What did you do in KSP1 today?

[TrooperCooper]

Not just today, but over the last few days...

Started running experiments at my LKO science station...

Launched a long range probe to explore the sun of the Kerbol-System...

It got really hot. Waste heat bar was filled pretty quick. But for some reason that did not have a negative effect on the craft...

Next up I launched an orbital IR-telescope for deep space observations.

Then Bill launched in his funny shaped rocket...

...to land on Minmus.

Which he did. Followed by multiple hops into several biomes...

The Minmus mission gave me enough science to unlock the parts neccessary to experiment with the Karbonite stuff. So I launched my first orbital harvester and refinery into space.

Deployed in a very low orbit, it will slowly generate the fuel needed in upcoming operations...

Next up I started to prepare for a Duna mission again.

Launched the package into orbit. Though not crewed yet, as I wasnt sure it would work and the transfer window is also a bit further down the road still...

Disembarking from the lifter and circularizing into orbit on Poodle engines...

Now waiting for a refuel tanker and the crew...

[Zaphod12]

I have an question: Is it bad if you post two or more posts about your KSP stuff of one single day?

[Red Iron Crown]

I have an question: Is it bad if you post two or more posts about your KSP stuff of one single day?

As long as you're delivering new and different content in each post it's not a big deal. If you spam up the thread with one liners like "Orbited Kerbin" and "Going to the Mun" that will get annoying quickly.

Welcome aboard!

[Xyrus]

It was past midnight so technically today, I finally finished getting my pet asteroid "Biggin'" (Class D) into a circular Kerbin polar orbit of 250K. That took a lot of dV to do. It may eventually become the core of a large station.

[Mohole]

I built a Space explorer! (yes I used cheats, but for fun!)

I also had some fun while flying to jool! ( which I did but I have no pics yet!)

Oh yeah, the kerbal in the pic above was stranded and I came by him (But didnt rescue him:P I had no space on the ship!)

Edited August 25, 2014 by Mohole

[Zaphod12]

So I have just launched and successfully landed an short test flight with my new Vondaren spacecraft into low Kerbin orbit.

The test flight was unmanned.(I accomplished that by attaching an satellite core on top of the capsule)

Vondaren I-Y on the launch pad before liftoff

Two pics of the Vondaren spacecraft in LKO.

Vondaren capsule before landing.

[Aragosnat]

I have an question: Is it bad if you post two or more posts about your KSP stuff of one single day?

Post away. Anyways. My initial trek from Southwest Crater to Northwest Crater to Northen Basin has finally happened. Now trying to decide if I should go to the poles or just head to the polar crater before heading towards the Mun Canyon that is attached to Farside Crater. Tough choicees. My little rover design works amazingly well. Been hitting 30 m/s a lot with it and living even reached 40 m/s. Catching space is still not fun when over 10 m/s.

[Liowen]

Let's see how the Kerbals like this nonfunctional space station! Well it s semi functional right now as I need to add more bits to get the life support running enough to support a full crew of 10. Soonâ„¢....

[Jovus]

Today was meant to be just another boring old day of remote orbital construction: the R&D department put forth a proposal for the next fiscal year for KASA to build an orbital station around Duna, and Kongress passed the budget. (No one was more surprised than the administrator; you know what they say about preparing budgetary proposals for the annual review.) Since they now have this task on their hands with a strict 5 year mission plan, the first step is to put a prototype station in LKO to prove the technology works.

This was all going according to plan, with another life-support module being sent up today by remote to dock with the uninhabited and inactive station. As part of approach protocol the orbital tug was undocked...and wouldn't respond to commands.

When the engineer in charge frantically went through the reboot procedures, gave up, and finally pulled out the blueprints, Gene noticed the problem right away - the contractors hadn't installed any batteries or solar panels.

