What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Monger]

I finished an interesting contract. I had to test the launch escape system while landed on Minmus. So I strapped it to the top of a small lander instead of a parachute, well aware that this would probably be a one way trip, and landed it on Minmus. The first stage burned in Kerbins Atmosphere, and the second stage was already back on its way to reentry into Kerbins atmosphere for recovery.

So the lander is standing on the surface on Minmus. I activate the launche escape system, the lander twirls around like crazy, smashes against the surface, loses three of his four landing legs and several smaller parts. It bounces back and maybe about 500m up.

I look at the instruments: the experiment did not succeed. Why? I ponder this for a few seconds while watching my semi-trashed vehicle missing first a small hill and then two mountains by just a few metres. Maybe I have enough fuel left to leave Minmus and at least recover what I can? I start to burn again to get into a very low, but stable orbit around Minmus. Steering the craft is really hard, because its center of mass moved far to the side where the remaining landing leg is. I had to limit my thrust to about 1/4th to keep it controllable somehow, hoping that I would gain speed fast enough before crashing into the next mountain.

I look at my fuel level: almost gone. This was designed as a one-way trip, after all. At least I am crossing a few Minmus biomes at a very low altitude. I use my thermometer to transfer a little science back to kerbin. Why did the experiment fail, I ponder. Then it hits me: the experiment is checked about a second after activating it, so in this case I was already thrusted back from the surface, so the experiment didn't succeed. I look at the burned-out launch escape system. Hm...

I look at the ground below me: fair enough. We are on Minmus, after all. We should be able to land anything here, even without gear. I carefully burn retrograde, set up on the remaining landing leg, tilt over to one side and carefully land without any further damage. I activate the burned launch escape system again. Success! Yay! And now for the fireworks: I set to full thrust, and burn the remaining fuel. I slide over the surface of Minmus, down the slope. Once I hit ground, the launch escape system explodes, and thrusts the rest of the ship a few metres higher. The engine crashes into the ground, bumping the remaining tanks and the core of the lander back up - and then: freeze.

KSP froze, no chance to reactivate it. In fact I had to reboot my computer, because the rest of the windows desktop didn't respond that well, either.

[DocMoriarty]

I built another tiny transport space plane today: SPT Leviathan 1_01

Empty TOW: 116t

Max Payload: 94t

Max TOW: 210t

Engines: 17 rapier

Fuel: enough

Part Count: 371

Planned to transport big SLS tanks or tugs based on big SLS tanks into LKO without stealing fuel from them.

Here a view in the secret construction facility on Kerbin:

Engine test. All the porcellain in the cubboard is gone now after the sound treatment.

On it's maiden flight. I still need to test it with it's payload though.

I was just a bit tired of Milkman (8-engine) using part of the milk to get to LKO. When i made Milkman i already thought this is a big space plane!

Edited August 12, 2014 by DocMoriarty

[Tw1]

I made the crew module of a big mission.

This ship is going to be awesome.

I built another tiny transport space plane today: SPT Leviathan 1_01

"Tiny"

[Cuky]

after trying the demo for a while and than trying pirated version a bit to see how my aging PC wold handle it all with mods I have bought the full game on Steam.

[Concentric]

Explored Eve and Gilly, losing my planned Gilly satellite in the process. A circular orbit close enough to get the "Near Gilly" science (and thus transmit temperature readings) is also close enough to hit Gilly's mountains and be destroyed. Finally, I crossed the 20 million mark on my funding.

My first attempt had to be scrapped, as while I was doing other things and waiting for my Gilly lander to get above the day side, the lander crashed and broke off its solar panels. I restored to the quicksave I made when entering Eve's sphere of influence, and continued from there. First, I took gravitic readings - the Gilly lander probe is intended to return to Kerbin with six different gravitic readings, three temperature readings and even a seismic reading - the expensive equipment and high value data should all make it back.

Anyway, aerocapture at 60 km followed by a few shallower aerobrakes brought me down to a nice 355 km over 100 km orbit - all in the Near Eve region. I took readings, transmitting one temperature and keeping the other on the Gilly lander. Then, I targeted Gilly and corrected inclination. I brought the periapse into the atmosphere and decoupled the Eve lander probe, before turning around to get back into a stable low Eve orbit and decouple the Eve satellite.

I changed focus to the lander-probe. That xenon tank had supplied the fuel for the entire journey before it was decoupled and it still had a little left. But emptying it would just be wasting fuel for the sake of wasting fuel.

