What did you do in KSP2 today?

[Ninemeister]

12 hours ago, magnemoe said:

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. 

Thank you! Right, the small 1.25m one. I only seem to have trouble with them overheating when put somewhere inline between an intake and engine. I moved it back a couple of positions before, but still experienced overheating. I'll try as far back as it can go and see what happens. I remember in KSP1 I kept having issues with the core not only overheating but causing a massive amount of drag when used in the same manner.

[Scarecrow71]

For about the last week, I've been attempting to get a lander to Tylo to complete the Tylo Monument mission.  And instead of trying to land a Kerbal there, get a bunch of science, and then try to get them home, I decided I was going to use a probe to do it.  And by probe, I mean a gadget-less thing with legs that I could set down near the monument to simply get credit for the mission and leave it there.  So I built a large rocket, stuck a probe on top of it...and then watched as time and again I either didn't have enough fuel to land OR I had just enough to land, but far enough away from the monument that I simply couldn't get the credit for it.  What little hair I have was starting to get pulled out of my already-bald head, and I was getting frustrated with it.

So I took a little break - maybe overnight at best - and came back with the idea that maybe I should use a rover instead.  Something simple, with wheels, a solar panel/battery combo, and a really decent antenna so I could drive this thing all over the place no matter where I landed.  The problem I have always had with rovers, though, is getting them up into space.  I could never quite seem to build a craft that was decent enough to get them up into orbit and then off to wherever I needed them, primarily because rovers are horizontal and rockets are vertical.  I spent a few hours actually drawing stuff with a pencil to see if I could get over that hump, and sure enough, I did.  Came up with an idea, and I built it.  Or, rather, a decent facsimile of it, anyhow.  But I built the rover, and the payload bay...and then got stuck on the rocket itself.  It seemed that no matter how many boosters and engines on this thing that I either couldn't get off the ground (not enough TWR on Kerbin at launch) or not enough fuel to make the trip to Tylo.  I spent DAYS trying to brute-force this thing and, at one point, nearly said "Fuggehdabbotit, I'm gonna cheat this thing to Tylo orbit".  But I stepped back, didn't cheat, and came up with a new plan.

I decided to built this thing in pieces in orbit of Kerbin.  Far easier to get individual pieces up and put them together in orbit.  This would then guarantee that I get enough dV on the lander, enough dV for the transfer stage, enough dV to orbit, etc.  So I started building Iah III (pronounced yah three) in pieces, beginning with the rover and the lander/cargo bay.

A bit of digression, if you will.  I've been naming craft after ancient Egyptian gods/goddesses/deities lately, and Iah simply means "Moon".  Tylo is a moon of Jool, and so this one stuck.  Iah, by the way, is sometimes considered to be the adult form of Khonsu, but very little is known of them as they were "absorbed" by Khonsu and/or Thot some time prior to the 16th century BC.  You can read what little Wikipedia has on them:

Iah - Wikipedia

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I am beginning with the lander and cargo area.  So here we have Iah III on the launch pad:

A lovely night-time launch.  For some reason, night launches just seem right, don't they?  But, continuing on, here is a shot of the lander in orbit (roughly 156km) after decoupling/undocking the ascent stage:

And finally, a shot to show the rover inside the cargo bay:

The center cone is the large cargo bay nose cone, so it does open.  When I get this thing onto Tylo, it will undock from the interior of the cargo bay and, hopefully, drive out the front.  Again, hopefully.

The only issue I currently have here is that I only have the medium docking ports and not the large ones.  Hence, the large-to-medium structural attachment.  Shouldn't be too much of an issue, but it is what it is.  So now we have the first of several pieces up in orbit!

[Urus28]

I continue my mission around Jool ! Today Vall is the destination. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that Vall is the only body in KSP 2 without any dedicated mission.

Since there was no special place to reach, the Vall mission was pretty easy.

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, Ninemeister said:

Thank you! Right, the small 1.25m one. I only seem to have trouble with them overheating when put somewhere inline between an intake and engine. I moved it back a couple of positions before, but still experienced overheating. I'll try as far back as it can go and see what happens. I remember in KSP1 I kept having issues with the core not only overheating but causing a massive amount of drag when used in the same manner.

