What did you do in KSP1 today?

[JoeNapalm]

2 hours ago, kurgut said:

I do a little break with my KSS station, so I started building a carrier. For aircrafts, science, fun,  and with a planned attachment point for a submarine. It has a weight of 300t currently, propelled by 2 rapiers engines, have 5h of burn time and managed to go at 30 m/s! This is just the basic/testing design for the moment.

An aircraft carrier that can manage near 60 knots is pretty good, I think.

 

-Jn-

[kurgut]

2 minutes ago, JoeNapalm said:

An aircraft carrier that can manage near 60 knots is pretty good, I think.

Haha, well yes a bit much than necessary, but those kerbals you now.. instopable

[Azimech]

Today I felt like making this one.

By the way, it can't get to space so this can't turn into a philosophical discussion.

[DoctorDavinci]

8 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Today I felt like making this one.

By the way, it can't get to space so this can't turn into a philosophical discussion.

I can probably do something about that 

Edited July 5, 2018 by DoctorDavinci

[Azimech]

1 minute ago, DoctorDavinci said:

I can probably do something about that 

Sure you can ... but can you cope with the philosophical implications? It would probably violate one of the rules of this forum :-P

[MDZhB]

I stranded a Kerbal in the depths of space.

[StrandedonEarth]

My past several sessions have been focused on an Eve return mission, with a Kemini capsule. Masochistic, I know. After trying to land the first iteration of my EAV in the course of my career save, I sent a KASload of spare parts to try to address the loss of control as the atmosphere thickened. After that also failed, it was kicked over to simulations in the Mission builder to get the craft perfected. When the new craft arrives, I'll transfer the fuel load over and scuttle the original, for science!.

It has taken many entry attempts with different crafts and tactics either overheating or going broadside (which the capsule could often survive, leaving potential castaways) to the reentry heat. After ironing out some of these hassles I finally managed to reach the surface a few times, minus a few parts, and one of those was even able to return to orbit, despite a staging/fuel issue. I even landed perfectly intact in the Explodium Sea. I also crashed forgetting to watch the surface altitude. I thought I was running the surface-modded altimeter, maybe not...

I've learned that this old meme of mine has more meaning than one...

It's been a major time trap, having to deal with several (dozen?) 15-30 minute entry profiles. It seems that a 95x84km entry orbit works best from a thermal view, which makes it rather long, and I don't dare physwarp a ship that size (I tried...). Set reentry orbit, and go vacuum something....

But I'm almost there, A few more tweaks for reliability and it'll be ready to be handed to the career engineers. All 680+ tons and 44+parts of it. I'll detail the mission more when it's complete, but for now here's the modified, career-ready beast....

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

I spent a good part of the evening designing this in my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career save:

I've got a contract available to fly between 360 and 560 m/s, between 11,050 and 13,050 m altitude, and it specifies an aircraft.  Rockets need not apply.

Unfortunately, I've been putting all my upgrade points into the VAB, so it's going to take 213+ days to build this just to find out if it flies at all.  The contract deadline is just under three months out.

And this is how the downfall begins.  I've flown the last sounding rocket contracts, and the manned stuff all needs flight hardware I don't yet have -- like heat shields and capsules.  I don't yet have a rocket engine that can push a payload into orbit (at least without extreme clustering).   Bill and Bob have retired from boredom.  Jeb and Val are still on board, at least, and Val's retirement date is five years off after letting her fly High Jumper to 300+ km altitude (Jeb's should be similar, he was first to fly High Jumper, I just haven't looked).  It's late 1957, and the Program looks to be at a point where all I can do is warp forward and hope, when the required tech nodes unlock, that I still have the capital to move into orbital launches.

[Servo]

8 hours ago, Azimech said:

Sure you can ... but can you cope with the philosophical implications? It would probably violate one of the rules of this forum :-P

Besides, you can only launch teapots with launch vehicles which do not launch themselves.

I added foils to my Crusader, and got a step closer to getting the wing to hinge correctly in flight.

I also built my first SSTO in close to a year probably. It's based on a scramjet SSTO proposal from the 1970s and it works wonderfully.

[CobaltShock]

Will post this in the mission reports save, but I am tired so I'll probably do it in the morning. I'll summarize it here.

 

Ilios IV was finally flying by Niven. It had some excess fuel to fulfill a contract test of a 2.5 meter heatshield.

