What did you do in KSP1 today?

[DunaManiac]

1 hour ago, obnox twin said:

Are you in science/career or Sandbox? I might switch lifesupport mods to Snacks or USI after I done my duna Mission as it would corrupt the mothership

I'm in sandbox mode. I would personally recommend USI life support. USI has less resources to manage (TAC life support has food, water, oxygen, waste, the whole shebang, while USI has food and mulch to manage), but I use USI mainly because TAC life support has no greenhouses or food recyclers. So with USI you need to resupply your bases less, while with TAC you are forced to resupply your bases with food on a regular basis. However, snacks! is also a good entry-level life support mod.

[obnox twin]

14 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

I'm in sandbox mode. I would personally recommend USI life support. USI has less resources to manage (TAC life support has food, water, oxygen, waste, the whole shebang, while USI has food and mulch to manage), but I use USI mainly because TAC life support has no greenhouses or food recyclers. So with USI you need to resupply your bases less, while with TAC you are forced to resupply your bases with food on a regular basis. However, snacks! is also a good entry-level life support mod.

I might as well use USI as kerbalsim would be very hard as radiation and all that other complicated stuff.
Another hand what did I do for the start of the day where I live problems with VAB as stuff ain't placing down its ethier a mod/s causing problems or something else so diagnosing time and as well designing my Jool 5 mission in stock.

Edited April 3, 2022 by obnox twin

[GDJ]

Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.

[king of nowhere]

Tried to run more necessary tests for my next grand tour. tried... and failed.

lately, I've been working on a rss+kerbalism stock part grand tour. I have a workable ship with the deltaV requirements. However, it breaks the game

First I devised the mothership; it's based on A'Tuin, but it's made so that it can be split in two, the heavy industrial machinery and high thrust engines left behind, what's left has over 10 km/s deltaV, which is required for a mercury mission.

Here during the latest successful test: orbiting the moon.

the test actually failed, the new ship has too little high thrust deltaV to circularize before falling down. But with the test data I did run some calculations, and I did establish that it would require way too much oxidier to land and take off on the Moon, and there are plenty of low gravity bodies where I can land with a fraction of the fuel, and so I should just cancel "can land on the moon" as a prerequisite for the mothership.

Here in a previous successful test: stability on reloading. Nope, the alignment bug struck hard. Hence I put struts (manual struts, not autostruts) everywhere.

I also discovered that, despite a 5 m docking port, the connection between the parts is not strong enough. I solved this by applying manual struts between the parts; the plan is then to detach them manually with eva construction every time I need to undock, and to replace them, again with eva construction, after docking.

Here the part with the machinery. It took a lot of effort to fit all of that in the available space.

And the two subships mated, without the outer shell. The upper part only has to carry life support for six, it's a lot less encumbered.

And the upper part

Then I did a survey of the solar system, and discovered there's no nitrogen in any planetary crust, nothing anywhere. Except on pluto, which is too far to be a convenient refueling spot.

But there is nitrogen in titan's atmosphere, and titan has a low enough gravity. So I did devise a spaceplane that can land on titan, carry the industrial machinery to collect nitrogen, turn it into monopropellant, and get back to orbit. monopropellant is 87% nitrogen by weight, and it's a lot more efficient to store than nitrogen gas

Here's the Nitrogenius as it's ascending titan's atmosphere by propellers. orbiting in rss is a weird experience compared to stock, because you need a crapton of deltaV, but you can get away with low thrust. To orbit titan you need an orbital speed of over 1.5 km/s, but local gravity is 0.1 g, so one can get away with a full nuclear thrust. Making sure it's redundant so that I can still orbit with a broken engine was a bit more complicated.

Then there are a lot of moons - all four major moons of jupiter, among them - that require roughly 2000 m/s to land on. Doing it with expendable landers would be too much, so I did devise a reusable lander that could do it. And that could drop and recover a rover.

Do notice the pistons on the rover's side, to lift the rover and bind it on the docking port.

Mercury and Mars require even more deltaV, though. For mercury, I got away with an extra expendable stage. For Mars I had to get crazy; six inflatable thermal shields used as parachutes to drop speed from 3 to 1 km/s, then some powerful rockets to brake in the last few kilometers of descent. The normal lander can then lift off from Mars just fine.

Had more troubles for Venus; the project is based on helicopterocket, flying on propeller power out of the atmosphere, then using a regular rocket. But propellers work badly on Venus; the atmospheric pressure is so high, the game goes crazy. I think the propellers are getting bent? Anyway, I could get a 1 m/s ascent speed at most, and I was fighting with the controls all the time. Still, I was optimistic there; I did make a plane that flies on venus, an helicopter must be feasible too.

 

But in the last few days, I had a final flight test for the mothership: orbiting Triton - about two-thirds the size of the moon, but that one is a required landing to reach Pluto, it's the only moon of neptune modeled in the mod. And so I brought the mothership - now finally finished - on the launchpad. Cue 10 minutes loading time. Then I used alt-f12 to bring it on triton for the test.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

alt-f12 didn't work. And eventually the game crashed.

