IncompetentSpacer

Continued my RP-1 Career. Today the mission was to achieve Molniya orbit. Spent lot of time burning mono-propellant to get final period time demanded by the contract. Point of this orbit (summary totally not taken from wiki) was for SSSR to solve problem of spending lot of dV launching into geostationary orbit from Baikanur. Another issue this orbit solution was solving was the problem with energy demands on a satellite in geostationary orbit would have to spend transmitting to SSSR's territories (which for most part are on higher latitudes).

Ugh...I remember that struggle from stock. One of those things in KSP that may work 5 of 10 times and I avoided using. LIfe is too short for that struggle.

Continued my RP-1 career (this is third restart due to updates to various parts of the mod) - preformed my second Moon impactor mission (Emulating SSSR Luna 2 mission and US Ranger missions). Due to RO mod not implementing time zones, I launched at 10:30 local time but it was pitch dark. As usual something had to go wrong and the main engine, RD-108, seized up but I lucked out on timing and I only lost 100 dV. I build my rocket with lot of spare dV so it was not a critical failure. Image above shows third stage finishing its burn, finalizing the orbit around the earth. Below the last stage, including the impacter payload can be seen flying over Africa. Impacter pluss avionics section on the way to the moon: Unfortunately no images from the moon since I landed on the dark side. Resulting image would be pitch dark and no point in posting that. I enjoy the early tech in RP-1 mod, since I find the age of space "firsts" to be most fascinating. Kerbalism? With all features on?

From rocket design to aircraft design in RP-1. Fulfilling speed contract.

Mass. You think that Sergei Koralev would not design 60t launch vehicle for Sputnik 1 if he could? 8K71PS launch vehicle (R-7 Semyorka variant), capable of 500 kg to LEO, was bit shy of 270t. It makes beating the historic dates somewhat easy in the mod (nowhere as easy as in earlier versions where people were launching kerbals in orbit by 1952 or at least by 1953 on normal difficulty).

Redesigned my previous rocket design with new tech I unlocked in my RP-1 career. Went from 149 ton to bit under 57.8t. This is where RO mod is not entirely realistic. It would be bit hard for such design to be made in late 50s, using existing tech, but whatever: Total dV budget: 10806 dV with no cargo Can lift 540 kg to LEO. 3 parts (stages) with RD-108 main engine and two RD-0105 engines in the middle and top.

We all were there at one point of time...next phase is landing on Mun but not having enough dV to get back.

Nothing impressive today, just finished one more mission on restarted RP-career (Advanced Biological Suborbital Experiment). Laika died just like in real life due to her not fitting into Sample return box - but we got the data we needed.

While most posted content in this thread is about the projects that go well, this game is at its most interesting when things go to hell in the true Kerbal way. After taking up X-plane contracts in my RP-1 career (basically make a plane, reach a height or hold a speed for certain time, not that much variation bar the design challenge of course), in what should be a boring contract, I managed to get my plane in a spin, for the first time since I started playing KSP: https://imgur.com/sXebuZEI dropped from 50 000 -60 000 m to 21 000 m before regaining control, losing one of the canards in the process, which can be seen in the image under: Unfortunatly, the aircraft turned too much to the left during the approach to the air strip and I had to use the noob landing procedure (parachute) in order to land the aircraft. Due to graphical glitch I cant show how close I am to the home base in the last image (max 200 meters)

Reinstalled the KSP (bi-monthly ritual - because there is nothing like it out there) and managed to break the sound barrier in my RP-1 carrier with subsonic tech and hold it there for 30 sec. Nothing special, many have done this before, but it was the first time for me. Image taken on the way home (so technically mission was not yet over, I had to land)

This. And it does not only apply to this game's steam forum. ----------- Would I like it to come out earlier - sure... But I haven't paid anything for it yet so I couldn't care less. Now, if they had opened for preordering, taken the money and then communicated postponement of the game , the case would be different (typical for 50% of early release games on steam).

Not sure what you mean but everything is where it should be, doing its job when being launched up in the air ? I take pride in building for function only. See - it makes sure nose is pointing the right way when flying up: Examples from Airships: Conquer the Skies:

Today's gaming session is finished with my first crewed orbit in Realism Overhaul. For those not familiar with that mod, you play in real sized solar system, using approximation of the real life engines. Rockets need to be built (takes time) and parts can and do fail. My first attempt was less than glorious.... I reused my lunar probe rocket (I produced two in expectations that the first would fail) which would have more than enough of dV if the damn mod mechanics did not insist on loading the tiny capsule with full contingent of food and water (14 days) despite being told otherwise. The kerbal pilot, Joshua Coleman, almost passed out because the rocket was not human rated. I reached barely an orbit which would have given me a safe decent for the Vostok capsule (had to use RCS to give me last few km). Have to mention that just before the tanks were empty for fuel, main booster engine failed. After lot of close calls and less than ideal start, the Vostok capsule settled in a orbit around earth, where it will stay for day and return with 72 science.

