What did you do in KSP1 today?

[harrierjack]

Sad news and technically not really today, but because of the severity of the tragedy all communications and press releases were halted..

10 brave kerbals were killed when the infamous Kraken attacked near the Mun. Flagship Explorer II with a crew of 9 was destroyed while waiting for refuelling around the Mun, next stops would have been Duna, Eve or any other celestial body it could reach.

This was it's maiden test voyage. It included a training facility with engineers, scientists and pilots, as well as a non-atmo lander for 3 for training purposes.

Fully self sufficient for decades, the ship wasn't prepared for the horrors it would face at the Mun, upon re-establishing contact the vessel was spinning (or it's orbital velocity, to this day this is unclear) at an impossible and constantly changing speed (including <0) which soon disintegrated the ship.

How did we confirm it was a Kraken attack? If the sheer terror in the eyes of the crew, taken from the last images transmitted from the ship don't convince you, one of the last text messages received was 'klaw kraken spotted...'. Though admittedly the beast must have confused the docking parts for klaws or it was starving and less picky, because there were no klaw parts on the ship.

Still hungry the beast was not content and attacked the refinery including 1 overwhelmed engineer just doing his job.

At the moment, all mining ops have a no-communication order and ground control is looking into ways to prevent all ground miners to succumb to the same fate, though they are unmanned, the amount of lost resources would be enormous.

Let's have a moment of silence for our fallen kerbrades who are paving the way for space pioneering.

** not all lost kerbals are depicted, some red shirts refused to take their picture..

(lol the roleplayer in me couldn't resist ;P , what am I gonna do 'tomorrow'? still working on Kerbopolis big civilian orbital city or krakenproof Explorer II(I?) mission, now if I could only make a Kerbopolis that does not feed on FPS..)

[percyPrune]

Finally achieved a personal goal and put 2 orange tanks in LKO by spaceplane. The Skylon 24-XXL:

Unfortunately I'm running into frame lag which, although it is flyable on its own, makes trying to dock with anything produce slide show visuals.

So, all in all, not such a success, but an interesting learning experience

[NecroBones]

I've been making some 7.5m thrust plates with stack shrouds. It allows making upper-stages out of huge lower-stage engines.

[Icarium]

Just flybys? Landings? Return trip? Looks good.

I've "successfully crashed" about 8-9 unmanned landers on the Moon so far, so not really ready to land anything on another planet yet. Altough I think the Ranger Mk3 with it's 17k dv should be able to get something with a heatshield and parachutes to land on Mars.

[TrooperCooper]

The ESA began its first missions to Mars. Click here for details.

[PCanas]

I like that blue color... Any mod?

[MaverickSawyer]

AIES, if I'm not mistaken...

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I've been making some 7.5m thrust plates with stack shrouds. It allows making upper-stages out of huge lower-stage engines.

http://ksp.necrobones.com/screenshots/2015-08/KSP%202015-08-17%2014-54-02-33.jpg

http://ksp.necrobones.com/screenshots/2015-08/KSP%202015-08-17%2010-54-14-12.jpg

That... is a delightfully Kerbal idea.

- - - Updated - - -

Completed my first test flight of my new 225 m tall , 42 000 ton rocket .

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

That is the FIRST time I've seen someone do a totally stock one-shot kill of the ENTIRE space center.

Well done!

[Red Iron Crown]

Used an XB-70-like plane to launch an ASAT missile and attempt to intercept a satellite in orbit, didn't get close as the SRB stage for the missile was difficult to control.

Ready to launch:

Ignition:

The interceptor:

[FastMINI42]

I picked up KSP again after hearing about the new 1.0 updates after not playing for a long, long time. I started career mode a few weeks ago and have beenn enjoying the contracts, upgrading tech, experience. Currently I'm working on ramping up to a Duna mission. Tonight I landed on Minmus for the first time (never really got there way back in the day) with 8 Kerbals to get more science and XP. I also brought the SpaceBus home after Jeb took four tourists for an epic 41 day journey through the system. Janjorie demanded a Mun flyby, so the return from Minmus took a little longer. Apparently orbiting the Mun for 5 days wasn't good enough. Tourists ... sheesh.

