What did you do in KSP1 today?

[delder92663]

Lost a few good men last night trying to land on Tylo with a craft that could return to orbit. Damn you Tylo!!!!!

[Valley]

Today I landed a Ranger Station on a Historical Site. Again and again and again till I figured, "That's good enough for government work."

Now, for the Guided Tour!

Yeah, bare bones really. Hey, I have a Flag on Ike but...we don't talk about that mission in the KSC. People cry.

[Duxwing]

Nevermind.

[Jouni]

I rebuilt my old space tourism craft for FAR & DRE.

For some reason, the big heatshield acted as a nosecone, and the craft always hit ground at ~400 m/s. Too bad for the tourists.

[Captain H@dock]

It looks like so easy to fly.. is it going to have a cargo bay? or is this just for 'space tourism'?

@Agost, maybe it is because of the mod and the non-stock parts? no idea.

It actually is a bit nose heavy when full, but nothing a bit of trim can't fix. First fuel transfer should come from fore-front tank to correct that and from there you can balance perfectly through the burn*. Roll authority is not as good as pitch since only outer elevons are allocated to roll when all of them are pitch enabled, so it's intentional.

All in all, i'd say it is quite easy, as in 100% landing success rate where my previous design was less than 10%. (level flight at flare did require 105 m/s to stay out of tail strike territory, but at this speed it would wheelbarrow upon touching down, so you had to flare up to 20-30 degrees a couple of meters above the runway until the speed decayed to 60 then slam the nose down when sink started in order to touch down at a lower pitch angle... I decided this wasn't worth the effort as it wouldn't be fun to consistently fly and I scrapped the concept)

As for the bay, like I said it should be easy enough to create a cargo and a transport version, these mk2 sections are interchangeable after all (I haven't looked up the weights, but that should be manageable as you'd need less fuel).

However, my career is about to get inter-planetary, so my payloads are way bigger than a mk2 cargo bay as I'm routinely using a 24t to LKO launcher. I used to have 12 millions when returning from my multi-landing science farming mun and minmus missions, which yielded around 5K each thus opening my options in the science tree but forcing me to spend quite a bit in R&D and building upgrates. Then all I had left was 2 to 3 millions. So ATM I'm trying to save funds where I easily can and SSTO plane re-fuelling (thus launching half empty, and re-using transfer stages) seemed to me like the obvious answer here. At my level, fuel is easily SSTOed up LKO, big structures aren't.

This is also due to the fact that I run concurrent missions (don't wait for the end of a launch to do the next one) which is easy enough in kerbin SOI as the longer you have to wait for a minmus mission to pay off is 6/7 days. But starting day 200 I have three or four inter-planetary windows opening, and none of these will pay back until they're all launched. So I suspect I might need to be careful with funds. Cause I intend to go manned on all of these (not saying they all land kerbals), I can't be bothered waiting another year....

As for Kerbals, I might end up ferrying them up and down using this plane too. Not sure it's worth it though, as they weight nothing and you need to send their craft up anyway...

Hence, I went for a tanker.

*(well, it's my guess since I've never burned more than half of it, and testing/real landings have been conducted in the almost empty configuration. But with tanks so far aft and forward, it is reasonable to assume that if you can find an empty and a full stable configuration, you can do so for the entire burn envelope)

[nothingSpecial]

I finally did it.

With horrendous lag.

But with tolerable wobble.

With a little cheating - tweakscaled RCS, massless adapter and massless battery.

But with manual assembly.

With five goddamned crashes.

But with no Kerbal left behind dead or lost.

[Agost]

Sent two probes to the Eve system. Unfortunately I forgot to make screenshots of the Eve lander, which actually splashed in the ocean. Tomorrow I'll land the second probe on Gilly ( yes the one with a single RCS thruster - damn simmetry )

I haven't unlocked separators... so I just welded two decouplers.

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[Hcube]

No pictures, but i landed my very first rover on the Mun this afternoon using a ridiculously overkill rocket. WAAAY easier than i thought, i was always afraid of trying something too hard; but it was quite easy and satisfying afterall ! Next step is Duna ! (i'll take some pics for this one)

[Alchemist]

Further experimenting with my newest SSTO shuttles.

To recover the stranded W-9, I used W-8 to launch a refueling module to Minmus. It actually worked only on the second attempt, because on the first refueler... somebody forgot the solar panels. With some fuel the spaceplane was able to take off from Minmus and fly back to Kerbin. Attempt at gentle aerobrake into LKO didn't work so well and the plane had to land in antarctica, which actually was the best possible landing site. Without the right canard, to stabilize roll I had to disable the left canard and one of the elevons on the right wing, which resulted in low pitch authority. Had actually to use engines to pull the nose up, what these planes don't require normally (they are designed for unpowered landings, sometimes they land completely unpowered if reentry is accurate enough). Actually, the furthest landing from KSC one of these crafts had. But now it's back home... not for long!

Actually, I've launched W-9 again in the same configuration... to Minmus. With 6 Kerbals. Maybe it's even capable on doing this single-stage, but I'm not trying the same with going past the limits of the craft again. Because I'm launching W-8 in tanker configuration as well...

And here they go:

At one moment I wasn't actually sure they'll fit together

And now, with twice the fuel W-9 goes to train some rookies at Minmus

[LordFerret]

Pretty much done rovering around on Mun, all biomes visited, I turned to Minmus. The game plan is to visit all biomes and the Minmus anomaly. Got a little overconfident (reckless is more like it) with the speed, my rover handles it better on Mun, and I came tearing down a mountain (in background) at 20+m/s. When I hit the Flats at the bottom, 2 tires flattened, and the rover proceeded to spin and flip. It rolled over several times, exploding parts all along the way, before coming to a stop. When it did stop, the driver was standing upright in his seat - not sitting - and now I'm stuck with yet another unresponsive Kerbal. I have the Stock Bug Fixes installed, but they're not working(?) in this instance. Now I've got to examine the Persistent file and see if I can figure out what went wrong. The second rover in the picture, undamaged, is the 'rescue' rover I sent up for the driver to continue his mission... it's autonomous, but I need the driver to take surface samples. Any suggestions about how to get the driver's attention would be welcome.

