What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Hey all. It's been a full week since last I was on the forum owing to RL events; I have a new baby boy in the house now, born last Thursday.

Still in KSP 1.0.2 for now; checking in this evening, though, I found instructions for how to install a working version of KER for 1.0.5, so the update will begin in the very near future.

I've spent most of my time (when I could play, of course) working on tweaks to the [I]Albatross II[/I] fuel delivery plane - which I've been able to get into orbit successfully at this point - and on a new craft, the [I]Peregrine 7[/I] heavy passenger liner, my first fully-fledged Mk3 craft designed to haul 20 Kerbals at a time to orbit. I've had some success with the design but I'm pretty sure an install of Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is in my near future; those damn Mk3 parts are unexpectedly flimsy, [I]especially[/I] the cargo bays. Managed to kill all four of my orange suits in my litterbox save when the plane broke up after re-entry during maneuvers to bring it back to KSC.

Did play my career save on Saturday; I pretty much had time to bring some ore up to Munport 1 and process it, then return the Wildcat lander to the drilling site. I landed too far off and still haven't taken the time to try to move the lander closer to the rest of the rig just yet. I've got tourists en-route at this point; hopefully they'll be able to go home right away when the time comes.

[Jouni]

It was a kerbal sports night. Tonight's event was rocket-assisted diving.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Jouni
Fixed the images

[KerBlammo]

Spent some more time on SSTOs.

The ascent is smooth, take off, let the gear come up then pitch up to 45° then follow prograde above 25km.







I have yet to find a re-entry profile that does not result in the front of the space craft overheating.

Edited November 30, 2015 by KerBlammo

[Robotengineer]

I worked on a SSTO for a little while.

[KerbMav]

Just picking up two new recruits from LKO and flying them into Mun orbit for training purposes.
The memory leak - and my mods - limits the time I can play before a restart, so I often drift back to marathoning Dr Who. (I want David Tennant back!)

[McFarnsworth]

 

I built SSTO planes, birds, ... whatever while the forums were down.

Edited November 29, 2015 by McFarnsworth

[Concentric]

A six simultaneous contract launch.

First, a landed test of the fairing. I attached a pair of fairings to the launch stabilisers for this, but also used one in the main part of the rocket. Also, two orbital tourism contracts for a total of four tourists. When the Thumpers ran out, and the swivel was still burning, I dropped them and fired a pair of Hammers, which brought the thrust up so that acceleration would continue.

The Fleas are there mostly for structural purposes, holding on the crew cabins, but they also help start the circularisation and raising the apoapse while in atmosphere. They fire once the Swivel drops. And here's what's in the fairing: a probe. The materials bay is for a satellite contract, the thermometer and antenna for the Exploration contract, and I have a Test TT-70 landed on Mun contract too. Didn't particularly want that hanging out in the wind on the way up.

This probe-piloted return vehicle had about 45 liquid fuel left over after deorbit, but on my test launch there was only 10 left before deorbit, so I left the tanks as they were. By test launch, I mean I forgot to put the tourists in and only realised once in orbit, so I reverted.

The probe has buckets and buckets of delta-v. Over 3km/s. So, even though the target orbit for the satellite contract is oddly inclined and retrograde, there's still plenty of fuel.

I actually also transmitted the data from the materials bay, too. The money has allowed me to upgrade my R&D centre for the first time this career, and also Mission Control to the unlimited mission capacity. I've taken on ten missions, and I think I can actually complete all of them in another single launch.

[Francois424]

Did we lose a lot of content or is the display more per pages than before ?

 

[juanml82]

I decided to finally send an upgraded rover mining rig to the Mun and, while in orbit, detected a place in the equator where the ore concentrations were high.

 

That place was in the Canyons. And the rover tilts forward when I fire the engines.

 

Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out well. At least I managed to bring it back to orbit. Will rescue the onboard engineer and destroy the rover.

[Gaarst]

Had fun with Kronal Vessel Viewer:

Scale is 1:1, and realised I am going to need a bigger LES... 

(Also, sorry for the huge image but IPS is not cooperating )

[DunaRocketeer]

Val is checking out her vehicle during rollout to the pad, prior to a surveying mission on the Mun:

 

[Chano]

Well I finally started my career mode with some success (thanks to some forumer's help). I ended up successfully getting a rocket into orbit using basic parts and haven't killed of any Kerbals...yet.

