What did you do in KSP1 today?

[KerBlammo]

Spent more time flying my SSTO rocket plane.  Up until now I've flown with the cargo bay empty, so its time to actually try and use it.  I put in a hitchhiker pod and an inline docking port.  In this configuration it barely made it to LKO (72x74km) and only had enough main engine dV to de-orbit.  

This is OK if I want to leave something in orbit for a tug to pick up or, in this configuration, a crew transfer vehicle can rendezvous with the plane, but no good if I want to rendezvous with a space station.  

So what to do? Add lightness? Come up with a new clever ascent profile?  NO!! this is KSP! the answer of course is to add MOAR BOOSTERS!

The boosters are lit after take off and help push the spacecraft through the thickest part of the atmosphere.  Once on orbit it now has plenty of dV on hand to change orbits and rendezvous with a space station in a 95x95km orbit.  But of course now its not a SSTO.  At least its 100% resuable...

In this configuration nothing is left in orbit and the extra weight up front makes re-entry and landing much more difficult.  The next step is a redesign with the cargo bay further back to make it more balanced on the return trip.

Here's another pic from an earlier test flight with an even more unstable configuration (this one resulted in the first (and so far only) crash landing of this space plane).

Edited December 2, 2015 by KerBlammo

[Geschosskopf]

I made an SSSTO (Single Stage Seaplane to Orbit) flying boat crew shuttle.  It can do a land takeoff, a touch-and-go on the water, and JUST BARELY make an 80km orbit where it has to await a tanker to do anything else.  It's a great way to strand 6 Kerbals in LKO but I hope it does a bit better on Laythe.

Surprisingly, it flies just fine in the air but flips out in space, even with engine vectoring, SAS, and RCS all working at once, although MJ's SmartASS will keep it pointed as desired.  Might need to shift some fuel around once in space, or tinker with the CoM as best I can.  It needs one of the more powerful Mk2 Extension engines to get off the water, too.  So this is far from a grand achievement but it's a step in the right direction.

[KerbMav]

Moved 166 experiments (four from Sounding Rockets) from Kerbin surface all around KSC into a Crew Taxi going to the orbital science station for processing. Supplies will last 115 days (due to USI LS), by then I hope I will have rank three scientists to replace my rank two ones.

For that I started designing a simple but hopefully reusable training vessel, able to go into Munar orbit, land on Minmus and hop into Kerbol's orbit before returning to LKO.

Also started designing a larger exploration cruiser, but this one will have to wait until bigger docking ports are available to make it future proof.

[bulletv1]

Did some data collection contracts on Minmus and also launched my unmanned recovery for 3 kerbals, 2 in LKO and one in Munar orbit. Then has a quick arse around and build something loosely based on the English Electric Lightning. Only few well when going fast

Edited December 2, 2015 by bulletv1

[Alchemist]

Well, I published my digital clock

Feel free to try it out!

[Val]

4 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I made an SSSTO (Single Stage Seaplane to Orbit) flying boat crew shuttle.  It can do a land takeoff, a touch-and-go on the water, and JUST BARELY make an 80km orbit where it has to await a tanker to do anything else.  It's a great way to strand 6 Kerbals in LKO but I hope it does a bit better on Laythe.

Surprisingly, it flies just fine in the air but flips out in space, even with engine vectoring, SAS, and RCS all working at once, although MJ's SmartASS will keep it pointed as desired.  Might need to shift some fuel around once in space, or tinker with the CoM as best I can.  It needs one of the more powerful Mk2 Extension engines to get off the water, too.  So this is far from a grand achievement but it's a step in the right direction.

There's a few things I'd do different, but I really like your design and the concept of seaworthy spaceplane for Laythe.

I feel inspired to build something similar. Thank you. 

[kotomikun]

During the long forum outage, got my absurdly huge ship+base on its way to Sarnus. 339 parts and over 200 tons, and even with the engine efficiency turned down to increase thrust, it accelerates at less than 20 centimeters per second. I had to climb up to 2000 km and refuel just to give it enough space to do the escape burn without having to do 30 burns over as many orbits. But, after many real-time hours of burning off liquid hydrogen, and a couple of corrections, it's on course and should have more than enough fuel to explore the easier landing targets in the system after dumping a massive amount of dead weight, i.e. the Eeloo base. More importantly, that will ditch a lot of laggy parts... including the wacky RCS tank with about 75 thrusters, intended to stabilize the landing.

