What did you do in KSP1 today?

[dangerhamster]

2 minutes ago, Kuansenhama said:

Jebediah Kerman looks worried. I have finally shattered his iron resolve...

What is this heresy? It's trapped wind from his hero's breakfast.

[Dreadwave]

Have been busy with school and all since break ended and haven't played KSP in a while so..

Sending Kariner 1 to Duna

Red planet has been spotted

Did a burn to lower the periapsis and saw I had an encounter with Ike.. But I thought "nah the United Kerbal Nations needs to continue onward to Duna!"

Now time to survey some landing sights for future rovers

[CatastrophicFailure]

@Proteus those ships are truly incredible!

 

Stayed up literally all night last night playing KSP so I'd be awake to go see the conjunction of Venus & Saturn just before dawn... shlep out there and my friggin telescope mount craps out. AFTER giving me a maddening tease of what could have been an epic pic of both Venus & Saturn in the same frame. 

[Puggonaut]

Short Video of the madness , well ok it was only 225 Engines in the 1st stage

 

[Red Shirt]

Not so much what I did as what I learned. Took my Tylo lander, added chutes, and went to Laythe. Haven’t been since 0.25. It did not go well. I used wing segments as landing legs for a wide stance. I first tried letting MJ land. The ship wanted to go in nose first and did not slow enough to use chutes. Tried again on my own (no MJ) holding retrograde. The Vector quickly overheated and exploded, but the unprotected fuel tanks did not overheat. Weird. Added a heatshield, which meant I needed a couple small engines to direct the ship out of orbit. Next attempt, one wing section overheats and explodes. Landed on three. Planted flag. Then discovered Val could not reenter because the top ladder did not project out to the tank edge. Tilted the ladder. Added heatshields to the wing tips. Tried again. Everything worded well until I jettisoned the shields after slowing way down. The ship immediately turned nose first. So, what have I learned? Laythe still hates me.

[Fearless Son]

After playing this game for a couple of years, I managed a personal first:  I landed on Eve.  

Knowing that any landing on Eve is likely to be a one-way trip, but built this as a simple drone rover expedition to gather some scientific data.  I knew it would need a lot of protection during atmospheric entry so it is well equipped with heat shields and fairings, and is shaped to allow some airbreaks the leverage they need to keep it oriented properly and slow it down.  It also came with a survey module that will remain in polar orbit to do a resource scan.  

The hardest part of the mission was aerobreaking on Eve.  The landing module might be built to withstand that kind of thing, but only when properly oriented, and it could not leave the survey module until both were at a good orbital height.  This meant that there was a very narrow window of altitude for conducting the aerobreaking.  Anything over 85 km meant that the air was too thin to make the breaking practical, anything below 83 km meant that the air was too hot for the craft to withstand.  Further, the airbreaks would start to overheat if left deployed so they had to be manually operated to maximize drag on each pass without destroying them.  Add to that the solar panels could not survive a pass while deployed without being destroyed, but the probe would run out of power if they were not out when safe, so they had to be retracted before each pass an extended out again after.  That made the aerobreaking the longest and most tedious part of the mission for me, taking weeks of in-game time and literally hours of play time to complete.  

I ended up touching down in the Lowlands, some distance from the Explodium Sea.  I would have liked to touchdown closer to the intersection of the two biomes, but fuel constraints and the need to keep the fairings on the landing module prevented me from being more selective in my landing site.  I just had to take some guestimates and let the laws of physics take care of the rest.  Still, the landing went as planned, the heat shield lost over half its ablator in the process but still well within its safe margins, and the landing site, though sloped, was gentle enough that I did not have to worry about the lander tipping on touchdown.  

The rover went around a bit, conducted some readings, and transmitted its data back to Kerbin.  All in all, a successful scientific mission.  

[Spartwo]

Speed tests.

 

[Proteus]

1 hour ago, Fearless Son said:

After playing this game for a couple of years, I managed a personal first:  I landed on Eve.  

Knowing that any landing on Eve is likely to be a one-way trip, but built this as a simple drone rover expedition to gather some scientific data.  I knew it would need a lot of protection during atmospheric entry so it is well equipped with heat shields and fairings, and is shaped to allow some airbreaks the leverage they need to keep it oriented properly and slow it down.  It also came with a survey module that will remain in polar orbit to do a resource scan.  

