What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Vaporo]

I finally landed a lander on Ike, completing my list of planets to land on.

[Concentric]

Decided I wanted to deliver something in a box, so I built a little box out of 5 2x2 panels, with radial decouplers holding 4 1x1 panels to form the bottom of the box. Then, I carefully constructed a cargo to go within, so that it just about fit, put some rockets and control onto it and saved the filled box as a subassembly.

Next was the destination. I hadn't landed on Minmus' Great Flats yet, and they were a nice, flat area that was rather nearby. I decided to send Jeb, Bill and Bob there with the box. So, I built a ship for it:

Got orbit, matched inclinations, performed a twist-docking maneuver and then set off. You may note a small issue here, if you are careful. I kicked myself when I realised it.

Bill and Bob got in the lander cans, and Jeb stayed in the capsule. Then, the box and the lander cans were decoupled. Bob descended first and I immediately noticed another problem: the lander can was upside down. I used the IVA a little to keep an eye on the radar altimeter (forgetting that the Great Flats surface is at "sea level") and the vertical speed, but it was still a little disorienting.

Then Bill followed, about an orbit later. This time, I used IVA a little more, to look at the anti-maneuver marker for the descent, and later in the same way as before. Landed very close, within 40m of Bill.

This is the point at which I realised my big mistake: the rockets on the box had no way of getting at the box's fuel supply. Yeah. Whoops. So the box was stuck in orbit until I terminated it and sent a replacement. The first version of the replacement had fuel lines and was strapped atop an extremely obsolete rocket which ran out of charge on the way out. The second gave each of the box's rockets its own, independent fuel supply, bringing more fuel than the original had brought, and was sent out by the old Aleph Tank Lifter, because any of my other subassembly lifters was even more extremely overkill. The rocket had a probe core, a Z-4k and two RTGs put on it, so it would absolutely not run out of charge on the way out, and could deorbit itself.

In the above image, you can see the lander cans with Bill and Bob in, if you look closely. They're the two little specks on the left. The one on the right is the shadow of the box. (No images were taken of the failed replacement attempt, nor of the rocket that got the successful one to this point.)

Special Delivery for a Mr. B. Kerman?

Landed the box almost right atop Bob, and noticed I didn't really have very much fuel left. Can you guess what is in the box? If you said "An ascent system", you'd be half-right. I opened the box, set down the cargo and placed the empty box aside.

It's an ionic ascent system and a rover, both capable of dealing with two or four Kerbals in extremely low gravity. Bill and Bob took down three reports between them, took a surface sample and planted a flag. (Now that I think about it, one of them is going to have to retrieve the crew report from whichever lander can it was before those batteries die. Should be fine though. I'll just remember to disable the reaction wheel - I've got time.)

Then, they got on the rover for a little drive about the flats. Had to disable the torque, and you can't go too fast, but it's a very small rover, so what do you expect.

Jeb probably won't be too happy about how the mission went when its time to come back, but he's been having most of the exciting missions lately. It's his turn to sit around in an orbit capsule.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Concentric

[Frank_G]

After installing the new procedural fairings mod version, my Orbital Service Vehicle did not work anymore, so i constructed a new one. The new version comes with more deltaV, the option to carry 4 KAS containers and it has a Telemachus telemetry link for detailed flight information and control.

[Overfloater]

I have expanded my Minmus base.

[Transits]

I added another module to my robotic Mun city.

It crashed.

[Jouni]

I started the live tests with my Eve lander and made three observations:

1. My parachute action group deployed only the drogues and half of the radial parachutes. I'll have to add a new stage to deploy all parachutes.
   
2. The stronger joints in 0.23.5 make the actual landing on Eve very easy. Nothing broke down when I deployed the parachutes.
   
3. When you make the deorbiting burn at 20000 km, it's very hard to aim at anything smaller than the dayside of the planet. In particular, continents are too small targets to hit reliably.
   