There was heated discussion about what to do. They had a payload approaching in orbit and no way to dock it. (Technically, the launch vehicle should still had fuel enough after the rendezvous, but nobody wanted to try docking with a Mainsail as the only propulsion.) They could send up another tug...but that would require a complete re-design, a process on the order of several weeks, and time pressure was on. Besides, they had a perfectly good tug in orbit already, if it could just be re-powered. And it's embarrassing to leave orbital debris, especially when it's nothing more than a monument to your mistakes.

Finally it was decided that they would launch three astronauts into orbit to perform field-repairs on the tug. A rocket was already designed and ready to go, and all that was needed was the repair equipment.

Of course for a mission this time-critical and delicate you send only the best:

And the flight to orbit goes off without a hitch:

Unfortunately this is where things start to go wrong. The repair vehicle will take another orbit to rendezvous:

(Yes, I did get it down much closer than that. Also, at this point the game crashed, which is why later on you see I actually have more dV than in this screenshot.)

Which means the payload must needs park next to the station and wait. Not a big deal, but still an annoyance.

However, the repair vehicle does get up to the meeting smoothly and on (the new) schedule, all thanks to the expert piloting of our very own Jebediah.

Here he is coming up on the rendezvous, happy as always

Final approach...

...and docked! Bob didn't believe he could do it all in one go.

At this point, since there's enough fuel left in the main stage for a re-entry burn, the extra RCS the orange crew brought up with them is dumped into the tug. Waste not, want not. Then Bob and Bill play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who must get out and do the hot, uncomfortable work of an EVA. Jebediah refuses, claiming he'll put a hole in the heat shield if they make him do it.

Bill loses best of three and heads out, where he promptly breaks the cargo container, spills batteries all over, and even manages to knock the box out of its bay. Here he is trying to convince the other two to let him back in after he bolts on the remaining battery pack and solar panel:

When that doesn't work, grumbling all the way he takes the multiple trips necessary to go clean up his trash:

And, pleasantly surprised to find it all still operational (according to field tests, aka a swift smack with his gauntlet) he finishes the job as originally intended.

Then he gets back in the capsule, glad to take off that helmet. The guys at Mission Control give the all clear to come home, but Jebediah decides to stick around just in case something else goes wrong.

The tug undocks and heads over to the payload:

which uncouples obligingly as the tug lines up for final approach:

and finally, a docking seal is confirmed. We're green to go!

Tugging it over to the station at first presents no problem, other than the fact that it handles like a truck. However, as it comes around into the light again, Jebediah spots something.

"Uh, guys? How are you going to dock that thing? It only has one port, and that's connected to the tug."

Panic ensues in the Control Room. Did the other port fall off during maneuvers? No, Jebediah confirms that there is no damage to the payload. It looks like the port was just never installed. That's what you get for contracting your space station to the lowest bidder. It's decided on the ground that they'll just dock the tug with the station as a bridge to the aeroponics bay, and either send up an astronaut with a field-seal port later or just leave it that way.

Jebediah, being the daring perfectionist that he is, isn't happy with this plan, and after complaining to Mission Control and getting nothing but flak for his suggestions, decides it's high time to override KSC and switch the tug to local control for his little stunt.

He's going to dock it directly to the station. After all, a thing in motion tends to stay in motion, right? And the scales involved aren't large enough for the spherical coordinates to matter. It just requires a maestro's hand at the controls. And who's a master of tricky maneuvers if not Jebediah?

(Maybe Archibald, but that's a different story.)

The first attempt doesn't go quite as planned:

but the second is next-best-thing to flawless. Mission Control will never want to unseal those ports anyway, right?

And so the crew of intrepid astronauts takes a moment to witness the grandeur of this fully unarmed and partially operational orbital station before heading home:

[Zaphod12]

Let's see how the Kerbals like this nonfunctional space station! Well it s semi functional right now as I need to add more bits to get the life support running enough to support a full crew of 10. Soonâ„¢....

http://i61.tinypic.com/28iuel3.png

That space station looks cool.

[DocMoriarty]

I worked hard on improving one of my big transport planes but all i achieved finally was ripping it apart mid air. And now the taxpayer can kiss 450,000 funds good bye.