Also, arrived at Dres and hopped through all the biomes. My flying rover smashed all its wheels in one poorly-executed landing (stupid darkness, with its lack of visibility), but was able to hop over to the other nearby biome with its thrusters and fly back to the mothership, where my engineer could fix the wheels. No anomalies on Dres, apparently, but my Laythe return vehicle test launch stumbled upon something interesting back at Kerbin... no spoilers!

 

[Vahal]

Just messing around with designs for my next mission program. They are not that optimal even functionnal (the Orion like is just eye candy)

[DunaRocketeer]

Last night I lost a booster on landing, first time I failed to recover both boosters on my current heavy lifter. Regardless, the Munar seismic survey mission continued onwards to a rather scary landing (quite enjoying suicide burns in a lander that has only a so-so TWR). Collected all the contract data and am now part way through a second rover sortee to collect science from a nearby crater biome. All very standard and yet very satisfying.

Finally, I spent a little time making sure my Mini Shuttle has an effective Abort action group - it's only a matter of time before the Launch Failure mod strikes...

[EuSouONumero345]

Nothing, as I haven't been playing KSP in a while...close to a year of no ksp.

[capi3101]

As usual I logged my previous night's activities in a Notes file on a deactivated iPhone 3GS. This morning upon arrival at work, I've discovered it DOA. Going to have to crack it open and re-seat the battery again... 

So going off of memory here. Since ferram had a new version of FAR available, I decided to install it prior to gameplay to see if it would help my woes with the Lawsuit 7 craft stuck in Kerbin's orbit. I checked the voxels for the Lawsuit craft, and lo and behold I discovered a metric efftonne of them in the Service Bay up by the Command Pod - and I discovered that they went away if the Service Bay door was open. So I figured WTH, and tried a re-entry with the doors open. Jeb and company returned safely to Kerbin's surface with no unplanned disintegrations, freeing me from the woes I predicted in my previous post on this thread. Made a fair chunk of coin in the process too - something like a 400% return on the investment of the Lawsuit rocket, enough to safely upgrade the SPH and Runway to Level 2. I don't think I have enough evidence to pester ferram with a bug report just yet - I need to try uninstalling a bunch of other mods first and see if the problem persists. If it does, time to pester. If not, time to add mods back in until the game borks, then pester that poor underpayed and unappreciated modder instead...

I picked up two satellite contracts and another two contracts to replace the ones I'd fulfilled, and did a trio of parts testing contracts - one for a Mk16 Chute, one for the Terrier engine, and one for a 2.5m Heat Shield while splashed down. Ended the night with a flight; I decided I would go ahead and follow monophonic's advice and build a rocket plane to do a high altitude aerial survey in the vicinity of KSC, using two FL-T800s and a Swivel engine for the boost phase and a whopping six Mk0 assemblies (Small Intake, Mk0 Fuselage, Juno engine) for aerial flight - six gets you roughly the same performance as a single Wheesley, at least in FAR; couldn't swear to that in stock aero. I have spoiled myself on procedural wings, it seems - I didn't like how kludgy the plane looked, but FAR insisted it would fly and that is something it did. I successfully hit all three waypoints even with the rocket running out of oxidizer while boosting up to altitude for the third and final waypoint. Jeb returned the plane successfully to the KSC Runway intact. Probably a good thing I had TAC Fuel Balancer installed (and that it works in 1.0.5 depite KSP insisting that it doesn't); at one point the plane went into a flat spin (tried to turn it a little too quickly) and Jeb's caboose was saved by pumping fuel forward - he came within 500 meters of kissing the dirt. 

Can't recall what I called that plane. I want to say I named it Crapbiscuit 7, but don't quote me on that. Feel free to use the name, though...

Anyways, I owe monophonic some rep. Now I will take the time to figure out how to do that on these new forums. And then tonight my first order of business will be to fix my damn phone again...

[Hannu2]

I planned and tried a new manned Eve craft in sandbox mode. I have not been on Eve since 0.something but now I am going to visit there. It seems that everything has changed. Now ascent is trivial, thanks to ridiculously overpowered Vectors and new aerodynamics. I succeeded at a first try with a good marginal. But descent seems to be nightmare now. My craft turns always sideways at 55-40 km and explodes.

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, Val said:

There's a few things I'd do different, but I really like your design and the concept of seaworthy spaceplane for Laythe.

I feel inspired to build something similar. Thank you. 

Thanks :).  Yeah, I do some things different myself.  This was more of a proof-of-concept prototype.  Besides the problematic control issues under thrust in space, the canards block the cockpit hatch so entry for all hands is through the crew cabin.  Plus a number of other bothersome details.

[jros83]

Had Jeb freefall from roughly 40,000 meters over ocean.

