What did you do in KSP1 today?

[LordFerret]

Rescued my 5 stranded crew, and am in the process of rebuilding the space station. I also 'cheated' and removed all of the orbiting debris from prior launches. Most of the junk were radial decouplers, so I think I need to rethink my builds to reduce the junk I produce in the process.

[Frank_G]

Rescued my 5 stranded crew, and am in the process of rebuilding the space station. I also 'cheated' and removed all of the orbiting debris from prior launches. Most of the junk were radial decouplers, so I think I need to rethink my builds to reduce the junk I produce in the process.

I still like to use the decouplers, that stick to one side of the stage. They are lighter and dont create any floating debris... made some bad experiences with them myself...

[Agost]

Continued from here, here and here ...

As promised, here are the pictures of the robotic ship, that left prior to the colony ships.

The ship left Kerbin and after a clean Hohmann Transfer, it arrived in the joolian system in preparation for aerobraking. The maneuver went well, and soon the ship was on its way to its target destination, Laythe.

The ship was disassembled (controlled and unspontanious) into the orbital refueling relay, the rover lander and the 3 satellites, which instantly moved to their designated orbit on their own to begin scanning operations. Once the surface was scanned, the robotic lander descended to the designated landing point to deploy a rover and check for the best possible landing site.

The lander descended as planned, but during final descent disaster struck... One of the fuel lines, connecting to the outer engines was not in place anymore, putting the ship into an uncontrolled spin. And if that wasn´t enough, when the robotic AI deployed the emergency chutes one of them was torn loose. It to land using the de-orbit-engines as a little help, but the impact was rough. The rover deployed as desired and seemed to be unaffected by the crash landing, but only 3 km later it lost three of its six wheels, just by driving gently at 10 m/s.

Maybe it was the kraken playing its evil game, or a hungry technician that gnawed on the kables back in the VAB before launch... who knows...

However, i count this mission as a success. The spaceplanes have been delivered (i double checked the fuel lines...), the planets surface is mapped in all its detail, the landing zone looks promising of what the rover could manage to see and the orbital refueling relay is in place.

Hopefully, the colonists will have more luck than the rover... we will see shortly.

What's the point of that huge disk in the middle?

[Frank_G]

What's the point of that huge disk in the middle?

Its a heat shield to protect the cargo. The ship goes into Jools atmosphere rear first, so the heat effects will only affect the engines. You can see the protected cargo in the lower right of the first screen shot. While the engine section and the shield glows, the rest of the craft remains safe. The shield was constructed, using the procedural fairings mod.

[Agost]

Its a heat shield to protect the cargo. The ship goes into Jools atmosphere rear first, so the heat effects will only affect the engines. You can see the protected cargo in the lower right of the first screen shot. While the engine section and the shield glows, the rest of the craft remains safe. The shield was constructed, using the procedural fairings mod.

It's kinda strange that the orange tank didn't blow up... was is a mild aerobraking?

[zekes]

ITS DONE! IT WORKS!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102239-Full-Size-Space-Shuttle-100-Stock%21

[Superfluous J]

I staged and took pictures for 4 of the 12 planned months of my eventual 2015 KSP calendar.

[Frank_G]

It's kinda strange that the orange tank didn't blow up... was is a mild aerobraking?

Yes, the ship was only scratching the atmosphere. And i dont use FAR, Deadly Reentry or any other aerodynamic mod. I just want to make things look right. I would have put the orange tank behind the shield too, but that would have forced another launch, which is one hell of expensive in career mode.

[EdFred]

I went to Moho and back. Only to have a bug strike at about 300m above KSC.

All is well, parachutes are opened, vertical speed is around 8m/s, then suddenly the HH module explodes. Jeb and Bill killed.

[annallia]

I updated to .25

Actually did quite a bit, after seeing an orion post on facebook with a number of KSP referrences in it (I admit, I added an obligitory needs more struts) I decided to finally come out of retirement. After a quick orion look alike type mission I checked out some of the new stock parts and made a bomber, had a bit of trouble with the bombs though... In once case even blew up my own plane by dropping it with the bay doors closed

After that I tried to make a stock VTOL. I got the VTO part down but it is incapable of the L. I need to tweak it a bit and shift the COM or something... Not sure what tail pitches up during takeoff, not sure if VTOL engines are too far back or COM is too far forward...

