What did you do in KSP1 today?

[KerbMav]

Tried the LazTek's Dragon capsule - in a test save, I lack science parts - and stripped it of all parts I wont be using in my main save to get a loadable craftfile for after I deleted the launcher parts.

Like the idea of a capsule with 7 seats, although it is a bit op in regards to the stored monopropellant. (But will be needing something more handy for crew and science transfer from my space station, part count is also much lower that way.)

Finally got around to speed up time for my first asteroid encounter. Rendezvous successfully in second try (quickloaded after starting my burn to late and it zipped by at 1.4km) - docked and brought it into an orbit, changed alignment to 0.x degrees, lowered PE to 80km at Kerbin to get LKO science too, transmitted a field report of a sample and packed two more from high and low orbit each, one for return to Kerbin, one for more preliminary analysis at the space station - finally parked it at 400x400km an sent the capture ship to dock with the station.

No parachutes on this one ... we were in a hurry to catch that space potato ... *cough*

[DeepOdyssey]

Assembled my 700 ton 12km delta-v EVE lander on orbit.

[problemecium]

Today I experimentally verified that it is impossible to make a reusable SSTO with a 200-ton payload capacity that is able to land in water. No matter how many billions of parachutes I stick on the thing, the time between when the bottom of the ship touches the water and when it stops moving is just long enough for the fuel tanks to rage-quit and spontaneously explode.

[Piper]

I didn't get to do anything today, since I stated on my vacation today driving across Canada, in fact I'm writing this from a room in a motel (hrmm, I think I may have become addicted to KSP ). But oh boy, let me tell you what I did yesterday! Yesterday, I successfully landed Jebediah and Genedred on the surface of Moho, marking my very first manned landing on the surface of another planet. I have to say though, it went really, ah, "interestingly". I needed to use my massive refuelling vehicle to mostly deorbit my lander, because I wasn't 100% sure my lander had enough deltaV to land and take off again, even refuelled. The only thing was, because of how massive the two vehicles were, and the fact I'd be doing it with fission rockets, it took a couple of minutes just to kill about 400 deltaV. That part wasn't a huge deal, because I could just rotate the whole thing slowly to make sure I didn't build up a negative vertical velocity, keeping both vehicles above 30,000 meters. But once detached, I needed to get my refuelling vehicle back to orbit as soon as possible, since I needed to have it dock with the return vehicle to refuel it. But if ignored the lander while getting the refuelling vehicle back into a stable orbit, which would take another couple of minutes, the lander would of course crash into the ground. So while getting the refuelling vehicle back into orbit, I had to kill the engines, switch to the lander to kill the vertical velocity it had built up, and then switch back. Once the refueller was back in a stable orbit, I switched back to my lander for the last time to complete its decent. The only problem, was I had overshot my landing site. Thankfully by not too much, and I just burned into the appropriate direction, and headed over to the unmanned lander that I had landed the previous day (and a few months previously game time), and successfully touched down beside it. Heck, I nearly landed on the thing. Oh and ya, did I mention I was doing this all in the dark ? Originally, I wanted to land on the day side, but the first time the lander's orbit crossed the probe's landing site, it had just become night time, so I decided to make the long wait until the next time the orbit crossed the landing site, thinking that one would be in the day time. The problem was, because of Moho's quick rotation around Kerbol, the second crossing was still on the night side. Getting up on to the unmanned lander to collect all the science also proved interestingly since I didn't put a ladder on the thing . Using RCS to hover up beside the science instruments is WAY harder on Moho then it is on the Mun or Minmus. I fear I may have given Genedred a bit of a headache bumping into everything on the probe until I realized there was a part I could just stand on and collect everything with ease. I was also right about the lander not having enough deltaV on its own for landing and getting back into orbit again. Even using the refueller to kill a bunch of the lander's orbital velocity, I have JUST the right amount of fuel left to get back into orbit. Unlike my landing, I'm going to have to have a perfect ascent or Jeb and Genedred are going to end up learning about lithobraking.

After I go all the science into the lander, I switched back to the refueller, had it burn prograde at one of the intersecting nodes between it and the return vehicle, at apsis, which now was also the oppossing node, matched inclination with the return vehicle, and then returned to a circular orbit. After that, it was a pretty standard intercept to the return vehicle. When I came up to the return vehicle, I parked near it, and switched to the return vehicle. The return vehicle only had one docking port, which at the time was tied up with a science lab, that didn't have an extra docking port, so I needed to undock with the lab, dock with refueller, then return to the lab. Easy enough, between playing Orbiter for years and now playing KSP, I had done tons of dockings. This is when I discovered the apparently infamous "docking bug".

So that's where I'm sitting now, with Bill staring out the window of his command module as a glorified gas tank with the fuel he needs to get himself, Jebediah, and Genedred home, just a couple of dozen meters away, and he can't dock to it. I didn't have time yesterday to go correct the save file, reload, and continue, so I'll have to get back to it later. I'm also going to have to take some screenshots, darkside of Moho not withstanding.

[NoPanShabuShabu]

There's now a place on Eve called "Jeb's ford."

Not recommended for long distances.