The hardest part of the mission was aerobreaking on Eve.  The landing module might be built to withstand that kind of thing, but only when properly oriented, and it could not leave the survey module until both were at a good orbital height.  This meant that there was a very narrow window of altitude for conducting the aerobreaking.  Anything over 85 km meant that the air was too thin to make the breaking practical, anything below 83 km meant that the air was too hot for the craft to withstand.  Further, the airbreaks would start to overheat if left deployed so they had to be manually operated to maximize drag on each pass without destroying them.  Add to that the solar panels could not survive a pass while deployed without being destroyed, but the probe would run out of power if they were not out when safe, so they had to be retracted before each pass an extended out again after.  That made the aerobreaking the longest and most tedious part of the mission for me, taking weeks of in-game time and literally hours of play time to complete.  

I ended up touching down in the Lowlands, some distance from the Explodium Sea.  I would have liked to touchdown closer to the intersection of the two biomes, but fuel constraints and the need to keep the fairings on the landing module prevented me from being more selective in my landing site.  I just had to take some guestimates and let the laws of physics take care of the rest.  Still, the landing went as planned, the heat shield lost over half its ablator in the process but still well within its safe margins, and the landing site, though sloped, was gentle enough that I did not have to worry about the lander tipping on touchdown.  

The rover went around a bit, conducted some readings, and transmitted its data back to Kerbin.  All in all, a successful scientific mission.  

"whatever goes to eve stays on eve" scott manley-2014

going to the purple jail house is not a problem,escaping it is! 

[batman78781]

@Proteus What mod did you use for the background? Thanks.

Cool mission btw, like the ship!

[inigma]

What did I do today? Develop a skydiving contract for my contract pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose. See link in my sig.

 

Sometimes GAP development can be quite fun...   

 

Jebediah Corliss's skydiving school, Corliss Paraventures class out on a jump together...

 

Edited January 10, 2016 by inigma

[Proteus]

59 minutes ago, batman78781 said:

@Proteus What mod did you use for the background? Thanks.

Cool mission btw, like the ship!

background?if you talk about the skybox than its texture replacer

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/96851-105-texturereplacer-2411-17112015/

[Grenartia]

On 1/9/2016 at 2:03 AM, Snarfster said:

At standard sea level conditions (corresponding to a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius), the speed of sound is 340.3 m/s(1225 km/h, or 761.2 mph, or 661.5 knots, or1116 ft/s) in the Earth's atmosphere. The speed represented by Mach 1 is not a constant; for example, it is mostly dependent on temperature.

From Wikipedia

at 1000 m/s and 15 degr C you're just under mach 3.

And I caught me a Class E in Dres orbit. Now I can finally bring my crew home.

They were stranded due to lack of fuel.

What we need is a speed/altitude chart for Mach 1 on Kerbin (and I guess Laythe, too).

[maceemiller]

Well, today I took my first folding rover using Infernal Robotics to the Mun in an Apollo style mission which I've never tried before but loving already. This is my test mission before I screenshot everything and post it on this forum. Im really happy with my rover, so much so im going to make it available for you guys to download and give me your opinions on it or improve it

For my next build I want to make something akin to the suits worn in Edge Of Tomorrow.......I can see a Kerbal fighting next to Tom Cruise lol

[Hotaru]

Thinking about finally wrapping up my old 1.0.2 career save, so I've been playing 1.0.5 sandbox to test out some mods I'd like to use in future careers. Unfortunately my personal rule of "unlocking" planets in career before visiting them in sandbox meant my choice of destinations was somewhat limited; still, trips to Duna and Eve were plenty enough to try out lots of part mods, USI Life Support, Near Future, Orion drive, Remote Tech, and Deep Freeze in various combinations. Basically I want to make sure I've got the mechanics and interactions of those mods all figured out (and any bugs resolved) before committing to using them in a serious career save.

 

Conventional rockets to the Mun.

 

Orion drive to Duna.

 

Nuclear-electric to the Mun and Minmus.

 

 

Nuclear-electric again, this time to Eve, with the two-Kerbal crew in cryonic stasis for the trip.

 

 

And a landing on Gilly, my first in an actual spacecraft.

 

[Snarfster]

Was a bit tired of docking in space, didn't want too many connections on this. So... I launched a spacestation in one go. At 1600 tons on the pad, about the heaviest craft I've sent up so far. (Also the most expensive, 1.3 million funds).

Booster separation. Worried that bits are going to burn off soon.

It made orbit, now the task of refuelling it begins. It has to go to Dres.

Toying around with making a surface based fuel plant. The above is the first test setup. A four star engineer keeps the ISRU plant fully occupied.

