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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Designed a 3-Kerbal SSTO rocket capable of a Moho flyby for another member of these forums; when they asked me about how some parts went together, I decided to actually build the thing myself and shoot it into orbit. It performed as well as I expected - slightly better, in fact. I only sent Jeb up (three one-man cans instead of a Mk1-2 Command Pod, see), so I think I'm going to have to land the ship (test the chute system that way) and go back up with a full contingent on an actual Moho trip now.

Finished construction of my three ships for the Doing it Gemini Style Challenge - the Gorgon 7, Orthus 7 and Echidna 7 (my original Gemini mockup was the Chimera 7, hence the related names). Got both the Orthus and Echidna to Munar orbit and the Gorgon to Kerbin orbit with Jeb and Bill aboard. Next step is to land the Echidna, fly the Gorgon to the Mun, rendezvous and dock with the Orthus and conduct a landing. The Orthus is the lander module and it's my first open cockpit design, so I'm interested to see how things ultimately go. The plan is to land near the Tranquility site - why not? I may not be allowed to bring a rover on that challenge, but nothing says I can't borrow one the Apollo guys left there...

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Well, lets see...

  • Built and tested a "debris collector" for the single piece of debris that, despite my efforts to prevent debris, ended up in orbit. Some clairvoyancy was involved, apparently! (see later)
  • Decided to replace my fuel depot (a leftover from a space station with too many parts) with a simpler one with lower part count
  • Managed to crash the fuel shuttle into said fuel depot, resulting in--by now--a beautiful ring of debris around Kerbin. My debris collector crew will not get bored over the next few weeks
  • While adding additional tanks the new (now necessary) fuel depot I borked the docking approach about 5s before docking by trying to rotate the camera, using shift. And forgetting that in docking mode, shift is for vertical movement.
  • The second attempt worked better. Docked. Discovered that I cannot undock the tractor. FML.

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Today I went to Laythe for the first time without the Orion drive mod. It was quite pleasant, dispite a few complications; yet it is those complications that make KSP so rewarding: to succeed despite unsuccessfully ditching a payload of 12 SRB missiles during my Kerbin ejection burn, causing the battlecruiser to tumble wildly in the middle of a crucial maneuver, and later the discovering of the proper periapsis to bleed off 8,500m/s of relative velocity by aerobreaking in Laythe's atmosphere, for interested parties the magic number is 17km, discovered after dozens of quick-loads. But it was worth it to say that I have a battlecruiser in a stable 100x100ish km Leythe orbit. Perhaps in a kerbal year or two I will send it some ammunition.

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Over the last few days I have:

a) Built a ship designed to both be as light as possible (to get it as a payload to Laythe) and once dropped capable of relaunching and returning a Kerbal from Laythe to Kerbin.

I have a design I think will work although its a little heavy and the chute system to drop it on Laythe need some serious work. Currently it needs to totally straight up or chutes tear bits off the craft . . . also about 50% of the time even with successful chute deployment and decent rate of 6-7m/s the engine falls off on soft landing . . . .despite not even coming close to hitting the ground. :huh:

B) Tried to get the hang of SSTO spaceplanes (as they will be lighter than the weird jet rocket hybrid I have made above) without much success. . . but I think I'm getting the idea now. . . they have to go really damn fast eh? With flames and everything!

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I actually made a manned landing on Tylo for the first time, and even had enough fuel in the lander to get them back to orbit to rendezvous with the command ship. They're now in orbit around Jool waiting for a window to transfer back to Kerbin. I thought getting a probe on to the surface of Tylo was difficult, but that wasn't fuel sensitive because I knew once it was down it wasn't coming back up. Putting a manned lander down had me feverishly watching the fuel gauges and trying to be as efficient as possible, as I knew fuel was tight for getting back in to orbit. Great sense of achievement when it all worked out.

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So since starting my new job, my KSP time has been zilch. Last night, I hopped back in the seat and noticed a lander on the moon.

Huh, where'd that come from? Oh cr**, I forgot Dunlan! After putting his ship back in Munar orbit and transferring back to Kerbin, I noticed that his ship was strangely lacking any parachutes. Oops. After some quick calculations (Hmmm, it *should* reach my space station) and a pep talk to a very scared Dunlan, I managed to rendezvous with the KSS and space-walked the little Kerbal that could over to the safety of the station. I then put his sorry little craft into a decaying orbit.

Emboldened by the seat-of-the pants mission, Jeb hopped into my latest 1-kerbal lander and flew off to Minmus to poke a flag in its minty green surface. Here he is watching the sun rise:

8210162B8A7B71ABB1828FAC976F4DC354DACFE1

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Drove my 8 wheel mini rover 4.5km across the surface of Duna towards a point I am calling "Mount Kerbal" with the intention of planting a flag there. The rover is currently parked to use again tomorrow. Even two RTGs are not enough to power all 8 wheels at once and only 4 wheels are not enough to climb the hills. So it is slow going (1.0 m/s) up the slope.

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If you don't mind me asking, how did you get the rover to stay inside without exploding?

Attached it with a KAS winch but *not* docked, else it'd fall through the floor. I also lined the floor with quantum struts, but I'm not sure if they actually do anything if you don't hard dock. The rover does stay in place though.

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