What did you do in KSP1 today?

[eddiew]

Not really "today" but eh... do you folks find the design process interesting? I'm always surprised by how long it takes to bring a new SSTO into service.

Really rewarding when you get a good design though   Think this bird can lift 20 tons, but with the cargo ramp at the back she's best suited for rover delivery.

Edited September 9, 2016 by eddiew

[Benji13]

18 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Not really "today" but eh... do you folks find the design process interesting? I'm always surprised by how long it takes to bring a new SSTO into service.

What are the outboard engines that you ended up using on the mkIV? In all the pics they look like rapiers but the exhaust is different in three of them.

[eddiew]

9 minutes ago, Benji13 said:

What are the outboard engines that you ended up using on the mkIV? In all the pics they look like rapiers but the exhaust is different in three of them.

Yus, they are rapiers - but sort of homebrewed ones. I started with Tweakscale to get them up to 2.5m, but this meant that they lost the expensive optimisations I'd given them through KR&D - so I wrote a hacky config to use the stock rapier model, scale it up to 2.5m, and apply Tweakscale's values for mass and thrust. But... I couldn't work out how to scale the engine exhaust plume, so I used the one from the panther engine, which looks pretty good imho  

If you like them, feel free to grab the config; downloadable here. No models, no textures, nothing original at all, so shouldn't be any memory footprint, and helps keep the part count down  

[Benji13]

8 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Yus, they are rapiers - but sort of homebrewed ones. I started with Tweakscale to get them up to 2.5m, but this meant that they lost the expensive optimisations I'd given them through KR&D - so I wrote a hacky config to use the stock rapier model, scale it up to 2.5m, and apply Tweakscale's values for mass and thrust. But... I couldn't work out how to scale the engine exhaust plume, so I used the one from the panther engine, which looks pretty good imho  

If you like them, feel free to grab the config; downloadable here. No models, no textures, nothing original at all, so shouldn't be any memory footprint, and helps keep the part count down  

I might do just that. I've been messing around with mkIV spaceplane parts and KR&D and this will come in useful. 

[Guest]

Did another mission with the improved Swan. This one went otherwise well, except I misjudged my re-entry and fell well short of Kerbal Space Centre, and then ran out of fuel supercruising there -- 34 km short, so it was close.

Nice thing was, I managed a dead-stick landing. The Swan handles reasonably well, stall speed at sea level is between 70 and 90 m/s which makes landings a little hairy but still manageable. I decided to add another reaction wheel so I can maintain a steep angle of attack for longer when re-entering, as it is, it transitions to flight already around 50k which makes things a little uncomfortably hot later on.

Overall though the plane works pretty well. No surprise as it looks pretty much like everybody else's space plane -- although I swear I didn't crib the design, I did evolve it on my own.

[MaxwellsDemon]

3 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

 Behold, the Swan 11C.

Any relation to the Hooded Swan?

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Any relation to the Hooded Swan?

I wish I had thought of that but... no, I just thought it looked a little like one, what with the big white wings and long neck.

[Red Shirt]

Still progressing in my science mode game. Today I decided I was far enough along that Mun/Minmus missions were not gaining enough science. I looked at a dv chart and rough added what was required for a Duna mission. I don't recall going to Duna since 0.28. Literally slapped together a craft out of what I had available. Looked at a Porkchop transfer in MJ. Didn't want to wait nearly 2 years. Did a launch as soon as possible burn. Of course there was no intersection after the burn and a correction was like 35k dv. Decided to warp to closest encounter. From there I did a 200 dv (or so) Hohmann transfer, catching Duna on the opposite side of the orbit. Landed perfectly. @Galileo dude that's a lot of dust cloud at the surface. Looked cool but killed FPS on my laptop (don't change it). Back to orbit and transferred home. I wanted to circularize around Kerbin. That's when I realized my not waiting for launch cost me around 300 dv that I needed now. Changed plans but came in way steeper than intended. Rough ride but made it with 1600 science. Glad I remembered a heat shield and oversized chutes. 

