What did you do in KSP1 today?

[vasco]

Landed on Laythe as part of J5 challange.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Successfully landed a probe/rover in Duna's north polar region, while the 'mother ship' did a resource scan. Now that I know what I'm doing with the aerocapture and aerobraking, it went superbly smoothly, and I have enough leftover delta V to do a flyby of Ike as well.

Also fixed the problem I was having in my kerballed lander's booster-- the TR-38-D decoupler just doesn't have enough "oomph" to decouple stage 3 from stage 2, for some reason (even when I added some Seperatrons firing retro to pull the empty stage 2 away). Replaced it with a smaller decoupler and strutted the joint; works smoothly now.

[capi3101]

Last night's activities began with a WTC moment, as KSP refused to load up my current game. Turns out that if you crack open a persistence file, the first word in it is "GAME"; KSP won't load the thing if all it says is "E". Did something the other night when I looked through the thing for my ore contract. A quick "GAM" on the keyboard and I was back in business.

So once I got into the game, I tasked myself with returning my two Stratofortress 7a "atomic bomber" craft - Enola Gay and Bockscar - to the Kerbinport space station. The Gay, holding Cerxie and her tour group coming back from Mun, arrived back at Kerbinport without any major issues; she was able to dock, refuel and swap out tour groups. Cerxie is now on her way to Minmus, where her tour group is scheduled to dock with the Minmusport space station and transfer to the Mun Buggy for a surface excursion for contract. Bockscar was another story; Jeb and his group of tourists came in a full 100 degrees off the plane of Kerbinport's orbit, and it took most of the craft's remaining fuel supply just to realign the orbits. After eight aerobraking passes, Trajectories was predicting the ship would enter atmo for good on its next pass, so I went ahead and circularized. The ship is out of gas now in a 264 x 94 orbit around Kerbin. I plan on sending up a Vulture flight to rendezvous with and refuel the craft this evening if I have time to play.

I also finally figured out what was going on with that ore mining contract - you actually have to be present while the ore is harvested in order for it to count, apparently. So I wasted 1200 units of ore by dumping it out of Wildcat's storage tanks and let the drill work at filling the tanks back up while I watched in timewarp. This morning I am √350,000 richer, which oughta be enough for me to get some refineries up and running at Minmus, and maybe take care of some smaller contracts in the interim.

Current plans - aside from the planned Vulture flight, I want to send a fuel pod to Minmusport so that the refinery module will have a place to put refined fuel as it comes in. Both Munport and Minmusport need refinery modules installed. I still need to tweak the Magpie 7 ore-delivery plane and put a booster on the Midas 7 refinery lander. I want to redesign the Project Peacock 7 craft for interlunar flights; it's not really designed for that and it's consistently arriving at the moons with only about 300 m/s of delta-V remaining, which is a low margin for space station rendezvousing. I need to get Theogel from Minmusport back to KSC to round out his rescue contract, and I've got three tourists at Kerbinport that need to come back down to finish out their itineraries. Finally, I'm considering a replacement for the Vulture refueling plane; it's an excellent design but it does have one drawback - the amount of fuel it delivers, which is equivalent roughly to an X200-16 tank, or enough fuel to refill a Stratofortress completely in two trips. It might finally be time to venture into the Mk3 spaceplane realm...

Sitting with about 90% of the tech tree filled in, √505k and all buildings at KSC at Level 3 with the exception of the Tracking Station as of this morning.

Edited October 9, 2015 by capi3101

[Goddess Bhavani]

WIP - Hyperion "Helios" satellite for a Borderlands fan.

[eddiew]

...I also finally figured out what was going on with that ore mining contract - you actually have to be present while the ore is harvested in order for it to count, apparently. So I wasted 1200 units of ore by dumping it out of Wildcat's storage tanks and let the drill work at filling the tanks back up while I watched in timewarp...

Wow, that's... pretty irksome :S But a useful lesson for those of us who haven't yet bothered with mining contracts

[milosh]

Succesfully landed my Mun Base today which has housing for 12 Kerbals and a science lab, can mine for ore and process it to hold more than 4000l of fuel, I love it if a plan works out

Launch mass was 900t, the station itself is something over 80t:

Choosing the right landing site:

Deceleration burn:

All set and done:

[capi3101]

Wow, that's... pretty irksome :S But a useful lesson for those of us who haven't yet bothered with mining contracts

Yeah, I wasn't thrilled about that one - coming back to find my ore tanks full but my wallet still almost empty, and having to dump out a full half of it.

Why didn't I just convert the ore to fuel, some of you may wonder? I needed the money from the ore-mining contract to pay for the converter I would've needed to send out there. Why not send more storage tanks? Same reason...

[Terwin]

Did a couple landings on Bop, finally finding a place with an incline of only 6 degrees(as opposed to the >20 degrees everywhere else) and managed to refuel.

Then I did a fly-by of Lathe, including an atmospheric dip(all of 50m inside he atmosphere) to get upper atmosphere data. Discovered I already had most of the upper orbit data, but managed to get some lower orbit biomes I did not have before.

After that I headed over to Pol, took a couple burns to get an intercept, but finally managed to hit the SOI.

After Bop, landing on Pol was quite easy, Managed to top up in the lowlands(6% ore), touch-down in the midlands(2% ore, highly inclined), and finished up in the highlands(7% ore) where I topped off all my tanks in preparation of heading out to Eeloo.