This logistics hub will ferry the fuel up. The markup for transport is considerable. The fuel plant one picture up will need significantly more space if I am to fill up the station hauler with it.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Snarfster

[micr0wave]

Quote

Hahahahahahahahaaa, made my day

Edited January 10, 2016 by micr0wave

[RizzoTheRat]

I did quite a bit of science

 

[Puggonaut]

 

Editied a Video I made using Adams ISS added some classic music , then had a few beers , Later on I crashed a Saturn 5.5 about a million times on launch....well it sure as hell feels like it

 

Video , er Iif you don't like classic music turn yer speakers off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV-rkXOsoaA

[AlphaMensae]

I'm still in my 1.04 Science save (I'll switch to 1.05 when I start Career mode) and had unlocked the stock tech tree without any mods, leaving me with about 1600 science leftover. So I started extensive designing and planning for manned interplanetary missions, then decided to add some mods. Nothing fancy, just KER, RCS Build Aid, Tweakscale, KJR and MJ, plus the parts mods Fuel Tanks Plus and Space Y.  The I remembered Porkjet's Atomic Age, with the Nuclear Lighbulb, and that became the basis for all my plans.  Turned out that adding that mod (which also added Community Tech Tree) and Space Y gave me several 1500 Science nodes to unlock.  I used all of my leftover science to get the LightBulb, then scrounged around for more science from an orbiting lab and a few quickie missions to get the first two wrap-around radiators.  That left me with the nuclear turbojet (eyeing that for my Eve lander) and a bunch of Space Y stuff that needed 1500 science each to unlock.

So in order to get some science and to test out the Lightbulb, I decided to science mine the areas of the Mun that I haven't been to before, of which there were still quite a few of them.  So I built this:

 

And this:

 

The lander has 4 stock and unmodified LV-Ns and gets over 7500 DV, and has enough TWR to take off from Duna (1.15 atmo).  I've been making chemical rocket-powered landers, but this just might be my go-to design for most of the Kerbol system.

The transfer ship was really just a throwaway testbed for the Lightbulb (I sorta "forgot" to add an RCS tank for resupply), it's not even manned.  The engine has been upsized to 3.75m for higher TWR, and the radiators are the Size 2 ones also upsized to 3.75m (no idea if they perform the same as the actual Size 3 ones) wrapped around a 3.75m tank from FTP.

So on my Mun mission Kellock Kermin has made about 12 landings with only one refueling.  Some of the sites I already had been to before, but there there was still some science left to get (especially with the Gravioli detector, which I didn't have on my early Mun missions). Now in the process to getting back to Kerbin.

More pics here:

 

Edited January 10, 2016 by Laguna

[Guest]

 

I successfully launched and orbited a falcon 9 along with landing the first stage.  It did tip, though...

 

EDIT:

I went back to my quick save and landed it correctly this time:

Edited January 10, 2016 by Guest

[Gaarst]

Started planning my future Taurus program for my RSS save, which will essentially be unmanned flybys of the "too-far-for-Hohmann-transfer" planets of the Solar System (Saturn and onwards).

Every mission will use Jupiter's gravity well to slingshot themselves to the furthest planets of the Solar System. While reaching Jupiter with a Hohmann transfer orbit takes something like 3 years, the cheapest transfer to Pluto takes 60 years to get there! Using a gravity assist from Jupiter, I can cut that duration to 10 years for about the same dV cost.

I currently have some early designs for the Taurus probe and launch vehicle. The rocket weighs 685t, puts 28t to LEO and is able to perform a 10 km/s ejection burn from Earth. If I don't screw up my manoeuvres and inclinations, it should be able to reach everything up to Pluto in a 10 year span.

I might later use the same hardware for exploration of the Jovian and maybe Saturnian systems. Though that requires circularising and circularising is prohibitively expensive in terms of dV.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Gaarst

[PnDB]

Sent my first 1.0.5 probe into orbit around Kerbin (almost... Pe of about 67 km).

And then deorbited some spent stages that were cluttering up LKO.

[NecroBones]

Still working on Delta IV variants for RSB:

 

[Workable Goblin]

The biggest thing I did today was launch the first rocket mission in a new career I started yesterday (thanks to GAP, I was able to scum a large amount of science on Kerbin before putting so much as a single capsule on a single Flea). This:

• Broke the 18 km altitude limit;
• Entered space;
• Achieved orbit;
• Also broke the 250 km "space high over Kerbin" limit;
• Fulfilled four contracts outright and parts of at least three others;
• Saw the first Kerbal to enter space, the first Kerbal to achieve orbit, the first Kerbal to conduct an EVA in a vacuum, and the first Kerbal to conduct an EVA in orbit;
• and recovered about 300 science points (a lot considering what point of the game I'm at).

It was kind of the "do-everything" mission. Oh, and it had enough delta-V left over that I'm pretty sure it could get to the Mun and back. So that's where the next mission is going. With Bob again, because he's the scientist who can reset my experiments to reduce part count. For that matter, it could probably get to Minmus and back...

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

Still working on Delta IV variants for RSB:

 

Are you going to make an Atlas V?  I'd like that.