Looks like the mothership is so complex, the game won't even manage to execute the alt-f12 change position command. I also got several seconds per frame.

I tried many times, the game would always crash without letting me do anything.

It's not the part count; it doesn't have more parts than A'Tuin. But every additional mod increases lag. Navis Sideralis Neanderthalensis had as many parts, but it could be loaded in a few seconds, and the lag was barely noticeable.

So, it seems I am finally defeated. I can't make this grand tour work. not because of any lack of engineering, but because my pc can't handle my increasingly bizantine requirements any longer.

Is it the end of me playing ksp? In the past two years, I kept myself interested by pulling increasingly more complex stunts. This rss is the next logical step, and it looks impossible by pc limits. And without a big challenge, I'm just not motivated.

 

 

But wait! Last minute update. While I opened ksp for the last time to take the screenshot without the external fuel tanks, upon removing them I noticed a misplaced, glitched part. I fixed that, and now the ship launched correctly, and alt-f12 worked! Currently on the surface of Triton.

So, it seems I'm not done yet.

I am still not optimistic about actually launching the mothership from earth. Though I will launch the two parts separately, and empty of fuel, I'll still need at least a 50kton launch vehicle. If the game lags and glitches that badly for the ship alone...

and the glitches are not done yet;

According to the sidebar on the right, all my tanks are full. According to the part menu, that tank - and all other fuel tanks - are not full...

 

There shall come a day when the game will crash on me, forbidding me from more grand tours. But this is not the day! Today, I test orbiting Triton!

(EDIT: the Triton orbiting test was successful. The "yes, it can actually do this with the available resources" kind of successful, not the "it failed spectacularly, but I learned something from it" kind of successful I was mentioning above for other tests)

Edited April 4, 2022 by king of nowhere

[DunaManiac]

The mothership leaves for Minmus, carrying the base modules, the station, the rover, and the lander.

We arrive at Minmus. The most ideal spot on Minmus, with 9% ore, is located at an inclination, so I couldn't come in at a perfectly equatorial orbit. Thankfully, everything lined up in just the right way and I didn't have to perform a plane change.

The base modules go down first. They're carried by a trailer that doubles as a tug for delivering modules to the surface.

Once down, some minor rearrangement was needed.

Secondly, I detatched the Rover/Lander. For simplicity's sake I decided to just land them together, skycrane style. Its also carrying two of the three kerbals down to the surface.

And they're down. I'll have to use the lander to get one kerbal down from Jewel 2, and then deploy the ISRU unit.

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by DunaManiac

[Kerb24]

Did a quick rescue contract.

Spoiler

On the launch pad

A bit into flight

Stage separation

In orbit

Approaching the stranded capsule

Another angle

Deorbited

Re-entry

Nice view of the Restock parachutes

Mission complete.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Launched a scanning satellite into polar orbit, then tried to recover the booster. It worked well enough, right up until it landed on the side of a mountain, tipped over and exploded- but somehow the engine survived tumbling down the side of said mountain at speeds of over 50m/s and came to rest literally a mile away from the rest of the debris, somehow intact. 

[obnox twin]

30 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

engine survived tumbling down the side of said mountain at speeds of over 50m/s and came to rest literally a mile away from the rest of the debris, somehow intact. 

Thats what I called a beast of an engine
But for the boring update on K.I.V Duna after some kraken attacks or a rogue docking autopilot collided with them (I couldn't find there rotors or whatever they are called) the solar panels somehow disappeared so launching a new module then a miner then I can wait until 10 days till transfer window and then get crew on board and get to duna with only 17 ignitions on a nuclear engine (Mind you I am doing this with kerbalsim but will switch to USI life support as it will be more easy after the mission)

Edited April 4, 2022 by obnox twin

[spacejet]

.

Edited April 6, 2022 by spacejet

[Akagi]

Started up a Space Odyssey knockoff with REALLY COOL spaceships, if I do say so myself.

 

[spacejet]

.

Edited April 6, 2022 by spacejet

[ColdJ]

Achieved a childhood dream of having a working Thunderbird 2 and 4. There are still refinements and internals to be done but it can do just like in the original show. Drop the pod at sea, pick it back up, telescopic legs, VTOL, Take TB4 for a cruise under the sea (wish there was more to see).

Spoiler

 

[DunaManiac]

The base is now mostly set up. I was planning to add a communications tower via KIS, but a glitch caused an RUD that forced me to repeat the landing. I've learned my lesson - do not trust KIS.

In the meantime, I executed my planned maneuver to rendevous with Jewel 2 and bring down my third crewmember. I happened to chose two kerbals for the mission with the most insufferable names, Irsey and Isalfal. How can you tell them apart?

After bringing down either Irsey or Isalfal, they settled down for a picture.