Parachuting small things down to Eve surface safely is not difficult. I happened to come down in the water, but fortunately, splashdown transmissions count as far as the exploration contract is concerned. The parachute appears to be the only reason this thing floats at all... Anyway, that's one contract down.

Back to the Gilly ship, it's about time to make the transfer. With my inclination already correct, and the encounter near both apoapses, this should be relatively easy.

Got orbit simply enough. A 5500km retrograde circular orbit is where I decoupled the Gilly satellite, then I turned completely around to go and do the landing on the day side. That also was rather straightforward, if a little slow. I took all the readings I wanted, transmitting orbital and landed temperatures, and keeping a copy of each alongside all three Gilly gravity readings and the seismic one. After that, I launched back to Eve orbit, escaping Gilly immediately after I had completed its exploration contract. At some point before the landing, however, the Gilly satellite hit a mountain and was annihilated.

With some aerobraking and a little fuel use, I got down into a 100km circular orbit to await the return window in a little over a year. Still got over 4 km/s of delta-v, so I should be able to get this back to LKO and take as many attempts as is necessary to land arbitrarily close to KSC. That return window is after the Duna one, though, so it'll have to wait.

My next Exploration contracts are Jool, Pol and Bop! Perhaps I'll be able to leave satellites at each next time...

[nli2work]

Sanka MkB test flight and botched landing. stock and SP+ wing pieces. rest of the parts will see release soon.

[Felsmak]

Here a view in the secret construction facility on Kerbin:

http://www.docmoriarty.com/ksp/gfx/leviathan_01.jpg

It's not that secret. My satellites are spying on you right now!

[TheVillain]

Visited EVE and Gilly earlier today with this ship: (pretty nice view if you ask me)

I also finished my Jool 5 mission preparations and put this behemoth out on the pad:

This thing burns fuel at the rate of 1.1 tons of liquid fuel + 1.4 tons of oxidizer every second.

This launch has an estimated cost of 1.4 million funds, where 900k for the launch vehicle alone.

[StevenJ]

Sanka MkB test flight and botched landing. stock and SP+ wing pieces. rest of the parts will see release soon.

Very nice parts. I love that landing gear and cockpit.

[_BizGod_]

I finished working on my minmus station today, but school took most of my time away.

[Redd]

I finished working on my minmus station today, but school took most of my time away./Users/thomaswestmaxfield/Desktop/Minmu Station (KASA).png

We sadly can't see your local pictures. You'll have to upload it to a website like imgur and then put the link you get between the tags like you did above.

[RocketPilot573]

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

[CaelumEtAstra]

Built an orbital telescope, then de-orbited the upper stage. Got a few screenies during reentry! VVV

[TUFOM]

Lost some pretty important part in launch.

[panfish5]

Sent a plane to Laythe and some probes to scout the Jool system.

[sumrex]

Tried my hand at building a good looking VTOL. Many Kerbals died.... I reassessed the situation and realized my Kerbals are simple folk and not currently up to that challenge..... Therefore they were tasked with building the very first Kerbal "Double Wide" SSTO. Needless to say the Kerbals succeeded in building a working double-wide prototype on the first go. :\

Thrust vectoring with robotics still cannot save me from the inevitable...

We made orbit but a few more Jets will be strapped on to help on the initial ascent. Otherwise, all in all it flys well.

Edited August 13, 2014 by sumrex

[G'th]

Today after many trials and frustrated cussing, I've finally made a return to SSTO spaceplanes! The wonderfully powerful Karbonite turbofan engines (the non-Karbonite ones) and a certain eureka moment regarding my launch profile (I forgot that these aren't rockets and going full throttle isn't recommended at lift off) finally brought forth my most successful SSTO. I launched this into a basic LKO of 85x75km and it had a leftover dV reading of 1.35km/s. Which is well over twice what my previous successful attempts have achieved.

And here she is!

Granted, I technically used a modified part to accomplish the job (I gave the B9 cargo bays fuel. I did my best though to make it as realistic as possible), but even so. The design could easily accommodate a replacement for it, and actually doing so might even make for even better plane, as I'll be able to add more surface area to the wings.

I haven't done reentry yet, so I don't know how that'll go, but so far I'm VERY satisfied.

Update: Reentry didn't go as well as I thought it might, though it has more to do with silly things. All of my intakes and my landing gear burned up on reentry (which is silly), but the basic structure of the plane stayed intact so the point where it could still fly exceptionally well. I also clearly need to install breaking systems.

