What did you do in KSP1 today?

[coreross]

After getting my large section into orbit, then getting it to dock with the station. There was a catastrophic failure and booooom

[cantab]

I'm running KSP on a low-end AMD CPU. No lag during the landings.

Wouldn't mind hearing your full spec, since I also have a low-end AMD CPU and know that a 500-part ship is gonna put the game on my PC at maybe half speed at best.

[andrew123]

Wouldn't mind hearing your full spec, since I also have a low-end AMD CPU and know that a 500-part ship is gonna put the game on my PC at maybe half speed at best.

CM TX3 - GTX 760 - CX500 - 970a-d3p - 256 GB SSD + 32 GB SSD - ASUS PB278Q - Lite On DVD drive - WinTV-HVR-1250 - ASUS Xonar DX - Rosewill Challenger - 2 module 8 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 RAM - Sennheiser HD 280

Alright, maybe the rest of my pc isn't low end, but I still haven't gotten that 4k ips 100% A-RGB monitor for my graphics work yet. (I do need that gpu for CUDA).

Edited November 2, 2014 by andrew123

[Francois424]

I got my "Flying Lab" plane to the North Pole.

Departed KSC from the Rocket launch site and taxied to the runway. Pushed the throttle 100% and it took off rather quickly... Headed strait north for my long flight. After a rather pleasant and fun ride, landing/taking off multiple times on the way (and using electric wheels/plane wheel when terrain got too harsh to test driving capabilities... passed A-OK), managed to land on the Arctic Ice Sheet without problems.

Planted a flag right at the joint of the lines coming from all 4 directions.

Here's BOB, the captain of the flight, standing for a picture shot :

[spaceman1999]

Can I see more of that shuttle?

[numerobis]

I didn't set out to upstage my compatriot, but I got my flying lab to orbit with enough fuel to get to Laythe and back.

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It's not a single-stage-to-Laythe-and-back; I used jet pods, second image in the album. Each pod has a turbojet, lots of fuel, 48 radial intakes (!), and a deorbit pack so I can recover it (probe body, LV-1Rs, small amount of fuel, parachutes). 48 radials == 48.000 Roots ; best get that home! The amount of material I used in the ascent and dump is about 2.3t on each wing, 4.6t total that I don't need to send to outer space and back. My previous attempt at this in an old version needed an LV-N and more careful flying (it had twin turbojets).

[Jouni]

I continued the 6.4x Tylo mission planning by launching a probe to scout the delta-v requirements.

The launch mass was 1173 tonnes, and the rocket had a total of 19121/27161 m/s of delta-v.

The probe itself started from a 1100 km orbit with a bit over 19 km/s of delta-v left. It had three stages: a conventional stage with a Skipper for the first half of the transfer burn, a nuclear stage for the rest of the tranfer and Tylo insertion, and an ion stage for the return trip.

MechJeb found me a 6.5 km/s transfer, but I managed to spend around 6.75 km/s for it due to the low TWR of the nuclear stage. Then I spent another 400 m/s for course corrections to get an encounter with Tylo. Approaching Tylo from retrograde, I entered its SoI at 4.6 km/s, which was quite promising. It turned out that I needed only 3.3 km/s to circularize to a 65 km orbit around Tylo. Overall, I had spent 10474 m/s to reach Tylo.

The surface speed of the probe was around 5.4 km/s at a 65 km orbit. Landing on Tylo is going to be scary.

After playing with maneuver nodes for half an hour, I ended up with a 3.1 km/s burn that would put the Sun periapsis to the same level as Kerbin's orbit. When I started executing it, I found that I had made a mistake. This was the 6.4x Kerbol System, and the solar panels were incredibly inefficient at Jool. Once the batteries ran out, the panels could only sustain around 10% thrust from the ion engine. I had to split the burn over multiple orbits, wait for Tylo to complete an orbit around Jool to continue, and finish the burns outside Tylo's SoI. In the end, I had spent 4.4 km/s instead of 3.1 km/s for the escape burn.

The rest of the return trip was uneventful. The plane change took 0.35 km/s, and then I burned 0.65 km/s retrograde at the periapsis to get an encounter with Kerbin after one orbit. The probe entered Kerbin's atmosphere at 11.8 km/s and was destroyed a few moments later, when I couldn't keep the heatshield facing the right direction.

My earlier estimate was that the manned mission would require 12 km/s to reach Tylo and 5 km/s to get back. Based on this experiment, 11 km/s will be enough to get there, which should save me a lot of mass.

[Kamuchi]

Started preparing and move the first pieces of my new Minmus base from Mun.

