What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Starman4308]

10 minutes ago, Galileo said:

A 350w?  Very,  very affordable.  I bought a 750 w thermaltake for $50 a few months ago from best buy. I would have to imaging a 350 going for no more than $30 or less

PSUs at that price range tend to be unreliable out to fire hazards, though. Sometimes there's a nice deal, but taking a quick gander at PC Part Picker, the list of PSUs below $30 can be summed up as "nothing I would ever plug into my computer". Closer to $40, there's at least a few SeaSonic units, and those tend to be decent.

1 hour ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Well, once you've understood the intricacies of Real Fuels, ullage requirements, limited ignitions and so-on, it's just a question of making things bigger. Much bigger... 

Don't forget that the mountains on real Luna are higher than the Mun, and that there's no Minmus for extra science farming.

[eddiew]

8 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

PSUs at that price range tend to be unreliable out to fire hazards, though. Sometimes there's a nice deal, but taking a quick gander at PC Part Picker, the list of PSUs below $30 can be summed up as "nothing I would ever plug into my computer". Closer to $40, there's at least a few SeaSonic units, and those tend to be decent.

Agreed - of all the components to save money on, the bit that controls the voltage going to all the others is not the one. For your own safety, buy a proper brand - I concur with Seasonic being quite good as well as good VFM. Also, 350 is very small for a modern PC... what are the main innards @capi3101 (CPU/graphics card)?

Edited October 3, 2016 by eddiew

[Galileo]

42 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

PSUs at that price range tend to be unreliable out to fire hazards, though. Sometimes there's a nice deal, but taking a quick gander at PC Part Picker, the list of PSUs below $30 can be summed up as "nothing I would ever plug into my computer". Closer to $40, there's at least a few SeaSonic units, and those tend to be decent.

Oh I agree,  just with you saying you wouldnt have the spare money I went with the cheapest estimate.  But 40 bucks isn't bad either. 

[Starman4308]

1 minute ago, Galileo said:

Oh I agree,  just with you saying you wouldnt have the spare money I went with the cheapest estimate.  But 40 bucks isn't bad either. 

I would recommend against endorsing bargain-bin PSUs for any purpose; saving $10 is not worth putting the rest of your expensive computer at risk from it.

[Firemetal]

Over the past weekend, I have docked two dropships to the Duna cruiser. Today, I built a dragon/Cygnus style craft and dropped it on a scaled down 551 Atlas V replica. I was going to take  it up in an SSTO but by now, I have gotten used to getting a close easy rendezvous off a vertical launch and a horizontal launch is a different ascent path altogether. I was thinking of going with a shuttle but I am not sure my Buran can do it with its low fuel supply in LKO. I still wanted to do it in style so I did it with an asymmetric Atlas V booster.

Now the crew is up there waiting to go to Duna. It is time for fueling, undocking the refuellers and the crew transport vehicle, and then do the burn to Duna!

Pics later!

Fire

[mikey117]

while not as epic as posts above, I managed to reenter jeb into kerbins atmosphere from orbit in just a heat shield and external command seat, lol.

Dont know how to upload clips from my xbox to here.

so if you want to see proof you will have to check my clips. GT, NBC VETERAN.

It was an epic ride,lol

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

Agreed - of all the components to save money on, the bit that controls the voltage going to all the others is not the one. For your own safety, buy a proper brand - I concur with Seasonic being quite good as well as good VFM. Also, 350 is very small for a modern PC... what are the main innards @capi3101 (CPU/graphics card)?

Nothing terribly impressive - a six-year old AMD Athlon II Dual Core at 2.9 GHz with a GeForce 620GT and 4 GB memory, good enough to run KSP. Replacing the box has been on my "as soon as I can afford it" list for the past four years; it keeps getting passed over for either A) medical bills or B) vehicle repairs. This year it was vehicle repairs; I imagine next year it will be medical bills. KSP really is the most graphics-intensive game I play, though, so I haven't really needed much more than that up to this point. Replacing the PSU would just be a band-aid to keep me running until I can afford a new box, which should (optimistically) be around 2046 if the current trend holds...

[eddiew]

2 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Nothing terribly impressive - a six-year old AMD Athlon II Dual Core at 2.9 GHz with a GeForce 620GT and 4 GB memory, good enough to run KSP. Replacing the box has been on my "as soon as I can afford it" list for the past four years; it keeps getting passed over for either A) medical bills or B) vehicle repairs. This year it was vehicle repairs; I imagine next year it will be medical bills. KSP really is the most graphics-intensive game I play, though, so I haven't really needed much more than that up to this point. Replacing the PSU would just be a band-aid to keep me running until I can afford a new box, which should (optimistically) be around 2046 if the current trend holds...

