What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Angelo Kerman]

I added door gunner observation seats to the Buffalo 2 Cargo Bay, then test flew the Buffalo 2 to the song of Voodoo Child:

[ColdJ]

2 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I added door gunner observation seats to the Buffalo 2 Cargo Bay, then test flew the Buffalo 2 to the song of Voodoo Child:

Those fold up rotors are what truly impress me.

[Axelord FTW]

haha rover go brrrrrr

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[planeticegaming]

16 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Took some tourists on a tour of the harbour.

where can i download this?

[2Tricky]

16 hours ago, panzer1b said:

What mod gives you all those ground objects?

That would be Parallax 2.0.
more info about the mod here:

 

[MythicalHeFF]

15 hours ago, Lunar Sea said:

What latitude is that?

28S, 171W

[Beamer]

As I make my way onto the press balcony today I see the room is absolutely packed to a level of around 3 people per seat. That was to be expected of course, because today is promising to be a record day. I nod and wave to the familiar faces, some I know personally, some only because their pictures have graced the pages of our blogs many times over.

Behind the large glass window, the Eve and Moho mission crews are already at their seats. Even in the mission control area there are people sitting on desks and boxes, cafeteria stools are being dragged in to make sure nobody important needs to stand on this momentous day. The engineers are busy staring at monitors and discussing what they see, the scientists are leafing through stacks of papers and pulling out their slide rules to make quick calculations.

I make my way to the other side of the room and nod at the security guard waving my pass at him. He smiles and opens the door for me with barely a look at my credentials. He's my sister's fiancee, normally I would ask how things are going but he too knows this is not the day for vacuous pleasantries. The VIP balcony is full too, but of course not so full that we have to joust for a seat. I pick one in the corner from where I have a good view on the large mission monitors and settle down. As is tradition, the Planets suite of Gustav Kerman is softly playing over the speakers. "Duna, the bringer of dust" has just started. Good, I'm well on time to hear my favourite piece of the suite, "Jool, the bringer of joolity".

I stare at one of the smaller monitors on the wall behind the glass, it shows today's mission roster.

Two planetary transfer windows only 6 minutes apart. We've seen missions with 3 or even 4 crafts before of course, but the combined missions to Moho and Eve in the coming 6 hours add up to no less than 7 planetary transfer burns, some of them only minutes apart. To top it off, 4 new recruits in a KerBus Mk-2 will be making a plane change on their return trip from The Mun and Minmus.

My eyes are drawn to a colourful display to the side, showing our current deep space network. This display, more than any others, shows how far we have come in the past 7 years and 35 days.

I still remember that fateful day when Jebediah Kerman was the first Kerbal in space as if it was yesterday. That moment when the Director himself walked into mission control just before launch, carrying a hammer and a plaque, climbing on a chair and nailing the plaque to the wall and stepping back to look if it was hanging straight:

"Here we conquer space / By going really fast / Sideways"

And conquer space we did! Every planet is now connected and once our Jool and Eeloo missions arrive at their destinations in a few years time, every planet will have a living Kerbal presence. These are the times to live, my friends!

I browse through the folder of promotional material the PR department left on every seat and make a selection of the images I plan to use. The folder kindly includes a coupon for a free drink and snack from the cafeteria. Fortunately I don't have to leave my seat for that as a caterer is standing by to serve us lucky few in the VIP press room. I order a selection of donuts and a pot of coffee. The coupon is only good for one donut but I know the caterer, we went to school together, so he lets it slip with a quick look around and a conspiratory wink.

Before we know it, T0 is there and the first craft, the Gilly Polar Antenna Spire is ready to perform its burn. This craft carries a crew of three, a pilot and two engineers, who will land on Gilly's Northern Pole to prepare the ground anchor for the arrival of the base of the structure.

The crew reports successful engine ignition, and 1 minute later the highly anticipated communication comes in: "Burn successful, reaching Kerbol orbit in 4 days, en route to Eve". A sigh of relief goes through the room, some people are applauding but most are still sitting on their hands with nervous expressions on their faces. One out of seven isn't bad, but we're all hoping for more.