An tiny probes and some small reaction wheels in an cargo bay works just as well, put in some batteries as its room for them. 

[Kimera Industries]

4 hours ago, Urus28 said:

I continue my mission around Jool ! Today Vall is the destination. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that Vall is the only body in KSP 2 without any dedicated mission.

Since there was no special place to reach, the Vall mission was pretty easy.

Well, there is the Canyon.

Spoiler

The one with water in it.

[Ninemeister]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

An tiny probes and some small reaction wheels in an cargo bay works just as well, put in some batteries as its room for them. 

Omg that worked! Thank you so much!

[Madishmike]

Added some house / trance beats to the V.A.B music for quicker builds 

 

[Urus28]

20 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

Well, there is the Canyon.

  Reveal hidden contents

The one with water in it.

That sounds interesting ! I should send a rover there =D Well that will be after Eeloo...

[magnemoe]

19 hours ago, Ninemeister said:

Omg that worked! Thank you so much!

Nice, cargo bays are nice. Its also easy to fit an rover seat inside, here I would use two small as it looks like one is to narrow for kerbal to easy enter and board. 

3 hours ago, Urus28 said:

That sounds interesting ! I should send a rover there =D Well that will be after Eeloo...

An diving bell would be more fitting. Has unlocked them but not used them yet, Eve mission 2 focus on land and Jool 2 was canceled because Eve 2 eating up resources

[Urus28]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

An diving bell would be more fitting. Has unlocked them but not used them yet, Eve mission 2 focus on land and Jool 2 was canceled because Eve 2 eating up resources

I unlocked it yesterday.... I have to figure how it works. But my present priority is still Eeloo. It's the last  body to visit in my game =)

[Urus28]

Destination of the day : Pol !

Since I have plenty of dV with my lander, I spent quite some time at visiting different radioactive places of this little moon.

No eruption to report at volcanoes.

Time to return to the mothership.

[stephensmat]

So. Today's mission: Recovering Samples.

I've been making flights out, but the 'early' Tier Science means it's hard to get long range craft that can return to Kerbin. As a result, I leaned into it. I put everything into Science Production, and sent my ships out on one-way missions.

Without local refueling capabilities, the only move is to build whole spacecraft for the sole purpose of launching fuel tanks out to everywhere a mission has gone before.

Or, I could send out a probe mission to collect Samples, and bring them back.

After conversations with the Forum, I made the least expensive ship capable of reentry and docking that I could, and stuck a rover seat on it.

Docking turned out to be time consuming. Each 'Orbiting Station' sent out a Kerbalnaut for EVA, and thus transferred the Samples. (Science Station Orbiting Mun is not included in this picture)

After doing the loop of Mimnus and Mun, I've already collected over 1500 science points from the samples. Next stop is to try landing on Duna and bringing it home. I put this thing in front of an XL Hydrogen Drive, like my usual stations, and I can send it out to the far worlds. The XL Drives are so efficient, I can even refuel from all the booster drives that are still out there. There are plenty of them. Every Planet/Moon that I sent a Science Station to? The Drive sections are still in orbit from the insertion/deceleration burns.

And on that note, my outer planets missions? Just got to Dres and Eeloo.

First time I've ever reached a planet with Rings. Not sure how dangerous those rings are, so I came in at an angle off the ecliptic, and made my orbit inside the rings before I changed the inclination. Dres is... interesting to look at, with that 'ridge' right around the equator.

Eeloo is a little infuriating, because

Spoiler

once I got into the SOI, Mission Control told me the next mission to drive a Lander on it.

And that's the one bit of equipment I didn't bring on this flight.

Next step is to land, but I'll do that tomorrow.

[Urus28]

Final Jool moon of my mission : Bop !

Taking some precious samples !

I really like the green crater, but the place was finally very dark and not so interesting for pictures... Here is a shot from space !

Spoiler

How do you fossilize something in the vacuum of space ? I believe it's actually a sculpture !