Minmus Landing:

SpaceBus landing:

[Columbia]

I tried to send an Eiffel Tower replica into space.

[problemecium]

A tight squeeze:

[Zhartek]

Landed my first plane! "Any landing you can walk away from..."

[Sharpy]

I've "successfully crashed" about 8-9 unmanned landers on the Moon so far, so not really ready to land anything on another planet yet. Altough I think the Ranger Mk3 with it's 17k dv should be able to get something with a heatshield and parachutes to land on Mars.

Make a simple lander, stick it on top of a SRB and launch towards the hills west of KSC. Train <1m/s touchdown, neutralizing horizontal speed, suicide burn etc. A couple hours of such a training in Kerbin gravity and you'll touch down on other bodies like a feather.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

Well, it looks kinda like a Blackbird...

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...and it certainly goes as fast - within a minute of takeoff, I've got it to over Mach 4 at 23km altitude. Main mods in use are B9 procedural wings (with stockalike textures), Nertea's Mk4 system (for the ridiculous engines) and BahamutoD's adjustable landing gear.

[capi3101]

Last night it was all about Bob. Having finally arrived in Minmus orbit for the first time in my career save, Bob was tasked with pillaging as much science as possible from the moon's surface. He was supposed to hit three, maybe four biomes before returning to Kerbin. He hit seven - for reference, Minmus only has nine biomes in all. He might've collected more science had there been more instruments unlocked, but as he was going there to get the science needed to unlock said instruments, well...

In any event, the trip was an unqualified success. There were a few nervous moments on the return - I had to lock a battery down so he'd have enough juice to pop his chutes at the end and so he made most of the trip back in an unpowered capsule, it didn't want to keep retrograde during the re-entry and he wound up on an eleven degree slope in Kerbin's highlands, causing his capsule to tip over upon landing on Kerbin - but other than that his trip was a success. 3880 science brought home from Minmus, enough to unlock the remaining science instruments, most of the Mk2 spaceplane parts and nuclear engines. Not much left for for Kacella to do when she arrives at Minmus in six days besides hit the Flats and the Poles, and since she's in a capsule identical to Bob's, she oughta be able to hit them both without issue. Probably won't be as fruitful as Bob's trip was, but every little bit helps.

Now to turn my attention to other matters - I've got some tourists to bring home from Mun.

[EladDv]

Rods From The Gods -The Mars Edition

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[MaxwellsDemon]

I've been on a launch-vehicle-standardization-and-development kick ever since I learned how to save subassemblies... last night I put the finishing touches on my 40-tons-to-LKO launch vehicle, which makes some of my space station plans practical.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Prepping the KerbalWagen for a cinematic.

[MrWolf83]

Last night completed a couple contracts one involving putting a satellite in a specific orbit around kerbin with a Resource Scanner , which the orbit alt. and orientation make the scanner useless, so I oriented it correctly and lowered alt. to meet scanner requirements since I've never used a M700 before, pretty neat results, just wish I could understand the readings better. Also, I utilized the 7 Linear RCS Thrusters, which will never do again, unless I know how to use them, cause I couldn't get the craft to level out even after turning them off and using the regular RSC thrusters. I also had issues with this on last mission where it wouldn't allow me to use the 'Q' and 'E' keys to level out nor would the SAS track to selected target after selecting either prograde, retrograde, etc... Worked fine on second mission last night just not my latest. Anyone else have this issue.

My second contract was to ferry tourists around Kerbin sub-orbital and orbital, simple enough.

Little extra fuel came in handy when re-orienting for usefulness of Scanner.

What's not shown here is the fact that I ignited engine a little to close to the last stage and created a sweet explosion as Sat. departed it.