[FacialJack]

Launch of Microwave arms and Solar station 1 core, in a try of enhencement of the Kerbol Explorer

Putting solar arm away

Lots of fly

Solar arm 1 docked wiz Solar Station 1, move to microwave arms

Launcher deliver microwave arms at KE

microwave arm

Docking MW arm

Made in France microwave arm

[sober667]

Crashed game and still renstaling and choosing mods...

[problemecium]

Today I finally downloaded the B9 pack (now that it works) to see what all the hype was about.

Can't say I'm overly impressed. While it does have a lot of parts enabling me to build hulking monstrosities, and they have generous joint strengths and crash tolerances, there's this huge gallery of them that makes it hard to find what I want without installing another mod to sort the parts list for me, and they weigh so much I need about a square kilometer of wing area to make a decently controllable plane (which I only barely managed just now after about 20 revisions).

[cantab]

Failed to get a 500-ton ship into orbit. Turns out these big launches are tougher than they look.

[panfish5]

I made a small philea probe to inspect an E-Class asteroid that got captured in kerbins soi.

After futile attempts of ramming the probe into the asteroid I noticed the grabber was put on the wrong direction and finally make a connection.

The small probe is dwarfed by the massive potateroid.

[SRV Ron]

Did a career designed Min lander mission and returned. Good thing I added the landing legs on the radical decoupler for added stability. The launch vehicle contains KW parts. In spite of having to hunt for a landing spot which used more fuel then expected, the lander has enough fuel for a return flight.

Lander is all stock;

Launch vehicle

Landed on Mun;

On liftoff, the legs were staged.

[KingPhantom]

yesterday i was milking all 9 biomes of minmus in one mission. without the whole techtree i was only able for: EVA, Sample, Seismic, Temperature, Goo and Study... but it was enough of all the 9 bioms to complete the last tier of the techtree. got over 5500 science

thx to mechjeb it wasn't that boring... it was 9 times the same...

[JebNeedsHelp]

Today I again failed to land a Kerbal on Tylo - I just keep running out of fuel between orbit and ground. However, I finally got my Sundiver One "near the Sun," and back, with the ship and all science intact.

[capi3101]

Did a career designed Min lander mission and returned. Good thing I added the landing legs on the radical decoupler for added stability. The launch vehicle contains KW parts. In spite of having to hunt for a landing spot which used more fuel then expected, the lander has enough fuel for a return flight.

Lander is all stock;

http://i.imgur.com/qkgSyA2.jpg

Launch vehicle

http://i.imgur.com/9Hp2ZJq.jpg

Landed on Mun;

http://i.imgur.com/K3o8jJX.jpg

On liftoff, the legs were staged.

Nice looking ship there, SRV Ron. I don't use KW myself - if I wanted to try to replicate that craft stock, what would be the best equivalents?

Myself, I did moar parts testing for kerbux (funds? dollars? what's the general consensus on the meaning of that little radical symbol the game uses for "money" anyway) and did my first career Mün shot with a Geschosskopf Sci Pack lander, netted about 550 Science. Not much but I'm still low enough down in the tech tree to unlock some important stuff, like RCS and thermometers. I've got a Kerbal rescue mission coming up; figured I wanted RCS for that, and the thermo will let me launch reusable sci probes for bux (at last).

Followed Kashua's advice for the TR-18A test. Overshot the parameters on the launch but I was able to get in the right spot to conduct the test on the descent; managed to bring the whole contraption down intact west of the VAB.

[Mahnarch]

I tried to meet up with a small asteroid in a large N/S orbit around Kerbin and ended up just breaking all my solar panels off.

This was my first time trying out the grabbing arm. Does it grab automatically, after you arm it/open it up?

How close "enough" do you have to get before it does?

[GregE]

Restarted my save a few days ago, (after taking a bit of a break following 0.25 dropping) so I'm still mucking about in Kerbin's SOI.

Launched my first Kerbin mapping satellite; Eagle 1.