It looks like it was done in 20 minutes but took half a day with fixing ships, f`ups, lag and using cranes instead of just sending a simple rocket from Kerbin

Craft is left in orbit, tomorrow do all the rest hopefully...

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[MGCJerry]

New sport! 15 Pin KerBowling on the runway.

Created a "rover" that can hurl a 100 ton cheat menu "Whack-a-Kerbal" ball down the runway and a 15 pin "Pinsetter" machine for the willing (forced) Kerbals. Thinking about making it a challenge and posting it there.

The hardware...

"Pins"

Edited November 3, 2014 by MGCJerry

[Srpadget]

I finally decided to try a fresh new game with V0.25, to check out the new KSC-area biomes and play with strategies. (I have been playing in an existing 0.24 save until now, migrated to 0.25 and playing with the new spaceplane parts mostly). Went with Hard mode, but allowed for quicksave/reload because the game still has too many bugs to 'play without a net' (that's my story and I'm sticking to it. My ineptitude with powered landings on airless worlds and jetpack EVAs? NOTHING to do with it. That's my story and I'm sticking with it!) :-D

Scouting around KSC, gathering up surface samples, etc was fun but did get a bit grindy. I built minimal-capability sounding rockets to just BARELY reach each of the altitude targets in turn (in 0.24, I always just went straight to orbit with my first launch, so I didn't even know until recently that there WERE intermediate altitude targets.) Eventually unlocked the first tier of airplane parts, and built a little jet-powered wingless 'runabout' so Jeb could scoot around KSC and explore the local biomes in a more fun, less grindy way (and with science modules, too!)

Realized I now had a decent 'nest egg' of Funds (400k or so, more than I could reasonably spend that early in the game), and could probably muck about with strategies now. Was a bit strapped for science points, so I set up the Funds -> Science strategy at 50%. Promptly got a 'test LV-1R in orbit' contract...and I already had one of those sitting on my obligatory 'probe core with thermometer in orbit' Funds-generating machine, from a previous similar contract. A couple minutes later I had something over a couple Science points (I rang the 'science in Kerbin orbit' cash register a couple times while I was there), spent 'em in R&D, then promptly got a 'test LFB 1x2 in escape trajectory'. Better than 6000 science, and even with 50% Funds from the already-reduced Hard mode, STILL raked in 6 figures in Funds.

I now have most of the "important" (to my playing style, anyway) nodes of the tech tree already completed, just filling in a few less-important bits still to go...and I have only been to low orbit three times with crew, once with a probe, and of course the one escape trajectory test. For practical purposes, I've never been further than LKO. And the dang tech tree is almost complete.

Oooo-kay. That Funds -> Science strategy is SOOO broken... especially when paired with the occasional appearance of an obscenely-overpaying contract offer. (Yeah, I know, everyone's been saying so. I "knew" it before. Now I "feel" it....)

I think I'll be going back to my old 0.24 save now...

[Theoderich]

Have you tried Interstellar? Their tech tree goes further and much more expensive later on.

[KevinW42]

I took my first trip to Moho and surprise surprise, I didn't quite have enough fuel. What was supposed to be a scanning satellite ended up being just another stage, and I had to use a good chunk of the landing fuel just to get into orbit. At least I managed to get a close-up view of the Mohole before slamming into a hillside at over 900 m/s.

[Farex]

Today I gave every Kerbal in my roster a face (thanks to texture replacer) and named them accordingly after family members, friends and foes (I need some testing pilots for my crazy stuff )

After that I realized that somehow my AlarmGlock is broken, so I had to fix this problem somehow, so no gaming

[Spatzimaus]

What did I do today? Test flights. And by "test flights" I mean REAL tests.

First, I landed my first Valdez 2-class depot on Minmus:

Apologies for the night shot, I didn't want to wait until morning just for one picture. 440 tons with a full load of Kethane, it's a mobile refinery vessel intended for low-gravity moons (Gilly, Minmus, Ike, Pol, Bop); Mun is also possible but not too efficient (TWR 1.7ish). It lands, deploys its drills, fills up its tanks with raw Kethane and refined fuel, then returns to orbit to act as a fuel station for passing vessels:

It's got two 2.5m ports (one at each end) and four 1.25m ports (at the ends of the four arms), plus KAS line attachment points and such, so it's not hard for other vessels to refill from it as needed. This is essential if you really want to have fun exploring places like the Jool system, with small vessels capable of doing fun stuff on Laythe and such. It's a bit expensive to launch (~1.2M net per launch) but definitely worth it in the long run.

