What did you do in KSP1 today?

[FancyMouse]

today? tried to do a named save and then pressed alt-f4

[Sharpy]

I'd probably go with a reaction wheel instead of the legs. Land any way, set yourself upright later.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd probably go with a reaction wheel instead of the legs. Land any way, set yourself upright later.

But that's another part.

[capi3101]

Last night I launched a Raven 7 to orbit. Its mission: to rescue two Kerbal scientists stuck in orbit, to retreive Bill from New Horizons (seeing as he's the only Kerbal still aboard the station at this point) and to retreive Wilta from Kerbinport to finish out her contract. Should've checked my launch window first...the Raven gets to orbit largely empty, so the first place I wanted to send it was New Horizons for a tank-up. Wound up with it in orbit on the complete opposite side of the planet #facepalm. Began the long slog of orbit after orbit to close the distance (and wound up overshooting while I was doing other things...).

Meanwhile, Berris took Kathina, Jesny, Rolie and Handun on a voyage to Minmus aboard the newly launched Stratofortress rocket, which was named The Great Artiste. This brings my re-usable fleet back up to three craft: Straight Flush, Necessary Evil and The Great Artiste. They'll arrive in a couple of weeks.

Bob dispatched the Minmusport Mun buggy to go pick up Adsey and Sanula; the mission to pick up Adsey was a bit hair-raising, with her capsule's periapsis a mere 6,000 meters off the surface of Minmus. But the rendezvous was a success. The Buggy is still on its way to pick up Sanula, whose capsule was barely within Minmus's SOI; a close pass between her capsule and the Buggy is scheduled for two days hence.

In need of funding after the launch of The Great Artiste and the Raven, I accepted a mission to put a satellite in a Kolniya orbit of Duna, bringing my Duna mission contracts up to a total of four. Still have about 120 days left to the first Duna window, plenty of time to get all of that planned.

[rodion_herrera]

Launched and landed a Skylon-style SSTO, with reasonable payload bay.

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Originally, I only used 2 RAPIERs, but they were simply not enough to put my 30+ ton ship into LKO. So I had to add a single J-X4 at the rear. Remaining fuel and oxidizer once achieving orbit is between 10-15%. But if you nail the re-entry trajectory squarely, you don't really need any more fuel, because you can dead stick it in like the Shuttle.

Edited July 29, 2015 by rodion_herrera

[MaxwellsDemon]

I've been busy working through the tech tree in Science mode... bewildered by all the components, I decided to begin a Science campaign as a way to introduce myself to KSP. I've developed (through trial and error) a reliable and successful unkerballed Munar probe and am systematically investigating all of the Mun's biomes. I figure, that with just a small increase in delta-V, I can swap in a Mark I Command Pod for my probe for my first Kerbal landing mission.

I'm on my third generation of interplanetary probes, although none have actually reached another planet yet. My first series ("Osiris") I ended when it became apparent that I had not given any of them enough delta-V to do anything but coast by, so I launched a series of uprated probes ("Anubis") which are partway to their destinations (glad for the Kerbal Alarm Clock add-in; it's vital when running multiple missions, especially ones lasting many days). In the meantime, I've developed a new series especially for investigating planets with atmospheres, which include an atmospheric sub-probe inspired by the Venera landers and Gallileo's atmospheric probe; the first two of these ("Amun-Min") are on their way to Eve.

My second-generation space station, modeled after Skylab, has been up for some 70 days and is on its second crew. (I know, it's not really necessary to swap them out, but for role-play's sake... plus, I need the rendezvous and docking practice...) Working on designing the next generation of space stations.

I lost three Kerbals in one landing; I'd attempted to make a "transport" version of my Apollo-analogue craft ("Horus") by sticking the Hitchhiker Transport container on the bottom of the Mark 1-2 command pod, with the heat shield under it, but I found that the occupants of the command pod were the only ones that survived a water landing. (It might be something specific to water landings, as I think it worked fine with a land-landing...)

I've also dabbled in rovers; I'm trying to create one that can negotiate the steep slopes of the mountains west of KSC; not quite there yet. I haven't done very much at all with spaceplanes yet.

Having a blast, and learning stuff along the way!

[Alchemist]

"Sputnik" means "Satellite"

For craft files check here

[PTNLemay]

Built an interplanetary spacecraft designed to take a few people to Duna in comfort. I used one of the 16-seat modules as the living compartment. With a lab+cupola at the front to act as the flight deck. I made use of the excellent Kronal Vessel Viewer to make this cool schematic thing. http://i.imgur.com/5ngenqo.png

This is the first test flight in my current career mode. Cost about 425,000 to launch.