It might be worth investing in something with a little longevity anyway though   Fit a 450-500w from a brand with a 5 year warranty and it'll carry through to the next PC ^^

I'm actually amazed that you manage to play with that CPU, especially with FAR... maybe I underestimate how much load SVE and SVT generate between them. It's been a long time since I ran with stock graphics 

[DerekL1963]

7 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Nothing terribly impressive - a six-year old AMD Athlon II Dual Core at 2.9 GHz with a GeForce 620GT and 4 GB memory, good enough to run KSP. Replacing the box has been on my "as soon as I can afford it" list for the past four years; it keeps getting passed over for either A) medical bills or B) vehicle repairs. This year it was vehicle repairs; I imagine next year it will be medical bills. KSP really is the most graphics-intensive game I play, though, so I haven't really needed much more than that up to this point. Replacing the PSU would just be a band-aid to keep me running until I can afford a new box, which should (optimistically) be around 2046 if the current trend holds...

Unless you run with a ton of graphic mods...  KSP isn't typically GPU bound, it's CPU bound.

[ryan234abc]

Intended this to be a one way trip probe lander to Eeloo, but it over-performed so much I got it into Kerbin orbit. Sent up a heat shield with chutes and a claw, brought it back successfully.

After that, sent a Kerbal to do a rather shoddy Jool-2, naturally it all went right though. Got a Kerbal down to Tylo, right next to the remains of my last attempt. Got that back to orbit, but he's stuck there now.

The other half of the 'Jool-2' was a Laythe drone. Didn't last long, but got science from 4 biomes before engines cut out and the powerless thing dropped into the Sagen Sea. Still, with Scatterer and EVE, graphics really look good from Laythe.

That about wraps it up. All together, pretty busy weekend, but hey, it was all worth it for those Laythe beauty shots.

[DerekL1963]

Sunday's update on Monday morning as I was tired and cranky when I was finishing up last night.

After tossing some probes to Jool to gauge delta-V requirements, I used the data I collected to design this beast:



Theoretically it can be assembled in orbit, and theoretically it has sufficient delta-V...  In reality, it didn't work so well but fixes are fairly straightforward I think (crosses fingers).  Most importantly, my confidence level that the mission is doable just went up considerably.

More pics and information in the thread linked in my sig...  Questions and comments are always welcome.

[TimePeriod]

43 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Nothing terribly impressive - a six-year old AMD Athlon II Dual Core at 2.9 GHz with a GeForce 620GT and 4 GB memory, good enough to run KSP. Replacing the box has been on my "as soon as I can afford it" list for the past four years; it keeps getting passed over for either A) medical bills or B) vehicle repairs. This year it was vehicle repairs; I imagine next year it will be medical bills. KSP really is the most graphics-intensive game I play, though, so I haven't really needed much more than that up to this point. Replacing the PSU would just be a band-aid to keep me running until I can afford a new box, which should (optimistically) be around 2046 if the current trend holds...

I'm rocking a HX850w Corsair (on a offer, local store) which has been taking everything I've managed to throw at it without any kind of issues.

[maceemiller]

Today I successfully built and tested my Jool 5 Lythe lander which landed, took off and achieved orbit exactly as I needed it too. Now to start on Tylos lander.....

Edited October 3, 2016 by maceemiller

[eddiew]

(Ed: let me know if these are too wordy. Wanted to put some context into them, but not everyone likes reading so much ) 

The Tylo expeditionary force continues at pace! The Longer Ranger Rover behaves remarkably well for a spur-of-the-moment change, and proves its worth when having to engage all six motors for some of the bigger climbs. With twin RTGs and double the battery capacity, he unexpectedly turns out to be a highly capable design. Future missions might make use of this configuration - even if it does cause a little tension amongst the crew with regards to who has to travel backwards. Well, at least they're the one most likely to survive a crash. (Although the engineering team notes that a lot of money would have been saved by not duplicating all the science instruments!)

The 120km trip passes surprisingly quickly (Ed: 50m/s and 2-3x timewarp) and soon enough the crew are back at the Grenadier with an additional four biomes worth of rocks, reports, and surface experiment data. Concerns about ladder safety are quickly dismissed as they all ascend back to the capsule without incident. 

Ascent from Tylo begins gently, not wanting to knock over the flag or damage the Longer Ranger Rover, but quickly picks up to a full 2.99 TWR and near-horizontal burn. Following the popular Jinx Intercept ascent profile, Jay Kerman gets the apoapsis within a respectable 4km of the orbiting fuel cache. (Ed: wish there was a mod to help with the timing of these launches, hint hint modders )

Docking... was annoying. The crew is very glad that the transfer stage has both a probe core and its engines, rather than being a dumb target onto which they would have to reverse without any thrusters. As it was, careful taps with the main engine keep the fuel cache headed towards Grenadier's back end until the two lock together like kelephants in musth.