[McFarnsworth]

Is it just me or can you SSTO pretty much anything that vaguely looks like a plane now? I didn't even expect to make it off the runway in this thing

 

I wasn't planning on taking screens so I got nothing from the first half of the flight. I took the first screen after being amazed I got this far. CoT and CoM are way off, so it's a bit tricky to fly without atmosphere.

 

Surely it can't survive reentry?

 

Apparently it can.

 

Doesn't really float like a seaplane though.

 

But it does take off like one.

[cantab]

Not much. Really I just want to see how posting images works in this new WYSI vaguely similar to WYG editor.

Coleridge 2 perishes by cantab314, on Flickr

Let me guess, what used to be a single quick copy-and-paste operation is now going to be a boatload of work.

Wheeee, and for no obvious reason the image goes somewhere random NOT where my cursor was. ... wait, it went in the copy pasted BBCode. OK, what the?

Also, trying to write or edit a post with images is now going to a complete PAIN IN THE REAR END.

Bring back our BBCode.

[Val]

Over the weekend I finished converting my signature crafts to KSP 1.0.5.

The SSTO S-4 Chibi Skylon Mk.2 has been upgraded with full RCS translation for docking.

The SSTO S-108 Long Mk.2 is now easier to fly, has lower time to orbit, and also received full RCS translation for docking.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Val

[Mjarf]

2 hours ago, Chano said:

Well I finally started my career mode with some success (thanks to some forumer's help). I ended up successfully getting a rocket into orbit using basic parts and haven't killed of any Kerbals...yet.

I love that part of the game, everything is new and unknown and you have to learn as you go and scrape together whatever resources you have in a creative way to reach your first goals. It's lots of fun don't you agree?

[DunaRocketeer]

2 hours ago, Mjarf said:

I love that part of the game, everything is new and unknown and you have to learn as you go and scrape together whatever resources you have in a creative way to reach your first goals. It's lots of fun don't you agree?

I for one, love the beginning of a new game. Strapping Kerbals to glorified fireworks and launching them into the sky, learning the fundamentals and expanding your capabilities. I love the whole game of course, but the beginning has a great appeal.

[ROXunreal]

During the forum downtime I landed on other planets for the first time with the smallest microlanders I could build. The missions were a partial success.

Four overall missions, two to Eve and two to Duna. The first craft entered orbit, dipped a toe into the upper atmosphere and collected science data, then increased orbit and acted as a satellite relay for the other mission, which consisted of the lander and the transfer stage, the later doubled as another relay satellite for better coverage uselessly floated in orbit once the lander detached because I forgot to give it its own probe control unit. This was a problem for missions to both planets as they were more or less twin craft apart from the very landers themselves which were more tailored to the specific atmospheres of Eve and Duna. The other problem was that both orbiters had too small a battery to transmit the actual atmospheric test unit science data (but could still get materials bay and other science equipment data sent),while the landers also had too small a battery to transmit the seismic instrument data. In any case both landers managed to land intact and send at least some science data, which was the main objective.

Violet was the first to reach Eve, got orbital capture, entered the upper atmosphere (which is so dense that parts started overheating only 2-3km into the 90km thick atmosphere), ran science tests and then entered a stable orbit again. The other Eve mission, Heat, arrived later with the lander. Once it synchronized orbit with Violet which acted as a relay for the lander to communicate with the Space Center, the lander got to the surface of Eve safely despite a very violent and hot reentry. It still had 2/3 fuel left but of course I would forget that Eve has a higher gravity and that the thrust to weight ratio of 1.2 on Kerbin equals to <1 TWR on Eve, thus no changing position.

 

Violet after reaching Kerbin orbit

The Heat lander

Violet briefly enters Eve's atmosphere

Heat lander detaches from the transfer stage to soon land on Eve

 

Pretty much everything the same for Duna, only different lander.

The first Duna mission was Novelty II (Novelty I made a flyby of Duna earlier and is now floating aimlessly without fuel far far away). Later the lander mission arrived, and the Dust lander made an easy landing on Duna, with an almost full tank of fuel to spare for making perhaps one jump to a different biome later. Novelty II also had enough fuel to also visit the orbit of its moon Ike.