After getting into Pol orbit(using a mid-level thrust setting of my VASMIR to get a TWR of >2), I played with maneuver nodes until I managed to get an Eeloo fly-by(tried to take advantage of the Oberth near Jool, but the other moons were in the way).

I'm planning to burn half my LFO fuel as part of the ejection burn, as half a tank was plenty for landing on Duna without chutes and I have > 37 tons of LFO at ~300ISP vs ~20 tons of LH2+Ore at 3.4K to 16K ISP on a 95 ton ship, so burning up ~20 tons of LFO during my ejection burn should greatly improve my acceleration and range. (I should still have > 2/3 my LH2+ore left when I hit the Eeloo SOI even without burning the LFO, but I am keen on cutting down those burn times as I have 2.5km/s of burning to do and my current acceleration is less then 0.7m/s/s)

I am hopeful that by the end of the weekend I will have my Kerbals back on Kerbin and be starting my UKS+EPL game with life support.

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[BJ Quest]

Been working a short series of jet aircraft. PJ and TJ Jets are shown. The side by side (PJ) is a real nice smooth flyer :-)

A total of about 5 different jets were made last night of which the PJ and TJ were the 1st and 2nd ones in the effort.

[Draconiator]

I refueled my station I put into Minmus orbit, and I had a little bit left over so I decided to attempt a landing.

I had another smaller station which I don't need anymore, so I either may deorbit it or add it to the existing station to "upgrade" it

[Sido]

I made a mission patch for my next mission to Urania

[The Optimist]

I accidentally jettisoned a half-full rockomax-8 tank onto my fledgling mun base. Rest in peace Bill, Bob and around 8 others.

[The Aziz]

Unmanned landing on Ike.

With no hope for return because parachutes.

[xtoro]

Put small extraplanetary launchpads workshop on orbit around Minmus to build a larger workshop from there and fly it to Sarnus.

[xub313]

I finished my first 1.0 ssto. The improved aerodynamics make this so fun to fly, especially during reentry.

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[Mat2ch]

Yesterday I started adding the boosters to my space station ship thingy and today I finished it. It's a bit terrifying...

The finished station thing...

And then I needed a way to deliver the crew to the station... and I came up with this. Flies really great though.

The mission to Gilly has not yet started, maybe tomorrow there's enough time.

[Draconiator]

I refueled my station I put into Minmus orbit, and I had a little bit left over so I decided to attempt a landing.

https://i.gyazo.com/6c55f9755ad9a29652bffd644119727b.png

I had another smaller station which I don't need anymore, so I either may deorbit it or add it to the existing station to "upgrade" it

Result of doing that:

Ended up destroying both stations because the smaller one did not slow down enough. I kept this piece of the larger one because it adds historical value. One of the ships I brought over from Mun is docked to it, and it still has fuel. one more to bring from Mun and the station there will be deorbited once I get around to it.

[Vermil]

Well, some time ago I finally got my Laythe mission together. A goal I've worked hard on for a long time. So the old hard nails, - who else? -, Jebediah, Bill and Bob started their long journey towards Jools and laythe.

The real crux of this epic mission is getting into orbit around Laythe. That perhaps requires a bit of luck with slingshots. I've done it before,..

...but I'm not comfortable with that kind of maneuvering yet. (That was an unmanned dress rehearsal)

Meantime, I didn't have the energy to rush things, so I let the boys cruise along in space and did something else. Started work on my new generation of rockets, based on the Mk3 Spaceplane cockpit as command pod. First out was a new moon rocket. I hired some more astronauts, three green girls, and let some old hands take them on their first trips to Mun.

After that, the planets lined up and I figured that Ikaros E, the latest iteration of my trusted Ikaros family of Duna rockets, hadn't been tested on a live trip yet. What better job for the three new gals? So they loaded up and away they went.

Now they have about a year to spend on Duna, before the routine return trip.

Meanwhile, I will concern myself with the boys' rendevous with Laythe.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Vermil

[Draconiator]

Awaiting liftoff, a replacement Kerbin-class station, to replace the one that got destroyed.

[Randazzo]

Established a fuel base and station at Ike with Pathfinder instead of working on things I should be getting finished

[cantab]

Was forced to repeatedly edit my savefile because of stupid overheat bugs killing my electricity. This is turning what should be an enjoyable epic tour of the New Horizons Jool system into a chore.

[NecroBones]

Added switchable paint schemes to the SpaceY Expanded 7.5m fuel tanks (optionally, with either Firespitter or Interstellar Fuel Switch installed):

[RocketPilot573]

Plane

[Znath]

Made a land train to see how far I can crawl along the ground. It does like to turn left for some reason... and it also has a tendency to roll when I'm barreling along at over 80m/s. I've been sticking to around 60 or so with a time warp instead to save energy and time.

It has a lot of redundancies and such. There's an anti-roll system but it doesn't really work that well. My goal is to get to sandoland, mine up some ore and refuel there and keep goin. The rover wheels are mostly for narrow turns and help reduce the 0-20 time, then i switch to jets and the main 'landing gear' since they go faster and are more durable.

[-M-TheDoctor]

Folwig Kerman, the first Kerbal to walk on the Mun in my newest career, contemplating existence and the vastness of the universe. He then tripped on a pebble, face planted, then tumbled down an incline before coming to rest in what can only be described as a "Mun Cow pie".