My next stop is now Kerbin =)

[Scarecrow71]

Continuing on with my mission to Tylo.  I have been experimenting with different engine configurations for the transfer stage, flopping between nuclear and deep space and conventional methalox engines...and none of them give me both the dV and TWR I am looking for.  It's no secret that I don't like the DSM's due to their really low TWR (and yes, I am aware that everyone thinks that TWR in deep space doesn't mean anything).  Not sorry, but I don't want to do 10 minute burns to slow down when going interplanetary.  Once we get to interstellar, that's a whole different ball of wax.  But interplanetary?  I don't want to do it.  I shouldn't have to be forced into doing that simply to get the dV I want/need.  I think it's a poor design choice to say "Hey, you spent all those science points on these engines...but they are heavy and you corner like a dead whale on roller skates".  That's a development thing, not an engineering one.

But I digress.

I settled on conventional methalox, with a design that requires multiple launches and docking to do what I need to do.  Which is, of course, transfer from LKO to Jool, then from Jool to Tylo.  I don't necessarily need to orbit Jool, and I don't necessarily need to orbit Tylo.  I'd prefer to use Jool as a gravity well for the turn, and I really want to orbit Tylo as I can then plan a better landing.  But, that's for later.  Here we have the transfer stage sitting on the launch pad waiting to go up into the cosmos.

If you can see the image clearly, you'll know that I have 24 Clydesdales there for the first stage, followed by 10 Mammoth's for the second.  And that's just the launcher; the actual transfer stage has 7 Labradoodles on it.  And see where the antenna are?  On the bottom of those arms, directly opposite the antenna, are medium docking ports; I am planning on launching this thing 3 total times, docking the central column here to the lander, and then a pair of the labradoodle transfer stages, one to either side.  Should give me enough dV and TWR to do what I want.  So here we are with the beginning of the transfer stage docked with the lander:

With a Munar photo-bomb, no less.  I tried to get this lined up so it looked like a perfect X when looking at it, but I accidentally hit the W key as I was docking, and we are off-center a bit.  Doesn't matter in the long run; lining it up perfectly was only for aesthetic purposes anyhow.  But I at least have one of 3 transfer stages docked with the lander.  Just one question:  Can someone tell me what the frak this cloud is:

I noticed this at launch, and thought "It's just a low-lying cloud".  But then it behaves like it's engine exhaust, and moves away from the craft until it disappears.  Comes back every 2-3 minutes in a repeating pattern:  spawn near the ship, flutter about, move away as if engine exhaust, disappear, rinse, repeat.  Not sure what this is, other than a bug that I may have to report.  But has anyone else seen this?

For what it's worth, I'll try to do that other 2 launches tomorrow; I spent nearly 4 hours on the transfer stage today alone, and then fought with the kraken over whether or not strut physics should actually apply when you have them connected in a non-clipping fashion.  I think they should, but the kraken thinks otherwise.  And while I won the battle today, it wasn't without losing a whole bunch of troops to that things' appetite.

Edited March 26 by Scarecrow71

[LorenzTheExplorer]

Tried to land on Tylo, but faild  

[Urus28]

After landing on all Jool's moons, it's time to go home ! Metalox tank and lander will remain in the Jool system.

Final staging around Kerbin, I was finally quite large on fuel for this mission.

Since my spaceship has no return vehicle, I designed and launched a space plane for the crew return.

Final docking around Kerbin.

I decided to go for a space plane to be sure to land at the KSC, my crew deserve that !

Final shot of my Jool 5 mission... I gained something like 74k science points in this mission, and still not unlocked the complete tech tree.

This was my first Jool 5 mission in a KSP game, I planned to do one in KSP1 but lost my interest because the tech tree was already fully unlocked.

So it's a little victory for KSP2 to give me the motivation to achieve this classical mission. This despite the completely crazy number of bugs I suffered during this game !

My next goal is now Eeloo !

[Casellina X]

A few minutes of downtime between, ahem, meetings, I decided to send a fuel tank into orbit to satisfy the side mission. I'm beating around the bush on sending a crewed mission to Duna because I fear it will be one way.