It was around this point that someone noticed the laser scanner and magnetometer on the bottom half of the lander, which River Kerman totally forgot to use when they were on the ground. Well... we ain't turning back now. Mission control makes a note to use action keys for science gathering, lest future scienticians have the same lapse of memory.

Return to Kerbin is as uneventful as can be, what with not having a lab onboard, and in what seems like minutes the blue marble is looming ever closer through the porthole. A modest 2500m/s burn drops the Grenadier into a low orbit, and a simple transfer sees them rendezvous with Starcrossed Station for data transfer. There seems to be a lot of fuel onboard, but Starcrossed doesn't have a 3.75m docking port, and Grenadier doesn't have any monoprop anyway. It seems like a sad shrug is in order, except...

...and that is why you leave your assets in orbit. Except for the Grenadier lander itself, which is both rather flawed, and sufficiently specialised that it is somewhat inefficient to send it to anywhere that isn't Tylo. Nevertheless, data is sent to the lab, excess LF+O are sent to Herkules, and Ollie Kerman is finally relieved after 10 years on duty. Llew Kerman has only been there for 5, so she'll be staying with River and rotating out at next opportunity.

With the larger than planned recovery, the predicted 150,000 roots instead became 280,000, roundly putting the mission into a profit of a quarter million. Pretty good for a big, dumb, loud rocket, and a lot quicker to design than an interplanetary cruiser like the Odyssey. Maybe there's something in this malarkey after all...

(Ed: I think I've now visited all stock worlds except Eeloo! Although this is now a moon of Sarnus, which might be a reason for skipping it. Next mission will be either a heavyweight Eve science lander, possibly with rover(s), or a Sarnus shot. Let me know if you have a preference   *edit* Or Dres. Which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist, but I haven't visited it for sure.)

 

Edited October 3, 2016 by eddiew

[JadeOfMaar]

Finished developing the Runabout. It's up for download.

Confirmed fit inside USS Prometheus but it's not a good fit.

 

[Guest]

I built an orbital station around Gilly, on contract. Got a clean million as a completion reward.

Also dropped a probe on Eve. 

And, incidentally, will shortly max out my tech tree. Those labs produce obscene amounts of science. We'll see if the game remains fun after that; I had science rewards down to 60% for this (1.2-pre) career, but... well, short of just not using labs, I can't see how to keep science challenging toward the endgame. IMO those labs really are overpowered -- sure, there ought to be a small bonus as a reward for all the trouble of putting them up there, but not... like this.

Still, was fun. Launched by spaceplane, assembled and refueled in orbit, and on its way. Braking was expensive as my craft design doesn't permit aerocapture.

Delivering the science module for orbital assembly:

Delivering the booster module -- incidentally, this is the biggest spaceplane I've built, and there's something weird about it: the CoM is well ahead of the CoL even empty, but it flips out of control on re-entry. It is possible to regain control in low atmosphere afterwards, and when I tested it in the same fuel load and distribution right off the runway, it flies very politely. Managed to wrestle it to a nearly-intact splashdown... but not gonna use it unless and until that mystery of the instability is elucidated.

Good-bye Kerbin...

Hello Eve!

...and final arrival at parking orbit around Gilly.

[Firemetal]

Here are the pics I promised.

Managed to edit them in Paint. Looks cool!

Anyways, I transferred fuel into the whole craft, now I need to get rid of all the refuellers and the return craft. Then I have to send the rover, hab, ascent vehicle and the DCTS or Duna Crew Transportation system (This thing ^) to Duna. While I'm there, I'll look for the Duna head. Pinpointed an anomaly with Kerbnet. It might be the head but I don't know if Duna has any other anomalies. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Anyways that's it for now.

Fire

 

[Benji13]

@eddiew Have you ever thought about posting craft files for some of your ships? I know a lot of them rely on mods but I'd love to be able to get a copy of the ranger rover. 

[JadeOfMaar]

13 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

-- incidentally, this is the biggest spaceplane I've built, and there's something weird about it: the CoM is well ahead of the CoL even empty, but it flips out of control on re-entry. It is possible to regain control in low atmosphere afterwards, and when I tested it in the same fuel load and distribution right off the runway, it flies very politely. Managed to wrestle it to a nearly-intact splashdown... but not gonna use it unless and until that mystery of the instability is elucidated.

Enable aerodynamic overlays and watch for ice blue lines. I assume you may be getting rogue body lift which is apparently quite a thing with Mk3 parts. Or maybe there's not enough control surface ahead of the CoL. Or despite the CoM's location, your plane is relatively very heavy in the back and is still vulnerable to the same problem of the CoL being ahead of CoM.

