What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Bishop149]

I had a go (and failed) at making a large rover. . . . over 100 tons fully loaded.

Simply doesn't work, hit any kind of a bump going at anything approaching a decent speed and there is an ~50% chance a wheel will come off and half the rover will explode.

Went through a LOAD of design iterations often with an awful lot of struts trying to hold the bloody thing together, all to no avail. . . . is such a heavy rover just a flat out impossibility?

[Belphegor]

I had a go (and failed) at making a large rover. . . . over 100 tons fully loaded.

Simply doesn't work, hit any kind of a bump going at anything approaching a decent speed and there is an ~50% chance a wheel will come off and half the rover will explode.

Went through a LOAD of design iterations often with an awful lot of struts trying to hold the bloody thing together, all to no avail. . . . is such a heavy rover just a flat out impossibility?

try it on a low gravity body like minmus.. the biggest one i put up there was 30t, still a bit smaller than yours but it worked perfectly.. still needed ions pushing it down or it would take flight on the smallest of bumps. only time it broke a wheel was after an unexpected double backflip

edit: also spread the load by using double wheels on the same 'axis'. leave gaps on the inside of the rover if possible so you can attach a wheel on the inside of the structure. (pic related, it's not very clear tho but watch the wheel placement)

Edited August 31, 2015 by Belphegor

[hendrack]

Instead of landing on every biome on Mun and getting back to Kerbin, I created a self-sustained lander that grabs the remaining science from Mun and transfers it to an orbital research station. The command module, tank, legs and fuel tank are from the AIES Aerospace pack. Lovely mod.

[algwat]

Improved Lander delivery pod design into a four pod mother ship that gets to orbit. Land at all the anomalies in one launch?? The lander has custom built rocket made from GEM parts.

[capi3101]

This weekend was reasonably busy. First was the successful rescue of Val, Neglas and two tourists aboard Superfortress 7 from the surface of Mun by Bill in Hound Dog 7. Since I forgot to bring a KAS winch, I had to get the two ships unreasonably close to one another - putting Bill down within twenty meters of the target craft in an area with a fifteen percent grade. Needless to say, I didn't make that on the first try. But I did eventually get him in position and from there it was a simple matter for him to screw on the two connector ports he was carrying - one on each ship - and then link them together with a pipe. Connection made, tourists piped out, science piped out and the Hound Dog cannibalized most of the Superfortress's remaining fuel for the trip home prior to disconnect. Val had also collected a few science experiments while she was stranded; those were transferred out as well. The ships were disconnected and Hound Dog made its way back to Kerbin while the Superfortress was set to self-destruct. Recovery was successful and the few science points the Superfortress's crew brought back was sufficient for me to unlock Turbojets, something I neglected to do after Nina returned from her successful mission to Minmus the day before.

Then yesterday was spent doing a nice, leisurely flight over Kerbin's north pole back down to the equator and then around the planet back to KSC with House Martin 7, a drone plane. Naturally, this flight was for contracts - a pair of them, one to do temperature scans and the other to do pressure scans. Good way to kill a Sunday afternoon. Had a fully successful flight. Nothing broke, though the internal probe core overheated more than once - I really should install that stock bug fix mod, methinks...

At this point I've got a set of tourist contracts for Kerbin orbit to do, and a group of tourists that want to head out towards Minmus to do, so I'ma thinking those are on the agenda for this evening. I need to unlock Aerospikes before I can utilize the same planes I was flying with in my previous career save (which were good designs all told); I'm there but I need 550 science to unlock them at this point. Bob's making another run to Minmus to do gravioli tests and tap it out, though; he should arrive in four days, and so I should be able to unlock them when he gets back. Meantime, I need to see if I have any Thud-powered spaceplanes so I have something I can use to send up tourists in the meantime.

[MaxwellsDemon]

I junked my Science Sandbox campaign and started anew with a Career campaign.

Jeb is completing a rescue of a Kerbal scientist who somehow ended up in a Mark I Inline Cockpit orbiting just a bit farther out from the Mun-- with my current tech level, it was a formidable challenge just to get there, but with careful deltaV planning and an epic long EVA, it was managed. They're in mid-return, aerobraking on successive orbits around Kerbin in their "Corvus"-derived spacecraft (thanks Orionkermin, I love that craft)-- I had just enough deltaV to get back but failed to aim low enough in the atmosphere, so it's taking a little longer than intended. But they'll land eventually.