At about 750 meters, turned on his pack and began continuous upward thrust.

Jeb hits the ocean at about 37m/s.

JEB LIVES!

Jeb achieves World First 10m ocean depth.

 

lol wut?!

[Terwin]

It has been a while, so a few updates.

Did some Mun missions but without KER I under-fueled the 2nd and 3rd.  The 2nd had enough fuel to get into Kerbin orbi, so I 'pushed' it to a periapps of about 55km and finally brought it home.

The 3rd had more tourists but without enough fuel to return but more than a month of life support, so had to unlock ISRU for a rescue-refueler mission.

Sent off a fuel tanker to Mun orbit for a fourth Mun lander without enough fuel(sending out several versions of a new ship in rapid succession tuned out to be unwise).

Got scanning and ISRU unlocked(mostly from a mission to Minmus that visited most of the biomes using an 'experimental' nerva)  

Got a mini-fueler on the Mun to klaw the stranded tourists and used the new ISRU parts(along with a couple normal sized drills, just in case) and managed to give them enough fuel to get home.(refueler drone is now fully fueled and sitting on the Mun)

Sent off probes to Mun, Minmus, and finally Kerbin to scan for ore(and those other USI resources)

Launched a couple training/tourist ships with ISRU to run around the Kerbin system for fun and profit.(~7 Kerbal years of life-support each)

(mk3 passenger, Mk3 cockpit, science lab each for a total capacity of 22 + front mounted klaw on the cockpit)
Did a lot of hopping around on the Mun to visit unfamiliar biomes, Tourists seemed to enjoy it.  Then stopped on Minmus and realized I had already visited almost all the biomes, so I stopped by the poles and the highlands and headed out to Kerbol.(with a number of rescued kerbals on board and a klawed pod for return)

Launched a couple 'tourist return' pods(Mk3 cockpit, Mk3 passenger, Klaw + LFO engine) to return 25 tourists and several rescuees, as well as bringing up a few parts for KIS(the first ship did not have landing lights, Extra lights were later delivered to the Minmus automated base) and some extra snacks to partially replenish what was used.  Loaded as much of the collected science as I could in the cockpit and passenger module, letting me unlock most of the populated nodes of the Community tech tree.

Deployed then later expanded a Kerbin fuel base for refueling ships in Kerbin orbit (using UKS Logistics.  Currently has ~ 30 drills, 10K ore capacity and ~ 400K LFO capacity, 3 full sized ISRU and a 3 star engineer so that the drills can both supply the ISRU and fill the ore tank at the same time.  That huge 300K FLO tank was quite a challenge to get connected, so I finally gave up, got it close, then used the klaw on the original fuel base to grab it)

Sent out a Minmus fuel base, the poles turned out to have all UKS resources except uranium, so I put on some extra-large solar panels and landed it near the pole, managing to get close enough to always have sunlight(as opposed to some places on Minmus where you cannot see the sun but your panels still work)

While waiting for the tourist ships to return, I launched an expansion for the Minmus base with UKS refining and manufacturing capability, and since I had half a dozen tourists and lots of empty seats, I sent those up as well.  Unfortunately both tourist ships return from Kerbol in retrograde orbits and could not dock, so I used the Kerbin Fuel depot to refuel the last part of the launch stage for the trip to Minmus.(there was no transfer stage as it was intended for one of the Tourist ships to push it to Minmus)

As they were both retrograde and I had a rescue in LKO I sent both ships to the Mun, but a simulation showed that they could not land, so I sent them to the fuel tanker drone still in orbit from earlier.

Then on the way back, they each stopped at the tanker to refuel it with their onboard ore.

The first ship grabbed the orbiting rescuee and then landed on Kerbin to have plenty of orange suits available for the planned Duna mission.  Earlier I had sent out a Scanner probe intended to scan Duna/Ike for resources and biomes.  It refueled in orbit of Minmus using UKS Logistics on the Minmus base then set out for Duna(> 200 day trip)

The second tourist ship headed up to Minmus to collect the tourists from the automated manufacturing portion of the future Minmus base and perform any connecting that would be needed to the Fuel station.

The manufacturing drone managed a good landing near the fuel station, then through a combination of RCS, Skidding on landing legs, very brief thrusts from the Mammoth, and finally reaction wheels, managed to tap the still-attached launch-stage fuel tanks to the armed Klaw of the refueling station.