[Deadpangod3]

spent the majority of the day fighting planets and moons so that they work properly, got sucked into nullspace several times, got nom'd by the kraken, struck a few mountains, raged at my color map edit not showing up.

[Duke23]

After lots of cussing, redesigning, and relaunching... I finally got my new prototype asteroid grabber up in orbit and poised to catch a 'roid that aims to come into my domain. It's nothing special and basically a slightly smaller and more fuel efficient version of the first interplanetary capable ship I built in .23. I debated back and forth about using MechJeb on this ship because sometimes I just feel dirty. I haven't used it in this save until this ship for anything except calculating DeltaV and gathering some info, but I really really hate long burns. If only you could just warp through them. I hope I'm not going about this completely wrong for my first asteroid heist but I don't think I am. Give me another 25 (game) days and we'll see. Just happy to have this ship up and running after being stuck in development hell for several (real life) days while I messed around with other stuff. But I had to get going because asteroids wait for no Kerbal!

Now what will I do with this asteroid once I latch onto it, assuming I succeed? Well I guess I have a few options.

-Botch the mission because my ship may or may not be underpowered for this and float out into Kerbol orbit for a while, possibly requiring tanker assistance. It's a class B so I should be good... (Right?)

-Bring it back to LKO and try to make a base on it / station out of it.

-Drop it (gently) on Kerbin and do... something with it.

-I'll get back to you on that.

[Superfluous J]

I spent far more time designing and building a rover for an upcoming video than I'll ever spend using said rover.

So nothing atypical

[Cirocco]

Fired up KSP when it was already late at night yesterday, figured I’d test some of the concepts for a no-parachute drop-pod I’ve been thinking of the past week. Wasn’t planning on doing anything more than rough concept and design testing because I could only play for about 30-40 minutes.

Turns out you can put together a perfectly functional drop-pod in that time.

So yeah, pretty happy with that: a drop-pod designed for a very fast, high-G entry which uses no parachutes at all, relying solely on separatron retrorockets to slow down at the last second and which reliably gets kerbals alive and well from orbit to the surface of Kerbin.

Fun fact: I can only get it to work from IVA view because you need to hit the retrorockets at EXACTLY 200 meters above ground level, and the radar altimeter in the cockpit view is perfect for that. So the drop pod is designed to hurl your kerbal at the ground at ludicrous speeds with a suicide burn at just the last 200m and the only way to (reliably) survive is to operate it from the pilot seat.

For the name, I’m still doubting between ODSK (Orbital Drop of Silly/Screaming Kerbals) pods or STEWD (Screaming The Entire Way Down) pods. Maybe SCREWD (Screaming, Crying or Raging the Entire Way Down) pods? The latter has a bit of a prophetic ring to it

[Duke23]

Uhh... This is a little bigger than I thought it was. My ship is mad at me now since I can't seem to balance the stupid thing out, but I'm working on getting rid of that escape trajectory we're on. Edit: Scratch that -- I got it "balanced enough" and I'm headed back to Kerbin... Very very slowly.

Edit again: Got it into a sort of circular ~2300km orbit of Kerbin. Not bad for coming half prepared.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Duke23

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

Got some Aperture Science flags to match the mood of my new save : no respawn, no save, no revert.

You have some ideas as to what should I add to this fresh save to add to the "expendables test subjects" feel ?

The goal is still to have no casualities, so I will use probed test runs as soon as I unlock the Stayputnik :-)

[Felsmak]

I just found out that you can still undock a part of a ship even if you only have one docking port - a discovery that will certainly revolutionize space travel.

[Kevin Kyle]

In keeping with todays "hot topic" I selected a class c asteroid, captured it and diverted it from Kerbin impact. I now have it in a stable elliptical orbit. Thats as far as I got. The intentions are to bring in into a LKO and eventually land it at the Space Center. So far so good. My monumental monument plans are looking good.

[michaelhester07]

I worked on my new Hermes 1 lander carrier, showing above.

Each lander detaches from the main ship and has a single external seat for a pilot. They also have probe cores so they can go retrieve a failed landing autonomously. The design itself popped out from what I call the Lawn Chair (below). Each Hermes 1 lander has 2500 deltaV. It can land on mun, take off, and get back to orbit for rendezvous with the mothership.

Kerbal gets out of the can under the engines,climbs up, gets in the seat, and hits the button. Bill is still in orbit.

A fun note... Thanks to the Hermes 1 I now know how much Bob Kerman weighs... 95 kg.

The Hermes 2 will have reusable landers that can dock to the mothership for refueling.

Edited May 14, 2014 by michaelhester07

[corvustech]

1. Had a kerbal discover that Mun hurts a lot when you thrust too fast on EVA.

2. Loaded an old failed munar mission (it overshot) that was getting close to a possible asteroid only to find that the command module pilot was panicked, the lunar module can pilot was just static and not responding (I.e. dead) , the navball read NaN and the dial was cycling "7777777","6666666", etc. At 0 there was an explosion and blackness I had to leave the game and reload to fix. Apparently my first Kraken is the Hell Kraken. Creepy but in space Noone can hear you skream.

[cantab]

Got some Aperture Science flags to match the mood of my new save : no respawn, no save, no revert.