This leads, indirectly, to the second test flight of the day:

That's the Sleazy Weasel 7e just after taking off from a test landing on Minmus. It's the latest edition of my general-purpose long-range spaceplane, primarily designed for Laythe trips; in theory it can do the entire trip to Laythe and back in one hop, thanks to the ion engines on the wingtips, but I test it using Minmus sans ions to see if the basic design is solid for vacuum work. On airless moons it lands on its tail (well, on the deployable legs, obviously) and Jeb climbs down the spinal ladder; that was actually the point of today's test, since I'd made enough structural changes since the 7d version that I needed to make sure it could still land safely without breaking anything. Plus, it looks darn cool; I tried blending the control/lift surfaces into the body in ways that didn't stand out once it was in orbit and no longer needed them, and I refuse to put a tail on the design. The wing is actually a triple wing, with the inner wing acting as the load-bearing entity and control surfaces, while the upper and lower wing surfaces add more lift and prevent the inner wing from shearing under stress.

I'm going to enter it in the spaceplane design contest, mainly the interplanetary explorer category, as soon as I make a less mod-intensive variant. Right now it uses a couple custom parts, plus bits from five or six major mods. I can cut that down to two mods (B9, Ion Hybrid Electric) and no custom parts with a little work; unfortunately the ion mod hasn't been updated since 0.22, but I don't really have an alternative.

Of course, a trip to Minmus' surface used up most of its fuel, since I was doing the trip without the ions, so I put the two tests together and tested the docking:

Yep, the Mk2 inline docking port worked just fine. While the Sleazy Weasel is a bit large for a 1-man spaceplane (33 tons), it barely made a dent in the Valdez's Kethane supply, let alone its fuel tanks. Now I'm in the process of flying the Weasel to Ike for another test, and once Jeb is back home I'll launch the remaining four or five Valdez depots I need to complete my fuel network. Then, it's time for my REALLY big launches (my 1500-ton megastations, my 600-ton rovers...) and maybe a repeat of my 0.22 Grand Tour.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Spatzimaus

[Kowgan]

Today, I recreated the Curiosity Rover mission. Well, sorta. The rover itself can hardly be called a remake.

My main concern here was the capsule (heat shield and backshell). That's what I spent most time making. Everything else was just mashed together in 5 minutes.

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[bartekkru99]

Nothing special, started new career, now, I'm trying to get as much science from "landed on Kerbin" contracts as It's possible

[capi3101]

Spent most of the weekend working on super-heavy booster designs for folks that wanted them (I imagine for orbital fuel depots, but I honestly didn't ask). Ultimately designed one that should be able to handle 180 tonnes, though it's only been tested at 150 tonnes so far. Cost about √375,000 or so.

Big thing I've been trying to do is build a DocMoriarty-style transporter VTOL plane to deliver a habitat and two Hellhound rovers to the crater island on the far side of Kerbin. I've got some issues to work out with SAS and wing-loading, and I've yet to put the VTOL engines on the craft. Other than that the design process has been going pretty well so far. Definitely going to have to put up some screenies of it when it's all said and done.

[Dat_Spacewaffle]

I think I found a monolith in the desert, but I couldnt get Jeb to it because the terrain glitched out, so therefore, time to practice atmospheric rover landings!

[Slam_Jones]

Flew one of my Cruisers into the sun. It randomly exploded a couple thousand meters above the surface due to heat.

Totally worth it.

[Spacepigu]

i thought of of making a flying chariot. Silly ideas FO' THE WIN!

[peachoftree]

I released my very first mod, LFO Balancer! Check out the link in my sig!

[Kurotenshi]

Today I finished my new Salyut stations. I already had a Zvezda-like service module, but now I redesigned it, with what I learned by making the Salyuts. Replicating historic craft teaches you new stuff, the same way their space program once did

[Frank_G]

My new münar ground base went operational today. And the new Münar Mule Mk. I rover successfully began its tour of duty on the Mün. It can be configured for various missions, by attaching different type of trailers to it. It also features a C.L.A.W. to haul things not meant for docking. Currently two mules and one trailer are active on the Mün with more to follow soon.

[xub313]

Construction continues on my Eve station. I've got 1.6 million funds so I gotta spend it on something.

This will be one of two stations I'm planning for Eve.

[SRV Ron]

Launched the FASA Explorer One into orbit. If you can't get it into orbit, made difficult due to using a three stage SRB per the real one, you need some practice in orbital turn. I could have easily aimed for a 100K apogee where you want to fire the last SRB two stages to achieve orbit.