What did you do in KSP2 today?

[astrobond]

53 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

Lastly, I'm kind of surprised by the choice of the Mammoth over the Vector for your ascent engine.  I had thought that the Mammoth's worse ISP curve would have rendered it impracticable despite its better inherent TWR, but I guess I was mistaken!

Thank you @herbal space program 

As you can see later in this topic, I made a new version of this Lander, with... Vectors lol ! And yes, this is a better choice

 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

  I reported on the Newest Space Agency to open its doors on Kerbin.

 

United Rockets has released an aggressive launch schedule that it hopes will provide opportunities to overtake primary competitor "Near Deep Industries.

NDI gained attention 2 years ago  when a group of Smart tech guys decided to show off their Ker-Bling and *launch* a space start-up. With Freon Kerman heading the fundraising & PR platforms, NDI hit the ground as a powerhouse.

Director Urgel with UniTed Rocket claims that NDI's cautionary approach and desire to fully test all components multiple times offers a valuable advantage they fully intend to seize.

By relying on the most skilled & bravest pilots Kerbim over, UR can abandon all preconceptions of caution. 

"Mechanical failure occurs on even the most tested of systems. Here at United Rocket we Trust our pilots to have the required skillset to deal with little things like unplanned disassembly"

The director kindly shared some pictures of the UR_T-0_Orbiter. Apparently, the T-0 was designed and fabricated within 20 minutes of opening the doors.

It sports an impressive [redacted] quad engine from Rockomax. The Orbiter incorporates spare parts from everyday appliances that can be found in any Heap Kerbin-wide. 

Though UR wants to adopt a zero sophistication model to its designs, you shouldn't try this at home. Just because you can reproduce the Rocket design doesn't mean you have the skill to fly.

Here we can see a successful separation. A clever application of old hatch back parts to improvise a decoupled. Way to go UR.!

 

KNTR asked for more pictures but UR reported losing contact with the craft shortly before renetry.

That's OK they plan to launch each day this week and KNRT will be there behind they dumpster ready for a scoop.

 

[Scarecrow71]

So today I decided to try and take on Second Dibs and plant a flag on Pol.  I'll state that I've only ever been to the Joolian system once, and that was in the current career game I'm playing in KSP2.  I've never been there in KSP1, and I have never attempted to land on any of the gas giant's moons.  So here goes nothing.

First, we start with a nice, stable, clean rocket.  And a night launch, no less.  Oh, look - Jeb snuck aboard the single-seat lander can.  I guess that if he is ok being hurtled through the cosmos with no snacks, then I'm ok with hurtling him through the cosmos with no snacks.  And you will notice that, once in orbit, you can see that this rocket actually turned out to be an SSTO.  Didn't plan that...but I didn't plan on using Jeb either, so maybe he's good luck?

You'll notice that we've got only a singular solar panel on this ship.  I tried to cut as much weight as possible here...and then forgot to remove all the monopropellant.  I was so worried about just getting this launched that I forgot.  Oh well.  After 4 years in space, and no snacks anywhere in sight, Jeb finally reaches Jool.

Ah, the jolly green giant.  Jeb was happy to have gotten this far.  Now he needs to just get to Pol.  Can he do it?

By jove - I mean, by Jool - he's done it!  I was going to actually circularize at something like 25km, but it turns out that a direct descent cost me only 50 m/s of dV more than circularizing, so Jeb made an administrative decision and parked this puppy instead of orbiting.

Bit of an incline there, but that's what happens when you set down on the side of one of the mold-covered cheese mountains on this rock.  Now that the easy part is done (easy?  really?  easy getting to Jool and landing on its farthest moon?), I get to try and get Jeb home.  Which was a chore.  I needed to do three correction burns mid-flight, and then I had to come in really hot and really fast.  By the time I got into Kerbin's SOI on the return trip, I only had 950 m/s of dV to orbit and land.  I came in at just over 3000 m/s, dipped into the atmosphere down to 50km, then clenched every orifice as I burned and aerobraked.  That little red bar comes up fast, and I know from experience that once it comes on you are almost certainly a goner.  But I somehow managed to not burn up and put this thing on the ground.  Granted, I had to do this maneuver like a half dozen times before it came out right, but I got it done!

All told, 9000 science points.  I have now landed on a Joolian satellite for the first time ever.  Wow!

