What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Moesly_Armlis]

Decided it is time to launch a rocket from Kerbin's North pole.  Cannot say if this launch site has any benefit.  The flat terrain made it easy to land my cargo plane and haul rocket for 20 km.

This rocket erector uses Flea boosters.

Once the rocket was going 80 m/s the fins allowed the rocket to obtain the correct ascent profile.

 

 

[Vermil]

Early morning on Duna. Deep in the canyon. Solar panels, ladders and rovers are deployed. Time for action and taking advantage of daylight. Long drive ahead.

 

But first: The traditional flag planting and group portrait.

 

 

But then it's time to mount one of the rovers. It'll be their home for a couple of days. The plan is to find a way to climb out of the canyon.

 

The climb is laborious. Traction varies. It's impossible to find traction beyond 23-24 degrees, but sometimes traction fails even at 10 degrees.
Lealian drives. Mission Control has mandated that only females drives rovers on missions. This decision is based on statistics of accidents and breakdowns during tests.

 

After hours of climbing and pathfinding, the sun is high in the sky, and they've reached 4300m, having climbed more than 3 km.

And here we leave Lealian, Danvey and Lindra (for today), as they're making a stop to charge the batteries. But it seems like this rover will be able to do it (reach the top).

 

[AlphaMensae]

I at last have got the Endeavour all loaded up, and soon Jeb, Bob and friends will be heading to the puzzling purple planet that is Eve, though Bob is the only one who will be actually going down to the surface.

First, docking the lander to the ship (actually the previously-docked crew retriever):

Next I fitted out the nuke jet plane (after the test flight I ended up adding a top-mounted Jr. port for a parachute pod):

Then, adding the Eve atmo entry package, preparing a launcher and getting it to the ship:

Next was the rover, used essentially the same launcher:

 

Here she is, all ready to go:

 

Also, the previously mentioned (and launched) Colchis station and Athene nuke lightbulb tug, destined for Jool along with the Argo Navis (the station starts with those retracted radiators):

 

[Gojira1000]

Got the core for my Career space station in place

[Mikki]

6 hours ago, Francois424 said:

What mod are those golden containers ?

@Francois424

They are from Roverdudes USI systems,

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/122420-105-usi-core-reactors-and-kontainers-v015-updated-kontainers/&do=findComment&comment=2214325

[juanml82]

4 hours ago, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

Built the Bee 2, a cute lil' plane. Any suggestions as to how to make it better? (Without radically redesigning it?)

Since I hadn't unlocked ladders, I later added a ramp made from a small thermal control system XD
Worked alright, but had a habit of shattering sometimes.

Seems fine for an early tech plane. You may want to put the backwards elevons next to the fuselage. AFAIK, that should make pitching up and down more stable.

 

 

I delivered a rover to Eve in my sandbox testing save by using the Mk4 mod

I put two heatshields, as the heat shields run out of ablator during descend. I still need to try to pinpoint the landing - my second attempt was at 24km from target, which isn't bad, but maybe it can be improved. I still need to design a lifter to put the cargo ship into LKO, though.

The idea will be, in my career save, to send the rover with the science package in one flight and the Eve lander in a separate mission. I didn't take a good screenshot of the lander, here it's during descend

Each of the outer, aspargused, orange tanks has two vector engines at the bottom and the center stack is an MK2 stack with two aerospikes. The center stack's upper stage uses six twich engines for the circularization burn.

[Dman979]

I installed my fourth copy of KSP on my computer, to get set up for the Realistic Space Program. We have a launch Saturday!

[Joco223]

@Dman979 I have 6 instalations of KSP. I don't know what am i doing anymore. One for RSS, one for 64k, one fot 64k career, one for 32k, one for stock, and one for messing around with RSS and see what else works except RO

[Ravenchant]

Made a partial skirt for the missile engine. Will be optional. The rest of the skirt won't be modelled since a) then you couldn't see the engine and b) it can easily be made with a procedural interstage fairing. Maybe jet vanes though?

 

1 hour ago, Joco223 said:

@Dman979 I have 6 instalations of KSP. I don't know what am i doing anymore.

We all know that feeling Well, maybe not all of us...but I certainly do.

[Stewcumber]

On 12/02/2016 at 11:51 PM, Stewcumber said:

I tried to get a satellite with a resource sensor into Kerbin orbit as I haven't done any mining yet!

D'oh! Not nearly enough electricity to do a scan! Engineer Bob, looking back over his calculations, realised some of the zeros on his electric supply formula were actually spilt Cheerios that had got stuck to the paperwork, and we actually only had 200 units of electricity. It looks like he'll bringing in plenty of 'My Bad' cake tomorrow. 

I took some monopropellant for the ride, but no RCS thrusters. Or lights.

I'll be back though!

And back I am! This time with a bigger battery. Still forgot the bloody RCS thrusters, but whatever, we'll roll with it.

T-Probe decoupling complete...

Scan complete yay!

Now I just need to find out what you do next...

[Captain Jeb]

Today Jebediah set foot on Laythe for the first time! After numerous test flights the new NX2 Dragonfly (Planetary Survey Vessel) was finally approved for take-off for it's surveying mission to Laythe. Mission objectives 1: Launch the Orbital Scanner around Laythe 2: Search for high ore mining sites for my planned Laythe colonisation mission. The mission was a big succes.... except that Bill, Bob and of course Jebediah are now stuck in Laythe lower orbit waiting to be refuelled. This was due to losing the Whiplash during their landing on Ike were they refuelled before continuing to Laythe.

