What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

Had a rather busy day in KSP today, to the point I don't have time to post the screenshots.  I'll post another time, but for now just a nice view while Valentina was searching for a magnetic anomaly in the mountains:

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, Triop said:

The right wing broke off as soon as I touched down.

I wonder to what you attached the main gear?  If you're attaching them (logically!) to the wings, you may get a machine that is a fussy lander.

I always (cough) attach stuff such as gear and engines to the fuselage and then (cough) gizmo it out to where it is supposed to appear.  Result is a robust lander.

  Love the appearance of this one!!  (It's awfully tempting.  Hmm, do I need another 2-Kerbal SSTO.  Well I learn something every time, so...)

Update:  @Triop: that's a real kick to fly, sir!  With just two RAPIERS and a total of 3600 units of LFOX, I struggled to get it supersonic until I realized I could light the rockets to get it over the top and begin a nice healthy climb.  The kind of plane pilots love to commune with due to the care & attention required!

Edited July 14, 2018 by Hotel26

[Triop]

15 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

I always (cough) attach stuff such as gear and engines to the fuselage and then (cough) gizmo it out to where it is supposed to appear.  Result is a robust lander.

You're right, I often use that technique for my landing gear when I have angled wings.

Didn't think of it for this project but it should work.

Maybe I'll do some experiments tomorrow.

Thanks for the reminder, there is always more than one solution.

 

23 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I will be sharing it on KerbalX Soon.^TM

Edited July 14, 2018 by Triop

[Lisias]

Uh… I lost my rescued victims…  And I don't have the slightest idea where to start to search for them… Again! 

I forgot to add stairs on my rescue blimp. Yeah, I know.  

So I had this brilliant idea to use the cargo bays. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Edited May 4, 2022 by Lisias
uh… grammars. =/ — and fixed image links!

[aagun123]

improved my small boat today

 

 

 

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Nice blimp @Lisias!!

Over the past few days, I've been on a road trip on the Mun. A 70 km round trip to explore that Munar Arch I saw from orbit a while back. I found that the Making History rover wheels are perfect for hiding a compact rover underneath a 2.5m lander. Pics in a spoiler as there are quite a lot.

Spoiler

I have no shots of the rover under the lander, sorry. But here are Jeb and Bob tooling along on the Mun.

Our target.

This rover is lovely and stable. Over shallow crests it actually tips backwards slightly, but over sharper ones you have to go gingerly.

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.

And we arrived at the arch. It's something like 150 metres tall 

I've spared you most of the boring journey back, but here's a nice pic of Kerbin hanging in space.

We finally arrive back after a successful trip. Note the flag floating in midair (mid-vacuum?)

And finally, after ascent to low Munar orbit, we spot the arch! The kerbals made it back to Kerbin just fine after this.

 

[MR L A]

12 hours ago, Triop said:

The right wing broke off as soon as I touched down.

You don't need struts, you just need to land with less vertical speed, which is hard to do if you've got a lot of horizontal speed. The parts your using can all easily take the landing strain of that craft if you land at the proper speeds Get KER installed to see your vertical speed accurately  

[Zeiss Ikon]

In my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia "Take Four" career, I flew another "X-Planes Low" contract.  These are boring, especially with a yellow clock (six real time seconds per MET second, roughly, when at cloud height), but not difficult, and let me practice landing my Jet Trainer.  The big deal here was that, for the first time, the Jet Trainer landed without damage; Jeb managed to grease it on (on the large, flat grass field north of the Space Center, since the level 1 runway is useless due to the transverse ridges) so gently I wasn't sure the wheels were on the ground for a moment.

After that, I made two attempts at a sounding rocket mission, both failed.  One, with A-4 booster and "Fat Aerobee" upper stage pushing an "Early Film Camera" and "Biological Sample" experiment, suffered a main engine failure too low for the upper stage (built to fit in a fairing and spin stabilize, so no fins) to work, the other on an Aerobee didn't quite make the altitude -- too much sounding payload.  I also spent some time designing a rough analog to the Aerobee 350.  Four of the Aerojet solid boosters (the upgrade from the Tiny Tim, I don't recall the designation and don't have the game open at present -- why don't we have a Nike motor in RP-1?), interstage adapter, staged to four XASR-1 with a minimum diameter common tank, and another interstage staged to a single Aerobee with added ullage motors (so I don't have to hot stage it).  Launch performance is much like the most recent updated Aerobee -- 4+ G off the pad on the solids, just under 2 G from the main stage with tanks full, and just under 2 G from the upper stage immediately after staging -- but with a combined burn of 2 m 10 s and average acceleration above 3 G (peak is close to 6 on the main stage, almost 8 on the upper), the upper stage burnout occurs at around 160 km and (according to the sim) apogee ought to be above 800 km.  That ought to get me some more altitude record payouts... 