[Goddess Bhavani]

With about 20% of the scenes re-enacted in KSP, I now have to badge the car as a fictional "Morris '54 GTO"

[eddiew]

...3880 science brought home...

That is precisely why I play at only 20% science, with Community Tech Tree, and some mods that populate the 2000 nodes Forces me to actually go out and do stuff in the wider system, not to mention keep calling in at Skylab I in order to top it up with data ^^

I earned my (big) wings - and forgot to screenshot any of the resultant SSTO because I'm a fool :/

[hazard-ish]

I've been working on building a mining station on Minmus in order to refuel SSTOs leaving the Kerbin system in preparation for a massive voyage to the outer planets. I will be only assembling the mining base via smaller modules dropped of by a small fleet of several SSTO designs.

The first launch will be performed by my largest SSTO to date - consisting of over 500 parts. This will drop off the 'drilling unit' - a module consisting of 6 drill-o-matics, an 'ore container' - an external group of 5 small-sized ore tanks, and the 'habitation module' - the main area the recruited Kerbals will be spending their time, either in the hitchhiker pod or the science lab. All in all the cargo weighs somewhere in the 40-50 tonnes region.

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[justidutch]

My Eve mission has been forced to rethink its strategy. Upon arrival at Eve and numerous aerobraking orbits, and after running landing simulations a few times it has been decided that an actual landing with the ship as it is would be much too perilous. So the decision has been taken to repurpose the ship into an orbital station where it will conduct experiments in space instead of on the planet's surface. A window to launch a new Eve lander opens in about 180 days and there is plenty of time to fulfill the Explore Eve contract, so the higher ups at Mission Control agree, and are now calling for the engineers to design a new ship. The newly re-christened 'Eve StayShun' has recalled its two Gilly landers, gathered science from the upper Eve atmosphere and is now conducting experiments and transmitting the results back home.

In the meantime, a quick check on the progress at the newly landed 'Duna Bass' revealed that its experiments are progressing nicely, and as the engineer went outside to repack the parachutes she noticed she was right on time to witness a full eclipse. The wonders and beauties of the universe are abundant!

[Fearless Son]

Also, I utilized the 7 Linear RCS Thrusters, which will never do again, unless I know how to use them, cause I couldn't get the craft to level out even after turning them off and using the regular RSC thrusters. I also had issues with this on last mission where it wouldn't allow me to use the 'Q' and 'E' keys to level out nor would the SAS track to selected target after selecting either prograde, retrograde, etc... Worked fine on second mission last night just not my latest. Anyone else have this issue.

Looking at the picture of your launch vehicle, I think you might be fat-fairing it a bit too much. You might want to move your communications antenna in closer to the hull to allow a narrow and more gently tapered fairing to be built around it. Fairings create drag, the point of them being that they create less of that drag than whatever they might enclose, and the wider they are and the more sharply they open and close, the greater that drag is. Too much drag near the top of a rocket is a big part of what leads to them spinning out of control during the ascent phase of a launch. If you narrow the fairing you will reduce that front-side drag. You already have some tail fins near the bottom, those will create drag at the bottom of the rocket and should provide ample control once the top is generating less drag.

[MrWolf83]

Looking at the picture of your launch vehicle, I think you might be fat-fairing it a bit too much. You might want to move your communications antenna in closer to the hull to allow a narrow and more gently tapered fairing to be built around it. Fairings create drag, the point of them being that they create less of that drag than whatever they might enclose, and the wider they are and the more sharply they open and close, the greater that drag is. Too much drag near the top of a rocket is a big part of what leads to them spinning out of control during the ascent phase of a launch. If you narrow the fairing you will reduce that front-side drag. You already have some tail fins near the bottom, those will create drag at the bottom of the rocket and should provide ample control once the top is generating less drag.

I wasn't having any issue during launch with drag really, my issue with leveling out was with the roll feature using the 'Q' and 'E' keys in space to level out or just plane rotate.