Then I went and got a few of what I consider essential mods... Keth, parachutes, KAS, procedural fairings and such then jumped into career mode. Was doing good till I blew my entire budget on a mun lander that crashed

[CatastrophicFailure]

A dramatic day today (well yesterday) on my fledgling 6.4x station. Everything started off according to plan...

Third launch of my uprated Colossus/H-R1 LV. This proved it's good for 35 tonnes to 130km LKO, with a couple hundred m/s left in the third stage, can maybe push that to 40-45. Need to try sticking a MUL on top soon.

Seven NovaPunch M50's fire at launch (that's like 8 MainSails). Crossfeeding boosters burn out about 2 min into the flight, then separate into an "inside-out" Korolev's cross to clear the three M50's on the core stage.

Core stage burns for another two minutes, carrying the stack out of the atmosphere. Staging, fairing separation, and the same upper stage I've been using for nearly this whole career continues to ApA, with a typical circularization burn of less than 100 m/s half an hour later. In this case the stage is fitted with a probe core & power to fly the rendezvous, and a 35 ton cyclotron for the station. It's a bit of a pig of course. At 45 tonnes total the reaction wheels can barely turn it. The Vernors can turn it much more quickly but produce so much thrust that using them can quickly throw the trajectory way off. There's no RCS fuel on board for the thrusters mounted on the cyclotron. This later becomes another brick in a wall of fail.

Ah, there she is. HighLab II, 30 (real) days into the S5 crew's 180 day stay. The S4 crew met with tragedy just days into their stay when life support completely failed. S5 was the backup crew, consisting of space hero Chadvey and veterans Edmund & Jerdous, launched in a hurry to secure the station. It takes a couple of orbits, but controllers are finally able to wrangle the cyclotron to within a couple hundred meters of the station, and stabilize it.

Time to undock the tug that brought in Hub-1 and go pick it up. But someone, somewhere has made a critical mistake. There's no probe core. The tug has just become a very expensive hunk of debris.

Thinking quickly, Chadvey rushes to the extra MUL from the S4 crew and undocks. It's fully fueled but has limited life support

This is way beyond its design specs. First he tries to maneuver behind the drifting tug in hopes of pushing it back onto the docking port, but he can't see forward, and there's no docking telemetry from the tug.

He makes contact, but it just bumps the tug away. He desperately tries to maneuver around it again, to nudge it into the docking port's magnet range, but again it doesn't work.

Chadvey knows he has limited fuel, a good part of the station's supply is still on that tug. They'll have to deal with it later. For now he goes chasing after the cyclotron. With good telemetry, docking is no problem.

The Colossus upper stage is discarded, Mission Control will de-orbit it on auto. Now Chadvey has to guide the massive module back to the station with the MUL's minuscule RCS supply.

Mission Control has been able to reconfigure the docking alignment display to work from his MUL, but first he's got to get close to the station, and he can barely see out the tiny window.

His initial course is off, and in a tense moment 40 tonnes nearly slams into the main hab module. Chadvey recovers, barely missing a solar panel.

But he's gotten a feel for it now. The DAI has come online and he's able to nudge the huge module into position.

With a thump and some clicks, the latches engage as the cyclotron is secure. Chadvey breathes a sign of relief. He has less than 10 units of monoprop left.

That's plenty, though for a simple reposition of the MUL to the apex port so he can get back into the station.

With disaster averted for the moment, the crew settle in for a much needed rest. But their headaches are far from over. While they're in the other module watching "Batman Begins" a monoprop tank springs a leak. By the time they notice it and isolate the bad tank, nearly all of the station's remaining monoprop has been vented. They're into contingency minimums. The construction schedule will have to be completely revamped now, even using a MUL as a tug they don't have the fuel to dock any new modules, and the next cargo ship isn't due till near the end of their rotation. And that drifting tug will have to be dealt with before it causes more problems.

But on a lighter note I finally got the MunCastle!

Edited March 3, 2015 by CatastrophicFailure
Retcon LOL

[Agost]

Yes, the ship was only scratching the atmosphere. And i dont use FAR, Deadly Reentry or any other aerodynamic mod. I just want to make things look right. I would have put the orange tank behind the shield too, but that would have forced another launch, which is one hell of expensive in career mode.