Dust, the trash can lander.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by ROXunreal
mistakes

[gamerscircle]

I am attempting some KSP Historical Missions: Via [NASA, Career-mode total conversion]. & [Contract Pack: Historic Missions] , I am having a ton of fun and getting close the to Mun landing.

[zspoelstra]

Lots of trial and error after starting a new science game in 1.0.5. Been away for quite a while so I basically forgot everything I knew  Watched some Scott Manley videos and did the basic science grinding so I can get some actual rockets to fly. Did a Mun flyby to gather science and next up is a Mun landing which I'm bound to screw up 300 times before actually landing.

[Leb111]

I sent a new part to my Kerbin space station, but i forgot to put RCS controls on it... So i managed to do an orbital rendez vous and i sent a probe from my station to    The package and i docked it back

[GarrisonChisholm]

This weekend I accomplished what I feel to be my greatest feat to date, inserting a probe into orbit of Eeloo.  With 4 RTGs the ion engine at 1/3 power required a 42 minute insertion burn to kill 4500m/s, but I am quite happy.

 

So happy in fact, that the aftermath is a bit of a let-down.

I'm still attempting to get an unmanned ship to Duna and back reliably before sending Kerbals beyond Kerbin SOI.

[capi3101]

Had some problems getting back on the forums here after the migration; apparently AOL dislikes messages to reset my password so much it didn't even bother letting me know one had flown into my spam trap. Big thanks to KasperVid for taking the time to get me back up and running again. Been jonesin' to get back on the forums...

And boy did I really need to get on the forums this weekend. Friday I found a procedure to get a working version of KER running for 1.0.5, so I bit the bullet and upgraded. As usual, I kept 1.0.2 for archival purposes; I may or may want to go revisit that game in the near future. I've gotten reports from Firespitter and TAC Fuel Balancer that 1.0.5 is an unsupported version (though TAC seems to be running just fine; I have Firespitter only for the Procedural Fairings, which based on events last night seem to be genuinely borked.) I began a new career save for 1.0.5 following Streetwind's early career strategy, clearing most of the lower tech tree within four simple missions. I flew a couple of tourist contracts and was deeply concerned when my stupid tourist craft chose not to fly straight, but it all worked out and ultimately I started making a little bit of cash. Even managed to clear five contracts with a single flight (though in fairness two of them were chute-hauling contracts, one for a Mk16 and one for radial chutes).

Saturday was when the weird stuff began happening. I had my tourist craft for six Kerbals, which I had equipped with a Mk1 Pod and three Mk1 Crew Cabins, a Mk1 Service bay with four Z100 batts, four basic fins and a heat shield. Three times in a row, this craft would make orbit, I would de-orbit it, and immediately upon hitting atmospheric interface (at 70k) the fins would explode and knock 20k off of both my Apoapsis and Periapsis, putting me in too steep and resulting in RUD every time. Reverting kept this from being an unrecoverable disaster for my early space program, but it sure was annoying as hell - especially the sudden adjustment to my entry profile.

So. on Sunday I tried compensating - enter with Periapsis at 50k instead of 30k like I ordinarily would've. I also repositioned the Service Bay in the stack. That craft made it down and I cleared five contracts at once (once again). I followed that up with a few parts testing contracts. When I again had six contracts for Kerbin orbits and sub-orbits, I launched the craft again, this time taking the fins off the payload completely. This version of the craft loses control and explodes - doesn't matter where I put the periapsis. Obviously I need to re-learn a thing or two about entry profiles in post-1.0.2, if I need to be deploying my chutes sooner or what (I have noted that my 1.0.2 launch profile now seems to be off - my apoapsis seems to be getting higher sooner - and I'd like to think it's just a matter of relearning those aspects of the game again and not a borked mod or something).

Meantime, the current tourist flight is stuck in orbit, at least until I can figure out how to get everybody down safely. I've also unlocked enough tech and earned enough cash to send Bob to Minmus for sci farming at his leisure. An attempt to launch that flight late last night met with failure - which I suspect had a lot to do with the fact that Procedural Fairings doesn't seem to be working properly at the moment.

Well, it's good to be back in any event. Going to have to see what all I need to / can adjust from the old forum...

Edited November 30, 2015 by capi3101
found and corrected a few typos.

[Guz]

 

[Bubbadevlin]

Well today i started redoing my Saturn V replica, but i got impatient testing fuel flow, physical warped x4, and well...

My launch escape system surprisingly worked!