 

Sadly there aren't any magnificent scatterer effects like my previous 3.2x save. I am assuming it has to do with either the version of scatterer or the RESCALE! being a version outdated (yet still seemingly working for Gael & Tellumo). Am sad because of it

 

After one aerobrake, the orbiter & lander separated to perform the first landing. 

The contract said to test the 2.5 meter heat shield travelling between 71,000m and 87,000m of Niven's atmosphere, but while travelling at 4.1k-4.5km/s. This initial approach was only at 3.3km/s

So, the spare fuel was used to give the craft a "boost".

The contract was fulfilled (450,000!), and the probe landed with the help of a ton of parachutes.

There we go.

I managed to get up to 2,300,000 from this and the Gratian flyby mission, but that mission didn't really go as planned due to communication issues. However, I set an alarm for 2 years, 300 days for when it should get back in range with Gael, and so it can send it's science back at that time.

 

Also, I found the issue as to why scatterer effects don't work (as per the scatterer page)

Spoiler

-RSS/rescale mods might not actually work and may have several issues.

Aww, dang. Hope this gets fixed soon. I'm fine as long as Gael has the effects. 

 

Edit: I did some tests in sandbox mode, and Gratian and Tellumo don't have the effects of scatterer, but they look fine compared to Niven, which has an oddly low quality look from space, which is quite weird. 

Edited July 6, 2018 by Steeeeve

[kurgut]

Here the "submarine room" under my carrier.

Let's launch this!

Rolling out:

more rollout

Spoiler

Ditching the wheels

Fire! 20 m/s stable meuvring speed. 30 m/s maximum speed.

 

My testing pilot is ready, but he feels incomfortable, so diffrent from a rocket!

Release that!

But the Kraken, make the Sub attached to the carrier. After loading, saving, loading, saving: it worked.

But well,  my sub crashed, just have a pic with the pilot trying to go the surface.. Max depth encountered while "stable" : 300m, then crashed at about 380m on the ground.

And have to disable for the moment "parts have pressure limits", can be handy!

 

[Hotel26]

21 hours ago, Atkara said:

I found some time

 

May I ask a couple of questions, please, good sir?  Does this craft have RCS thrusters and, if so, where placed?  The wingtip leading edge strakes: I was unable to identify the part; please do tell.

Nice work, I must say.  (Getting from the end of the breathable air to the Karman line on nukes only was a new challenge for me; awfully good fun.  )  Well done.

Edited July 6, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

Does this craft have RCS thrusters and, if so, where placed?  The T100 tanks are for LF only?  The wingtip leading edge strakes: I was unable to identify the part; please do tell.

For port/starboard and dorsal/ventral movement, there are 4 RCS blocks (2 per side), arranged right in front of the 1.25m reaction wheels, which is where I expect the CoM to be around, once in orbit and after a couple of burns.

Aft movement is undertaken by two RCS blocks, placed on the connection between the air intakes and the wings and at a 45 degrees angle. Fore movement is managed by a single RCS block, between the two Nervas.

The T100 tanks are indeed for LF only.

The wing assembly is made of a classic Delta Wing and a Swept Wing Type A, with a wing strake softening the curve.

I've been using this for a while now, although it originally had the Big-S line of Delta wings and strakes installed. For some reason however, the shuttle wings were causing the craft to want to yaw to the left, causing all sorts of problems during the flight. The new wing assembly doesn't suffer from this.

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

Nice work, I must say.  (Getting from the end of the breathable air to the Karman line on nukes only was a new challenge for me; awfully good fun.  )

Thanks  When using Nervas in the upper atmosphere and depending on how badly (if badly at all) the flight has gone so far, you may need to point at a 35 to 45 degrees angle, despite what the speed gauge says. You do this in order to push your time to apoapsis (TtA) forward, giving the Nervas time to get the job done. Once the rate your TtA increases starts to accelerate, you can go for a less aggressive angle.

Ofcourse, if everything has gone well, you don't do any of this -you just sit back and enjoy the ride 

I could send you the craft file if you want, although there's nothing you can't see right there -well, except the RTG maybe, sitting between the NERVAs too, in a RTG-NoseCone-RCS Block order 

Edited July 6, 2018 by Atkara

[Hotel26]

2 hours ago, Atkara said:

I could send you the craft file if you want

Thank you for the information and the kind offer!!  My second try had gotten to space doing precisely as you suggested: lifting the nose.

One learns a stack by reverse-engineering other people's work -- but I only bother with the really pretty ones!    [You hadn't mentioned a name, so in my hangar, it is Atkara.]

Edited July 6, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

26 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

You hadn't mentioned a name...