Nothing creative today but more of gaming the system in my RP-1 career - rockets designed in SPH (Spaceplane Hangar) and launched from airfield can be recovered in current version and reused. Since I am bored to death by position satellite X in Orbit AxB with inclination of Y, I have (ab)used the repetitive airplane contract which ask you to launch to height of 120 km for up to 30 000 credits (depending on difficulty and how long since last time you took the contract). This rocket can be turned around in 5 days and relaunched minimizing the time it keeps the build line busy.

TLDR version: To quote popular meme from some time ago, today's mission in my RP-1 career was "Not great, not terrible". I failed to fulfill Moon flyby but succeeded with Moon impact contract in Realism Overhaul. More detailed version: The two contract's, I aimed to fulfill today, are supposed to emulate real life late 1950s missions to explore the Moon - flyby of the Moon and impact missions. In my alternative history, I aimed to fulfill both objectives of these historic missions, coming near enough to the moon to gather data and impacting the moon's surface to do what real life Luna 1 mission aimed to do but failed (Luna 2 succeed to do). Since this was the very first time I was launching to the Moon in my RP-1 career/Realism Overhaul mod, I kinda followed general advice from the net but which all proved wrong. For the design vehicle, I used my previously described rocket just with bigger liquid booster tanks, 13188 dV total (vacuum). First thing to go wrong is that, that one of the RD-107 malfunctioned, careening the rocket to the side and ended up in highly offset (from the desired) ecliptic orbit, shown in the spoiler below. Btw - all engines are single fire only, meaning that they cannot be restarted. Due to the bug in forum software, rest of the post is in the spoilers (sorry for this).

Continuing my little RP-1 career experiment, I built a new rocket generation, finally doing away with post-ww2 rocket engines which fail even more often after latest update. It follows real life R-7 inspired configuration with RD-108 main engine with four RD-107 boosters and finally RD-0501 engine in the top. Is is half of the mass of historic R-7 with 147 tons (but not half the capability). It can lift 3200 kg payload in orbit, limited by the launchpad's current max mass limitations. Not enough for historic Vostok capsule and perhaps enough for Mercury, but plenty enough for a jury rigged Kerbal solution. Second and final stage images in the spoiler.

Congrats. First orbit and first Mun landing is the best moments in KSP. After that, stuff becomes just dV calculation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Continuing my KSP RP-1 career which had to be restarted due to latest updates of the mod re-balancing much of the early era hardware so it is bit more historically accurate. Since historically, I did not progress that far in the career, it was not that much of revert so here we go again. Early on, the mod got couple of X-1, X-2 etc missions which involve airplane design (this type of contracts can be turned off but I forgot) which I am usually not that big fan of. That being said when asked to produce plane that can reach 30 km up, I had fun with the contract: FFAR analyses tool says the airplane on image below is a death trap for Kerbals and making this design a "safe plane" gives a maximum speed of around 500 m/s. So how about an unsafe airplane design you may ask? You don't ask? Well, I am gonna tell you anyway - 912 m/s or 3283 km/h before engines melt and explode: It is basically 3 Tumansky RD-11 engines with wings attached. Same engines were used by SSSR's MiG-21PF and Su-15 (initially) but never as triplets. Huge canards give better control and shorten the take off distance by half. Engines of the airplane on the images have died because I used up all fuel after 6 min. And since this game is (mainly) about rockets here is one of the early morning launch:

Vacation time over here but not much Kerbal time, so I just had time to mess around with a rocket plane mission in my RP-1 career. Just managed to glide back to the airfield (in RP-1 mod, you can reuse your aircraft after landing them back home).

Hear! Hear! Default camera controls are result of making horrible implementation in order to avoid edge case problems and thereby lowering user experience100% of time.

After yesterday's failure, today I focused on building aircraft. I am not new to the subject - I have built VTOL aircraft in stock (fun but not very practical) - but for some reason, in Realism Overhaul mod I had constant issues with aircraft constantly swinging off the airfield before managing to take off. So I built on a working design I had from somewhere (it is called Peregrine but no idea who org creater was ) which solved the wheels issue. I replaced the cockpit and changed the materials to the ones from RO mod. Also added canards. The engine is based Tumansky R-11, used IRL for Mig-21 and Su-15. In this design it translates in 500-550 m/s max horizontal at 10 000+ meters, around 15 min of flight. Take off speed : 127 m/s (with canards...). It climbs and accelerates OK though. Landing speed: Beats me... I am not taking any chances in RO with this! The mismatch in the colors is due to how lighting affects coloring of stock items (in this picture inline cockpit and landing gear boxes) and procedural items. I could have used more time to get it perfect but....life is too short...