[Zaphod12]

Finished my Apollo playthrough with ripoffs of Apollo 17 and Apollo-Soyuz today. (I didn't do the Eve flyby because I am not experienced enough yet to send a crew to Eve and back home to Kerbin)

[Triop]

6 hours ago, MR L A said:

You don't need struts, you just need to land with less vertical speed, which is hard to do if you've got a lot of horizontal speed. The parts your using can all easily take the landing strain of that craft if you land at the proper speeds Get KER installed to see your vertical speed accurately  

I don't think so, my landing speed is usual around 60 m/s. My guess is the wings broke because the back landinggears are so far apart.

I have 2 struts merged into the wings now and my SSTO is doing it's job just fine.

I just returned from orbit without any problems and even had some fuel left.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Triop

[Drakenex]

 

[MR L A]

38 minutes ago, Triop said:

I don't think so

Well that's entirely up to you, it is your design  but I'm telling you, that design 100% does not require any additional struts whatsoever  I'll even remake it on Monday and show you aha

At this point, you may be wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of this... well you're right, I am being a bit of a doorknob about it, but that's because I've been playing KSP for years on a computer that is pretty down on power i.e. I'm FORCED to cut every part I possibly can just to keep my fps from being a slideshow. This mentality has crept through into how I talk about other people's designs e.g. "You don't need this part... you have two of those... etc etc", especially when it is something structural rather than aesthetic - so I apologise for that  

But I suppose for people with non-potato powered PCs, a strut or two makes ZERO difference when it guarantees the safety of your SSTO (which is quite nice btw).

[Atkara]

51 minutes ago, Triop said:

I just returned from orbit without any problems and even had some fuel left

A small suggestion if I may: Once you've flown the plane enough to know it, take out the excess oxidizer.

[Triop]

23 minutes ago, Atkara said:

A small suggestion if I may: Once you've flown the plane enough to know it, take out the excess oxidizer.

Nah, why would I ?

The weight is no problem and besides, I like to have some extra fuel in case I mess up...

@MR L A and @Atkara

I uploaded the jet, if you would like to play with it be my guest.

https://kerbalx.com/Triop/SR-2000

[MR L A]

5 minutes ago, Triop said:

I uploaded the jet, if you would like to play with it be my guest

I'll certainly give that a bash on Monday (not currently at home and my laptop is ChromeOS so zero chance of playing it on here)  

[Atkara]

 

18 minutes ago, Triop said:

I uploaded the jet, if you would like to play with it be my guest.

Sure, I'll take her for a spin

[Triop]

5 minutes ago, Atkara said:

 

Sure, I'll take her for a spin

Thanks, I like to know what you think about it.

I also just uploaded my latest multirole jet which I'm shamelessly plugging here...

https://kerbalx.com/Triop/F-12-X

Edited July 14, 2018 by Triop

[Atkara]

53 minutes ago, Triop said:

Thanks, I like to know what you think about it.

Did a quick test. Before taking it to orbit though, I did a couple of things I usually do on my planes:

• Assigned specific roles to the control surfaces and toned down yaw & roll authority.
• Rooted the Type A Structural Wing to the main wing assembly.
• Switched the normal parachute for a drogue chute and added an airbrake.
• Suspensions also got their dampers cranked to 2 and springs to 0.8. Feels alright.

Also:

Are these fuel states any similar to what you had, once in orbit?

Besides that, re-entry was largely trouble-free. I undershot the KSC but that's me, doing things in a hurry and not paying attention. So I had to burn some fuel to pass the mountain range. Upon landing, I had 225 Lf & 995 Ox, as I didn't do anything up there, besides the de-orbit burn.

Looks good overall, although I would cut down some Oxidizer to maximize it's available DV -at least in the way I fly it.

[Triop]

4 minutes ago, Atkara said:

-snip-

Interesting stuff, did you remove the struts ?

I think I will remove the struts and replace the landing gear attaching them to the fuselage and off set them out under the engines like you suggested earlier.