Edited September 9, 2016 by Red Shirt

[JadeOfMaar]

On 9/8/2016 at 4:14 AM, Samniss Arandeen said:

Remember Porco Rosso? After finding some free time today, I successfully got it on the runway at KSC. It handles reentering like a champ and can dead-stick if you get it right. I undershot and had to kick in the jet engines, then my game went slideshow mode. I broke off the lower two Whiplashes on my landing, which is pretty good considering I was getting 1 FPS.

I took some screenshots of the craft and its reentry, all viewable here: http://imgur.com/a/Fp9OG

This coming weekend I'm going to make various refinements to the design and see if I can fly some cargoes into orbit. Does anyone know the most mass-efficient way, barring seats, to get two more Kerbals aboard? I need six crew and an RC-L01 for an eventual planned mission.

However you will, clip a Mk1 Crew Cabin into the ship. 1 ton & 2 seats.

 

On 9/8/2016 at 2:28 PM, cosimas said:

Jebs will be Jebbing

Do we have ourselves a prophet?

On 9/8/2016 at 6:03 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

ChallengeAccepted.png

Jeb does look rather entertained.

 

 

 

After a lot of fumbling with stock parts, looking to participate in the Domino's Challenge, I decided to send three pilots to the M2X crew hub but not in the Nosebleed shuttle as planned; the K Cargo SSTO. I decided to have it carry an orange tank and partially refill the huge tank on that station. I should've tried to haul a second orange tank because without real planning I had to ration it in order to make the parking orbit and the de-orbit. Strangely the large landing gear started generating insane body lift and I had to stay prograde nearly the whole way down or I'd find myself bound for a Sun orbit...or reentry at Mach 8+?

With little options for controlling my descent, and doing so at night I was informed the impact biome would be Grasslands but I saw that there was water right after that. On splashdown I sat above the water by a few hundred centimeters, lost some of the smaller engines and the heatshield, but the large gear were still possessd. They wanted to flip the plane and the medium gear became frozen extended. Valentina's getting all the fun now while Jeb sits on Mun and surveys all the things.

Edited September 11, 2016 by JadeOfMaar

[Francois424]

Today I continued the 'Explorer I' mission yet again.

Having completely fueled-up at Minmus, mission control identified the next Mün transfer window... And after a week we took off.   Normally the Minmus part of the mission would have featured roving around on a RCS Low-G rover with primitive parts as I never really have anything unlocked (much) in a science game when I get there.  Which can take a few Kerbal days, and a few hours of Real-Life to perform (waiting on 1.2 wheel/gear fix for this). So this being a Sandbox game, there weren't much to do but land, plant a flag, refuel, and move-on !

According to Mission Control, the Mün rendez-vous is only in 32 days.  Lots of time for the crew of the 'Explorer I' to get to know each-other.

 

People are getting restless, 1 day to go before the Mün encounter and capture burn.  Jebediah keeps jumping everywhere and hogging the simulator to himself at Valentina's expense, Bill and Nicole are worried about the FTmN overheating later during the long Joolian burns, Bob and Daisy are just chilling in the Lab, wrapping-up the results of all the samples and readings took around and on Minmus.  Then everybody turned to their windows when Valentina called it.

From this distance of 16'881 Km both bodies look roughly the same size !  Only one day left before the Mün maneuvers and exploration begins...

 

One day later, the 'Explorer I' gets in position, aim towards the maneuver node and wait for the appropriate moment.  The contrast with earlier behaviors is striking! Everybody are at their post and professionally serious, give the crew something to do and they fall in line of their own accord.  This bodes well for the multi-decade mission they just embarked on, and no last minute crew changes are planned.  The AlarmClock signals go off... "three minutes before burn, two, one... engage !"

The crew steps into action, and the FTmN2240 roars it's approval. Bill planned the maneuver to run the engine at 50% to prevent overheat.  Polar orbit achieved !