This mission was a bit of a SNAFU. I got the satellite in a nearly circular, polar orbit using a one stage rocket. Because I'm so early in the tech tree, I have to use a decoupler to deploy the payload. I forgot that decouplers have ejection force, so now the satellite is in an elliptical orbit, with no way to correct it. To make matters worse, the retro-rockets on the delivery vehicle failed to put the spent stage into the atmosphere (its periapsis is a frustrating 70,103m), so it will never de-orbit. The debris and the satellite make a dangerously close approach every few orbits.

Next I tested a new launch vehicle for my planned trips to the Mun.

Didn't go well, but Jeb survived. Only managed to grab a single shot. There are 3 other engine segments that flew out of frame...

Jeb was happier with the new version.

Now to design a service module and lander for it.

[Trann]

I had a ship that couldn't go as far as I wanted, so I sent it to Gilly for a first-time landing there.

Ever get tired of waiting for gravity?

Once I got low enough, the slopes were detectable so I had to coast around at 150m to find something manageable...

Plenty of practice on Mun and Minmus meant this was a breeze. Engine limiters set to 10%. Get a decent of 0.2m/s.

My biggest concern was what would happen on an uneven slope?

The sway made me wonder if going EVA would cause the whole thing to topple over! The tallest ship to reach Gilly?

Curious, indeed.

Let's go home.

Comin' in hot!

Touchdown!

Science!

[Heimdall5008]

While working in the Tracking Station to find his lost brother Jeb (forgot his antenna on Dres...) Bob deiscovered a C class asteroid on course to Kerbin. It would reach it's periapsis at about 8.000 km in about 18 days. That sounds really good, but the incilination of about 97° sounds really bad.

But we cannot wait for Jeb to have all the fun, so Bob ordered to launch the asteroid redirection probe that was prepared for the last asteroid but never launched because the launch window had to be used for a Jeb rescue mission...

The probe (including a transfer stage) has a mass of about 80 tons and about 11.000 m/s dV (without an asteroid attached ). It was launch from the main stage of two KR-2L and one KS-25x4 engines together with two SRBs. The transfer/circulazation stage consists of an Poodle engine.

(Main stage on ascend with the rising Mun in the background.)

After a short correction burn at the ascending node the KSC could set up a near perfect intercept (4.6 km after injection burn ). After the breaking manouver at the closest approach some careful RSC thrusts put probe on an intercept with RGK-663. The AGU was armed and the lights switched on to look for a nice place to attach.

(Seconds away from "docking")

Now docked with RGK-663 I was calculated that the asteroid has a mass of about 117 tons. That's much. Now the 4 NERVAs only had about 2000 m/s left. But no time to discuss, the KSC had to start the retrograde burn till the asteroid was still near engough to the perisapsis. Combined with a major inclanation change the probe was able put the asteroid in a almost circular orbit on the Mun plane with perisabsis of about 7000 km and apoapsis of about 8000 km.

In the same time Bob was not idle. He single-handedly designed a manned ship for a sample return from the now captured asteroid. Okay, basicly he took a standard Mun/Minimus lander, stripped the landing gear and attached a Klaw . After a short flight he arrived at the asteroid and attached his ship at the other side of the probe. As the asteroid was in the core shadow of Kerbin he had to be careful as he forgot to remount the landing lights at the top of his ship. Just after he finished his docking manouver he could look at an beautiful sun rise over Kerbin:

(Sun rise over Kerbin with the Mun in the background and RGK-663 "Bob" with the redirect probe and the sample return craft attached)

After this spectacular scene Bob started with his EVA to claim the asteroid for Kerbalkind and take some surface samples. Modest as he is, he named RGK-663 "Bob". After this he plotted this course back to Kerbin and dreamed of the many valuable elements he will find in the surface samples and how he will steal Jeb the show, at least this time...

[Xacktar]

Had a computer meltdown and lost a bunch of stuff... but now I'm back in action with new... um, well... its not really a spaceship. I have no clue what it is but it brought along the launch clamps.