[Atkara]

1 minute ago, Triop said:

Interesting stuff, did you remove the struts ?

 I think I will remove the struts and replace the landing gear attaching them to the fuselage and off set them out under the engines like you suggested earlier.

I don't remember suggesting anything about the landing gear -must've been Hotel26.

There were struts? Didn't see them but now that you mention it, I'll take them out since I basically autostrutted almost the whole thing -helps in keeping things where they should be and... yes, I forgot to mention that

[Triop]

13 minutes ago, Atkara said:

I don't remember suggesting anything about the landing gear -must've been Hotel26

O, ok, my bad.

I just tested the new strutless version and it landed just fine.

So the struts are gone now and the landing gears root is the fuselage.

Also, I think a airbrake is not needed, not even for re-entry and the parachute is just for emergencies, it stops just fine without it.

Glad you like this simple design, thanks for testing.

EDIT, I did replace the shute like you did, I didn't know that was a drag shute, thanks.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2018 by Triop

[Atkara]

7 minutes ago, Triop said:

Also, I think a airbrake is not needed, not even for re-entry and the parachute is just for emergencies, it stops just fine without it.

Oh the airbrake is personal preference. I often have the engines at 10-15% thrust on final approach, so I use it to keep airspeed in check. I also use it to bleed off speed in case I come in too hot, if I can't be bothered to do a zig-zag.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Atkara

[Hotel26]

50 minutes ago, Atkara said:

Are these fuel states any similar to what you had, once in orbit?

OK, I see your total fuel is 4000 units, which indicates the front Mk-2 fuselage is the short fuel fuselage and NOT an inline dock.  And why I was having fuel starvation problems. 

I also missed that the tail cone was a chute.  (Must change my monocle!)

[djr5899]

Today, I FINALLY made my first trips to Duna, with some success, some failure, and a lot learned.  I sent 3 craft all around the same time.

• First craft was an unmanned probe/science craft.  I wanted to get some science from Ike/Duna, and test out the abilities of the craft, in terms of could it make it to Duna.....could it orbit Duna....could it escape Duna gravity.....and could it return to Kerbin.  For my final stage, I went with 4 Ant engines instead of a Terrier.  That was at least partly a mistake.  The craft made it to a Duna encounter, and was able to get about a 90 degree turn around Duna, but didn't have enough fuel and engine power to circularize orbit.  This craft has drifted out of Duna SOI, and will be drifting in space aimlessly, unless it gets grabbed up by another planet's SOI.
• Second craft was an unmanned fuel supply craft.  Plan was to get this ship to Duna, leave it in Duna orbit, so I could send a manned mission to Duna, and use this craft to resupply the fuel for landing and return to Kerbin.  This craft fared a bit better than the probe.  It made it to Duna, and was able to put itself into orbit.....but it's nowhere close to circular.  I also had to scavenge more than 2/3 of the fuel that was mean for refueling other ships just to get to Duna and in orbit.  I could use a little bit to try and circularize, but for now, I'll just let it stay where it is.
• Third craft is manned lander craft, carrying Jeb and an Engineer.  This craft is currently sitting in a Kerbol orbit slightly inside the orbit of Kerbin around Kerbol.  I believe I have enough fuel and dV to get to Duna.  I am not sure if I will have enough fuel/dV to circularize to meet up with the fuel tanker and its limited fuel.   My plan is to build a 4th unmanned craft sort of a tug/booster.  Have it dock with the lander with a bigger engine and fuel reserves, and let it do most of the delivery of the lander to Duna SOI.  From there, what I have on the lander will definitely be enough to get into orbit and land, and hopefully enough to grab some fuel from the tanker.

After having the console game for about 2 years, and the PC version since November 2017, it's nice to FINALLY be doing some missions outside of Kerbin SOI.  Just a lot harder to learn from your mistakes and refine your build processes with the long amount of waiting that needs to be done to test the success or failures of crafts outside Kerbin SOI.  Now working to refine my ships for Duna, then next challenges are to start drilling and refining ore....something else I have never done.

Unmanned probe making it's closest approach to Duna

Unmanned probe about to leave Duna SOI, and drift about the Kerbalverse.....

Fuel tanker standing by to deliver what little fuel remains

[DeltaDizzy]

I sent a probe to minmus,

I tried a rescue mission,

and finally, I tired my hand at a plane.