What did you do in KSP2 today?

[Ninemeister]

21 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

*Facepalm* For some reason I saw RATO, Rocket Assisted Take Off.  

No worries!

[stephensmat]

Still hitting my head against the wall with a spaceplane, so I've shifted to the other project.

With the 'Space Truckin' parts unlocked, I've been able to use the stock Rover. It's five times bigger and more stable than anything I've ever built myself, and has two jet engines on the back.

I decided I could find a better use for the jet engine portion, since the wheels were electric. I put in some girders and wired in every experiment I could. My smaller rovers only had room for Sniffers and Science Jr Jr.

After that, I spent some time experimenting with getting the things to other worlds. Duna was the appropriate first step, since it has the most use there. Mun/Minmus/Ike/Gilly are just too small to be worth putting a large Rover on them.

Finally, I built a structure over the top and ran a fuel line for landing. Duna has one extra advantage: Parachutes work. The hard part isn't launching big things, it's landing them safely.

I didn't even bother with a 'drive section'. The heavy Boosters I've been using had enough fuel to make the transition to Duna orbit leftover after takeoff.

But I'm embarrassed to say that when I began deorbiting, I forgot to take a screenshot until after the fairings were ejected. You can see the sections flying away in the pic:

It's not pretty, but it's detachable.  Three parachutes gave it a falling speed of 20m/s. A few engines with fuel lines, and just enough fuel for five seconds of deceleration gave it a textbook landing.

Detach the landing section, and I've got a fully running Science Rover. The experiments run during the landing were enough for me to test everything else. During my 'Recharging Stops', I can transmit findings will stationary, and still be filling up the battery thanks to retractable Solar Arrays.

After mucking with the wheel settings, I can keep a comfortable pace of 30m/s on open ground. My goal is to go around to all the biomes, collecting points, and then meet up with the much smaller rover and lander I sent to check out the anomalies, and get their samples too.

If I ever get a proper spaceplane working, I'll do a grand tour of all my landing sites, collecting the samples from each of them.

Oop, don't forget to mark the location.

 

Given the ugly, yet successful changes made to this thing from the Stock version, I've named it the 'Frankenrover'.

[Meecrob]

More testing...

 

Edited April 8 by Meecrob

[stephensmat]

Okay. So I've been experimenting with 'Kerbal Movers' for the Eve Mission, and Future Colonies.

Spaceplanes have been the bane of my existence in this game. I've never managed a SSTO that works in atmo, and vacuum. Not even in KSP1 have I managed it. Yesterday I came up with the Mk3, which wouldn't even get off the ground.

So today, the MK-4.

Now I know what you're thinking: There's a hole in that plane. But it kept the weight low enough. The 'Passenger Module' up the front can fit 20 Kerbals. 16 Passengers, 4 in the cockpit.

Jets and Hydrogen engines are the most efficient in the game. Using the girders instead of a fuselage, I was able to lay some small methane tanks down the middle.

The question i had to ask: Why do I even want air-breaking jet engines, considering this is going to be primarily a spacecraft. The answer, of course, was for landing, back on Kerbin.

But it has to fly first.

It was weaving back and forth on the maneuver node for the last of the flight. With the hydrogen tanks emptying out, it was too 'front heavy'. It used almost all the fuel the thing had, but I got to a circular orbit of 120km.

Finally achieved the goal that's been eluding me for hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay across the entire franchise. And amazingly, as I was looking at the view, I had notes for the MK-5. For instance, I didn't need the shuttle passenger section. If I used the smaller 4 seater sections, I could have secured them in the trusses, and mounted them further back, the way I did with the methane tanks. Solved the weight and the balace with one change. (Smacks forehead) Duh.

But, this is proof of concept, so I keep going.

As well all know, the only trick of spaceflight in KSP is getting off Kerbin. Long have I used 'Drive Sections'.

An XXL Hydrogen tank, with a Hydrogen Engine. Standard Drive Section for all my interplanetary transfers, but this one is modified with a L-Sized Methane Tank on top. The reason for this is two fold.

1) It lets me refuel the jet engines, as well as the Rocket engines on my Spaceplane when they dock together.

2) It extends the medium docking port out forward. You can't really see it with the SWERV engines blazing so brightly, but between them, on that truss, is a Docking Ring.

It took a stupid amount of effort, but the docking is complete, and the plane is fully refueled, witha  drive to push it out of Kerbin's SOI.

I'm going to make a run for Eve, eventually. I might save that for the MK5 after all.

But in the meantime, a version of this craft is going to be making landings on Duna, Ike, Gilly, Moho, and Dres, as well as the Moons of Jool, to gather samples taken, and return them back to Kerbin. Remember what I said about how the 'Transfer Stage' is standard issue, for all my flights to other planets? That means I've got hydrogen tanks floating in orbit around several other planets and moons, waiting to pass on their remaining hydrogen to this one.

