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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Tried a few things before heading out to work. One, design and balance the core of the High Energy Facility that will be landed on Minmus about 50km SE of the main fuel producing facility. Turns out the CoM was naturally smack dab right in the middle (off maybe by a few cm toward the smelter side). Also decided to use heat exchangers and just one big radiator. Also works perfectly. The cost is kinda out there (about 1.8 million after some fine tuning), plus the delivery vehicle which has yet to be designed. This baby is almost 40 tons heavier than my He3 extractor rover, but Minmus is a much kinder place to land at, so I don't expect any problems.

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Also decided on a new flag.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the reason why this got a lab and two 4-spot hab modules or whatever they are called is because I was waiting for a 'build a new ground base on Minmus' mission. If successful, this contract will earn me back about 1,200,000 kosh. Enough to bring the total price down to about 600,000 for the facility itself. I think it was worth the wait.

EDIT2: Heat Exchangers, how do they work!?

Edited by Axelord FTW
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23 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Early Prototype Speeder Bike. It functions well, Has a ceiling of 400 metres, top speed has been set to around 160m/s to keep it stable. Only bits you add on are the elevon flaps to control pitch. Still got to properly texture and add little touches here and there.

Sweet. Now we just need to find some Baobab trees to crash into.

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Well, the High Energy Facility was landed successfully on Minmus, exactly 40km SE of the main fuel extraction facility. With this, done, I can now produce everything in the Kerbin system other than Deuterium. There's some antimatter around Kerbin but not really in any useful quantities. There's a converter later in the tech tree, but for now I'd either have to spend the Science on making AM on Kerbin, or wait forever for the AM research scoop I've left in high Kerbin orbit to collect some.
Once my AM-detector probe reach Jool, followed by another probe looking for other dusts, I'll be able to make plans.

In the meantime, I'll be building up the He3-holding orbital facility around the Mun, the multifuel-holding facility around Minmus, and make the Fuel shuttle proper for Minmus. With the He3 shuttle on the Mun, I could go with a single design, but the minmus lander will have to be modular, and carry detachable fuel loads to be left on the station if I want to be efficient. If I'm running low on funds, I'll go and recover some extra He3.

EDIT: Considering my only L4 Engineer as currently sitting in the multifuel facility, I'll either design a taxi-type sub-orbital shuttle to allow easier travel from one facility to the next, or a heavier rover. I've got an utility rover at the multifuel facility, but it's not well suited for long distances.

Edited by Axelord FTW
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I began working on a new rover that I want to do another Elcano challenge with. I want my next Elcano to be done on Duna, and I want the rover to be delivered there by SSTO. Here it is at the KSC going for a test drive. I still haven't thought of a name for it yet, so for now it's just called the "Elcano 1." I decided to go for a much more nimble and compact design than my previous mission, in which my rover had a mass of 70 tons. This rover, by contrast, only weighs in at a little under 8 tons.

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Of course, if I want to get it to Duna by SSTO, it has to be able to fit into a MK3 cargo bay, unless I wanted to go through the trouble of building an SSTO with a custom cargo bay, but those are an aerodynamic nightmare at the best of times. However, if the rover were able to fit into a MK3 cargo bay, it would be very unstable and easy to flip over. Not exactly ideal for an Elcano Challenge. And so, I decided to mount the wheels onto hinges, so they would be able to retract enough so that the rover can fit into a MK3 cargo bay.

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Another issue that arises with this, though, is that the rods that the wheels are mounted on are not attached to any other part except for the girder segment attached to the hinge, meaning that the rover's wheels move around a lot and the back is pretty droopy, which causes the lander can to explode when you hit a slope at any real speed. To solve this issue, I put struts into the lander can's container, so that an engineer kerbal would be able to attach the struts once the wheels were unfolded. 

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Once the struts were in place, the rover drives much more reliably, and can take much more of a beating. Now I just have to figure out how to make an interplanetary SSTO to get it to Duna with!

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 The Minmus taxi** has been delivered and is currently* doing its thing, taking the L3 Engineer Kerbal from the High Energy Facility (now renamed "'Lycaon' (Minmus HEF)") on a 40km trip to the Minmus Refuelling Station (still unbaptized)(now called "'Demeter' (Minmus Fuel Refinery)"), where it will pick up the L4 Engineer there and bring it back to the HEF. About 50 minutes round-trip without time acceleration, which I'll let happen in the background via MJ rover autopilot. A Methane-powered shuttle would have worked a hundred times better and faster, but rovers are cool. It's interesting that both facilities are on the Greater Flats of Minmus, and it's straight, flat sailing from one to the other.

*(it would seem the rover has mysteriously crashed while I was away. Damn green rocks is what I'm thinking. I reserve the right to rollback.)
**(now christened "'Korbin' (Minmus Taxi)")

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4 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Here it is at the KSC going for a test drive. I still haven't thought of a name for it yet, so for now it's just called the "Elcano 1."