Same exact thing happened with this that I posted over a week ago. It has much less wing span but it flies great at all times except while at high altitude on reentry. It had to as long as possible or else.

 

[eddiew]

Ok, one more before bed. Which I should have been in half an hour ago. But I have manflu and won't sleep anyway so why bother?  

Just some routine maintenance missions with a Thomas Superheavy, preparing for the next interplanetary thing - which will probably be Dres, since the window is only 100 days away and it only needs a light lander such as the Odyssey can carry. Current candidate is 22 tons, which is only 2 over the original design weight and should leave plenty of range.

This version of Thomas is... on the edge of what even those turbocharged, supersized rapiers can do. He passed his AP at 50km and fell back to 47 before his PE went positive. That aside, he reached LKO with a fantastic 22k of LF to spare, plus enough oxidiser to perform three dockings. Would have been four, but MechJeb squandered some by randomly turning on the rapiers after I'd turned them off. No biggie, but maybe I'll consider investing another 1000 science points for 10% more atmospheric thrust. At this point, that would make a real difference.

Felt a bit bad about draining the last of the Discovery's fuel, but the short of it is that it's outdated, has 200 less bounce per ounce than modern nuclear cruisers, and isn't well designed for carrying landers because it only has lateral docking ports and thus requires matching pairs. The Odyssey on the other hand, packs more fuel, better engines, has a similar number of 1.25 and 0.625m ports, and a central posterior 2.5m port, meaning it is just plain better for the job of being a mothership. With this in mind, the Discovery One is now officially retired and the onboard computer put into permanent hibernation. We pulled out some circuits just to be sure. Can't be too careful.

The Herkules hanging around at Starcrossed is now only 3k LF shy of being fully fuelled. There's an option here to launch a light lander (anything with a 2.5m docking port) and use the big guy as the carrier. Or he may just act as a fuel dump for a while or bring a lander back to ground, as happened after the Moho and Eve missions. Whatever the case, Starcrossed is pretty laggy now, and it might be time for Herkules and the station to have some time apart. Similarly, Sylveon - while recently very useful - is not part of Starcrossed's meat and potato tasks and might be better redeployed a kilometre or two higher to drop the part count.

 

18 minutes ago, Benji13 said:

@eddiew Have you ever thought about posting craft files for some of your ships? I know a lot of them rely on mods but I'd love to be able to get a copy of the ranger rover. 

Oddly, you're the second person today to ask about that   I've put it up for download here. I built it as a subassembly, so probably best to start with it in that folder. The jr docking port is the root so you can just stick it to whatever you like. I'm fairly sure that this one is all stock parts, though naturally I've KR&D'd some of them to be lighter - I don't think that changes the save file though. Let me know if it loads ok  

(General rover tip for everyone; remap your controls and add torque! I've put my wheels onto IJKL and left SAS/vessel rotation on WASD. Result, incredible stability and control, driving with SAS on without it causing any rolls, and if a flip happens then it can quickly be righted before the wheels hit the ground. Yes it needs two hands, but it's very, very safe and fast.)

 

[Benji13]

Thanks @eddiew. I also play with KRnD so it shouldn't affect me anyway. 

[Jeb-head-mug kerman]

Crashed the game... tested new parts for my mod and crashed the game... later i burned up some kerbals with big engines and made spaghetti kerbalese for the Kraken. (i got the kerbal burning idea from Danny2462.)

 

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, eddiew said:

(Ed: let me know if these are too wordy. Wanted to put some context into them, but not everyone likes reading so much ) 

Personally, I like context, even when not telling a story.  A picture is worth a thousands words they say, but it's not always the right thousand words.

3 hours ago, eddiew said:

Ascent from Tylo begins gently, not wanting to knock over the flag or damage the Longer Ranger Rover, but quickly picks up to a full 2.99 TWR and near-horizontal burn. Following the popular Jinx Intercept ascent profile, Jay Kerman gets the apoapsis within a respectable 4km of the orbiting fuel cache. (Ed: wish there was a mod to help with the timing of these launches, hint hint modders )

MJ does that - open Ascent Guidance, then select your target in Map View.  I know when launching from KSP, usually you have the esc/revert back after the first time and it nails it on the second (it has to learn the vehicle's performance), I don't how it would work in your situation though.  Drop by the game questions forum?  (Since the MJ thread is currently locked.)

[cubinator]

I launched the first part of a Duna base today (my first real surface base--can you imagine?) and I'm about to launch the second, which will pretty much trail it the whole way. Here's a pic of the booster:

[Grenartia]

@eddiew What is a Jinx Intercept ascent?