What did you do in KSP1 today?

[coreross]

Loving the updates

[LordFerret]

Worked last night on assembling a new ship in orbit, sending it up in sections. I was docking two large sections when all of the sudden my RCS thrusters stopped working... so naturally I freaked out and ensued with reciting every curse word I knew, thinking it was some kind of *new* frustrating bug. Took me several minutes of cursing and hair pulling before I realized I'd hit the Caps Lock key. Oh my.

It's true... you learn something new every day. lol

[Sarxis]

Hydroplane proof-of-concept: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=359896777

[AstroLuke]

I'm not as advanced as you guys, but today I started a new career and finally worked out how to read Kerbal Engineer Redux to calculate dV. So, I built a rocket to take Jeb into Kerbin's first orbit, only to realise maneuver nodes aren't available yet, so I had to perform a very improvised re-entry with little fuel. After that, I grinded some part missions, and now I'm pretty much bankrupt and stuck with just 4000 funds. I guess a new career will be started tomorrow

[Jirnsum]

Finally some time today to put my teeth into 0.90 (work and life earlier in the week )

Having a blast: first time I actually set out using aircraft (which may sound silly for an aeronautical engineer). Did an interesting contract testing the Mk25 at high altitude.

Actually managed to get it back to KSC and land safely

[Liowen]

I'm not as advanced as you guys, but today I started a new career and finally worked out how to read Kerbal Engineer Redux to calculate dV. So, I built a rocket to take Jeb into Kerbin's first orbit, only to realise maneuver nodes aren't available yet, so I had to perform a very improvised re-entry with little fuel. After that, I grinded some part missions, and now I'm pretty much bankrupt and stuck with just 4000 funds. I guess a new career will be started tomorrow

You'll get there just don't get discouraged by set backs. I have to pickup career mode since .25, I figured a break was needed and I wanted to hit every planet/moon before going back to career mode.

[Rithsom]

I built a plane for completing visual survey contracts. I don't have ladders unlocked yet, so the Kerbal has to stay on the plane in order to do surface EVA reports.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Recorded and uploaded my first Youtube Video.

Nothing much really, just a test

[Norpo]

Made a structural plate for my WIP mod; not ready for release yet. But soon I might release a dev build, but not until after I retouch the textures (let's face it, most of em are ugly)

I'm actually not sure about releasing it; i'm not sure the wooden parts will have any use in an actual game. (They're low-tech, and lighter, but they break a lot easier.)

Still, it's been fun making the parts, if only for practice.

[tygoo7]

I started my medium/hard difficulty career mode yesterday and now I have a vehicle capable of getting to orbit and I have a few buildings upgraded to Tier 2. I flew a flight with Jeb and Bob into orbit to do a first EVA from space, and after that I flew another mission with Jeb and Bill to go to orbit and land on the Icecaps. I don't have time for pics right now but I will post some tomorrow. 0.90 is a lot of fun!

[Concentric]

Returned Jeb safely after a series of aerobrakes (previously in my career...), and rediscovered to my pain that the radial parachute is massless, despite claiming to have the same mass as the Goo canister. However, through the wonders of makeshift gyroscopic stabilisation (read: spinning the probe really, really fast) and a low throttle, I managed to get the satellite almost up to its target orbit. I have its apoapse at the target orbit and the periapse a bit below, so I just need to wait until it's over the required location and circularise.

Then I saw a few really neat contracts: 24-77, ant engine and TR-2V orbital tests, and a KD25k SRB suborbital one. Seeing as my launchpad can handle 140t, these experimental parts gave me the power to shoot for the Mun in 30 parts. So, I slapped together a Mun lander and transfer stage, sticking them atop a five SRB cluster.

The central SRB ran out at the above location after apoapse - the first pair were on 64%, the second pair (with reaction wheels) on 32% and the central one on 16% thrust. I activated the central SRB manually just after launch, staging it only when the time came for the test. The decoupler between SRB and transfer stage stayed with the transfer stage, and I activated that and the 24-77s manually too. Then I burned to orbit at the right height for almost all the orbital tests, performed them, and immediately burned for Mun intercept. I realised later that I had missed the ant engine test's orbit height range.

No patched conics, but I was confident I could do it - it's been a while, but Mun missions aren't difficult to do mapless if you can work out your apoapse from your speed. Or make a note of the required speed. In this case, there was no need to do those, as I had the apoapse, just not intercepts. I then noticed I had very nearly enough money to upgrade my tracking station and get those patched conics anyway... but a good chunk of that came from the parts tests I had run on this very mission. One transmission contract later, and I had enough. It turned out that my trajectory would collide with the Mun's surface, but it was no trouble to move that a bit and get a nice path.

I got orbit, lowered it, took a few reports and transmitted one for the contract, then moved to land in the East Farside crater. Jeb got out and made an EVA report from the surface, then rolled the ship into a better position and got back in to transmit a landed crew report. I looked for flag-plant missions, but there didn't seem to be any. Jeb planted a flag anyway.

---

With science from those transmissions, I could now get fuel lines and the Okto core - which has SAS. Combined with the fact that I now have Flight Planning due to the combination of Tracking Station and Mission Control upgrades, I decided to perform a rescue mission, some parts testing, and get Bill and Bob to level 1.

