What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Xetalim]

Finally landed on Duna!

[evuljeenius]

I scared myself half to death doing aerobraking in Jool's atmosphere. Was almost certain I wasn't going to make it back to orbit but made it at the last moment.

[Brotoro]

Posted Part 21 of my Long-term Laythe series.

[Madrias]

Built an improved ejectable cockpit design for use as a subassembly. So useful now that I can just separate the whole thing from the crashing plane.

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Rescued Jeb for the third time, after stranding him on the Mun for the third time. Getting lots of landing practice at least...

[AcidSludge]

Finally, my first successful DOCKING at my second Rendezvous-Maneuver, the vessels at the pictures are Flirter 2A & Flirter 2B. My first docking try a few days ago (Flirter 1A & Flirter 1B) didn't worked out due to unknown reasons, the docking ports refused to dock, and since I did the first try watching MechJeb doing the maneuvers while watching/reading tutorials I do not count that as a legit try.

But this time I did the maneuvers all by myself, and without the (to me more confusing than helping) docking mode.

[Zatie12]

Hello from TeamMinmus!

And how did the team send their photograph back to Kerbin?

Using RemoteTech 2

Here's the comms network and a few of the satellites:

Minmus

http://i.imgur.com/kBuEJVB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/o8QZ4oU.jpg

Kerbin

http://i.imgur.com/90hGNCh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Xmq4nSq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3OHwsSh.jpg

Mapping Satellite:

http://i.imgur.com/n6DBlj3.jpg

Album of how I launched each comms sat:

http://imgur.com/a/5jp18#0

Enjoy

Edited December 14, 2013 by Zatie12

[nine_iron]

Getting a tiny SSTO into orbit, sadly not enough rocket fuel to rendezvous with my space station

[Sylon00]

I did something I've never done before: landed on Minmus. And on my first attempt too! All without mods, I wanted to land on both Mun and Minmus before adding any sort of assisting mods. The ship isn't mine, but the work getting out there was. I wasn't entirely sure if I would have had enough fuel to get home, so I made sure I kept that stage attached as long as possible, lol.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Sylon00

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Today I did an unintentional tower flyby: Hi guys!

[Grant_]

Working on a Matlab program to determine how many engines and fuel I need.... Staging is pretty primitive since it's based on optimal ISP. Haven't considered Asparagus staging yet.

[Liowen]

Getting a tiny SSTO into orbit, sadly not enough rocket fuel to rendezvous with my space station

If it is not too far from the station you could move the station to intercept it, provided the station has some thrusters of course.

[RocketPilot573]

[babylon218]

If it is not too far from the station you could move the station to intercept it, provided the station has some thrusters of course.

Even RCS would probably do, if you have enough of it and enough patience.

I've actually been a little lax in my KSP waiting for .23, but I think I'll go in tomorrow and try to (finally) put a space station into LKO. Since I've only just restarted my career mode (after a mod clearout - I'm only running 2mb of RAM), I'll be doing it in Career mode, but the challenge is going to be designing the core and subsequent modules to attach to it and getting them all in one place. After that, I'm thinking of trying an SSTO and getting it to rendezvous with the station.

[Zippy]

How do you people actually land things like landers & outpots on Mun & Minimus etc..? I just can barely get a lander down, let alone an attached structure!!

[Liowen]

Today I landed Roller the rover on the surface of Duna, but the delivery system had an issue when I went to blow it up.

Roller posing for the thumbnail for the video of his landing

And finally I decided to go against my better judgement and launch a manned mission to Duna. This mission will boldly go where no Kerbal has gone before! Oh did I mention the pilot is James T. Kerman??

[GROOV3ST3R]

How do you people actually land things like landers & outpots on Mun & Minimus etc..? I just can barely get a lander down, let alone an attached structure!!

It's not that hard actually. Easiest way to do it is to keep your payload to minimum and then have a regular size tank with a LV-N below or stick one on each side for symmetry. Eventually you will get the hang of it. The trick part is slowing down. If you are a beginner, it might be easier for you to slow down in steps - fly down a bit, stabilize, fly down stabilize etc. Keep your vertical velocity in check at all times as well as kill your surface velocity anywhere between 4-6km above sea level. Once you manage to land, you will get the hang of it. Then you can try orbiting the Mun in a circular orbit and lowering your PE to around 5-7km above Mun and then - depending on your TWR (thrust to weight ratio) first stopping your orbital velocity dead and then continuing with a nice, slow and gentle decent to the surface.