The landing should happen tomorrow.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Jouni

[Jon Tash]

Still upgrading my space station. A couple of modules and it will be done. Next future missions, after the remaining modules, will be launching Kerbals to the station. I need a minimum of 10 Kerbals in the station but I can stick way more if I want.

[Kerbal01]

finished my comms network, with an atlas 421 delivering 4 comm sats to a KSO with an inclination of 45 degrees prograde to the equator. and crashed a mun lander at 680 m/s when I over burned my capture orbit lowering burn.

[coreross]

I have started a new play through and I got my first Kerbal in Space.

[joethebeast22]

got my first successful SSTO into orbit in career mode with good fuel reserves left, rendezvoused with my first and still orbiting satellite, got some good pictures of the encounter, will post later on

[TrooperCooper]

Automated science ship coming back from the Jool area, on landing approach to Kerbin to return all the good data.

The atmosphere is going to do the rest...

Fuel tanks detached, coming in hot...

Getting rid of the main engine. Nobody will care about it beeing dumped into the antarctic, right?

How about some fried Mystery Goo along with baked Science Junior?

Chutes open. Just in time for a save ocean splash down of the datacore...

[Commander Zoom]

I clicked on the first page of this thread by chance, and discovered that it's exactly one year old today.

[corvustech]

Tried out career mode for the first time and learned that not getting the aircraft parts asap can make the mid game tedious

[velusip]

Today I flew from Florida to Bermuda.

• Mission time says 2 hours 10 minutes, which means a flight speed of about 768km/h.
  
• Burned 4585 litres of 10500 litres of Kerosene. So I can make it back!
  

It was fun to try and find Bermuda from the globe map using reference points; Nova Scotia North, Puerto Rico South, Florida West.

I still need to unlock parts. I'm trying to play realism overhaul with as few part mods as I can. Pwings and pfairings are the luxury.

Edited May 17, 2014 by velusip
added stats

[Mazlem]

Today I filmed the kerbals building a little fuel station. Processing the video now.

Edited May 18, 2014 by Mazlem

[DirtyHarry]

After a harrowing and (presumably hideously expensive) disaster-prone mission to Duna, I'm how just puttering around the Kerbin system with science probes, attempting to get all the science out of the system and finish out the tech tree before trying further/more difficult planets....

-Insp. 2211

[LABHOUSE]

Land on mun also blowing up/crash landing and landing are pretty much the same thing.

Ps. I crashed because the altitude metre glitched out and said I was 1706 metres above Munich when I was 0 above it totally not my fault.

[cantab]

Added a parking lot to my space station, somewhere to keep the modular ship bits I have, and shuffled things around. Knocked up a simple large moons lander, not to be confused with a large Mun lander. It'll probably do a shakedown run to the Mun then be used for Ike. Then explored some ideas for a rover-lander, and blew them up lots driving like a nutter around the space centre.

[Pwnstarr]

Land on mun also blowing up/crash landing and landing are pretty much the same thing.

Ps. I crashed because the altitude metre glitched out and said I was 1706 metres above Munich when I was 0 above it totally not my fault.

Just in case you don't already know this... use your Radar Altimeter (in IVA mode) to land. The meter at the top of the screen reads ASL (above sea level).

[ThatGalaxyMan]

Just in case you don't already know this... use your Radar Altimeter (in IVA mode) to land. The meter at the top of the screen reads ASL (above sea level).

I really like this method. A successful landing from inside is a fun accomplishment.

Today, I made my first successful SSTO spaceplane

[Duke23]

Anfield Kerman just flew my first successful SSTO (ever). It's very basic, but I just got RAPIERs and wanted a proof of concept. I could see a design like this being used for space station missions in the future... Hopefully less ugly. At around 15km it flipped the bird to the atmosphere and really started to pick up speed. It's currently in a mostly circular ~90km orbit and by my guestimation has barely enough fuel to deorbit and land, but I feel like once I get more comfortable with designs like this it could be very useful.