The stabiliser was just for a parts test. The rest of the ship was 29 parts, so I could squeeze it in. I tested the BACC and stabiliser landed, the LV-1R pair suborbitally, and the Poodle and LV-1 in orbit. Fuel line technology allowed me to use droptanks to hold the boosters away, and to save on parts I built up spin when I released them - taking them clear of the engine without the use of separatrons. I didn't have General Construction at the time, so no TT-70 radial decouplers were available. Bill and Bob rendezvoused with the orbiting scientist (Seanski?), then deorbited and made a safe water landing. The launch core was also deorbited, as I dropped the periapse back into the atmosphere to decouple it between the Poodle test and going to the rescue.

Edit: Oh yes. Got a pleasant surprise in that the rescued Kerbal got 2 KXP because he'd technically been orbiting Kerbin.

Finally, I accepted a pair of Polar satellite contracts, putting together the Polaris30 to fulfill them. With fuel lines and the 48-7S, I decided that it might be possible for a sufficiently fueled probe to fulfill both contracts, and a little asparagus could give the lifter the oomph to get the apoapse halfway to the lower periapse height. Polaris30 was a fiddly build, I kept running into the part limit and having to remove critical-seeming things. There was another landed BACC test, too. The version you see above, I actually launched nearly to the orbit, still with plenty of fuel left, before I realised its fatal flaw. Exactly 30 parts... no antenna whatsoever. The only place I could see to remove parts was the solar panels, so the next version (not yet launched) has only three, leaving it with a small blindspot - unfortunate with its lack of battery other than the probe core.

So long as I keep the blindspot in mind, it shouldn't be that big of a deal, I guess.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Concentric

[xub313]

I spent some time on my ksp addon which I had been neglecting. It now supports an infinite amount of different fairings. Any size or shape.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

As for my career save, my Mun space station has been very busy. Ferrying kerbals to and from the Mun base, refueling crafts, and processing science. My master plan with this whole thing is to get enough science to commit 60% into open sourcing my tech licensing my patents. Then I'll launch a Duna mission and get rich rich rich!

Edited December 21, 2014 by xub313

[FiesesAlien]

Hey.

As soon i saw that "Outsourcing R&D"-Thing i thought to myself "Well... Satellites are now very... very... awesome!" And so i shoot up a few Satellites and unlocked every Science-Project on my Medium-Carreer till to that point all 90's are done. Now i need money for upgrading R&D Lab =) And guess what, i will still shoot Satellites up in the oribt.

I think the outsourcing needs a small fix from about 20% less Science.

Stay crunchy.

[cantab]

I've been playing KSP for hundreds of hours. How have I only just noticed this gauge!

Gauge by cantab314, on Flickr

[Capt-Coulson]

Today I went to Duna for the first time. In fact, it was my first ever interplanetary mission (that is, outside Kerbin's SOI). Below is the docking of the two Interplanetary Transfer Vessels (IPTV's) in Low Duna Orbit:

And the 'Interplanetary-Exploration Vehicle (Duna)' (IP-EV(D)) on the surface, with a relieved pilot:

Awesome fun! They'll overnight in the crew cabin, before a day of science, and then lift-off to the IPTV-duo to refuel, and to contemplate the feasibility of squeezing out a visit to Ike.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Capt-Coulson
Grammar :)

[NecroBones]

Today I went to Duna for the first time. In fact, it was my first ever interplanetary mission (that is, outside Kerbin's SOI). Below is the docking of the two Interplanetary Transfer Vessels (IPTV's) in Low Duna Orbit:

http://i.imgur.com/EfGQJKn.png

And the 'Interplanetary-Exploration Vehicle (Duna)' (IP-EV(D)) on the surface, with a relieved pilot:

http://i.imgur.com/IBPni1c.png

Awesome fun! They'll overnight in the crew cabin, before a day of science, and then lift-off to the IPTV-duo to refuel, and to contemplate the feasibility of squeezing out a visit to Ike.

Hey great! Duna is one of my favorite places. It's relatively straightforward, not hard to get to, and has some pretty views. It's an awesome first-stop when starting your interplanetary career.

[coreross]

[SickSix]

So i have been having fun putting up satellites to fund my space program. And really had fun using an in-place Minmus satellite to then conduct low altitude thermal readings. And even set the satellite down on the surface to get the last reading.

However I failed on another trip to the mun. I tried to get the 3 kerbal capsule set down and had to use all my stages and even then still had to use infinite fuel to set the return stage down without killing all of my orange suiters. So now they are stuck until I figure out how to build a proper mun lander.

[Liowen]

OMG I have forgotten what the TWR is to lift off of EVE and how much deltV is needed. I loaded up my old attempt at a lander in .90......and well bad things happened. UGH I hate when I take long breaks I forget a lot of stuffs

[ShawnPhillips]

Since I upgraded to a 28" 4K resolution display I have had some issues with the HUD being too small to read without needing to lean in closer to the monitor. I have solved this problem in the most Kerbal way possible,

With a bigger 4K display

The Flight stick and throttle grip are also new.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

Built a working space shuttle esque spaceplane.