Edited July 29, 2015 by PTNLemay

[eddiew]

today? tried to do a named save and then pressed alt-f4

Think you need to adjust your hand calibration, it seems to be a bit off to the left

[justidutch]

Last night I had an hour or so of playtime. So, still waiting for the next launch window to Duna I picked up a contract to rescue some hapless scientist orbiting Minmus at 7,500 km. I spun up the little transfer vehicle on my Kerbin 200 station, sent it to Minmus and picked up the target sans problem. A couple gravity assist from Mun on the way back and the new recruit is now relaxing in the station's hot tub. I noticed, however, that time played a trick on me: it was now two days past optimal launch window for Duna! How the heck did that happen???

So I built a ship. I have three contracts to complete on this mission: Explore Duna, Science from Duna, and Plant a Flag On Duna. It's not a ship, it's a base. I have no idea if it will survive re-entry and neither does Werner but he insisted on launching without any tests or simulations, so who am I to argue? It's certainly a unique design, mostly built around the fact that I wanted a Mainsail as a landing engine; over-engineering because of the lack of concrete knowledge regarding landing on Duna. And I like green.

Time played another trick: my hour of playtime turned into three. Oh well, KSP is much more important than real life!

Edited July 29, 2015 by justidutch

[RocketPilot573]

Darn, I never noticed the 0.0m/s

It looks like it's hauling ass just inches above the surface but it I do think it's a clever hoax. He most likely dropped the plane on it's belly and clipped the camera underneath the runway. From below the runway is invisible making it look like the plane is flying.

A hoax? The runway is over there...

[annallia]

Why didn't he just move to one of the pods and eject it some 300m above the ground, using it to land safely?

Because it was a dual purpose mission. Part 1 was to deliver the pods, part 2 was to deliver pilots to the station for the purposes of the orbital construction yard. In other words the pods were full already the only way for him to do that would be to toss one of the pilots out.

I must know which mod provides the parachute...!

Mod can be found here

Hasn't been updated in a while but still works great.

Edited July 29, 2015 by annallia

[FancyMouse]

Think you need to adjust your hand calibration, it seems to be a bit off to the left

Actually it wasn't as bad as you thought. I was using my backup keyboard that I'm not quite familiar with, and it's compact enough not to have the gap between f4 and f5. Hopefully I can get back my main one soon (it's being airdried now).

[Rufledt]

today i made a bunch more SSTO's and cool looking ships from TV. i think i found my new favorite thing to do!

[Goddess Bhavani]

The Primitive Orbital Station complex successfully performed transmunar injection today, deploying a lander to investigate a target of opportunity soon after Bob went EVA to take this photo for science and general awesomeness.

There's a video too (also created for general awesomeness) which I posted in this thread to avoid spammage (I just made a video of the POS station yesterday!)

[Spartwo]

Put the first Bohemia class into orbit awaiting outfit for Jool.

Did some other building stuff.

[sneff30]

I worked with Mega_Dunsparce to send his E-USC 4 "Sciencemobile" to the Mun! It took a bit of ingenuity on his part and flying on my part to get it there, but we did it!

The full gallery HERE!: http://imgur.com/a/Rlfyr

Download and showcase of the E-USC 4 "Sciencemobile"

Download and showcase of its bigger brother, the E-USC 6 "Sciencemobile Jr."

[annallia]

After multiple chute failures as well as a few ejection mishaps and unplanned rapid disassembly events I got frustrated and a little homicidal... And de-orbited my station while it was crewed.

There were no survivors.

[GarrisonChisholm]

After multiple chute failures as well as a few ejection mishaps and unplanned rapid disassembly events I got frustrated and a little homicidal... And de-orbited my station while it was crewed.

http://i1184.photobucket.com/albums/z335/annallia92/screenshot11_zps7gqlvgke.png

There were no survivors.

...I think there's an office down the hall that encourages Space Program Employees to discuss their high-stress and general work satisfaction. Right over here, that's the way...

*soto voce* "...someone call security..."

[Vegvisir]

To satisfy a contract and the next logical step in my Career game, I sent a probe to visit Mun. Got there no worries, a few orbits and a few tests, sent it back to Kerbin. Very low on fuel, and still learning the "best" way to de-orbit (in terms of efficiency, and not-exploding-due-to-heat) so tried to let the atmosphere do a lot of the slowing. It worked well enough, until the heat dissipated. Then my chutes broke. Tried again, thinking it must have been too fast. Chutes broke. Again. Chutes broke. Hmm. OK, turned off heating in difficulty and tried again, trying even slower re-entry. Chutes still broke. This is odd.