And my desperate attempt on beating Union of Soviet Kerbalist Republics in race to get first man in space failed due to engine failure in last stage.... It started well. The rocket was rolled out of VAB during the daytime in perfect weather, 15:45 The staging went well and despite dropping fairing bit too early, not much dv was lost by it. And then 15 seconds after last stage was ignited, engine failure: As you can see in the left corner, the brownish color on the engine icon indicates performance loss. In Realism Overhaul mod one needs ca 9400 dV, depending on where you launch from, to reach orbit. One can do with less but not that much efficiency loss. Also I have experienced explosions when engine was overtaxed and I was not sure if I was running some additional risk. So I ditched the engine section and coasted back into the atmosphere. Because I was so distracted by the failure above, I forgot to activate/detach the de-orbiting rockets and they exploded from the heat during the re-entry. Fortunately only the reserve chute was taken out but I did not manage to take any pictures during the wild ride that followed. Contact with the pilot, Gerd Hoffman, was lost due to wild G-forces on the aircraft cockpit. Fortunately he recovered 4500 meters above ground and managed to activate the parachutes. 15.4 Science points and 30K+ reward for beating crewed speed record of 5000 km/h was what I got out of this mission but in this alternative history, Kerbal Gagarin will be the first man in the orbit...

After using Mechjeb for first time yesterday, I remembered why I stopped using it in 2013/2014 - the damn thing requires you to construct rockets in special way, especially if you play with realistic sized solar system. In my case 400 kg with extra weight (ullage problems) and extra dV fuel. Seeing that I have effed up my RP-1 career with damaging my facilities which ruined me financially, I did some calculations regarding when my research will be done and ca time to build crewed orbital rocket. I realized that to beat Gagarin to space, I will have to resort to some desperate measures:

After a short break from gaming due to life obligation, today I got time to design next variant (I would not call it a generation) of rockets in my RP-1 career in Realism Overhaul mod. While having unlocked more powerful rocket engines, lack of funds and launchpad limitation makes these kinda useless currently - what is point of using engines which lifted historic R-7 Semyorka into space when your launchpad is limited to 100 tons? So instead I redesigned current generation of my rockets which resulted in a 11 300 dV rocket with 145 kg payload which it can comfortable lift into 700 km circular orbit. This variant can at its max lift 1200 kg into low orbit of Earth, which is more than enough for early missions. Perhaps even just enough for 700 kg Mercury capsule + 1 kerbal and other equipment? Of course any safety feature (I play with no revert) would have to be omitted. If any Realism Overhaul veteran reads this and has any good advice for me, please do share them! I have replaced Scud missile engine (S2.253) of an earlier variant of this rocket with historically more correct RD-0105 (shown on the image below) which was specifically designed to be used for upper stages of rockets in SSSR. It remains to be seen whether it's historically problems with reliability (early on) are also modeled in. Finally due to contracts in RP-1 being balanced around Mechjeb AND me still not having access to maneuvering nodes and orbit info, I have finally relented and for the first time since 2013, I have today launched a missile with it. Of course, one of the RD-101 engines lost efficiency and the damn autopilot slammed the rocket into the sea - luckily it was simulation mode in RP-1 otherwise I would be *issed off at having to wait additional 140 day for the next rocket to be built.

I recommend Kerbalism mod here unless you are stock only guy (which I too was few years back). It adds more depth to the game, also the science part. But expect to lose your Kerbals left and right unless you remove some stuff in cfg.

Got some more time to play and managed to finish the mission in RP-1 career which required to have mission payload in certain orbit for two days. Image of the rocket that delivered part of the payload was linked to before. Now I can detach the science part (packaged in early tech solar panels)of the 331 satellite which will start collecting science (way more difficult in RP-1, which uses Kerbalism system that collects science data over time instead of instantly as in stock version of the game). Mission of the science satellite will last 90 days. The goal is to unlock tech that allows maneuvering modes (so far I have been navigating by navball and MK1 eyeball). Also took second hop into the space for extra money and science. Since I have not unlocked the capsules in my RP-1 career, I am using X-15 cockpit (IRL cockpit belonging to US rocket airplane capable of reaching the edge of space) to send a Kerbal 560 km up in air when fuel tanks are fully loaded. But since I have not heat shields yet, using solid boosters to slow down decent into atmosphere will be necessary when flying so high up.