And with that, the return flights can finally be made. Once I kick out the Eve passengers, I can load up the one-way trip Kerbalnauts, leave the landers and labratoies behind, and bring them all back in this passenger jet.

[astrobond]

I made @ralanboyle Challenge...

 

That was fun to play without reaction wheels xD

[Casellina X]

I made a Minmus science hopper. I wanted to unlock the next node on the launcher portion of the tech tree. Around about 3200 dV to help me get around.

This was after a few hops yesterday. I did a couple of biomes and it seemed as if that was about it.

However one more hop showed the difference between Sheet Ice and Arctic Ice.

I did take a trip towards the south pole but it didn't look like the biome was going to be anything other than Snowdrifts or maybe Craters, so I got back into a high orbit and went on home.

Somehow the burn put me in a near polar orbit so I decided to aim for the cap.

For whatever reason I turned the force on the decoupler down to 5Nm. Sure it decoupled, but it didn't create any separation. I had to go through all manner of wiggling to get free.

I was coming in H-O-T, HOT. The detached portion of the craft lasted maybe 10 seconds? I was concerned that I wouldn't slow up enough for the parachute to deploy.

But fortunately I was able to get down. Banked somewhere over 1400 science from the trip. Returning those samples is critical.

Unlocked the first LG parts and put this together. It was the sustainer and not the launcher, which was a little disappointing, but I can still put it to use. It wasn't until I was firmly in atmosphere that I realized... you didn't put a decoupler dummy. No worries though, I had about 1k dV and enough TWR to save things. Well not really. This thing bled no speed through aero losses, so I was ~20km and above 2k m/s velocity. A couple of burns did help, but the larger issue was the rising temperatures. I thought I had it under control.

I did not have it under control. The gauge dropped as low as 30%, and then crept its way up to critical, then poof. I then had an ICBM en route.

[Ninemeister]

Playing with more aircraft. Got off work today a little earlier than normal, so had some time to build an A-10 Thunderbolt-ish aircraft I couldn't stop thinking about trying out. She handles very well for a quick bolt-together without much fine tuning.

[Vanamonde]

17 hours ago, Ninemeister said:

Playing with more aircraft. Got off work today a little earlier than normal, so had some time to build an A-10 Thunderbolt-ish aircraft I couldn't stop thinking about trying out. She handles very well for a quick bolt-together without much fine tuning.

It looks like an A-10 had a baby with an SR-71. :) 

[Urus28]

Spoiler

My Mun rover was close from a landmark I had to visit...

[Casellina X]

Ugly orbital station for the Mun. Yes loyal followers, I continue to dance around a proper Duna mission. I don't know if I'm overcomplicating things or what, but getting there a third time is really beating me down. 

25km orbit which passes almost directly over one of my previous missions.

This was supposed to be an uncrewed mission. It wasn't until after I took the previous picture and turned the HUD back on that I realized Tim C. had stowed away... The solar panel placement is not EVA friendly so when I did EVA, he kept colliding with the craft. After getting free, somehow that turned my almost perfect 25km (25,119/25,096) orbit into a 29km AP/24km PE. I shudder to calculate the eccentricity of that.

[NexusHelium]

20 minutes ago, Casellina X said:

I continue to dance around a proper Duna mission. I don't know if I'm overcomplicating things or what, but getting there a third time is really beating me down.

It's easy. Just get good 

But seriously. Getting interplanetary is not the easiest right now (and sometimes not even outside of Kerbin) so I wish you the best of luck and may the kraken slayers bless your voyage.

Edited April 26 by NexusHelium

[Urus28]

Today I decided to go for a little trip on Kerbin.

In general, I'm ok with KSP 2 graphics, but flying at high altitude at night close to the pole gives quite ugly results.

With a little bit of sunlight, it's getting better.

Rover deployment close to the target.

Spoiler

So, the goal of my mission is on the horizon ! I want to place a scientific station on the top of K2 with a rover.

Of course, the terrain is difficult, and it's climbing !

We have a very nice view from here !

My team is on top of K2, deploying the scientific station and taking samples.

Mission accomplished, time to go back to the plane, going up was difficult, going down is very dangerous !

Hopefully the team has been able to reach the plane and dock the rover, time to return to the KSC, but not without a little goodbye to this beautiful mountain.

 

[Casellina X]

4 hours ago, Urus28 said:

In general, I'm ok with KSP 2 graphics, but flying at high altitude at night close to the pole gives quite ugly results.

What was your altitude? I didn't notice the repeating texture on my flight, but I probably never got higher than 3 or 4km.

[Urus28]

16 minutes ago, Casellina X said:

What was your altitude? I didn't notice the repeating texture on my flight, but I probably never got higher than 3 or 4km.

I was flying around 8000m.

[Meecrob]

19 hours ago, Casellina X said:

What was your altitude? I didn't notice the repeating texture on my flight, but I probably never got higher than 3 or 4km.

Try again at dusk. Get above the clouds and aim the camera back down towards Kerbin.