I then realised they were already deployed. At some point in space I must have pressed space and deployed them by mistake. Or something. Oh well. On another attempt I noticed them fly out behind for a split second before disappearing. So that explains it. I managed to get the thing down without chutes, RCSing like crazy the whole way down and used the last 13 units of fuel. Crashed down between 100-200 m/s, legs, engine and fuel tank obliterated. Section with science jr, goo pods and probe core bounced up. Tumbled. Held breath........and then they came down again and didn't explode. Yussss!!!

It had no docking (not unlocked yet) and I didn't want to "send" the science. So was determined to recover....

[Landwalker]

To satisfy a contract and the next logical step in my Career game, I sent a probe to visit Mun. Got there no worries, a few orbits and a few tests, sent it back to Kerbin. Very low on fuel, and still learning the "best" way to de-orbit (in terms of efficiency, and not-exploding-due-to-heat) so tried to let the atmosphere do a lot of the slowing. It worked well enough, until the heat dissipated. Then my chutes broke. Tried again, thinking it must have been too fast. Chutes broke. Again. Chutes broke. Hmm. OK, turned off heating in difficulty and tried again, trying even slower re-entry. Chutes still broke. This is odd.

I then realised they were already deployed. At some point in space I must have pressed space and deployed them by mistake. Or something. Oh well. On another attempt I noticed them fly out behind for a split second before disappearing. So that explains it. I managed to get the thing down without chutes, RCSing like crazy the whole way down and used the last 13 units of fuel. Crashed down between 100-200 m/s, legs, engine and fuel tank obliterated. Section with science jr, goo pods and probe core bounced up. Tumbled. Held breath........and then they came down again and didn't explode. Yussss!!!

It had no docking (not unlocked yet) and I didn't want to "send" the science. So was determined to recover....

Two pointers:

1. You can right-click on your parachutes (in VAB or in flight) and tweak their deployment parameters. The default for an armed parachute is to release at 0.04atm... which is absurd. Change that to about 0.5atm, and make sure the altitude setting for full deployment is around 1,000m. As long as you don't go barreling into the atmosphere hard enough to still be traveling at 280m/s+ when you reach around 6km above sea level, you should be fine even if you accidentally armed your parachutes in space.
   
2. You can retrieve science from an orbiting probe without docking if you can go on EVA. Rendezvous with the orbiting probe, EVA from your manned orbiter over to the probe, and right-click each of the experiments to collect them. Then EVA back to the capsule and go home. Bonus OCD points for also deorbiting your now-useless space junk probe.

Regardless, congrats on the recovery.

[Vegvisir]

Two pointers:

1. You can right-click on your parachutes (in VAB or in flight) and tweak their deployment parameters. The default for an armed parachute is to release at 0.04atm... which is absurd. Change that to about 0.5atm, and make sure the altitude setting for full deployment is around 1,000m. As long as you don't go barreling into the atmosphere hard enough to still be traveling at 280m/s+ when you reach around 6km above sea level, you should be fine even if you accidentally armed your parachutes in space.
   
2. You can retrieve science from an orbiting probe without docking if you can go on EVA. Rendezvous with the orbiting probe, EVA from your manned orbiter over to the probe, and right-click each of the experiments to collect them. Then EVA back to the capsule and go home. Bonus OCD points for also deorbiting your now-useless space junk probe.
   

Regardless, congrats on the recovery.

Cheers for the info about parachute deployment, I'll check that out next time. I thought about getting a Kerbal to EVA and collect the data, but I've never had any luck with a successful rendezvous. Figured raising the orbit back above the atmosphere would use most/all the remaining fuel, when I could instead use the fuel to deorbit the thing. And yah, OCD, I didn't want to leave it up there Hoped enough would be left after crash landing to a) get full science and reclaim at least some funds.

[Taowulf]

Being new at this is rough. I have been failing to get a VIP into orbit and then home again.

Got him into orbit....but the going home part I failed at. I will get it tonight.

[Drakenex]

My take on the Constellation program...... KSP, the only place where the Ares I worked

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[Spartwo]

Tested the craft that will be fitted. All that remains is a small, single stage Tylo lander...

...Which is going less than optimally.

Soon enough, soon enough.