We don't have to wait long (that will be the general theme of the day), I barely manage to wolf down three donuts before the next burn is up. The Gilly Antenna Spacer x4 carries four tall tubes that will be docked on top of the Gilly Polar Antenna Base once that has been anchored to the tiny moon. Although not clearly visible in the image, between those four tubes is a Mk-1 capsule carrying its single crew member who will return to Kerbin after delivering these construction parts. According to the scientists, there is some value in returning something from the Eve system for ground recovery on Kerbin.  I take their word for it.

The report from the crew is the same as from the previous craft. Successful engine ignition, and 1 minute later the message that the craft is en route to Eve. The applause is louder now, two down and five to go, by all accounts this day is already a success.

There is little time for celebration as a mere 10 minutes later, the third craft with destination Eve is ready for its burn. We are by now familiar with the new scanning technology employed around Kerbin, The Mun and Minmus, and Eve and Gilly will get their own variants of these unmanned probes.

I watch the plot with the craft's calculated trajectory slowly change, its orbit becoming more elongated until it snaps and points directly out of the Kerbin system. Flight control reports success, telemetry looks good, all systems operational. Another successful burn. The applause and cheers are getting louder now, some are stomping their feet and I barely manage to rescue my coffee from tipping over. Three down, everyone is in good spirits now, only one more burn to go before the Eve mission crew can take a break.

The final craft to leave for the Eve system is the Gilly Polar Antenna Base, which will attach itself to the ground anchor prepared by the crew aboard the Spire and will form a solid base for the other components of the structure to rest upon. This is another unmanned craft, due to its mass there was no room left to pack snacks, so the intended crew of the Gilly Polar Antenna opted to transfer on the Spire instead.

As Flight Control announces another successful burn the Kerbin-side Eve Mission crew rises from their seat as one and fall each other in the arms, congratulations and back slaps are exchanged and some waves are directed at the press balcony where people are now jumping up and down and banging on the windows, and I'm starting to wonder if we can keep this up for three more crafts without breaking down the building.

The Eve Mission crews quickly shuffle out of the control center for a well deserved snack break, creating a bit more room for the Moho mission crew to breathe, who have their first burn coming up only 3 minutes later. The first craft to leave for Moho is the by now famous BottleCan Base of Sean's Cannery (or as the public prefers to call it: "Bottly McBottleface"), carrying a crew of three.

Only 10 seconds into the burn some of the engineers start discussing and pointing at monitors in an animated fashion. The Mammoth engine is using up slightly more Oxygen than anticipated. It is supposed to have around 50 m/s of deltaV left at the end of its burn but at the current rate of Oxygen consumption, they will fall just short of the intended burn vector. The Flight Controller's hand hovers over the abort button as he fixates his view on the engineers, but their response is resolute: No need to abort, we estimate flame out on the Mammoth at target velocity minus 2.8 m/s, but there is plenty of liquid fuel left for the nuklear engines to pick up the slack. And indeed, barely 2 minutes later another successful burn is reported. More applause from the press balcony, people are jumping up and standing on their chairs clapping their hands, except for the few who have fainted from the stress.

Still there is no time to rest because the next craft is already preparing to ignite its engines only 6 minutes later. This will be the MultiSkanner package for Moho with its distinctive SRBs intended for the Moho orbital insertion burn.

This is one of the simpler crafts to leave today, at least in terms of its planetary transfer burn, and nobody expects any issues with it. And indeed, after a 2 minute burn all telemetry looks A-OK and the ground side crews report reaching Kerbol orbit in 1 day with plenty of fuel to spare for the planar correction burn halfway through journey to the innermost planet. I tentatively cover my ears for the expected outbursts but it seems most of the gathered press have chosen this moment to grab some refreshments from the cafeteria. I do not blame them, this is thirsty work.

Almost nobody notices the report from the KerBus Mk-2 reporting situation norminal after its minor correction burn. The craft is piloted by a veteran in the program so fortunately for Mission Control they don't have to worry about this too much. Instead they focus on the last craft to leave today, the dual mining rovers that will accompany Sean's BottleCan Base on Moho to provide refueling services for any visiting crafts. The engineer that will crew these vehicles is transferring on board the BottleCan Base in the luxury of the base's tourist cabins (with stocked mini-fridges) so this is another unmanned craft. Of course it has been sent to Moho twice before with no issues so the tension already starts to fade a bit and some are finding time to splash some water in the faces of the fainted few.