[herbal space program]

2 hours ago, astrobond said:

As you can see later in this topic, I made a new version of this Lander, with... Vectors lol ! And yes, this is a better choice

Good to know,  and thanks for saving me the guesswork! The engines weren't so easy to make out behind the heat shields in the pic you posted, but I can now see that's indeed what they are. I've been noodling around with my own eventual 10-seat Eve lander, and I'm pretty sure it will end up looking a lot like yours. I figured I'd use it to do the Chonker and Husky missions before actually sending it to Eve, since it will be a good testing opportunity for all the complicated sub-systems, and besides, what other practical reason is there in this version of the game to make a 300+ ton lander?

Edited March 12 by herbal space program

[Aeolica]

my Kerbin spaceport / Station "St. Masha"

 

Edited March 12 by Aeolica

[Heretic391]

2 hours ago, Aeolica said:

my Kerbin spaceport / Station "St. Masha"

Wow that looks fantastic! Great work 

[stephensmat]

7 hours ago, Aeolica said:

my Kerbin spaceport / Station "St. Masha"

 

(Low Whistles) Thing of beauty. 

[Dakitess]

It looks really nice indeed ! How many FPS do you have with which kind of PC ?

[magnemoe]

Nice station, love the angle statue on top. 

Something not as good looking. 

My 300 ton Duna lander is back in orbit. This was an rather painful mission, first time it broke apart on parachute opening and save file did not work so had to go back almost a day. Redoing the sungazer mission and Duna 1 return. 
Yes should use more airbrakes and fewer grid fins  But staggering opening and doing an short burn on opening and it worked well. 
Fell over after landing but pointer a bit up because grid fins so just burned. 

[Socraticat]

I tried a new video format. Posted it over in cinematics. More there if you want to hear me ramble about it:

I'm working my way through a trip to Ike, Duna, and back to Kerbin, and this is just the first leg of the trip. I'll be posting more in a dedicated thread in Mission Reports as I go along. Here's the video:

 

[magnemoe]

More ugly ships. 

This is an Eve lander with integrated rover. The things in front is an separate miniature probe glider for recon of the more challenging landing sites. Its brakes fast and has an decent cross range so it will go down first many places. 
Then front heat shield. rover accent stage, grind fins upper heat shield before drag plates and an transfer stage. Sent 5 of them to Eve with an manned ship and a tanker. 

This was an pain to launch as we know fairings don't totally shield inside and this is very draggy on purpose so I had to launch straight up to 15 kilometer before starting gravity turn. The Eve accent stage turn over faster on Eve. 
 

Edited March 15 by magnemoe

[Casellina X]

I don't see how people can call their craft ugly when I have semi regular postings in this thread 

[Urus28]

After Tylo exploration, it's time to visit Laythe. It was an epic journey !

The mothership on low Laythe orbit.

Docking operation for floating lander assembly. Not much space, docking requires some precision...

Undocking...

Lander during Laythe atmospheric entry, it's quite hot but I tested it before...

Since I continue to fail at pinpoint landing I designed a seaplane for surface operation...

The seaplane is a good glider, so I had no problem to reach my lander even with a 100km error.

Exploration time !

Time to return to the lander...

In a pure kerbal way !

The late picture occured while I was trying to make this glorious picture

Time to take off !

Final docking operation.

Next stop is Vall !

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Urus28 said:

After Tylo exploration, it's time to visit Laythe. It was an epic journey !

The mothership on low Laythe orbit.

Docking operation for floating lander assembly. Not much space, docking requires some precision...

Undocking...

Lander during Laythe atmospheric entry, it's quite hot but I tested it before...

Since I continue to fail at pinpoint landing I designed a seaplane for surface operation...

The seaplane is a good glider, so I had no problem to reach my lander even with a 100km error.

Exploration time !

Time to return to the lander...

In a pure kerbal way !

The late picture occured while I was trying to make this glorious picture

Time to take off !

Final docking operation.

Next stop is Vall !

Very creative, could you share the seaplane with me? lander looks overbuild did you land with engines as no heat shield? Yes the empty tanks is flotation devices I assume  

[magnemoe]

For me its an changing of the guard. 
Eve mission 1 return to Kerbin. 



240 kg of hydrogen left. Now I could drop capsule on an flyby, but went into orbit first so decent margins. 
Eve Mission 2 doing braking burn and set up for Gilly intercept. 

5 Eve landers arrive in an month. And a tanker since I can not see how much circulating burn cost always send a tanker, will also do future Eve mission like under pressure and oceanic science. 
Very light loaded ship just carrying 2 mapping probes an probe lander for radiation on Gilly and some orbital taxis to transport kerbals during the landing events.