[Andrew Duff]

Today I can announce that Minmus Mining has commenced. Landed a mining module that is expandable.

Mining Module:

Expansion to include refinery:

The refinery has already filled available fuel tanks planning to launch additional storage soon.

[Concentric]

Completed the K-Prize challenge with the new version of my Triangle plane from last time (details here). With this, I now have a new cheapest-per-kerbal standard method to get people to and from Stopover, as the journey's fuel cost was only about 400 funds. Previously, my best was to send up my two-man minishuttles, which would then glide back to the runway, and I think that was over ten or fifteen times the cost per passenger, as their lifter was dropped on the way up.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Concentric

[Mikki]

I just abandoned Discovery 2, projectname "CEOs Heartattack"... if i knew before how true it would be once.... About a million bucks (careerplay!!! ) went down the river, i tried to revert this savegame but it was to late...

And another careermillion goes up in the successor, Discovery 3, projectname "Fully Flush Fluffy Fuzz".

Bill will be fired if it does not work... yes.

"Uuups, forgot to shut the lights..."

But now its time to look ahead and ... see the funds melting down ...

-I really do not know why there is allways so much flames and lotsa explosion when i stage this asparagus lifter... is this normal behaviour?

Edited August 31, 2015 by Mikki
That Typo tho...:D

[Fearless Son]

If you'll forgive the 2p, I think you're quite heavy at the aft end. The lateral engine pods would let you move them up to the middle, helping keep your CoM forwards, and you might find you don't need those big front deltas anymore

Partly I did it to give it more total lift, partly to store extra jet fuel. But then I am probably still thinking in old-school heavy spaceplane design mentality where I could never seem to get enough lift for what I needed to do. It probably needs less lifting surface area now than it did before, and maybe the lighter weight and reduced drag will enable a more aggressive ascent that needs less fuel?

They can't be retracted. They are single use probe panels.

Crap, well that explains why I have been having so much trouble with them then. I only ever used them in cargo bays prior 1.0 when I assumed aerodynamics and heating would make them super-delicate exposed in atmosphere, while the cowling-laden ones would be more survivable and less drag-inducing.

[Terwin]

Quite the busy weekend.

Finished getting the Moho Tanker into LMO. The retro-burn(the one that started an hour before the SOI entry) did not result in a capture until 2/3 of the way through the Moho SOI on the way out(periapps was less than 300km but got past 6Mm before it was actually captured. ) Talk about a long burn.

I think it is now orbiting at ~100x100km with the nose-cone pointed at the sun to minimize non-solar-panel heating(and because that is the attitude I want it in for Klaw-capture as it keeps the non-retractable solar panels as far from the Klaw as possible).

After that, it was time to capture at Eve with my Eve Rover.

Capture went pretty routinely, with roughly 4km/s left in the tank once in LEO.

First attempt to land went poorly, but after most of the ship exploded, the probe core with drogue chutes still attached managed a reasonable descent velocity even without opening the chutes.

Second attempt I dropped the (still thrusting)remains of the transit stage at the first sign of reentry heat and things went much better. Used far more chutes than were really needed and had a nice safe touch-down.

After touch-down and some science I discovered that because of how I attached the rover wheels, they would not work. Attempting to tun moved the top and bottom of the wheels in and out not the front and back, and the wheels are all providing some sort of heavy drag effect. After experimenting for a while with enabling/disabling various motors, steering and inverting steering, I discovered that I could drive the rover in a rather tight little circle in one direction. Not great for my plans to explore Eve via rover.

On the other hand, I had this electric propeller I installed in case I needed to get around in the oceans, and generally as a 'just in case'. (note: installed on the top node of the cargo bay but rotated and positioned to stick out the bottom as I could not reverse the direction of the thrust, so conceptually it is a nuclear-decay powered small-propeller electric helicopter).

Aside from some delicacies in taking off with a tilt, it seems to work pretty well(on the surface the maximum spooled-up twr is like 1.07 so not much to spare).

While traveling to the nearest biome, I discovered that the rover is apparently aerodynamic enough for quite a lot of lift in the lower eve atmosphere, getting over 70m/s horizontal velocity while still climbing at > 3m/s when tilted around 45 degrees(if I close the service bay).