You will be surprised by the power of as little as 3 LV-N engines. They can land some pretty hefty loads on the surface. For those of us who aren't rocket scientists and who don't calculate everything, trial and error is key. But it's easy enough, I'm sure you can do it.

[elxverde]

Last week I built my first working spaceplane, a prototype called the Jumping Jack. Its successor in form and function is the Pagoda 1, powered by 3 SABRE engines from the B9 pack. The wing structure isn't terribly attractive, but that's the part of plane design in KSP that I've always had trouble with. I'm just happy the planes I'm building now don't go *SPLOOSH*.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Liowen]

One thing that happen last night was I tried to reload a quick save before my encounter with Duna, and my quick save was from my second Mun landing launch . Luckily I had a presisant file that was up to date with all my other landings, but I did have to relaunch my time keeper satellite, and the current rover mission I was running. Also this thread should be a sticky

[Jordanpumah]

Due to poor stage planning, my Mun lander left Kerbins soi and went on a course into Moho's orbit (my main lifter got decoupled instead of the last asparagus stage, leaving my poor lander stuck to the thing)

the lander still had a full tank of fuel, so it was enough to land.

http://imgur.com/a/hXuEv

Edited December 15, 2013 by Jordanpumah

[nine_iron]

If it is not too far from the station you could move the station to intercept it, provided the station has some thrusters of course.

I built this instead, just did a nice return journey to my spacestation at 300km (note the mechjeb module "hidden" on the underside which could not rendezvous with the station, I did that myself and let MJ do the last 200m and rotation. Stupid me forgot to take piccies of them docked

I think I could have taken the little one up to it with better piloting skills but I accidentally deleted it when purging my saved ship list. I have spent most of this weekend, probably 12 hours worth now, learning SSTOs properl. I had made a space plane months ago previously but it was not technically an SSTO as I later read the rules and realised it did not qualify. Anyway my ship list was full of test rigs and fancy ideas such as the below which did NOT work in the slightest, I cleared them out and accidentally deleted my first ever proper SSTO

Edited December 15, 2013 by nine_iron

[babylon218]

I managed to place my first space station in Low Kerbin Orbit and docked a Solar Panel Array to it (6 XL panels) after a very long docking manoeuvre. Note to self, put RTGs on the core.

And as a consequence of attaching the Solar Array, the station has gone from a 70km orbit around Kerbin to an 80km orbit.

Next port of call is to send up an escape/command module, as the station is presently unmanned and fully automated.

If I can get this done by Tuesday, I might also try an SSTO before .23 comes out. If not, I'll still try an SSTO, I'll just be using the R.A.P.I.E.R. engine

[Moar Boosters]

I created my latest weapon to battle the Space Kraken.

A 1100 ton spaceplane. 100% stock.

So far the kraken is winning and I've only managed to get it up to 20,000m but I'm still hopeful I can get it into orbit. It has a payload which will go to Jool or somewhere. Those 3 guys have a much higher chance of survival then the 2 guys piloting the main plane, as it's mostly likely going to be impossible to land.

Still, I will try.

It takes off vertically, but the 4 mainsails only last a few seconds, and when they're dead it has a thrust-weight ratio of 0.75, so it's technically a flying airplane after that point.

(screenshots are from multiple test flights/versions).

Edited December 15, 2013 by Moar Boosters

[koshelenkovv]

Built new 365 kg airplane with Firespitter parts and tested it.

Plane is quite flimsy and prone to flipping. Rough terrain or braking by wheels instead of propeller almost certainly will flip it.

It easily can be flipped back, though: set trim on plane, then run into it by Kerbal. But some panels could shatter.

craft

(There was changed attach rules for folding electric propeller and small tail winglet ('allow surface attach' rule was set))

Edited December 15, 2013 by koshelenkovv

[Liowen]

I created my latest weapon to battle the Space Kraken.

A 1100 ton spaceplane. 100% stock.

So far the kraken is winning and I've only managed to get it up to 20,000m but I'm still hopeful I can get it into orbit. It has a payload which will go to Jool or somewhere. Those 3 guys have a much higher chance of survival then the 2 guys piloting the main plane, as it's mostly likely going to be impossible to land.

Still, I will try.

It takes off vertically, but the 4 mainsails only last a few seconds, and when they're dead it has a thrust-weight ratio of 0.75, so it's technically a flying airplane after that point.

(screenshots are from multiple test flights/versions).

Why am I reminded of the star destroyers from Star Wars?? I bet this is murder on FPS to launch though.