Well, I'm certainly liking the design. Autobot-like rovers are always a plus.
As for a name... Eight wheels, and a flourish-of-a-butt rear end (what with the colorful antenna there) reminds me of some jumping spiders. Maybe something in that direction?

Edited by Axelord FTW
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15 minutes ago, don17 said:

I landed on Mun and came back to Kerbin for the first time without a tutorial and I also planted a flag on the Mun and flew around with a jetpack which was cool and I also made a sattelite.

Sounds like a full and satisfying day. :D

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I present to you, Prism Terminal. An orbital, multifuel depot set around minus. Additional, modular fuel tanks that can be detached and landed with a special lander, refueled, and brought back up will be added next. LF, Ox, LH2, Methane, Lithium, Enriched Uranium (one drum extra for the next three stacks), Fission Pellets, Fission Fragments, and nuclear salt water. It can also hold a ridiculous amount of monopropellant but that only because I used the 'support' octotrusses from NFC as the core structure. Who need monoprop when you got bipropellant RCS thrusters? A BZ52 Radial Attachment Point was first installed on the asteroid (via KAS), followed by an extra Sr. Docking Port I brought along for this reason.
Second picture is of the fuel 'crane,' Titanomachus (lit. Ruler of the Titan Battle). This baby was able to bring Prism Terminal from LKO and dock it with a C-Class asteroid I previously left on an 18km circular(ish) orbit around Minmus for a contract. Titanomachus has been expertly crafted to carry fully fueled payloads shoved up between its legs. Like his cousin, The Onion, this craft runs on four MU10 'Buzzard' Liquide Methane Engines. The four landing legs are also mounted on extendable 'stilts' to allow payloads taller than it could normally accommodate to fit up there, like the interplanetary drug mule that it really is. Its self-aggrandizing name fools nobody.

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Spoiler

Some progress...

Delivery of the first four modular segments.bLku0uR.jpg

 

Some segments are borderline NSFW, the way they gotta squeeeze in there. There's about a handspan of clearance between the payload and the Titanomachus' engine nacelles. The takeaway point here is that I designed the crane around the payloads, which is distinctively not a stupid idea and very much unlike what I usually do.IoKtbp3.jpg

 

There, all four sections are in, time to dock the crane back in there.yo904Hk.jpg

 

Tight fit, again.
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Like a glove~!
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Section booster is deorbited with prejudice.
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Continued...

Spoiler

Launching the common fuels payloads. Interesting to note that this whole launch barely cost over 300,000 kosh, in comparison to the million-ish the stacks of exotic fuel containers (empty) mugged me for.dkyu4Zx.jpg

 

Meeting up with a FFT testbed I left in orbit a long while back. Thing has around 66,000m/s of dV.
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All hooked up. Trying to keep part count low, so I can't say they are very maneuverable. Engine nacelle is jettisoned, and deorbited. Burnin' for Minmus!
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Minmus, home sweet glassy home.
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The crane gets to work.
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Decided to offload two sections at once, and separate them at Prism Terminal. Liquid Methane and LH2 containers came off without a hitch. Titanomachus is da real MVP!
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There, Prism Terminal is effectively complete.
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Edited by Axelord FTW
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I've been developing Argon and Lithium fueled transport systems, and updating Rational Resources' procedural tanks config to make sure that it's worthwhile to even design this, let alone launch it. The orb is a 6.25m procedural sphere holding 50 million ArgonGas and bound for Minmus. I have a compact lander design which holds 2Mil at a time and can do 2 landings and takeoffs at JNSQ Mun with that, so this one tank will last a darn long time.

After getting this into orbit I absolutely had to install Persistent Thrust, and then proceed to alter its engine config to only target engines that make sense (only ones with certain propellants, then only ones with > 3000 Isp and aren't air-breathers), and not simply target every single engine. Not one of my launch vehicles needs any more PersistentTroubles in them, lol.

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On 11/18/2021 at 4:46 PM, Axelord FTW said:

EDIT2: Heat Exchangers, how do they work!?

Heat exchangers are basically heat sinks/buffers. They hold far more thermal mass for their size and are extremely insulated, and they delay or ease the saturation of the actual radiators, allowing them to still be effective after a major heat source has been active for far longer than the radiators can normally tolerate.

Edited by JadeOfMaar
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 I sent  up a radar altimetry satellite around Gael.

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On station.

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And I sent another satellite to Iota to fulfil a couple of more contracts.

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After an unfortunate incident involving the off center CoM on the Trans-Iota injection burn. (The terrier at full thrust over came the gimble and SAS authority and the space craft was cartwheeling) We arrive at Iota.

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And on station mapping away.

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Next session I have a bunch of tourist contracts to do for the cash.

 

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