Also, the trashed rover is moving, creeping ever so slowly, backwards, in clock-wise motion. The batteries have all been shut off (I still have right-click control over that), but the wheels continue to slowly turn. Note that the 'focus' is the rover and Kerbal combined ... showing both battery charge and EVA propellant together. So either the Kerbal now has batteries on him, or the rover EVA propellant. Weird.

[kerlateral_damage]

Launched a Duna probe today. Miscalculated the initial burn and the correction cost me too much delta V to be able to enter orbit, so it turned into a flyby. Dunik 2 will be better.

[percyPrune]

Started testing a load hauler for a modular Mun hotel. Went into the hills behind KSC to check that it could still offroad with minimal ground clearance.

It just fits inside a Mk3 cargo bay (diagonally) so I should be able to get it into orbit by plane before transferring to a freighter. Also tested it loaded:

Respect to Temstar for the original concept: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50685-Modular-Base-Creation-Kit I just scaled it up a bit!

[hellblazer]

Long overdue Mun visit.

[Aragosnat]

Landed on Minus using a SSTO space plane and then took off after planting a flag.:

[Flixxbeatz]

Landed on Minus using a SSTO space plane and then took off after planting a flag.:

-snip-

Neat. Made something similar to that before but it failed to reach orbit.

[Hypothetical]

Earlier in the week, I got Jeb into orbit around Duna, only to find that I had mismounted the SAS module, and it was keeping the landing stage from developing thrust. So... I made a duplicate with a Stayputnik for remote control, and sent it up. Rendezvoused the remote control lander with the main one, and then used KAS pipe ports to top off the fuel in the lander, and EVA'd my pilots over. Landed, did some science, retrieved the data, dumped the science modules, and relaunched. Caught up with the bad lander, transferred remaining fuel to the manned lander, and successfully made it back to Kerbin! First Duna landing!

Here are the two landers in orbit around Duna, prior to landing. The bad lander has a KLAW because I had originally intended to grab the middle stage with it to hold it steady while transferring fuel.

[Hrv123]

Another day, another list of objective failures.

Failed to lunch Large CommSat into orbit, FPS considerablly under 1, after two times bearley hitting 10000m under one real hour passing had to drop entire idea. Once when KSP get more optimisation Im guessing

Enlarged M CommSat a bit and lunched that, reached orbit but still failed to move out more than 9k km. And succeded to fire to West haha...

And yes Im comming to conclussion I most likelly dont need alll that antenas in Remotetech (they do autotracking when not loaded locally and no need to cower entire sky dome ?) but ah well.

For tomorow hopefully deploying same sattelit to 100k km orbit, in proper direction.

[ilo]

I most likelly dont need alll that antenas in Remotetech (they do autotracking when not loaded locally and no need to cower entire sky dome ?) but ah well.

That's correct.. you just need satellites pointing to the bodies you are working for.. and if you plan appropriatelly, not so many in a single ship, you can just split the coverage from SOI to SOI using link satellites at all. There will be more ships, but decreasing enormously the number of used parts and cpu..

Cheers

[inigma]

Today. Created ranks for the STS Challenges.

STS Astronaut Proficiency Rating Forum Badges

[table]

[tr]

[td]

Mission Specialist

Qualification[/td]

[td]

Mission Specialist I[/td]

[td]

Mission Specialist II[/td]

[td]

Mission Specialist III[/td]

[td]

Mission Specialist IV[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]

Pilot

Qualification[/td]

[td]

Pilot I[/td]

[td]

Pilot II[/td]

[td]

Pilot III[/td]

[td]

Pilot IV[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]

Commander

Qualification[/td]

[td]

Commander I[/td]

[td]

Commander II[/td]

[td]

Commander III[/td]

[td]

Commander IV[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

[TimePeriod]

I made quite possible the simplest, most elegant and useful test-rig I could think off. 16 parts, 16 tons and 3000 dV.

Pure genius if I do say so myself.

[delder92663]

Got all my landers and probes configured for Jool 5 challenge. Just need to work on a mothership now.

[NathanChimp]

First docking \o/

Well chuffed.

[Alchemist]

The plane had some fuel left, so I went for some more XP for these guys: to get out of Kerbin's SOI (and right back again). Of course, since the plane had fuel I decided to speed this process up a bit... Result: barely managed to get them back to Kerbin. Of course, no precise reentry targeting in this case, but the plane ended up above the southern end of the correct continent and was forced to land about 120 km from KSC in the middle of the night.

Then I took another plane (W-4), slapped the claw on its nose (only during the mission I realized I've lost the RTG in the process, but it worked good even without power) and sent it there. (How do these planes cover such distances? By reaching the cruise altitude! >25 km) Both planes were home before sunrise.

Summary of the mission? 3 planes launched (W-9 as the main craft, W-8 as orbital refueler and W-4 as recovery craft), 3 planes returned to runway, 100% recovery and only negligible expenses for the fuel. And 6 Kerbals promoted to level 2.

It's a pity these planes are not very compatible with the interplanetary missions... however, I want to take one to Laythe...

[Finnan]

I managed to land on Duna on the fourth attempt without using Mechjeb. Since I was in the neighbourhood I then went to Ike. Landed, with Mechjeb, on a sloop at about a 40° angle.

[RocketPilot573]

Reusable stuff...