Using only re-useable science tech(Basically everything but the goo and Science Jr basic science parts), I managed to unlock the last couple 2250 science nodes in my community tech tree, leaving only the 3 4K nodes and the 10K nodes to be fully completed. No visits to the lowlands, Sea or the poles, but got everywhere else, may do the shore just to get splashed down at some point)

Eve play time:

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After my play-time on Eve, my Duna training ship 'Grand Training' arrived, landed on Ike to collect a stranded Kerbal, refueled, collected a stranded Kerbal and their Mk2 passenger module from Duna orbit, Accepted a contract for yet another Kerbal on Ike(since I had capacity I had to being back anyway) and went and fetched them as well.

After collecting all those Kerbals, I remembered that I had planned to refuel my scansat probe, so I matched up with it, got within about 20m, dropped my rescued Mk2 passenger module(with 2 kerbals in it) and maneuvered the probe into the klaw. After pumping as much fuel as the probe could hold, the probe thrusted a bit to get out of the way and the drifting kerbals had only gotten bout 100m away, making retrieval relatively simple.

Now, with all kerbals on-board and having planted flags on Ike, it was time to make the Duna landing attempt.

First attempt went poorly as I had forgotten to adjust my chutes and they were still in their default configuration which does not provide much braking on Duna.

Second attempt involved adusting chutes on the way down and went somewhat better:

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But still not successful. (burned the engine too much and it exploded at about 50m)

For the next attempt(tonight) I have adjusted the chutes before starting the retro-burn and expect a nice soft landing.

[DocMoriarty]

My KSP day began with some routine jobs. There is quite a queue of ships currently waiting in Minmus orbit to get refueled. So first task was to finish refueling Cudgel Station for Eve before it goes on it's long journey to Eve. Here is an image of Tanker-144 00-01 that is currently on duty on Minmus arriving at Cudgel Station.

Since Cudgel Station only uses liquid fuel and has enough oxidizer, the oxidizer was delivered to Raider 31-02, also waiting in Minmus orbit for refueling. Raider 31-02 features not only 12 nukes but also 2x S3 engines which are very thirsty once fired. NOTE: Tanker-144 is that tiny ship at the bottom which has a capacity around 17,000lf and 8,000ox. Raider has a capacity around 70,000lf and 50,000ox.

After this roundtrip to two current customers in Minmus orbit the tanker returned to the Minmus mining op, currently run by Tedcal Kerman. It's composed by an ancient mining rover which lost 3 of it's 6 solar panels in an accident, a new one much larger (8 solar panels) and 2 tanker vessels that haul that stuff into orbit and serve as fuel storage when docked to the mining site.

Tedcal: A really cool job, but stressful regarding that there are at least 3 missions waiting to get refueled. Also often get visited by kerbonaut trainings missions, then we can play poker and eat snacks together.

I also took on a mission to rescue a Kerbal from Minmus surface including his pod. Bad thing about picking up pods from surface is that there is no moving part such as a telescope arm, crane or something which would allow a bit more flexible operation of the claw. In any case before going there I wanted to see what I'm dealing with. So I redirected a research rover to the crash site to have a look at what's the pod to fetch. Luckily the crashed Kerbal was a scientist. I had only a pilot on the rover but already nearly max. science in the lab. Also finished a build base mission with this rover when landing on Minmus which was pretty good since my funds is really low at the moment.

Mortimer: Low? Looowwww? You must be kidding. After the desaster with developing a so far useless huge space plane.

A yes, also I worked on a large twin-hull space transporter which has a take off weight in the vicinity of 120tons. Twin hull is important to be able to add bulky loads in the middle. And I lost 4 or 5 of these during testing. Mostly on ground when taxiing since the gears aren't as stable as they should be and torsion forces are strong between dual hulls. Here is Twingoose docked to my Kepler Station with Predator docked in the background.

Here Twingoose after return from that space flight waiting to be towed into the hangar. It features 10 RAPIER engines and 2 nukes in this long distance version that is supposed to go anywhere in Kerbin system.

[BlueCanary]

The dres canyon challenge, in a rocket house on the back of a pickup truck. Occasionally it didn't explode.

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[percyPrune]

I redesigned the passenger and cargo spaceplanes from post #17986 as the COG tended to move too far forward when out of fuel. This, plus a high wing loading, meant that I had to make landing approaches at 150 m/s+ to keep the nose up. Doing this using a keyboard is not good for my nerves!

Anyway, I am trading some efficiency for pilotability (ie more lift traded for higher drag).

I am also trying to design an extremely cheap way of sending 4 tourists to Minmus.

[FlipNascar]

snip snip snip

-I really do not know why there is allways so much flames and lotsa explosion when i stage this asparagus lifter... is this normal behaviour?