 

The scanner having spotted a nice ore patch in the northern hemisphere of the Mün, the crew assembles in the Lander (no one wanted to be left behind this time), and separated the vehicle from the mothership.  A quick retro-burn later and we can still clearly see where our landing area is.  The crew admires the view and waits for the good moment to begin the near-suicide burn as fuel was calculated in such a way to maximize the ISRU gains and save on fuel.

Really? a 90% Ore cutoff patch!?  This almost sounds to good to be true... But we're landing there for sure.

 

« Touchdown !  Would you stop freaking out Bill?  So what if there's only 57 m/s left... I'm da man ! » -- Jebediah Kerman

 

The crew started-up the automated ISRU operations, then stepped into their EVA suits to stretch their legs.  There hasn't been a manned Mün mission since plan 0.90 was put into effect by the KSC, so everyone was very eager to go out and have fun. Very nice spot... heavy ore content indeed and stunning view of Kerbin in the sky.  The Mün is now officially confirmed as seismically active, as proven by the cloud of Mündust that can be observed in the left side of the previous picture.  Bob and Daisy both affirmed it must have been triggered by just that, a recent Münquake.   Valentina planted the flag, being the expedition's leader afterall, and everyone got in position for the group shot in front of the Lander.

Stunning picture featuring the lander, Kerbin, and from left to right : Valentina, Bill, Jebediah, Bob, Daisy and Nicole.

 

A few days of mining will be necessary to recuperate the fuel expended to get to the Mün,  but it should go much faster as the tanks are still 90% full this time and the Ore patch is much, much richer.
After our business at Mün is finished, we shall see where we head out to.  The three most likely candidates are Moho, Eve, or Duna.  Eve does not allow to land at this time, and if the FTmN is to be tested for overheating I guess Moho would make the most sense... It's gravity is roughly equal to the Mün and it has some stunning landscapes.  Mission control shall decide on that one later ! 

Edited September 10, 2016 by Francois424

[XB-70A]

I have ended preparations for my first flight to Eve.

This time I don't want to "cheat" with fusion engines and futurist mods, so everything is full stock. It will be a one-way travel with a rover nammed Eve Explorer I.

I re-used my old medium/heavy launcher Neutron for this occasion, Electron was too weak to support the 3rd and 4th stages.

 

Can't wait to test it on Monday!

Edited September 10, 2016 by XB-70A
Ortaugraf

[RoboRay]

[Munar Faliure]

I was playing around on the Mun, and when i placed my flag, it fell.

http://imgur.com/a/YXzVK

[MagicFireCaster]

So i've been looking for mods al night to improve my vanilla experience, i'm still trying to find good mods that add balanced/vanillalike part to the game, if you would like to help i have a thread! 

 

[The_Rocketeer]

I spent an insane amount of time working on something else, and then an even insaner amount of time on this (and yes it goes... slowly):

[Kerbinchaser]

Launched my beautiful Argus 3 rocket into orbit with my station module. (It was also a beautiful sunrise)

 

Edited September 10, 2016 by Lo Var Lachland

[fourfa]

Homebuilt the first PC I've had since 2004 or so, made a happy beep on the first try, installed windows no problem once I figured out to plug in the power to the hard drive.  Got KSP running today, on its 6700K / 1070 GTX hardware.  Having a hard time not installing ALL THE VISUAL MODS.  Really fun to play with all the pretty

[Guest]

Further refined the "Swan" spaceplane. Mostly aerodynamic improvements. A second reaction wheel allows it to hold a steep angle of attack during reentry longer, which makes things easier, and a bigger wing makes landings easier. I also replaced the heavy and draggy tail with wing-tip winglets, which contributed to controllability, reduced drag -- I believe -- and reduced weight a little. 

I think I'm still going to make the second reaction wheel togglable as it makes the thing rather jumpy when using stability assist.