Have you given them a try? I'm kinda new to KSP but I'd never play without FAR... stock aerodynamics just don't make sense

[Frank_G]

Have you given them a try? I'm kinda new to KSP but I'd never play without FAR... stock aerodynamics just don't make sense

I have indeed. I really like FAR, just because of the unguided gravity turns and those nice supersonic effects, but i want to play KSP as it is meant to be played until release. I use only 4 mods at this time... which are Procedural Fairings, ScanSAT, RasterPropMonitors and Kerbal Engineer Redux. There are lots of awesome mods out there, but with each update KSP got closer to what i expect of a game like this, so with .25 i decided to go as stock as it works for me.

@CatastrophicFailure - You have some very nice station stuff going on there. Looks pretty impressive.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Frank_G

[capi3101]

Had a satellite constellation mothership prepped prime and headed for Mun. Set up the insertion node, got it where I wanted it, hit timewarp...and forgot to set the damn KAC alarm that'd kill it on time. Naturally, I didn't hit a low warp speed - I cranked it to the max. Next thing I knew, it was ten days later and my carrier was ten seconds from Munar impact...

At least it was in Sandbox.

[Barney]

Making planes with FAR is much more fun! Here is some screens from testing my new space plane. Parts start to brake after 2.0 mach speeds in altitudes under 5000m when making full on turns...

The two center jets will be replaced as nuclear engines when used as SSTO.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Kotijuusto

[Parallax]

just a crappy little vtol-ssto with tilting engines

[Stewcumber]

Massive achievement for me today! My first Mun mission ended with Jeb being stranded there with 80 fuel in my CMOI rocket. Rescue Mission! I radically changed my rocket so it had moar srb's!!!!!!!!! and added a second capsule.

It was actually successful, and in career mode too, so I managed to get some good science too.

CMOI on the ill-fated Mun science mission.

This one is my new desktop

CMOIII Rescue Special Edition (includes soundtrack)

'Jebpacking' his way to CMOIII

Very proud of my day's 'work' and very happy to have Jeb back.

[Robotengineer]

I went to Mars in RSS, had to get KAC to find the phase angle for a transfer, but I have found it to be quite helpful in other areas.

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The launcher looks a lot like a Delta II, which is sort of intentional. The sat itself had ≈1600m/s of ∆v, and has many science experiments, even though I was in sandbox.

[MGCJerry]

Kethane Mun Base: Phase 1

Landed Phase 1 of the Mun Kethane base. To reduce weight, the satellite and rovers were pumped dry of mono in the VAB. There was mistake during launch where Bob didn't check the mono in the sat and the rovers, so he could pump leftover propellant from the transfer stage mono tank to the satellite and rovers. So the Scansat & rovers are nil on mono. Also during the transfer to the Mun, he made the 2 new guys EVA to the habitation module and told them not to touch anything, he was going to handle the workload himself. They screamed the whole trip like 2 year olds.

We have 2 landers (Habitation & Return), Mission Control was going to land one, then on the next orbit land the other but Bob decided he could land them together while still connected. Landing went well and had some spare monoprop so Bob could transfer to the rovers that were still attached to the lander. Upon landing, he decoupled the rovers and the return lander. Once doing this, Mission Control was told they lost the habitation module. We were then notified that there was no remote guidance unit installed on the habitation module. There was no monoprop fuel to re-dock the rovers to the habitation module. Bob was livid, so he had to play with the rovers to dock them. Now one rover is left docked to the habitation module so it has a guidance module leaving the other rover usable. He also found out there was only ONE KAS fuel end pipe so he couldn't refuel the monoprop in the rovers. He ranted and raved, stomped his feet, and took a surface sample.

Then Mission Control readjusted the orbit for the mun scanning satellite to 240/241 (km) in a mostly polar orbit once Bob went back into his capsule and begged for a supply mission BEFORE the mining mission arrives. Mission Control is looking at a way of sending a few more KAS supply crates, and some probe cores attached with KAS winches with the science phase which was planned for the last launch. The director is pushing for that launch to be the next one instead of the last, or as a possibility of an additional mission. Sources say this could be the start of a Mun based staging area.

TL DR;

Bob had a very loooooooong loooooooooooooooooooong aggravating day compounded by the idiots in the VAB.

BTW: I play sandbox, but with self-imposed "rules", at least when KSP isn't crashing.

[Fizwalker]

Making planes with FAR is much more fun! Here is some screens from testing my new space plane. Parts start to brake after 2.0 mach speeds in altitudes under 5000m when making full on turns...

http://i.imgur.com/4GxNcyY.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/IeDLXr8.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1FGIhNZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jt4Sg3s.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9ht9aZN.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/cn1bZ9X.jpg

The two center jets will be replaced as nuclear engines when used as SSTO.