You have some ideas as to what should I add to this fresh save to add to the "expendables test subjects" feel ?

The goal is still to have no casualities, so I will use probed test runs as soon as I unlock the Stayputnik :-)

It will result in casualties, but run your entire space program on kethane. You may need to move the small converter, small tank, and kerbal unreconstitutionator into a lower tech node.

[Hallofo]

Lets See...

- I Finally put together a modded KSP configuration* that I'm happy** with

- Started on a Duna "There and Back Again" cruiser

- Started testing a science rover for the Mun/ Minumus

*Based around FAR, Kethane, DREC, Kerbal Engineer, KAS and a few others

** "Happy" is a strong word. "Somewhat realistically pissed off that I need to worry about deep-fried and mach-broken Kerbals" is closer.

[Pwnstarr]

It will result in casualties, but run your entire space program on kethane. You may need to move the small converter, small tank, and kerbal unreconstitutionator into a lower tech node.

Haha cool idea. I wonder what it would take to mine kethane, convert to fuel, roll it up the launchpad to fill up your rockets... And ONLY fill rockets like that. Hardcore.

[boa3532]

Fired up KSP when it was already late at night yesterday, figured I’d test some of the concepts for a no-parachute drop-pod I’ve been thinking of the past week. Wasn’t planning on doing anything more than rough concept and design testing because I could only play for about 30-40 minutes.

Turns out you can put together a perfectly functional drop-pod in that time.

So yeah, pretty happy with that: a drop-pod designed for a very fast, high-G entry which uses no parachutes at all, relying solely on separatron retrorockets to slow down at the last second and which reliably gets kerbals alive and well from orbit to the surface of Kerbin.

Fun fact: I can only get it to work from IVA view because you need to hit the retrorockets at EXACTLY 200 meters above ground level, and the radar altimeter in the cockpit view is perfect for that. So the drop pod is designed to hurl your kerbal at the ground at ludicrous speeds with a suicide burn at just the last 200m and the only way to (reliably) survive is to operate it from the pilot seat.

For the name, I’m still doubting between ODSK (Orbital Drop of Silly/Screaming Kerbals) pods or STEWD (Screaming The Entire Way Down) pods. Maybe SCREWD (Screaming, Crying or Raging the Entire Way Down) pods? The latter has a bit of a prophetic ring to it

`

I'd love to see the craft file.

[User Unrelated]

I somehow got to an apoapsis of almost 100km with an SSTO that couldn't actually circularize...

I was testing a prototype ion drive system that used a near-future engine that created 28kN of thrust... still not enough, because the thing also had to carry around a small nuclear reactor to provide the ~800 electric charge per second the engine needed.

It got to space fine, but didn't really go much further.

Then, I came back and tried to replace the ion drive with lighter LF/OX stuff, and the game WOULD NOT STOP CRASHING

I had to re-boot almost 4 times

so I gave up and went back to rockets.

I'm very surprised the plane held together. It was a mostly uncontrolled ascent, I just watched as it wiggled and flopped around at mach-whatever

[RW-1]

Last night, decided to create a small disposable probe, could either transmit science or await removal by a kerbalnaut.

Launched, the looked at what had options for, dres looked favorable, matched orbits and had an intercept planned into SOI.

Coming up on node ... Can't move ... Argh.

Kerbol angles. Booster blocked solar panels from charging.

All was not lost, if I wanted to stay in Kerbol orbit and await re-charging.

Terminated it though.

Ahh, the fun and relaxation.

I currently now have:

Stations around Kerbin, Mun and Minimus.

A lander with rover on the mun. Other lander is docked at Minimus Station One.

[Andrew Hansen]

Today I uploaded another episode of my series "Colonizing Tylo." In this episode I sent another Tylo ferry to my base to transfer Kerbals to and from Tylo's surface. I also organized my base a bit and moved some modules closer together. This was really hard to do because my base is on a slope that makes everything want to tip over and explode when I lift off from it. But eventually, I was successful!

[Grin]

I made a small plane that does 500 knots at 2200m.

[soulsource]

Today I finished the systematic study of the Mun by landing in the last two biomes I hadn't visited before: the Northern Basin and the Southwest Crater. Afterwards Bob, Calbas and Kirlas left both, lander and orbital station behind and returned to Kerbin. When checking the results I realized that I missed some of the possible reports, simply because I forgot to get crew reports from some of the biomes. Nevertheless, the whole mission yielded 6428.4 science points - enough to unlock all remaining items in the tech tree. So, no need to worry about the missed science. If I ever want to land on the Mun again, there is now a perfectly working science lab with a working lander docked to it and enough fuel for at least two landings waiting in munar orbit. All it needs is crew, and maybe some additional fuel if the target is far away from the equator.

Since I have unlocked the whole tech tree, I think I'll postpone the planned systematic study of Minmus, and go to (and also quite important: return from) other planets instead.

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Edited May 8, 2015 by soulsource
Changed from iframe to imgur tag

[Frank_G]

I continued designing my interplanetary exploration vessel. I think it will be ready for launch this weekend. Cant wait to go on my first grand tour. Next time with pictures.