Edit: That design clearly needs some work. When I brought it back down it got really unstable as the atmosphere thickened back up -- The nose would drift up almost uncontrollably, unless I tipped it below about 15 degrees then it would drift down. That landing was a rough ride... I chose to put it down near a coastline because I miscalculated (read: derped and lost my bearings) and KSC ended up being halfway around the globe on the dark side when I deorbited. Not that I probably could have landed it there anyway... Although I did do a pretty good job of putting it down where I wanted to (when I originally looked for KSC I just went by a rover marker that I knew was within a km or two, but I was seeing the marker through the other side of the planet).

Just over there

Almoooooossssttttt.

Crap. Good thing I wasn't planning to go anywhere else.

As you can probably see, I'm not very experienced with KSP planes... But hopefully I can change that now that I have motivation. I couldn't build an SSTO to save my life before I got the RAPIERs, but I knew it was a matter of time. Now to go bigger and farther!

Edited May 18, 2014 by Duke23

[Mitchz95]

Totally failed to get the Intrepid (my Laythe mission) to the fuel depot at Dres. Turns out she doesn't have enough delta-v to enter orbit. Guess I'll have to send another rescue mission … *sigh*

[joethebeast22]

First successful SSTO that i am thoroughly pleased with, makes it to orbit with good fuel left, and i caught up with an old relic as i rendezvoused with my first career mode satellite. the plane currently has no name and just goes as SSTO-X, anyone got a good name for her? she is beautifully stable and did not come even close to flipping once during the flight. after much frustration with SSTO's, this one made me feel good cause i threw all old ideas out the window and started fresh with this one and to my surprise, she flies great. oh, and i landed back at KSC too, it was a good day

[joethebeast22]

First successful SSTO that i am thoroughly pleased with, makes it to orbit with good fuel left, and i caught up with an old relic as i rendezvoused with my first career mode satellite. the plane currently has no name and just goes as SSTO-X, anyone got a good name for her? she is beautifully stable and did not come even close to flipping once during the flight. after much frustration with SSTO's, this one made me feel good cause i threw all old ideas out the window and started fresh with this one and to my surprise, she flies great. oh, and i landed back at KSC too, it was a good day

and here is a better view of its top/backside

[soulsource]

Yesterday I finished the design for my first manned mission to Duna. Behold the Spiceworm 1 (still in VAB, since the launch window is more than a year away):

This ship will have a total weight of 34 t when in Kerbin Orbit. The LV-N powered transfer stage just has 60 kN thrust, so it will have pretty long burn times. Nevertheless, if I didn't totally miscalculate, it should easily get to Duna, even if I miss the optimal launch window (there's enough fuel to change angular momentum around Kerbol form Kerbins orbit to Dunas Orbit with about 1/3 of the fuel as emergency reserve). The lander has a lot of parachutes (terminal velocity should be about 1.3 times higher than on Kerbin, where I tested the design) and aerospikes both for the final burn during landing and as first stage for the ascent afterwards. After the experiments are performed, the material bays, nose cones and goo containers are jettisoned (with separatrons) to lower the weight. To finally reach Duna orbit again, an LV-909 is used. The return vehicle itself is using an ion engine and will just bring back the Mk1 Pod.

As a side note: I know that those ladders are ugly, but my graphics driver (radeonsi) has issues with the lights of the mobility enhancer. If I use those, my FPS drops below 30. So, although the original design had extend-able ladders everywhere, I decided to go back to the static ones, that don't reduce my framerate. Let's pretend they aren't there, OK?

Also, I learned the hard way, that it's not a good idea to edit the text for Kerbal Alarm Clock alarms while controlling a vessel. After doing so, I was quite surprised to see parts of my unmanned Moho probe slowly drifting away from the probe itself... Well, I (unintentionally) went to the next stage by typing a space character, and jettisoned my (half full) fuel tanks of the transfer stage... I reverted that flight, although it's a pity, since I already had performed a successful gravity assist at the Mun and also already performed a 10 minute burn to get the periapsis on the orbit of Moho... I'll try again, this time with locked stages ;-)