psistorm

Just put an SSTO spaceplane prototype into orbit - I'm really happy with myself. Going to keep tweaking it, then maybe work on one that has cargo capability, or science, ideally. I want something I can take to another planet and have return with samples and such. But it feels really good to have taken that step, even though it's not a stock one (largely using FAR and B9 aerospace). Still its nice having a working prototype and having understood a few concepts of good SSTO design

More of a last night thing, but recently I finally got the first part of my science station in orbit. The hab module with the central docking nodes is up, with some science modules from the station science mod coming soon. Also finished another probe mission in interplanetary space. Got a nice chain of sun orbit -> high ike -> high duna -> low ike -> ike landed. Got me a good bunch of science to play with. Also working on spaceplanes lately, but they seem to love going into a flat spin and lose all control once they get near the transition to rocket power. Despite me having the CoL behind the center of mass, it seems to decide that about 16km is flatspin time with all control inputs going essentially dead. (yes i still have power, it just seems to not have any effect what i do. also using FAR btw). Ah well. a few more explosions should eventually let me come up with a design

I've been having a bit of an issue with this mod as well, which strangely doesn't seem to make things overall better, it just changes one problem into another. Rather than the parts wobbling by turning, they wobble a bit by sliding when I use the mod. Upping the linear drive spring/damper doesn't seem to have any effect that I can notice. So far I tested some kw rocketry 1.25m parts (just the standard tanks in all sizes), their 2.5m, and some b9 aerospace ones (the shuttle style series with cargo bay). all of them seem to slide rather than bend, but especially on planes the sliding wobble causes the same instability. I will play around more and see what I can find though

After the obvious kerbin, I used duna for an aerobrake and subsequent probe landing. Later on did the same on eve twice, then sacrificed a probe to jool

Lately I really hit a good run, after learning how to do mun landing in career mode with the reduced parts, i began learning quite a lot. managed to land probes on eve and duna, even did a suicide mission on jool. Decided to restart a career save with b9 aerospace, FAR and kw rocketry, and loving it even more now. Learning how to do planes all over, enjoying the really amazing new parts that are added. Landed on duna and eve again, got a probe onto ike and then duna in one go, generally having a ton of fun. I'm looking at bigger mun missions now, and then trying an ike land and return with a manned vessel. setting up stations and bases etc, also doing duna returns and other fun stuff. maybe spaceplanes

I managed to land a probe on eve, though not upright. During aerobraking it began to tumble, deciding it would go nose-down no matter what. Lack of torque led to it coming down upside-down with the chutes out at 2.8m/s. That day I learned that yes, that speed on eve is enough to wreck solar panels immediately. The probe landed on its main antenna, then fell over undamaged. So I technically "landed" it, and got a good chunk of science out of it all.

When trying to land on Duna, for heavens sake bring either an engine for powered descent, or do what I did and set a really shallow orbit so you can aerobrake. Don't do what I did before and try and enter like kerbin, since then you will come in hot and fast and when the chutes deploy, your craft will be torn up by slowing down from supersonic to 10m/sec in a split second. When trying to land on Eve, bring enough torque to keep your craft facing retrograde or make sure the drag is balanced correctly. My probe decided to face nose down no matter what for lack of torque, and the further you come down, the more impossible it is to turn the vessel again. After assembling your rocket, press Q once while holding the origin piece, that way you will be facing at 90° and can do a gravity turn by pushing downward. I always found that easier. On planes, balance your control surfaces. Use the appropriate size for your vessel, and don't put them too far away from the CoM, else you will have a very twitchy craft

I decided to finally rescue jeb from the mun, and build a new science lander. Well, turns out I miscalculated the fuel use, so while I have fuel to spare, it's not enough for an orbital trajectory, so both jeb AND bill are now on the mun for a while. Well, time to build a bigger, better lander