[Urus28]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Very creative, could you share the seaplane with me? lander looks overbuild did you land with engines as no heat shield? Yes the empty tanks is flotation devices I assume  

No problem to share this craft, fou can download the seaplane with the following link =)

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ap2ltA-u6yyxqzm5H4xjxuMBBpvk?e=y9dIHO

Yes the lander is overbuilt for Laythe alone, but I had to made Tylo final landing and ascent with it, so I wanted a good TWR.

For Laythe I was a little bit short in dV so the upper act as an additional fuel tank, at the end I was finally quite large in dV with a good 20% margin but it's in general the margin I design stuff with. For the descent, I had some problem with exploding ladders during tests and stability problems, so I decided to go with the pointy side and add some air breaks, the engines are only used to kill the final velocity in addition of parachutes.

The empty tanks are flotation devices, you are correct

[Casellina X]

I took this:

And headed to Duna. The original plan was a satellite + rover combo, but I said I should prove I can get there with one thing first. I'd been there once before in KSP 1 using the transfer tool and once in KSP 2 through happenstance. This time I went with intent. I parked this thing right on the edge of Kerbin's SOI and just waited. Nailed down a good transfer burn to set up for a near zero inclination orbit.

Duna and Ike came into view.  What I should have done is tried to set up the burn so that the nuclear stage would burn up in atmosphere, but I didn't want to get too cute before the job was done.

In position to burn to a ~100KM PE. It was cool watching Ike orbit around Duna through the time warp.

Had to circularize on the night side of Duna. Luckily this time I arrived with a plan, so no feelings of sheer terror trying to pan the camera around and seeing a black void in the midst of... a black void. The pictures in that post show the leaps and bounds KSP 2 has made graphically since the early days.

The atmosphere is noticeable on direct viewing, rather than just seeing it in the curvature of the horizon.


A brief word on the design - two semi-adequate solar panels, the most powerful communication dish we have (thus far), a small monoprop tank, and two Puff monoprop engines. This thing alone had enough TWR to launch itself on Kerbin, and nearly enough dV to put itself into orbit. Hopefully the range on the antenna is enough so that I don't randomly lose signal if/when I get a rover down there and Kerbin and Duna are on opposite sides of Kerbol.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Urus28 said:

No problem to share this craft, fou can download the seaplane with the following link =)

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ap2ltA-u6yyxqzm5H4xjxuMBBpvk?e=y9dIHO

Yes the lander is overbuilt for Laythe alone, but I had to made Tylo final landing and ascent with it, so I wanted a good TWR.

For Laythe I was a little bit short in dV so the upper act as an additional fuel tank, at the end I was finally quite large in dV with a good 20% margin but it's in general the margin I design stuff with. For the descent, I had some problem with exploding ladders during tests and stability problems, so I decided to go with the pointy side and add some air breaks, the engines are only used to kill the final velocity in addition of parachutes.

The empty tanks are flotation devices, you are correct

Thanks will try it out. 

I finished of science on Gilly, that is orbital surveys and radiation experiments. 
Tips, struts are usually nice for landing legs but not on Gilly, they flex a bit making it hard to land. I ended up killing velocity 10 meter above ground and land on the medium fixed antenna.  
Forgot to save any screenshots but easy to imagine. 
Land on engine or fuel tanks on Gilly  

15 minutes ago, Casellina X said:

I took this:

And headed to Duna. The original plan was a satellite + rover combo, but I said I should prove I can get there with one thing first. I'd been there once before in KSP 1 using the transfer tool and once in KSP 2 through happenstance. This time I went with intent. I parked this thing right on the edge of Kerbin's SOI and just waited. Nailed down a good transfer burn to set up for a near zero inclination orbit.

Duna and Ike came into view.  What I should have done is tried to set up the burn so that the nuclear stage would burn up in atmosphere, but I didn't want to get too cute before the job was done.

In position to burn to a ~100KM PE. It was cool watching Ike orbit around Duna through the time warp.

Had to circularize on the night side of Duna. Luckily this time I arrived with a plan, so no feelings of sheer terror trying to pan the camera around and seeing a black void in the midst of... a black void. The pictures in that post show the leaps and bounds KSP 2 has made graphically since the early days.

The atmosphere is noticeable on direct viewing, rather than just seeing it in the curvature of the horizon.


A brief word on the design - two semi-adequate solar panels, the most powerful communication dish we have (thus far), a small monoprop tank, and two Puff monoprop engines. This thing alone had enough TWR to launch itself on Kerbin, and nearly enough dV to put itself into orbit. Hopefully the range on the antenna is enough so that I don't randomly lose signal if/when I get a rover down there and Kerbin and Duna are on opposite sides of Kerbol.