If you need an outside tester for the mod, I'd be happy to run it through its paces

[cantab]

Flew DasValdez's KSA Munar Trainer, http://www.kerbalx.com/crafts/212 . Of course, I thought I'd stretch myself a bit.

[Kamuchi]

Playing with OPT now that my oc works again, it`s kinda overpowerd :/

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Edited December 8, 2014 by Kamuchi

[CatastrophicFailure]

@Frank_G: Gracias. It's yet to turn into a wobble monster or lag king, so I might actually finish it! If I remember the probe cores...

Today was much less dramatic. Five months after the near-disaster due to a failed tug & monoprop leak, a new cargo ship lifts off with fresh supplies.

This is Tenacity-2 atop a rather plain, as-yet-unnamed light launcher based on a Colossus-H core stage, but no longer sharing anything in common but the main fuel tank and standard upper stage.

Just barely able to pull off an almost-two-stage launch. Tenacity burns through a good share of its monoprop cargo to reach orbit, but the main internal tank is still full.

Tenacity. 11.5 tonnes on orbit, fully monoprop powered and quite stable when translating. Delivers a couple hundred units each of monoprop & LOX, plus TAC food & water to last 3 Kerbonauts about 6 months, and could carry other light 1.25 meter cargo in the cargo bay. And just plain looks kewl. Mostly Tantares parts.

Meeting up with Highlab II

Getting crowded up here. That's next on the list to remedy. For now, Tenacity-2 docks temporarily to the aft hub port above Tenacity-1.

All the station & MUL tanks are automatically topped off thanks to Goodspeed fuel pump. Fresh snacks & supplies for the crew, tho they'll be leaving soon. And proper waste disposal provisions so they can be "good stewards" and stop dumping crap overboard into space. Instead it'll be vaporized, aerosolized, and evenly distributed over the heads of thousands of unsuspecting Kerbals. (Chilling thought: if you live below 52 degrees latitude [and pretty much everyone does] you could be breathing incinerated astronaut dookie RIGHT NOW!) Sorry, squerl.... anyways...

With the station supplied and no longer in jeopardy, Tenacity-1 undocks for one final mission.

Tenacity-2 then repositions to its proper place at the aft port.

Tenacity-1 departs to chase down the errant tug-thing and dispose of it.

After a few days it finally locks on and deorbits. Can't risk something that big and uncontrolled sharing orbit with the station.

Tenacity lives up to its name. Reentry in 6.4x is well over 5km/s.

It holds together pretty deep into the atmosphere before it all comes apart at once from DRE heat & FAR aero forces. As planned, nothing survives.

Meanwhile, Chadvey takes the duty of returning with the doomed S4 crew's MUL. There's no way to bring it back on auto so it'll need a pilot at the controls. Mission Control sees the need to retrofit a probe core to the next generation.

The MUL's reaction wheels had failed sometime prior, and due to a spare parts conflict, can't be fixed on orbit. RCS is enough to get the ship out of orbit, but there'll be no attitude control after the service module separates. Chadvey knows he's in for a bumpy ride.

FAR and an offset center of mass let the MUL pod fly a lifting entry usually, keeping G load to around 4 and "gliding" farther. But it's unstable and needs attitude control from the wheels. Without that, the pod falls in a ballistic course and begins rolling wildly. After being weightless for six months Chadvey is subjected to well over seven G's during reentry, and that doesn't count the spinning. He wisely refrained from eating today.

He's way off course too. Instead of landing in the ocean just east of KSC he's heading for the barren desert of Cocomor. But finally the chutes open, the braking thrusters fire and he thuds back to Kerba firma. The MUL pod is designed for a water landing, but can land on land. It just sucks more.

Chadvey crawls out of his pod, happy to be home. His...hair... had turned from black into bright white. He said that it was from when the pod had smashed so hard (And a texture replacer head pack). He knows he has a long wait for the recovery crew, but it looks like he's already found a friend.

(reps to the first one who gets those references!)

Edited December 8, 2014 by CatastrophicFailure

[Barney]

If you need an outside tester for the mod, I'd be happy to run it through its paces

Um..? I did not make FAR. You know it has a post in the addon release section of this forums...

And that plane is stock except 2 remotech antennas inside the cargo bay.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Kotijuusto

[DanHalen]

I fooled around with parts and made a refuel truck for my aircraft.