Then using the over-sized solar panels of the refueling station, started drilling for non-ore resources and manufacturing Machinery(and once I fill that up, rocket parts).  Those fuel tanks roughly tripled the fuel capacity of the Minmus Fuel station, so all that extra effort was worth it(the RCS and reaction wheels weer balanced for not having the launch stage still attached, so keeping that on was a challenge while maneuvering)
 

With the Duna ScannSat off, an Ike Refueling station was launched.  The original plan was to use the up-scaled nerva(2.5M seems to be ~ 5.5 normal nerva) to transit to Minmus, refuel + top off Ore and head off to Duna, but the launch stage still had fuel after making orbit, so I used the Kerbin fuel base to send up lots of ore and fuel so I could use the launch stage for the initial ejection burn from Kerbin.  Once there was enough fuel to land on Minmus, headed out to Minmus to top everything off before leaving for Duna.  As the Minmus base has no engineers, it was slow going, so I landed the Ike fuel base on Minmus to use it's onboard drills to assist in refueling.

Around this time Tourist 2 got to the Minmus Automated base, linked up to transfer tourists/speed up refueling and sent out an engineer or two to unpack a number of storage bins that had been packed in the landing gear(KIS).

I also discovered that tourists without food do not seem to count as far as reaching destinations(how else would tourists get to Minmus without orbital or suborbital flight on Kerbin?)

While the engineers on Tourist 2 were beefing up production on the Minus Automated Base, the Ike refueling station finally topped off all tanks on the launch(now transit) stage, the ore tanks(for refueling the LF tanks on the way to Duna), and the Monoprop that had been unloaded to make launch lighter(launched with 100 of 3000 possible units).

Used RCS to get the Ike fuel base up to a 45 degree angle and took it to Minmus orbit for a final fuel shipment before heading off to Duna.(The launch stage which was ~0.9 twr on Kerbin without boosters was more than adequate to get off Minmus).

While waiting for the fuel ferry to arrive for the Ike base, Tourist 2 undocked form the Minmus station and headed down to an equatorial orbit to catch a rescue+pod orbiting Minmus, then went for a quick visit to Kerbol and started back towards Kerbin for more rescues.

While Tourist 2 was heading towards the edge of the Kerbin SOI, the Ike fuel station started out towards Duna, scheduled to arrive a couple months after the scansat, to give it time to find a good place to put it.

 

Tonight I am hoping to collect several rescuees in Kerbin orbit, trade them out for Tourists, and finally launch my Kerbaled Duna mission(only 4 of the 8 seats will be occupied to cut down on life-support needs as well as elbow-room for a mission likely to take about a kerbin year.  Probably Bill, Bob, Val + female scientist)

[rocketbuilder]

I made a really low tech spaceplane, with the panther.

 

Oops, How do I delete that Imgur album?

 

[CaelumEtAstra]

Nothing yet but I'm planning on returning my crew to Kerbin after my first successful Minmus landing. After that, launch Sojourner II, the second of my Salyut/Skylab hybrid style space stations.

[McFarnsworth]

Upgraded my plane that I didn't think was going to make it off the runway into an SSTM, with mining equipment to turn it into an infinite range spaceplane.

 

[jros83]

1 minute ago, McFarnsworth said:

Upgraded my plane that I didn't think was going to make it off the runway into an SSTM, with mining equipment to turn it into an infinite range spaceplane.

 

That's pretty cool! Is this fully stock? I'd love to give this a try, but I don't want to mess with mods right now.

[McFarnsworth]

2 minutes ago, jros83 said:

That's pretty cool! Is this fully stock? I'd love to give this a try, but I don't want to mess with mods right now.

Yep, fully stock, and very little clipping. It flies about as well as it looks though, and the oxidizer margins are cutting it very fine.

[jros83]

15 minutes ago, McFarnsworth said:

Yep, fully stock, and very little clipping. It flies about as well as it looks though, and the oxidizer margins are cutting it very fine.

lol then it must fly pretty well because I think it looks nice.

[Jatwaa]

I did...well...this

http://gfycat.com/RevolvingCloseCapybara

(video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mux05TqWsZk) 

[Bill Zarr]

I launched a space station ring module (stock) and hauled it off to the Mun. It has no real purpose in career, I just like the look of it.

 

Then I got offered a contract to expand this station so it can hold even more kerbals, I think not.

[jros83]

3 hours ago, Jatwaa said:

I did...well...this

http://gfycat.com/RevolvingCloseCapybara

(video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mux05TqWsZk) 

That is AWESOME!

[Snarfster]

Built a career spacestation with OKS and KIS. (No docking, everything bolted together.)

It took 7 launches of the hauler in the background to build it from the core to what is in the image.

Was real pleased with myself until Valentina pulled the chutes too early on kerbin return and ended up as fertilizer.