Here is an useful tool to show transfer windows. 
https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/#/Kerbin/100/Eeloo/100/false/optimalPlaneChange/false/2/140
This showing an soon to come Eeloo mission. 
I generally just use this to get the date, then, put ship into LKO, plot an burn and try to match mostly that shown. 

And its no blocking of signals by bodies like in KSP 1, it might come later but not an issue now. 

[w.simmonite]

On 2/24/2023 at 2:31 PM, magnemoe said:

Hardware update first, ordered an 4070 ti today. an nice update from my 980 ti. skipped 3 gpu generations. 

And thought I was behind with my 1080ti,been trying to put my hand in mi pocket for 3 years now

Edited March 17 by w.simmonite

[Casellina X]

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Here is an useful tool to show transfer windows. 
https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/#/Kerbin/100/Eeloo/100/false/optimalPlaneChange/false/2/140
This showing an soon to come Eeloo mission. 
I generally just use this to get the date, then, put ship into LKO, plot an burn and try to match mostly that shown. 

And its no blocking of signals by bodies like in KSP 1, it might come later but not an issue now.

I've seen that a couple of times but haven't used it just yet. I'm "letting" KSP 2 deliver on the promise of an improved new player experience and part of that would be explaining to the player things like transfer windows. To its credit it has delivered, at least for Duna. And actually for this mission the window itself wasn't so much the issue, it was just having the craft in the right spot and the maneuver node in the right spot. Burning out of the Kerbin SOI directly to Duna was a new experience for me. Also signal blocking wasn't a consideration, just range. I've put some ill fated probes into orbit around Kerbol that I couldn't control because they got out a little too far from me. At least I think... I could be misremembering.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Casellina X said:

I've seen that a couple of times but haven't used it just yet. I'm "letting" KSP 2 deliver on the promise of an improved new player experience and part of that would be explaining to the player things like transfer windows. To its credit it has delivered, at least for Duna. And actually for this mission the window itself wasn't so much the issue, it was just having the craft in the right spot and the maneuver node in the right spot. Burning out of the Kerbin SOI directly to Duna was a new experience for me. Also signal blocking wasn't a consideration, just range. I've put some ill fated probes into orbit around Kerbol that I couldn't control because they got out a little too far from me. At least I think... I could be misremembering.

In KSP 1 I only used it to get future launch windows dates. I used the integrated tool in Mechjeb to make the trajectory. Things got complicated as I tended to send my large interplanetary ships to Minmus to refuel and then drop down to LKO for burn, saving almost an km/s and starting the burn faster. 
Signals could be blocked by planets and moons in KSP 1, you could drop relay satellites to reduce this also larger capsules could work as local control so it was rarely an problem. 

[Flush Foot]

With very careful use of throttle, thrust-limiter, planning, and camera pre-positioning, I was able to arrange for a Jool-capture by Tylo-encounter for 'only' 15-16 m/s of LH2 burn from 'deep-space' (though still between Kerbin's and Duna's orbits).

Screenshot is NOT from that burn but is of my craft on it's first Kerbin-escape, Apoapsis-raising burn (where I was getting ~18 FPS fairly regularly, my 4070 Ti-Super was around 30C, and my PC + monitors combined were pulling under 220W <US/CAN 120V grid>)

Craft went up in 2 launches; Command capsule through to the end of the SWERV stages (plus a fuel-tank/docking adapter under the central nuke-engine) then a Mammoth-powered pusher stage to make it easier to get kicked out of Kerbin's SOI.

[Ninemeister]

Testing a Lockheed D-21 drone carried piggyback on an SR-71 and launched at 18K alt. Still have to get down the handling of the D-21 and play with the wing positions a bit more. That and find a solution to the remote guidance unit overheating.
 

 

[Ninemeister]

Also been playing with a more specialized carrier for a belly drop. Was able to get up to 29K alt (almost 30k) and still have a bit of air-breathing power, but as soon as I pitched down is stopped the show. Again, the remote guidance unit overheating was an issue.
 

 

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, Ninemeister said:

Also been playing with a more specialized carrier for a belly drop. Was able to get up to 29K alt (almost 30k) and still have a bit of air-breathing power, but as soon as I pitched down is stopped the show. Again, the remote guidance unit overheating was an issue.
 

 

I assume the probe core is inside an cargo bay? if it was the 1.25 m probe front would separate.  Try moving it towards the rear. 
I used probe cores on SSTO and only thing giving heating warnings was wings on reentry. I used the long 1.25 m cargo bay for radiation sensor and other science, probe core batteries and rtg. 

Love the look of the carrier.