[eddiew]

Mission control had been considering a permanent surface science installation at Rald, but with the elder soothsayers whispering of great change to the nature of the universe, it was decided that the logistical operations of such base were too costly in terms of management time. Since the Investigator has its own lab, and has the highest ranked scientists aboard, the mission was extended by a couple of months. Once the research rate fell below 10 science per day, mission control decided they were into diminishing returns and instructed the crew to move on.

With excess fuel, and given that not all of the crew had landed on Minmus, it seemed logical to have a stop off - at which point the records department noticed that nobody had been to this biome before, and so the already highly valuable mission was extended for another month.

A brief simulation proved the Ranger Rover to be wildly inappropriate for Minmus' low gravity. With high powered wheel motors and a relatively light chassis, it was more likely to go suborbital than it was to travel over the ground, and activities were firmly restricted to the flats. Continuing the note of failure, the landing revealed that half the ventral vernors on the Investigator weren't actually working. The imbalance wasn't too bad when landing on Rald due to the aerodynamics, but on a vacuum body it was quite capable of flipping the ship over within a few seconds - hence the rather awkward descent. The engineering team was alerted and the fault will be rectified in future.

Ascent from Minmus was of course ridiculously easy, even with the broken vertical thrusters, and waiting until the moonlet was in the right alignment, a burn to Kerbin was made with only 150m/s. Aerobraking revealed that the MKIV body is quite capable of surviving the fierce heat of a 3km/s atmospheric entry, although again the cargo bay caused proved to have some leaks and the valiant Ranger Rover lost all its wheels to the super-heated breeze blowing through it. On the up side, the science payload survived, which was a good portion of the cost.

The final descent came up a bit short, the Investigator producing rather more drag than expected. On the other hand, with wings specced for a thinner atmosphere and tanks almost dry, the gliding speed was somewhere around 60m/s, with the result that it took very little effort to coax it to the runway with the last of the jet fuel. Naturally, stopping distance at these speeds was basically nil, which may have resulted in the annoying 98% recovery value despite having all its wheels on the tarmac.

On the up side, Thystle Kerman is now my first 5-star engineer

[Mikki]

My space program becomes rather serious : i catched another 3000ton asteroid, dragged it out of collision course with kerbin and use it as pitstop to Duna. The plane is a Duna Rocket-SSTO which is buildt to aerocapture, glide and land on Duna surface, release a rover or recover crew, and launch ssto by rocketfuel and a vector to refuel in Duna orbit, well thats the plan at least...


 

[Firemetal]

Yesterday I begun a Jool 5! Have a 467 ton spacecraft in orbit.

i am on mobile right now so no pics. But I have a thread in mission reports.

[Guest]

Continuing spaceplane development. 

This time, I took what I had learned from the design of "Swan," and scaled it down again. I ended up with something I really like: a three-seater suited perfectly for LKO rescue or crew transfer operations. It flies really well, and gets into orbit with plenty of dV to spare for manoeuvres and such. It doesn't have the Swan's cargo capacity, but is much easier and somewhat cheaper to operate.

I dubbed it "Angel" because its primary mission is rescue, and also it kinda flies like one.

[Crocket]

@Brikoleur How do you get the two kerbals in the Crew Cabin out, or do you?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Crocket said:

@Brikoleur How do you get the two kerbals in the Crew Cabin out, or do you?

Via the cockpit. If I'm on a rescue mission, the pilot sits in the back while the rescuee climbs onboard; if both spots in the back are taken, pilot goes EVA while the rescuee climbs in and then moves to the crew cabin, then pilot climbs back in.

-- I've further developed the concept. The Angel 15L seats six plus pilot, and can get to LKO with plenty of manoeuvring fuel left. Deorbit is almost boringly easy -- I just stick it in Hold Radial Out until it noses down, then there's a little manual control, then at Mach 3 or so, transition to regular flight. 

I hear the crew cabins in the engine pods are a little... windy, though.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Guest

[GustafB]

Today I learnt the hard way not no build docking ports backwards. Time well spent.