

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Fulgora

[ConArt70]

1 hour ago, Fulgora said:

craft file is for download if you like

I'm an xbox pleb, so I'll just have to stop being lazy

[quazarz]

Got my first successful docking with this MASSIVE fuel carrier to a base station on the Mun. I wanted to build a fuel carrier with the S4-512  tank and this was a great success. Total capacity 28.5k LF (+O), reached 15km Munar orbit with 22.5k in the tanks, with 2k reserved for re-landing and maneuvering back to the station.

Edited December 30, 2020 by quazarz

[Popestar]

Yesterday, I took a copy of my Caveman challenge career - saving the original one in the event I ever need to go back to it for some reason - and upgraded all the facilities I could and launched Explorer V to the Mun.  Got there, landed, came home, got a bunch of science points.  I now have unlocked Advanced Exploration and Advanced Landing, which means I can start thinking about putting a colony on the Mun.  I just have to figure out how to get payload/cargo not just to the Mun, but how to deploy it once it's up there.  Thankfully I know a community of people who are willing to help me figure it out. 

Today, my plan is to put together a tutorial document about my experience with the Caveman challenge.  A lot of the concepts I learned doing that challenge are good for everyone, especially beginning players.  Ship construction, TWR, probes vs. manned, weight limits...really good stuff.  Even if nobody ever reads it, at least I will have put it out there.  And you never know!

Well, that didn't go as planned.  I had to open KSP so I could do the document properly; my brain doesn't remember every part and tonnage and such, so I had to have it front of me.  And as soon as I opened KSP, I was like "Well, I'm already in here...".  And so I sent Valentina to Minmus.  And got her back safely!

Edited December 30, 2020 by Popestar

[Guest]

anyone guess what my next video is about?

[EndIris]

Made a small addition to my mothership today. IRL they would never face into the sun while docking, but it made a great screenshot.

[Popestar]

Because I'm incorrigible, I put an SSTO into orbit for the Orbit Boot Camp challenge.  Just waiting on validation for that.

I also did start typing up that document I mentioned earlier.  Gonna be longer than I thought.

[stephm]

Hi !

for 2 days modification and test, and nerve crisis as usual ... 

Final Update on ASET MFD40X20, And fits like other instruments and buttons with the variable: ALCOR_BACKLIGHT_ON.

steph !

[eberkain]

I've spent the entire day messing around with a 10m stock starship using tweakscale. 

These are 2.5m Kontainers in the engine bay. 

Kerbal for scale. 

Cargo Bay scale

Edited December 31, 2020 by eberkain

[king of nowhere]

After spending one day assembling my huge mothership in orbit - a beast with 1300 parts and over a dozen deatcheable smaller ships - I discovered that I forgot to put in a clamp-o-tron jr. Had to scrap it all and start back from scratch

[SpacePixel]

What better way to spend the New Year's Eve than drawing blueprints of your ship? 

[NHunter]

Some more pics from Vasto:

[Mortimer Kerman]

I launch KSP with a GameData folder of 6Gb. Only gameplay mods, no graphic mods.

My computer rests in peace.

[eberkain]

10 minutes ago, Mortimer Kerman said:

I launch KSP with a GameData folder of 6Gb. Only gameplay mods, no graphic mods.

My computer rests in peace.

BTDT, I'm having a much better time with just a lightly modded install, loads quick, good FPS, no yellow clock. 

[Rakete]

5 hours ago, SpacePixel said:

What better way to spend the New Year's Eve than drawing blueprints of your ship? 

How do you make these amazing drawings? Could need some for my own favourite creations.

[djr5899]

Today I played KSP for the first time.  OK....not really, however, for the last 3-4 years of my KSP experience, I have been using a 6-8 year old laptop that only had an Intel graphics card in it.  So I finally decided that I was going to buy out myself a new laptop with a decent graphics card (since the wife and kids all have gotten new laptops in the past 2 years, I figured it was my turn).  Since loading up 1.11, even with my graphics settings turned down very low on the old laptop, the game was really starting to lag and become unplayable.  Even something as simple as docking two small craft in orbit would lag enough that the Windows loading circle would show up and the game would free for 10 seconds or so.

OH.  MY.  GOD.  I knew that KSP on my laptop was less than optimal, however, this is simply amazing.  Who knew that one could:

• Load the game in under 5 minutes, with a few mods.
• Load a saved game in under 30 seconds.
• Launch a rocket without having to turn the camera completely to the sky to avoid massive lag.
• Rotate the camera view with the arrows and actually get a smooth experience.
• Have a craft rotate from Prograde to Retrograde in under 30 seconds.

I had started a new career save when 1.11 came out, so I'm excited to see all the moons and planets with a graphics card that can handle most of the graphics settings set near the high end limits.

[SkyRender]

Prototyping galore today.  This has been a 3-day project so far, developing the latest version of my Duna-Ike exploration mission "Dunaverse".  Pictured here is the current testing model of the assembled station with the 6 main components of the mission: station core, orbital habitation, surface base (hinges with servos are used to deploy it), heavy-duty 8-Kerbal lander, Ike mining mission (surface-to-orbit fuel ferry, wheeled fuel tanker, mini-miner), and the Ike-to-Duna fuel ferry.

[SkyRender]

5 hours ago, Rakete said:

How do you make these amazing drawings? Could need some for my own favourite creations.

Can't speak for this user, but when I do this sort of thing I use the Pencil Sketch rendering option in Paint.net and then use some color and thickness manipulation shenanigans to make it look like a blueprint drawing.  A simple blueprint background behind that, then an overlay texture filter to make it look a bit rumpled, and there you go.

EDIT: An example!  I added some coffee stains too.  Fonts are Sergoe Script and Sergoe Print.  Arrows are done with hand-adjusted bezier curve lines.

Edited January 1, 2021 by SkyRender