As the announcement of the success on this final transfer burn is made, the sun is already setting outside, and just like that this legend of a day comes to an end. I hang around for a little while to chat with my colleagues but it's clear that everyone is tired, hungry and eager to go to town, have a late diner and start partying. I believe I will join them. It will be a while before we see a day like this again but with a score of seven out of seven we all agree that the future looks bright and there is plenty of reason for optimism about the future of our magnificent space program!

 

[capi3101]

The past 48 hours for me have been filled with things that haven't been particularly photogenic, but that won't stop me from trying to bore y'all with it...

After completing her EVA reports on the 11th, Val conducted a burn to take her Trinity 1 craft out of polar Munar orbit, beginning the process of wrapping that mission up. Shortly after completing that mission, the Genie 2 craft returned from its Munar flyby tourism mission, landing safely in the Grasslands about 280 klicks east of KSC. Shortly afterwards the Kerbal Tour Bus 7 craft carrying ten tourists (whose names I've already deleted) made its way back from a Munar flyby tourism mission, landing in the waters 270 kilometers west of KSC, finishing up three contracts in the process and paving the way for a level 2 upgrade to the SPH and a level 3 ugprade to my tracking station. With a new contract to put a satellite in a retrograde equatorial orbit over Kerbin, I next designed the Trash Can 3 craft, which launched to a 128.5 by 109.9 kilometer retrograde orbit before boosting itself up to its final target altitude.  It will arrive at apoapsis in a little over eight hours. Pilot Jedus Kerman and six tourists launched on a fresh Kerbal Tour Bus mission, this time to orbit the Mun. The KTB arrived at Mun yesterday and after a brief period in orbit made its burn to return to Kerbin; it should arrive at Kerbin periapsis in about 8.5 hours. The day ended with Trinity 1 escaping the Mun's SOI, upon which Val burned to put her on a trajectory for Kerbin re-entry.

My day yesterday began with a parts test at Kerbin, after which it was time to launch a new Gurney 7 rescue mission to pick up scientist Deswig Kerman from LKO.


Gurney 7 boosting to LKO on a mission to rescue scientist Delwig Kerman from LKO.

The mission was a success, with the Gurney 7 making a successful rendezvous and Deswig boarding before returning to Kerbin and splashing down about 78 kilometers northeast of KSC. After that, Trinity 1 arrived at Kerbin.


Val making her way back down to the surface. The SM has been jettisoned; you can see it in the background.

Val's successful return paved the way for the admins to greenlight a Munar landing. To facilitate this, I designed the Crossroads Able 7 Mun lander after making some changes to the Scimobile in order to get enough extra dumb KSC science to unlock seismometers.


The Crossroads Able 7 Mun lander under construction. She's designed to hit 2-3 Mun biomes before needing to return to Kerbin.

With Val and Bob aboard, CA7 launched and burned for the Mun.


Crossroads Able 7 burning for the Mun. She only had 60 kN of thrust on the transfer stage, so the burn took over eight minutes to complete. The stage doesn't have sufficient delta-V to complete the orbital injection maneuver, which is going to impact the overall mission I'm afraid.

The craft will arrive at Munar periapsis in just over a day, at which point Mun landings will commence. I expect to only be able to hit one, maybe two biomes at most before I'll have to return to Kerbin; the lander itself only has about 5000 m/s of delta-V and I'll have to use some of that to finish the orbital injection burn. Looking forward to conducting those landings either today or tomorrow. Hoping I'll find a Mun stone while I'm there; I have a contract to pick one up.

Incidentally, if anybody knows whether Protractor was ever continued continued continued or some such, I'd like to know too. The mod I'm using was designed for KSP 1.3; I consider myself exceptionally fortunate that the thing still works...

Edited September 14, 2022 by capi3101
Imgur issues.

[capi3101]

I also need to figure out how to update my ribbons, or indeed if it's even still possible to do so...

[ColdJ]

Hi.

My Bubble Patrol Craft mod has been updated and now has a Drone and a Motorbike.

https://spacedock.info/mod/3114/Oblivion Bubble Patrol Craft

[Hotel26]

The Terkestani Space Force out on display:

Just a pair of harmless KISS-II Asterisk space station starter kits (102 tons) loaded on my new Slingshot mobile launchers.

