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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I've not had nearly as much time to play KSP as I'd like.  I'd also been stuck in a strange rut, where my progress into the tech-tree had ground to a halt.  I'd done a number of unmanned Mun survey missions, and heaps (heaps!) of tourist missions, but it seemed like I wasn't progressing.  Anyway, after remembering that the Admin building was a thing, set up some policy to turn that easy tourist-run rep into science (while kicking myself that I didn't do it ages ago), and also got round to doing an unmanned Minmus shot. 

That got me enough science to nab the "Fuel Systems" tech node, so *finally* I have access to fuel ducts.  I then felt more confident about trying for a manned (Kerballed? :D) Mun mission...  Manned-Mun-Survey-1 was a rickety monster, but it got brave Jebediah to the Mun and back, with oodles of good science to boot.

I'd like to send some probes to Minmus, but until I have a power option other than batteries, I don't think it is feasible (not ready to try it with a Kerbal-piloted vehicle just yet).  Still, being able to get Kerbals to the Mun and back opens up some good options in the meantime.

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Not sure what happened.  I made a bone-stock install (parts and physics, at least) to check out the Vector and ended up with a shuttle yesterday.  One thing led to another and ... well ... I made a new station.  Four launches so far, two with the shuttle (which is flying great even though the RCS layout is bad).

 

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I landed on the Mun, and had so much extra fuel that I did it without dropping the Kerbin>Mun transfer stage. This is my first Mun landing since career mode, I think, because I was astonished at how easy it was with Thompfel holding retrograde the whole way down.

I did have to abort the first site, which was on the edge of The Canyon, but that was just a matter of angling up and giving it a quick burst.

On the way back now, and I've realized I left the heat shield off. My lander engines really can't handle Kerbin gravity... glad I have the fuel to circularize in LKO. I think.

 

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Spent last night watching that new survival game "Tharsis" where a crew with a damaged ship tried to make it to mars... felt inspired.


I was having issues with powering the 3x 2,5m Ion engines (total of 192 Kn of thrust with 4200 ISP really rocks)...
However, A friend of mine who's a physicist in RL and was watching me play blurted out : "Why the F[bleeeep!]k aren't you using a Nuclear Reactor ?"

Told him stock KSP did not have one and he said: "Well, Mod one, this is ridiculous"... 
It was easier than I thought.  He provided efficiency vs regular LOX and weight quotes as I was adding Uranium as a resource and setting the physics stuff in the appropriate files...
Turns out I have about 11k Delta-V and it's not because of me running out of Uranium, lol ! 

So with our immediate power crisis remedied, we managed orbit and set a Rendez-vous with Duna... Enjoy !

Ship doing departure burn for Duna :
lp8VWeS.png

Ship has arrived at Duna and now performing capture burn:
1c9dpRA.png

We made it... Unfortunately, 15m/s landing proved too hard for the ship (4 parachute + 4 Drogue chutes)... but all the modules survived !  A flag was planted to celebrate.
hYHXJG1.png

Edited by Francois424
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A little story.

Today, my Grandparents came over. My grandfather was very excited to show me a ~10 minute computer animation showing the launch, transfer and deployment of the Spirit rover on mars. I'm going into computer graphics and animation in college right now, and I guess he figured that I'd be interested in it. (My grandfather is a huge space nut. Twice a week he emails me about all the new discoveries happening in space. You should have seen him when New Horizons did its flyby, he never let me hear the end of that.)

Usually my grandfather likes to talk with my parents for his visit, but I pulled him aside and asked him if he'd be interested in showing something, and I booted up my install of KSP, and created a fresh sandbox save. I gave him a shortish explanation of how the game is basically do-it-yourself space travel. Some things are a bit silly. The scales are a little wonky. Kerbals are only about a meter tall, and the planets are all 1/10th scale. I told him we could build a spaceship and go wherever we want. He said 'Saturn'. (Well there is no Saturn... I opened up the Tracking station and showed him Snarus from OPM. I had to do a little more explaining of how all the game's planets are sort of parodies or replicas of the real solar system planets, and even more explaining to tell him that normally, the last planet in the game is Jool, and that the outer planets is a mod.)

So I took him to the VAB. I asked him if we should send a probe or send a manned (kerballed) mission. He said it should be manned. As I put the mothership together, I explained how some of the different parts worked, and how some were from mods and others from the stock game.

At one point he asked me how I knew what the functions of all the parts were. I explained to him how I normally played in a career save, with money and defined missions, and in career, I unlocked parts slowly, a few at a time. So I had a chance to look at each part, try it out one by one and see what it did. I continued by explaining that when other people add their rocket parts to the game, and put the files out there for you to add to yours, they usually do a pretty good job of explaining what each part does. I also showed him the tool-tips that give the statistics on the parts, such as the mass, ISP of engines and heat tolerance.