Assuming you are open to a solution to that problem... you may be able to fix the problem by changing the decoupler's physicssignificance=1 to =0. I had a similar issue. If that doesn't do it, try rebuilding that part of the aspargus by replacing the decouplers with brand new ones. If that fails... Build a new one. That is of course, assuming that the separation is ultimately making the rest of the craft unusable...

[Thorium]

Today I experimented with a rover/crane that I am thinking of sending to Duna

[Val]

I improved the Chibi Skylon I made yesterday.

The Mk.2 has increased maximum take-off weight to 68 t. Now up to 34 t per Rapier.

But even though it carried the same 17 t cargo and the total mass to orbit increased from 37.6 t to 38.8 t, the available dV dropped from almost 400 m/s to 170 m/s.

Album + Craft file

[PnDB]

Well, it wasn't today, but it was a couple of days ago... does that count?

Landed on Minmus for the first time in this career. Bob and his lander managed to touch down in six biomes before running low on fuel, partly because the last biome he landed in had to be done in the dark... who forgot to install the lights on the lander?

Bob is currently on his way back to Kerbin with tons of science on board.

[SovietBear]

I found out just how close Jebediah can be to the launch pad during launch without harm, totally not realistic.

[Just Jim]

I found, much to my dismay, that my flagship, the Annabel Lee, is missing a critical gas line. So I built a replacement, with a couple changes, and sent it out to replace her.

So the Annabel Lee II is now sitting in orbit over Vall, and I'm pretty sure I've spotted Vall-henge. I'll investigate tomorrow.

In the meantime I also put a new space station over Dres. It's just like my others, except with white lighting. But what's really cool is in the time it took to bring the station online, a few more "dres-deroids" showed up. I am now tracking 32 of them, ranging from class-C to several big class-E's.

This really changes my plans... There are so many to play with, and I haven't built a space station into an asteroid(s) yet...

[KandoKris]

I upgraded my career KSS to a respectable size

old one is attached on the left

[Mikki]

@FlipNascar

Thanks, it is an old 0.9 design which has way to much declamping forces applied... gonna work this over.

For the curious... what i am doing now?

I docked a Lathye SSTO and did some more equipment transport to the Fully Flush Fluffy Fuzz Jool Nuclear Tug... its the final type, it must work...

I am gonna make a mission report in the Fanworks when the bunch is ready to go!

I want to try the Jool-5 Challenge with it... yay!

[Bishop149]

Over the last week or so I have:

Continued to upgrade / replace my remote tech network, the below is my new Inner system Sat, 16 dishes with a range covering Moho to Dres, should be sufficient. Need to make an "Outer" one now. . . . boy that thing will have to be HUGE, super long range dishes are rather big.

My Duna Expedition lead by the Kallichore (below) complete all their transfer burns and are now on their way to Duna intercept.

I got a little annoyed at my returning Eve / Gilly flyby mission. I jumped to the ship when the "1m to Kerbin Encounter" alarm went off to be confronted with this:

No where bloody near, SOMETHING screwed up. I managed to rearrange an intercept but in another 136 bloody days, and slowing down into orbit will now drain the dry. . . won't be enough to deorbit.

Well screw that I wasn't waiting 136 days, so I designed a small high burn ion ship to go get the science which was basically a MkI lander can with as many Dawns and as much Xenon as I could fit under 10 tons. . . ended up with a deltaV of around 18,000m/s, shot it off to go meet the Eve mission. Made the intercept and returned to Kerbin within ~20 days and had about 7,000m/s left afterwards. Also probably holds the record for fastest Kerbin approach, entering SOI to 100km Periapsis in less than 2 days.

I also swapped out the pilots as I felt poor Isabella deserved to get back quicker.

A meeting / pilot swap in Solar orbit

Yay, science finally! Was enough to buy 3 lovely research nodes.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Bishop149

[MaxwellsDemon]

Jeb landed with Eriny (finally) after rescuing her from an improbably distant orbit, and he (I) learned to aim a little lower in the atmosphere when aerobraking. (!)

Launched a satellite into a "Kolniya" orbit to a contract.

[capi3101]

I had a grand total of fifteen minutes to play yesterday. It was still enough time for Val to strand yet another group of tourists in Kerbin's orbit...

Valuable lesson there, kiddos: don't switch to rockets if your plane is only going 800 m/s; if it is, that's the time to dive and try again.