OK, here's another one:

Spoiler

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Hotel26

[panzer1b]

Damn i love the new version of parallax, it seems to have decent performance now unlike the last time i gave it a try (which was when they first really came out with it, looked nice back then too but the current version with all the redone scatters puts the old one out of the water and is well worth the minor hit to performance...

This is what it looked like b4 config messing, there were these odd lines where the textures didnt quite line up right when looking far away (not really visible on dis screenie but very blatant on decent from orbit).

Not as pretty shadow wise, but its still decent looking (and what matters the most to me, the scatters, are all fine).

I really like what they did there, each planet is truly unique now (most of the "classic" grey moons were mostly identical visually b4, now each one has something going for it)...

[Rutabaga22]

Landing on  eve for the first time! Hope I'm going slow enough.

The upper heat shield exploded, but we're reentering successfully!

Edited September 16, 2022 by Rutabaga22

[Rutabaga22]

Took a hot minute, but after a lot of use of the F9 key, I 'm landing on land.

Rover decoupled from truss, but kinda flipped over...

There goes the truss!

[Blufor878]

52 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Took a hot minute, but after a lot of use of the F9 key, I 'm landing on land.

Rover decoupled from truss, but kinda flipped over...

There goes the truss!

Ah, parachute spam, I see you are a man of culture (I’m being serious, I spam chutes like crazy).

[Rutabaga22]

3 minutes ago, Blufor878 said:

Ah, parachute spam, I see you are a man of culture (I’m being serious, I spam chutes like crazy).

Nah, I jut wanted to be safe for my first time

[Blufor878]

1 minute ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Nah, I jut wanted to be safe for my first time

Fair enough.

[Rutabaga22]

1 minute ago, Blufor878 said:

Fair enough.

Next up is landing a boat on laythe....

[coyotesfrontier]

After performing a second moon landing in my KSRSS Science Mode playthrough, I decided to make a fully reusable moon lander instead of doing a third disposable moon landing. The new lander will reside at a lunar space station when not in use, which will be placed in a low equatorial orbit around the moon. I decided to use cryogenic propellants for the lander due to their greater efficiency, creating a design with around 5000m/s of ΔV, enough to land anywhere on the moon and return to the station without disposing of any hardware.

The lander is launched first, on a new derivative of the Amazon II launch vehicle dubbed the Amazon III. The difference from the Amazon II is the removal of the second stage, in addition to the first stage boosters being fused to the core stage instead of separating. These unusual design decisions are done to make the rocket as short and fat as possible, to prevent flipping due to the very large fairing containing the lander.

Next, the station itself is launched, being much smaller than the lander due to the lander's massive fuel tanks.

Now that the station and lander are docked in low lunar orbit, the next few days will involve a refueling mission being sent to the station, followed by a crewed mission to the station. Then, the landings can finally begin.

[Axelord FTW]

Taking some time off the rover stuff to do some Minmus surface-to-orbit shuttlin' to fuel up the next interplanetary super-ship. Built a crane ship with modular payload and while it was fine, I thought I could do better. Didn't want to just supersize the system and instead did something different. New craft technically takes off and land vertically, but scoots around on its belly.

Edited September 16, 2022 by Axelord FTW

[Lt_Duckweed]

I recently completed working on a deep dive into how fairings and bays work. If you've ever wondered what exactly counts as "inside" a fairing, look no farther.

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by Lt_Duckweed

[SparkyFox]

I remodelled(from scratched) and re-textured the old kethane turbine/engine/thruster. I've given it a fairing, mode switch for atmosphere and vacuum and a reverse thurst. 
Development Nerd Album
Recent Album
https://streamable.com/l07zjf

Edited September 16, 2022 by SparkyFox

[ColdJ]

14 hours ago, SparkyFox said:

I remodelled(from scratched) and re-textured the old kethane turbine/engine/thruster. I've given it a fairing, mode switch for atmosphere and vacuum and a reverse thurst. 

Beautiful work as always.

[N_Danger]

A course correction was done for the Jool probe.

Then we launched the core of a space station to Duna. We will build it out robotically and then pre-position supplies for an expedition.  

The transfer burn

And on the way to Duna.

[Kerbalistic1]

I Installed RSS and RP-1, but RSS won't work. It will show just the regular Kerbol system planets and, which causes RP-1's contracts to bug out and for some reason I start with only 3 parts: 

These parts are all non-rp1 parts

Edited September 17, 2022 by Kerbalistic1