I don't think I'll ever actually use it but you never know.

[Poppa Wheelie]

I flew the same 300t payload to Minmus, and then to Duna.  One launch.

[Vanamonde]

23 hours ago, LorenzTheExplorer said:

Tried to land on Tylo, but faild  

These things happen.

[Kimera Industries]

On 3/26/2024 at 4:06 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

They are heavy and you corner like a dead whale on roller skates.

I just pictured this vividly. It was... quite the mental image, to say the least.

[Scarecrow71]

Well, I finally got the entirety of my Tylo mission docked and put together in LKO.

If you'll take a look at that last image, you'll see something that's missing.  Namely, a labradoodle engine on the central column.  I am not sure how that happened, but I think that explains why I had that odd cloud the other day.  But, I finally have this put together and I'm ready to try taking this thing to Tylo.  My concern here is that the dV calculated in LKO right now shows 6,000 (ish; I'm rounding up a bit here), but the VAB showed I'd have like 8000ish.  I cannot stress to the developers enough that the dV calculations need to be fixed.  Pronto.  We cannot keep putting missions together and assuming we have enough based on the bad math in the core loop.

Anyhow, I'm going to try sending this thing off later today.  We shall see what happens.

[Scarecrow71]

And I have completed my Tylo mission.  I was able to get into Tylo's SOI like I predicted/hoped for - using Jool as a gravity well, and then getting a "free" encounter with Tylo.  The odd thing is that I ended with a Joolian Ap of 5+ million km, which took over a year to get to after entering Jool's SOI.  And then another year to get the Tylo encounter.  So 2+ years just to get to Tylo.  Which I did:

So, you'll notice that Stage 1 has 950 m/s of dV remaining, while the lander stage - Stage 2 - has 0.  Which is why I brought up the Resource panel, so you can see that the tanks on Stage 2 actually do have fuel in them.  And I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is.  Is this due to the engines on Stage 2 not being activated?  Or is it because of the docking port separating Stages 1 and 2?  Either way, unsure.  Anyhow, I was able to put the lander on the ground on Tylo:

All that building, and the lander stage exploded upon impact.  The rover inside survived, which is good.  But the lander stage apparently had design issues.  When I pointed this thing Retrograde (using the probe core on the rover as the control point) and then fired the engines, the thing spun wildly end-over-end.  I think that's due to it being unbalanced inside; the rover sat near the back of the cargo bay, making that end heavier than the front.  I like the rover design, but the lander needs work.  Anyhow, driving off to the monument.

Spoiler

I really REALLY REALLY like the rover design.  It's simple, effective, and is responsive to commands.  Unfortunately, brakes don't work unless you hold the B key, so unless you are on a perfectly flat piece of terrain, this thing rolls.  Might need langing legs attached to keep it from rolling around.

Anyhow...

Spoiler

That's it for the story missions?  "Hey, build a rocket.  Ok, now fly it.  Got that down, so now go to these 4 monuments...and we're done."  Really?

That was a complete let-down.  I haven't even unlocked all of Tier 3, and all I've got left are side missions.  Sure, I could have done science on Tylo and sent it back, but I didn't feel the need.  I did not realize that the story ended here.  And I'm hoping that, once we get interstellar, the story continues and we get more missions to prepare us for that.  Either that, or let us create our own missions so we can add stuff to the game.  Even if we don't get science points for doing the mission, let us add our own stuff.

So the LKSA (Las Kerbas Space Agency) has touched down on Tylo.  Where to next?  I'm not sure, but I need a break after the multiple weeks I spent on this one mission alone.

[Kimera Industries]

47 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

"We're done."  Really?

That was a complete let-down.

I agree with you. Four story missions don't feel like much. The game should spur you to land on every celestial body at least once.

[Scarecrow71]

8 minutes ago, Kimera Industries said:

I agree with you. Four story missions don't feel like much. The game should spur you to land on every celestial body at least once.

It does...with side missions.

[Kimera Industries]

22 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

It does...with side missions.

But they are side missions. Not exactly spurring. I'm sure it helps, though.