We got into a long discussion about how different engines might use different fuel types, and electric charge storage and generation. The names are strangely generic. I told him that Mono-propellant might be Hydrogen Peroxide or C02 gas. He then decided to mention that the first Ion powered spacecraft was already in service. He told me that the real life Ion engine relies on a very high voltage and low current to ionize the xenon gas. I showed him the Ion engine in game, and explained how, though efficient, it didn't produce a lot of thrust and used a lot of power.

I sent up the Mothership. Nothing went wrong on the launch. I think it was at this point that my dad and grandmother came and tried to steal my grandpa back, but he was much more interested in the 'Snarus 1' launch than talking with them about who won the football game last night.

We decided we would send a second ship, a mining lander the mothership. I smacked together a pretty simple mining lander in the VAB, and threw a scanning probe on top of it. Then I launched that. But nobody's perfect and my second stage was wayyyy underpowered, and we went suborbital. I reverted back to the VAB and swapped out the second stage with a much more powerful engine. He asked me if I was cheating. Even more explaining. This is a sandbox game, I can do whatever I want. Unlimted money and time. I told him how, if I wanted to, I could make a giant rocket, blow it up, and nobody would care.

The second launch of our lander was much more successful. Unfortunatley, as I was making my approach to dock, he realized he was late to an appointment and somehow or other, we had killed a good three hours in the game. So after docking, I closed the save. My grandfather comes over every other weekend, so in two weeks we will (hopefully) depart for Snarus.

That's also why I didn't get to update Uuuokozetistan space program today.

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7 minutes ago, Kuansenhama said:

A little story.

Today, my Grandparents came over. My grandfather was very excited to show me a ~10 minute computer animation showing the launch, transfer and deployment of the Spirit rover on mars. I'm going into computer graphics and animation in college right now, and I guess he figured that I'd be interested in it. (My grandfather is a huge space nut. Twice a week he emails me about all the new discoveries happening in space. You should have seen him when New Horizons did its flyby, he never let me hear the end of that.)

<SNIPPED A LOT>

That's awesome.  I thinks it's neat how you can bond in sometimes unforeseen ways.  That's one of the great things about this game.

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15 minutes ago, DunaRocketeer said:

The landings are... entertaining.

The people want to be entertained - show us if you will!

 

Buoyed from my recent success in landing an asteroid strapped to the top of my Buran replica (Very nearly with Patcan Kerman riding a command chair on the asteroid) I decided to take on a Class E that was on a collision course with Kerbin.  Full mission report here, but as a little taster:

qvuOVuu.png

SM

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Work continues on Minmus. Although somebody forgot to measure the combined command and battery units resulting in an unplanned separation event... this provided more work for the manipulator removing the wreckage and pulling the stuck command unit out.

screenshot204_zpsyr5pby0m.png

screenshot206_zps7fxvwdnk.png

Power and command units are being positioned. With a new battery unit landed replacing the planned payload of ore tanks.

screenshot208_zpsmi72p0aw.png

screenshot210_zpshvfqvdor.png

 

Ascreenshot212_zpsymwazx0x.png

Also landed were containers with rover seats etc to enable a couple of light rovers to be built from the now redundant BCTU's (Base Component Traction Unit).

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Sent something to another planet for the first time. Picked up a contract for a Duna fly by, couldn't be bothered to dig up a dV map so I just 'eyeballed' it.

Plan was to have a 2 stage lifter to put a probe in a 250x250 parking orbit, then four the probe to do the transfer burn and fingers crossed have enough in the tank to capture at Duna.

Over built the lifter, which ended up as an SSTO at a 150x150 parking orbit, 2nd stage took care of the transfer burn and mid course corrections and left me with a probe due to fly by Duna with 4500 ish dV left.

Was able to capture at Duna, orbit Ike (completing the first part of my explore Ike contract) and leave it in a 65x65 Duna orbit, with 2500dV left in the tank.

Not sure what to do with it now, leave it at Duna or see if I can get it somewhere else??

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15 minutes ago, Jablea3000 said:

Sent something to another planet for the first time. Picked up a contract for a Duna fly by, couldn't be bothered to dig up a dV map so I just 'eyeballed' it.

Plan was to have a 2 stage lifter to put a probe in a 250x250 parking orbit, then four the probe to do the transfer burn and fingers crossed have enough in the tank to capture at Duna.

Over built the lifter, which ended up as an SSTO at a 150x150 parking orbit, 2nd stage took care of the transfer burn and mid course corrections and left me with a probe due to fly by Duna with 4500 ish dV left.

Was able to capture at Duna, orbit Ike (completing the first part of my explore Ike contract) and leave it in a 65x65 Duna orbit, with 2500dV left in the tank.

Not sure what to do with it now, leave it at Duna or see if I can get it somewhere else??

After a little playing with https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ you can get a flyby of any body in the system. Orbit is possible at least at Dres and possibly Eeloo.

I suggest going to Dres, it is the next place outwards and always happy to have a visitor. 

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