Edited August 13, 2014 by G'th
Reentry update

[Mitchz95]

Had fun designing an aircraft carrier for naval warfare, with a VTOL fighter to go with it.

While both craft work great on their own, landing on the carrier (whose flight deck is about thirty meters long) is still very much trial and error so I need some more practice before I can really utilize it effectively. Also, it seems KAS doesn't like it when you use fuel lines to connect the plane to the carrier while on Kerbin. Guess I'll have to find a way to use docking ports.

[soulsource]

Well, I did a trivial part testing mission in orbit that finished three well paid contracts, did another part test in flight right above KSC that also got me a huge amount of funds, rescued Theoemy Kerman from LKO and finally built my first base on the Mun.

The base was built, because of the lucky coincidence that fine print offered me two "build a base on the mun" contracts at the same time. Requirements were moderate: It needed to house 7 Kerbals, have a lab, and of course power, antenna and docking port. While building I figured that nights are long and cold on the Mun, so, in order to make it until the morning, a lot of batteries are required, for I haven't unlocked RTGs yet. Supplies for about 300 days were packed along with the base, and I plan to dock recycling parts soon. Since the whole base was sent in a single launch, I chose to send it unmanned, what was a good idea, since the first launch failed. The second attempt was successful, and even the landing nearly went smooth. The kOS landing script I wrote did well, but landed on a slope and the base started to tip. Luckily I could start it again using manual controls and position it on a better position.

When I have a reliable Mun rover - without it the base is pretty useless in in-game terms - I'll send some crew to live there for a few month.

[Roskerbos]

Because I'm a total sucker for Mun landings, I continued my Scansat-induced tour to identify all the Mun's many anomalies.

Here we are approaching today's target, while consulting the Scansat map. You'll see I have my upper Main-Stage still attached. Anomaly-hunting requires a certain amount of hover-gliding over the surface, so I'll use anything that still has fuel and an engine on it, to do so.

Having ditched the main stage and zig-zaggged around a bit, we're getting closer. We appear to be looking for some sort of square structure...

We're here! What on Kerbin is an "Armstrong" when it's at home (which this one clearly isn't)?

Finally, we're down. Jebediah gets out to prepare for Rover deployment. "Remember to put the handbrake on before you release her, Bill... I'm not chasing after a runaway buggy in a space suit - even on the Mun!"

With the Rover deployed, Jeb is all for hopping on and visiting the "Armstrong thing", but Bill reminds him that today's contracts include the planting of yet another flag.

For the glory of Kerbolia!

With that tedious distraction momentous occasion out of the way, it's time for the serious stuff!

After driving round it several times, the boys reach the edifying conclusion that "This edifice ain't got no door". Bill decides that it is Handheld Anomalous Materials Monitor and Edifice Register time, and - pressing his helmet to the side of the thing, to hear any noises generated - gives it a few taps. Bill is heard utter the words "My God! It's full of bricks!"

With nothing else to be gained, it's back to the lander and off to space, to rendezvous with Bob in the Command module again. Another day's successful de-anomalysing over!

Edited August 13, 2014 by Roskerbos

[sardaukar11]

testing fineprint, put a basic satellite in minmus orbit

[BrainiacBlue]

I decided to go into space. Original, I know.

[DocMoriarty]

Uploaded my in depth documentation and quick reference about space planes 'n stuff to Curse: KSP Space Plane Construction and Operation.

Then I tested the payload capacity of my latest creation of a tiny 17-engine transport space craft and lifted a 93t space tug based on the huge SLS tank into LKO. 'SPT Leviathan 1_02' arrived there with the tug at LKO with only stealing 300 LF (actually for de-orbit and landing) from the tug. Total assembly around 400 parts and 210t take off weight.

I cheated a bit and did final orbital insertion using the tug's nukes.

The tug got released in an orbit slightly above 70km. It will make it's way to it's destination from there way more efficient with it's own engines.

Leviathan returning home after his first successful delivery. Knock Knock! 430k+ Funds waiting to be delivered back to my account.

[BJ Quest]

Tried to add simple (low part count) inline booster(s) to aircraft. It actually worked quite well as long as a single stage booster was used.

Used the streamline air intakes on some of my standard aircraft designs.... I Like Them :-)

Edited August 14, 2014 by BJ Quest

[capi3101]

Farted around with a Mün lander design. Overcooked it - it was capable of taking off from Kerbin. Mainly was just re-familiarizing myself with the game since it's been a few months since the last time I played.