Last night I did some more science missions, and took another crack at eve. I actually managed orbit by using aerocapture to save fuel, and then let it decay to see what happened if I came in for a landing. Unfortunately, you quickly learn to balance drag on your probes when wanting to put one on eve, because otherwise you WILL be turned nose down and no force in the world can turn you around again. Okay, maybe it also was a lack of pod torque, but both the probe designs I put up there were very quick to turn nose down. The first one blew up because no chutes, the second one landed on its antenna at 2.8m/s and came to rest on its side completely undamaged. So I guess mission success. I did get a bunch of data from it too, so that's good Later on I took an atmospheric analysis plane for a spin on kerbin, but despite the hefty data size, I only got 14 science out of a run despite it saying it had a value of 140. Anyone else got that problem? Is that going to be a better payout for places like duna?

Today I took another shot at interplanetary. First attempt took almost a year KSP time, but I touched a probe down on ike after gathering some data from dunas orbit, then ikes orbit, before touching down. The second probe - same model, a Kerbasat 3 - got flung right at duna, first on a 30km flyby, then 10km, which turned out to give me a very unexpected opening for a landing. Took me two tries, but I managed to touch the probe down with a good amount of fuel to spare, so got about almost 700 science out of that run alone. Now I'm working on Kerbasat 3-N, which uses an LV-N instead of an LV-909 as interplanetary. A beefier launcher to get it going, and I hope to get a good deal more mileage out of it that way and reach some inner planets. The probe itself also has been improved with some folding solar panels, so it can regain its - admittedly pretty sizable - energy buffer faster.

Well, not today, but last few days, I picked up the game again and managed a few things: - landed a rover and small base on the mun in a joint landing. worked fairly well, though i trashed two solar panels after i messed up the detaching of the skycrane. i shouldve put a probe core on it, but oh well. base is operational anyways - made my first interplanetary flight with a rather small craft. put a satellite into a nice orbit around duna, learned how cool nuclear stages are. didnt even have to use large parts, only the medium-sized ones for launcher and transfer stage. very satisfying. - decided to one-up myself and fly to duna again, with pretty much the same launcher, just an extra helping of nuclear fuel and a small rover in a heat shield + parachute deployment setup. had a nice little shell out of two adapters. everything went well at first, until i experienced just how thin duna's atmosphere actually is. came in supersonic at about 5 km height, so jettisoned the heatshield and in a panic, deployed the chute. when it fully deployed, the rover violently separated from the upper half of the shell and pancaked at 1000m/sec onto duna. i still have a moral victory though, since thanks to the chute, the upper shell had a 4.1m/sec descent and gently landed on duna. so I landed /something/ on another planet at least. I will retry next time, this time having fitted the deployment shell with retro engines and drag chutes

I generally let my space-bound debris sit where it is for the most part nowadays. I only delete debris when it's near the KSC, say a failed plane or rover experiment, since I can just chalk that off as "oh it crashed and they sent out a recovery crew with a truck to sweep up the remains". Stuff in orbit isn't just deleted anymore. But I also don't play a ton, so the accumulation rate is lower. Also I try nowadays to learn how to deorbit successfully.

Personally I can agree with that, yes. Tank stacks should by default have a much sturdier connection. In general, I think in-line struts should be reduced, though they are fine as far as fastening say, boosters to the main rocket to keep them from wobbling and such. That aside it feels pretty balanced. There are some things like intake stacking or engine clusters, but once we pay for parts in a carreer mode, these things can be balanced for to make them a cost/return tradeoff.

When you realize you derped and read your orbit the wrong way around, so that after your retrograde burn you aren't headed for the designated landing spot on the day side of the mun, but your rover delivery system instead smashes itself to bits on some mountain on the dark side, because you also forgot about landing lights.

I used them recently to stabilize a rover delivery system, which, despite my best efforts to center the CoM began tilting strongly whenever I put thrust on the main engines. That aside, I usually use ASAS now for my ascent stages to keep them in a nice, stable trajectory, despite a wobbly one. But as was said before, that will soon be a thing of the past once 0.21 comes around and makes it all better