[HafCoJoe]

I made the fifth chapter of my long term Duna series!

[Spatzimaus]

After that, I grinded some part missions, and now I'm pretty much bankrupt and stuck with just 4000 funds.

No such thing as "bankrupt". The next time you're offered one of those "make a base on Mun/Minmus" missions, accept it; you'll get an advance of 100k or so. Use that advance to pay for the next few missions until you're back on your feet. (If you want to be really cheap, use the advance money to upgrade facilities, then abort the mission; you can't go below zero in money. It'll hurt your Reputation, but you can get that back quickly.) Since those missions have ten or fifteen YEARS before they need to be completed, you won't really have a problem finishing them at some point in the future. They do clog up your mission list, though, so upgrade your flight control building ASAP so that you can have 7 missions at once instead of the starting 2.

Or just put a simple satellite (with thermometer and antenna) in orbit, and complete every "science from space around X" mission. Even if you get 0 science for doing something you've done a million times, it'll still complete the contract, and once the satellite is in orbit there's no expense to it.

Or just complete every "test X while landed" contract. Or once you can make a rover, every "test X while splashed down" (drive off the runway into the ocean, then test while floating). Neither of these has much of an up-front cost.

--------------------------

Back to the original topic, what I did today was continue my 0.90 custom (Hard with quicksave/revert enabled) career. What I found out was that those Base/Station missions? Very easy to complete. I had a mission asking me to build a 5-man base on Mun. So, I built a spaceplane, stuck a 4-man crew pod onto it, and flew it to Mun (with a fuel stop in Kerbin orbit). Since it had power, docking ports, etc. and held 5 crew, it met the requirements for the mission. As an added bonus, this made it very easy to level up my new Kerbonauts since they got the 2 points for Kerbin orbit and the 5 for landing on Mun.

[Janos1986]

Today (it was 00:30 when I went to bed, so it counts as today) I upgraded my Harrier VTOL, scrapping the landing legs and adding 4 newly unlocked gear bays in the exact configuration of the real deal.

One in the front, two on the wingtips and one in the back. Now it officially became a V/STOL.

Flies and lands like a hummingbird, and survey contracts are a piece of cake, EVAs or not.

[RCgothic]

Over the weekend I started a new .90 moderate career. Mod installed:

FAR

Deadly re-entry

Kerbal Engineer Redux

Remote Tech

Procedural Fairings

ScanSAT

Chatterer

Sounding Rockets

I started off with a four-capsule tumbler to explore KSC and unlock the first couple of tech nodes.

I then used some sounding rockets to grab atmospheric and low-space science, and after upgrading the launch pad I sent Jeb up in a manned mission for a first orbit.

Next I sent up a two-pod craft that JUST had enough dv and electric charge to effect a rescue rendezvous. I used the science gained to unlock the steerable winglets and batteries.

At this point I thought I'd got all the low-hanging science available, and unadvisably took two satellite contracts. I was prepared to manually fly a Stayputnik, but turns out that not having solar panels is a serious impediment to an unmanned craft, even with a trio of the first batteries on board. Further complicating things was Remote Tech. It's difficult to circularise your orbit when the horizon breaks your comms link. That was a slightly unplanned re-entry... And a manned launcher was too heavy to loft to the required orbit and return, even for Jeb.

Luckily I had enough funds to upgrade Mission Control, so I got around my contract lock-out and remembered that I hadn't returned any high-orbit science. So I sent up a manned suborbital and that gave me enough to unlock the first solar panels and RCS thrusters.

I still didn't have enough funds to upgrade the VAB, and I'm not getting to either of those contract orbits with a manned launch, so that means setting up a relay network for my unmanned probes. The delay meant my relays were Octoprobes rather than Stayputniks, which helped a lot. They each had four RCS thruster blocks, four solar panels, a communication 16 and the first circular battery. The mk1 probe had a single spherical monoprop tank. The mk2 had 2 monoprop tanks after I realised it would need to manoeuvre relative to the mk1. The mk3 was much the same as the mk2, but with a slightly optimised weight distribution.

The mk1 and mk2 were placed in a circular orbit by the manned launcher at 100km, and then used their RCS to boost up to a 710km orbit. Jeb de-orbited the manned launcher safely each time. 710km is a little above the minimum of 600km for line of sight to give me a little more leeway during the initial positioning. Also, one/two monoprop tanks was a little more than required to reach this orbit, but I like to de-orbit as much as possible and the surplus have me the capability if these relays ever get replaced with something more capable.

After they were both placed in a circular orbit 120' apart, I launched the mk3 with the same launcher, but without the manned pod. This meant I could stick the launcher on a suborbital flight to 710km and have the relay ciecularize at Apoapsis. The advantage of this was that the uncontrolled launcher de-orbited itself, which it wouldn't have done if I'd done a usual civilization burn at 100km.

After a little bit of fiddling, my relay network is completed! This evening I'll be able to go for my first satellite contract. It's a retrograde orbit inclined 176' at an altitude of 2.1Mm.

Edited December 22, 2014 by RCgothic