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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Early experiment with adding ablator (and thermal tolerance) to a mk1 cockpit and flying to orbit with JNSQ at 100% re-entry heating.

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Even Jeb seems a little concerned at the kinks that haven't been ironed out of this one. Maybe he has reservations about sending a pair of nuclear engines into an uncontrolled descent back to Kerbin.

(Honestly, I suspect I'll end up adding thermal limits and ablator to so many parts it's probably not worth the effort, and I should just keep the heating setting dialled down. But it's been a fun experiment, and I learned a whole new flight profile where this spaceplane doesn't even hit the SRBs until supersonic at 10km. Now it uses them to get as much vertical velocity as possible once the rapier maxes out, rather than to get off the runway. I didn't know it could get off the runway without the SRBs!)

Edited by eddiew
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I've been flying Skyranger, my Mk-33, for 28 missions now, and except for the initial test flight, I haven't recovered it. Instead, I've used a combination of docking ports, Kerbal Attachment System, DockRotate, stock robotics, and stock EVA construction. This combination of mods and stock gameplay lets me load new payloads into the payload bay via the Mk-33 Payload Crane, rotate the vehicle into launch position via the Mk-33 Launchpad, and blast off into space.

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Unfortunately, after 28 flights, part drift has become an issue.

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Fortunately, thanks to stock EVA construction, I can realign the landing gear.

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I can't fix the gaps in the fuselage, but they're too small to worry about for now. Anyway, after landing, I installed a new solar panel- Skyranger's fuel cell failed thanks to EVA Repairs, and I had no eva repair kits aboard. Now she'll have a solar panel and a full stock of repair kits.

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Since the forward payload bay docking port is also misaligned, I had to fix that too...

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Unfortunately, I grabbed the wrong part and accidentally pulled the payload bay module. But it gives me an idea: if I can figure out how to drop the module without welding it, then I can swap out the modules in-field!

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But all is well, I reinstalled the docking port, moved it back into position, and reinstalled the payload module.

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And with the airlock reinstalled, Skyranger is ready for her next payload.

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For those interested:

 

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I recently started a fresh career with some new mods, and finally started doing some interesting things again. Got a contract to hold a Space Camp recruitment event on my LKO space station, which is going to require some upgrades, so I sent up a supply ship with a bunch of life support, more solar panels, and a temporary docking adapter compatible with my new Falcon spaceplane:

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Preparing to deorbit the supply rocket after Kergard got done with the power upgrades:

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Jeb brought up the first 4 recruits in the Falcon, using MK1 spam-cans to hold passengers inside the cargo bay:

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It was at this point I realized that Contract Configurator requires that all 16 recruits be on station at the same time, which is going to completely swamp even the additional life support, never mind finding a place to put them all. :/

Not sure how I'm going to handle this one...

 

KoS

 

 

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Still crawling up the tech ladder from the very bottom, but I got some progress done!
Planned, and executed a fly-by of the Mun followed by a simple 34km AP aerobrake recapture to land on Kerbin safely.

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Still trying to fine tune the dV requirements. Not only am I running Principia now, but also FAR now. I had over 2000m/s extra (a WHOLE stage!) that I ditched upon hitting Kerbin's atmosphere. I could have easily landed on the Mun and come back with room to spare, but I'm still low tech enough that it's kind of a waste. Also didn't have a contract for orbiting the Mun (let alone land on it) so I let it do with a quickie and a slippie.

EDIT: Also, first rendez-vous, which was both a rescue contract and a milestone 'Explore Kerbin' contract.
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Edited by Axelord FTW
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7 hours ago, Kerbals_of_Steel said:

Jeb brought up the first 4 recruits in the Falcon, using MK1 spam-cans to hold passengers inside the cargo bay

Those look like Kickbacks and -- "the magic to go to space today" -- a pair of Hammers...(?)

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2 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

Those look like Kickbacks and -- "the magic to go to space today" -- a pair of Hammers...(?)

This version of the Falcon is just a stack of kludges and space-tape fixes...

Yes, twin Kickbacks for the first stage (with Restock). The mini SRBs are from RLA Reloaded, and are vacuum optimized version of the PAM from the space shuttle. 

The Falcon has enough fuel to make it to orbit with only the Kickbacks. It wasn't designed to return mass from orbit, though, so the MK1 cans in the cargo bay require extra fuel remaining for ballast, or the CoM moves too far forward and it wants to lawn dart. (Moving the wings forward causes the whole stack to flip on launch.) So, to fix that, I added the kicker engines to ensure it has enough fuel after docking and deorbit to remain flyable.

I can solve all of those problems with a MK2 crew cabin, but, alas, the Community Tech Tree takes a lot of science...

Space is hard,LOL!

 

KoS

 

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Regarding my Eve Mission, Jeb is stranded. He cannot climb back up the lander's ladder even though in the past I tested it and he could climb it. :(

So, I am designing a small craft that I can send to Eve to get Jeb back in his lander.