Meanwhile, I took my rover for a little drive. I found a stack separator near the base, and got Isalfal out to store it.

Back in orbit, the ISRU unit is down next. I initially planned for it to be connected to the base via attachment cables, but I had earlier issues with things disappearing and falling through the surface, so I decided to simply dock it to the assembly itself. Once I landed, then began the excruciating process of trying to connect it to the base without any kind of landing gear. It didn't help that my torque was low and every time my landing gear would touch the surface there would be a small jolt. Eventually I set down near the docking port and turned up the attatchment force on the docking ports, allowing it to slowly slide over.

Eventually though, I got it. Next would be to attatch the fuel tank. For some reason I decided to put a docking port senior rather than an ordinary 1.25 meter port on the other end, meaning that I couldn't use the other end. Thankfully, I still had the other, redundant orbital tug which I eagarly cannabilized for parts. I forgot to include monoprop tanks on my trailer that the redundant one had, so I ended up stripping the redundant tug for parts.

Thankfully however, and after an hour of stripping parts, I finally fully assembled the base. Now that its complete, Jewel 2 can return home and come back with the next batch of parts.

[spacejet]

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Edited April 6, 2022 by spacejet

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, spacejet said:

found it by accident - is there a better way? You could run this on a Rotation Servo which has a dampener.

 

 

I've used stacked tweakscaled tiny cubic struts for this effect, as well as stacked picoports (mod).  The physics engine doesn't seem to have a lot of patience for this kind of thing in my experience; eventually the kraken would come for my creations anyway

[Zacspace]

1 hour ago, spacejet said:

is there a better way?

The physics joints created when you attach the ant engine to something/attach something to the ant engine are known to be pretty weak and bendy. Rover suspensions and occasionally even hinges were made this way in older versions of the game before wheels were improved.

I think I once saw a player make a crossbow where the string was a bunch of ant engines attached to each other and stretched out.

Edit: I guess that's not strictly better, might be less buggy though due to fewer robotics. I guess the point is, all KSP part attachments are a little springy (some more than others) and that has a long history of being abused to make neat stuff.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Zacspace
text needed to be at least 3 times this size

[Kerb24]

Today I launch a transfer vehicle to my Duna space station so that I can get Jeb and Bill home.

Spoiler

On the pad

Liftoff

Booster separation

Almost in orbit

In orbit

Val does an EVA using a new space suit (Yes, I realize that the Sokol is an IVA suit, but it's just a game.)

Departing Kerbin

Approaching Duna

In Duna orbit

Stage separation

Approaching the station

About to dock

Docked

Still need to get back to Kerbin.

Also, here is some old screenshots I have that I didn't upload.

Spoiler

My First Mun landing

My First Eve landing

 

[spacejet]

.

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by spacejet

[obnox twin]

One thing that I hate is kraken attacks my Duna Mission was attacked by the kraken and it lost its engine module and the docking port that attaches to it. So I am just rebuild aka in the SPH and cheat it into orbit as I already managed to get it in orbit (I only do this as kraken attacks are annoying and I don't want to do tons of refueling missions) But I still have hope.

[darthgently]

1 minute ago, obnox twin said:

One thing that I hate is kraken attacks my Duna Mission was attacked by the kraken and it lost its engine module and the docking port that attaches to it. So I am just rebuild aka in the SPH and cheat it into orbit as I already managed to get it in orbit (I only do this as kraken attacks are annoying and I don't want to do tons of refueling missions) But I still have hope.

F5 before every maneuver.  Always.

[obnox twin]

7 minutes ago, darthgently said:

F5 before every maneuver.  Always.

Like I've been building it in orbit as the craft is big and it was 130 days before duna transfer window is coming up as preparing but I will do F5 before every maneuver as I am going to aerobrake around kerbin as I don't need the lander and miner and fuel storage and ISRU. So I am going to ditch them and meet up with a heatshield system/aka heatshield that will be used to aerobrake.

[MythicalHeFF]

Made a little cover art for a mission report I might write soon about my ongoing Jool system colonization.

 

[obnox twin]

9 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Made a little cover art for a mission report I might write soon about my ongoing Jool system colonization.

 

I just got this idea why don't you do a jool 5 and colonise all the jools moon in one mission

[Kerb24]

Today I got Jeb and Bill back from Duna.

Spoiler

About to undock

Undocked

Duna Escape Burn

Leaving Duna

Midcourse correction

Arriving at Kerbin

Detaching the transfer stage

Re-entry

Parachutes deployed

Splash down

Mission complete.

Also, I've started work on an ISS recreation, coming soon!

[obnox twin]

I was liking how close I am getting to do the burn but the kraken or autostrut is making things very annoying everything was all good. But the engine is nowhere to be seen when I switch to it and the parts are at werid angles as I having my crew ready to transfer. I need help to fix this.

Sorry about who this is written I just needed to vent