SquashWarp! - A home on the forums for my secret video series

[Tiber9]

Hi awesome KSP community!

Earlier this year I had some time on my hands and I made a number of KSP gameplay videos, a series called SquashWarp! chronicling my playthrough of 1.2 with a bunch of mods. I don't have great hardware for the purpose, but I had a lot of fun making it before I got busy with other things.  I recently realized that I never shared it on the forums, probably because I was afraid of criticism or something. I imagine I'm not the only player who sees the kind of amazing stuff some people can do with this game and ends up feeling kind of insignificant. But no longer! 

There are eleven episodes up, and I have a few more edited but not published that I will get up soon. As for if the series continues, I am not opposed to the idea, just not sure if there is an interest so I'll see how that goes and what people think! The full playlist is linked here!

Now, because I feel like posting a link to a whole video series isn't really in the spirit of 'Mission Report', here is one such report about events taking place in episode 5 (at which point I had figured out how to get my audio in better shape). 

 

Elsted Kerman's Fancy Flight -- My first one-take orbit to runway landing in Kerbal Space Program:

The goal: test a dyna-soar style mission with the Mk1 cocpit. The point is to test out the dynamics of returning from orbit in a flying vehicle, determine that mods and heating settings are correct, and pave the way for larger more useful space-planes in the future.

Development: The project began with a test vehicle to determine flight characteristics of a small plane with stubby wings.

But I think I may have been using an old install of the B9 wing parts, so Elsted began an uncontrolled dive, and had to jump out. (Thanks EVA chutes!)

 

When Elsted had dried off, we built him a new plane and launched it with a solid booster to attempt an un-powered landing test. 

We were happy to find that it was easy to control and had a nice low landing-speed.

 

Mission:

With everything that had been learned, Elsted and the other Kerbals were ready for a full mission. They stuck that plane with a few modifications on top of a giant booster and staged!

After the boosters are ditched, the small on-board tank is supplemented by two drop-tanks on the wingtips. 

Orbit achieved! Next Elsted deployed the payload...

And then it was time for a return. 

Now here's the part I hadn't done before (without reloads). We made a rough guess on the descent profile, and then performed a retrograde burn. Elsted hit the atmosphere at the same time as sunrise.

Reentry got a little hot....

But once the flames cleared Elsted was in just the right place for an approach. 

He was still moving pretty fast, and had to do a complete turn west of the space center to bleed off speed...

But then came down for a well-aligned landing and popped his drogue chutes!

Mission accomplished!  Happy space-travels!