Glad you like it

I rarely give them actual names, apart from what they are and what they do: In this one's case, it's SSTO Mk1a -yeah, that bland 

As for the flight profile, I keep it at 25 degrees till 6.5km alt, where I let the nose fall down to 5 degrees, to let the Whiplashes really breathe. At 12km I engage the Nervas. If everything has gone well, the angle will have increased to 20+ degrees in the upper atmosphere, pushing the time to apoapsis.

Usually, I get in orbit with 1000-1100DV left, more than enough to fill the passenger module with stranded Kerbals. The flight crew always includes a pilot and an engineer (the latter because why not?)

Edited July 6, 2018 by Atkara

[kurgut]

Just wrote this, check it! :)

The underwater space program- Kostov- First Kerbal to go... under water

[Atkara]

This day in -my- KSC was relatively quiet. A correction burn for the recovery drone coming from Moho and the transfer burn for the craft carrying the crew I extracted from Eve's surface.

I also did some some fiddling around with the crafts en route to Vall. Most of them, after the initial Tylo encounter, will head straight for Vall. They'll come in retrograde and burn some 720-750Dv to circularize in low orbit. For the miner accompanying them however, I went a bit further:

It'll hit Tylo, then burn 30m/s for a Laythe encounter which will reduce the final route to Vall in what essentially is a typical Hohmann transfer between the two. The estimated circularization burn around Vall... ~450DV.

Yep. The miner's trip from Kerbin to Vall, will have come at a cost of ~2500DV in total (excluding landing ofcourse)

I love this game

Edited July 6, 2018 by Atkara

[kurgut]

8 minutes ago, Atkara said:

I love this game

Yeeea me too

[Torn4dO]

Today I finished my first attempt in building a SHIELD Helicarrier replica, the design could still use some work but I like it.

Craft file

[djr5899]

Finally got Valentina and Bob out to a Mun landing today in my accelerated career save.  Had to make a few adjustments to  my vessel, as I kept coming up about 10-15 seconds too short on fuel the first few attempts.

I've also been trying to add some mods to my game, just to try and get some more information and guidance on a few areas.  Not looking to do major modifications like adding parts, planets, etc (although, maybe I will in the future), but here is what I now consider my standard mod config:

• KER
• Docking Port Indicator
• Surface Lights
• RCS Build Aid (and dependencies)
• [x] Science

Last one I am looking to possibly add, but have never used, is SCANSAT.  I haven't done a lot of scanning in previous saves (but have done a few), so I'm not sure exactly what this is going to add for me.  If anyone can add a good reply sentence or two on what advantages SCANSAT gives over stock game (without taking this thread too off topic), that would be awesome.

[JoeNapalm]

16 hours ago, MDZhB said:

I stranded a Kerbal in the depths of space.

Been there, done that.

 

-Jn-

[MR L A]

On 7/5/2018 at 4:13 PM, kurgut said:

 



This image made me wonder, is it possible to target another vessel for landing (instead of the launch pad) with MJ?

[Cavscout74]

31 minutes ago, MR L A said:

is it possible to target another vessel for landing (instead of the launch pad) with MJ?

MJ Landing guidance can "land at target" as one of its options.  And in the past I didn't expect it to be exact and ended up crashing a resupply mission into a Mun base.  It's not always so exact - it might be a few hundred meters away - but it does attempt to land exactly on the target

[AngrybobH]

1 hour ago, djr5899 said:

Last one I am looking to possibly add, but have never used, is SCANSAT.  I haven't done a lot of scanning in previous saves (but have done a few), so I'm not sure exactly what this is going to add for me.  If anyone can add a good reply sentence or two on what advantages SCANSAT gives over stock game (without taking this thread too off topic), that would be awesome.

Scan sat adds some contracts and 3 or 4 parts. The parts give you scans of bodies that build maps of altitude, biomes, resources, and anomalies. Scans are done over time (like real life!) and are based on current orbit and the scans continue even the vessel is not active. The maps are quite cool and useful for picking out good landing spots or guiding ground based vehicles to new biomes. To me, scansat is essential as is its companion Orbital science.

[kurgut]

50 minutes ago, MR L A said:

This image made me wonder, is it possible to target another vessel for landing (instead of the launch pad) with MJ?

Agree with @Cavscout74

So What I did sometimes was let Mechjeb do his job, and then disengage it and adapt manually just 1000m or 500m (even less) before the ground, And it worked pretty well!

 

Edited July 6, 2018 by kurgut