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Good news: I finally, after several false starts and redesigns, settled on a base design system that works and that I like.

Bad news: Right after I accomplished this my save got corrupted. :mad: Last good save I have is old. Very old. Now I'm thinking that I might as well just start over from scratch. It will give me a chance to correct some structural deficiencies in my stations that, while not show stoppers, were irritating me. Maybe I'll start a mission report thread this time. Taking a break while I mull things over.

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The good:  I was able to, yesterday, upgrade the Astronaut Complex in my no contract career to level 2, which will allow me to go EVA off Kerbin.

The bad:  I'm running out of World's Firsts in/around Kerbin's SOI, so to conserve on fuel and funds I'll need to combine multiple missions into 1 larger mission.

The ugly:  I set off this morning to go to Minmus so I could get a bunch of science and some World's First accomplishments.  And I failed to save before I tried to land on Minmus...and flipped the lander upside down.  Sigh.

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Poody was sent to Iota. Were she found a crater.

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She then went to Ceti on a brand new rocket.

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We have stage separation and fairing deployment.

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And Poody is the fist Gaelen on Ceti.

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On re-entry it was discovered that the fuel tank was attached to the heat shield and not the de-coupler. Explosion's ensued.

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Everything but the engine and fuel tank exploded on the lander section and they were very close to doing it also.

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But a safe landing was achieved.

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22 hours ago, Alien21 said:

We have launched the Science lab module!

Nice. You can get a lot of science if you can keep it loaded with experiments. Just some pointers here... I don't see enough batteries and solar panels. It will be night (in Mun shadow) roughly 20 minutes, 1200 s... x 5 EC/s ~= 6000 EC needed to keep processing science. That's a lot in early career. You can stuff a lot of 400 EC batteries in a 2.5 m service bay. For the panels, you'll need roughly 10 EC/s to recharge the batteries and power the lab in the daytime (5 EC for the lab, 5 EC to recharge before night comes). That's at least 6 of the 1x6 panels. And once a month (about 6 days) you could have a Mun night followed by Kerbin eclipse, so that would needed even more EC and panels. 

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Now I'm thinking that I might as well just start over from scratch.

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And I failed to save before I tried to land on Minmus...

Just trying to help...  it autosaves to "persistent" every few minutes. So if you mess up and quickly reload before it autosaves again, you should be able to go back and try again. If you use KAC I believe by default it will create a save when you "jump to ship". Those filenames start with a "z".  If the save file's corrupted I'd consider spending some time with KML to fix it. It has a few built in error checks that might help. 

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3 hours ago, Kerb24 said:

Regarding my Eve Mission, Jeb is stranded. He cannot climb back up the lander's ladder even though in the past I tested it and he could climb it. :(

So, I am designing a small craft that I can send to Eve to get Jeb back in his lander.

When you have issues like that, I think it's perfectly acceptable to 'cheat' your way through whatever nonsensical issue KSP is throwing at you. Ladders is one of the things the game handle very poorly as it is.

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41 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

Just trying to help...  it autosaves to "persistent" every few minutes. So if you mess up and quickly reload before it autosaves again, you should be able to go back and try again. If you use KAC I believe by default it will create a save when you "jump to ship". Those filenames start with a "z".  If the save file's corrupted I'd consider spending some time with KML to fix it. It has a few built in error checks that might help. 

Yeah, I forgot about the Autosave thing when I landed poorly.  And so I reverted back to the VAB, which isn't all bad.  Yes, I lost an hour of playing time futzing around with the original build and launch.  But there are a couple things I can do better this time, so it's not a big loss.  Annoying, but not too terrible.

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With nothing much in the way of rockets to build, I decided to try my hand at a large geostationary contract satellite launcher. Some time later, with the judicious application of Pen and PaperTM, I had the optimal upper stage design and just whacked that on top of an existing launch rocket that can handle the weight without any issues. Two different variants- one with 5000 units of payload and the other with 10000- and two variants of each of those with different types of payload for different contracts, which should keep the VAB crews occupied while I think of big new missions that can be bankrolled by big geostationary contract payouts.

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1 hour ago, Krazy1 said:

Just trying to help...  it autosaves to "persistent" every few minutes. So if you mess up and quickly reload before it autosaves again, you should be able to go back and try again. If you use KAC I believe by default it will create a save when you "jump to ship". Those filenames start with a "z".  If the save file's corrupted I'd consider spending some time with KML to fix it. It has a few built in error checks that might help. 

Nope. The problem is that one of the stations is corrupted. So the save works great, until I switch to that station, and then the game crashes. And it has apparently been corrupt for some time, because all the quicksaves, the FMRS saves, the KAC saves, they all have it. By the time I get back to one of my backup saves where it isn't corrupt, well, as I said, I might as well be thinking about starting over. Apparently I haven't been as diligent about making backup saves as I should have been. Another lesson learned I can apply when I start over.

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