 

KSC take off!

Getting hot you think?!

Love my Minmus ore!

Whoeps! You really think we need this part? Nahhhh!

Jeb inspects the Orbital Scanner right before deployment.

I hate night time re-entries!  

Wow! We actually made it boys!

One of the many flight to find new un-prospected lands.

Jool by night.

7%! This is the place guys!

And were off again... Only to discover were stranded in orbit with a little over 500 d/v...

*Some of the above pictures were taken during test flights but are just there to show you guys the plane.

 

The NX2 Dragonfly PSV is my newest spaceplane specially developed for this mission. She can take off from Kerbin with about 1600 d/v left over in LKO. Can fly to and land on Minmus. Packs 2 mini drills and 1 mini ISRU. With an engineer on board she can totally refuel under 30 days by a given ore percentage of 6 %. She carries 4 Kerbals an 1 Orbital Scanner Satellite that has about 3000 d/v worth of monopropellant. All that at 40 t. (wet mass) with a total dv of about 4100 m/s (including the satellite with propellant).

What's in the name? NX2 stands for 2 clipped nukes in front of the Rapiers. Not particularly proud of that but those nukes are just so ugly! 

 

 

Edited February 14, 2016 by Captain Jeb

[SelectHalfling0]

Today, after a bit over 1 month of on and off work, I completed phase 1 of my interplanetary project:

Phase 1 is a Mun Refueling Base, which will resupply a dockyard in low Munar Orbit (Phase 2). My plan is to have similar (smaller) bases and stations dotted around the solar system at key locations, such as gilly, ike, and val. At the dockyards there will be long range tugs of varying sizes, with just enough delta-v for a one way trip to their destination. Once they arrive, they will swap places with a fully refueled tug at the station.

[Vermil]

The tenacious struggle to climb up out of the canyon continues. I have to say it's ridiculously 'thin' at times, with hardly any traction at all. Steep slopes requires zigzagging, but even then it's dire. Clearly we need new rovers with better traction, ...or better wheel physics.

 

 

 

Finally!  At the top of the world! At least locally.  5375m altitude, a climb of more than 4km up from the Landing site. An average incline of 16 degrees.

 

 

 

 

Well, remains to figure out where to go next.

 

[dangerhamster]

A spate of activity at KSP as testing prototypes of the Duna and beyond lab takes place. Probe controlled versions were flung at (and later into) orbit before moving onto nuke engine burns, giving the design team the chance to work up a mission profile.

A slight hiccup occurred when Leeree supposedly showing four compatriots around the Mk2 hit the big red button with his foot whilst trying to demonstrate how to eat an orange in freefall. Mission control gave a collective sigh and then suggested he try a few more buttons as they weren't in the mood to come and get them at the moment.

Our errant Kerbals set up a burn for Minmus and just managed to achieve orbit whilst observing that the ship lacked "oooomph" with it's single engine. The designers sent them details of the dictionary page with the word prototype on. The crew salvaged some credibility by carrying out a practice docking with the Minmus orbital fuel truck and confirming that all the sticky out bits did indeed stick out.

Opinion at base is divided on wether to let them go for a solar orbit or recall and sit in LKO.....

Meanwhile the Mk3 made a successful flight and looks likely to be adopted for service, to the extent that simulations with a drop tank were carried out.

This led to development of a launcher for the range extender (and anything else they may have forgotten.. lander perhaps?), although things did not run smoothly at first.

Eventually a design evolved bringing interplanetary crewed travel a step closer. Although the idea of adding a lander has gained headway to the despair of the design team who have started openly wondering how long this thing will end up being..

 

 

[Puggonaut]

Jeb , Bob an Bill got home this morning all fine . Jeb even sent me a postcard

[el_coyoto]

Parallel parked stuff at orbital speeds in a tight spot today. Stuff with big unwieldy wings...

I misjudged the retroburn and the re-entry of the tanker though, and ended landing it with not much fuel left in the "Notsoflat" plains area between the ocean and Mt. "Whoopstooshort", roughly 150 km west of KSC.

Note to self : add a light for emergency night landings in the middle of nowhere. 

Edited February 14, 2016 by el_coyoto

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Valentina attempted to land the Bee 2 on the mountains many, many times. After several failures, she succeeded!

Spoiler

Heading there

Ouch

Victory! You can see the radiator ramp there on the right. It works... sorta... I can get down, but not back up

Also got some KSC science using the Hummingbird 1, a VTOL-ish design. Credit to @Evanitis for the core design. I added science, landing legs, and parachutes. Check out his Antinormal Aeronautics thread, it's pretty cool.

Spoiler

 

[michal.don]

I had lots of free time this weekend, so I decided to watch Apollo 13. It was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid, and I haven't seen it for years. And after watching it, I couldn't resist and just had to build something apollo-ish in KSP. It's not nearly as beautiful as some of the Saturn V replicas that can be found in spacecraft exchange forum, but it works quite well, and most important, has only 70 parts, so even my potato computer can handle it.

At the launchpad

Third stage separation

Let's go for the Mun!

 

Michal.don

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, michal.don said:

so even my potato computer can handle it.

Which model?  I really want this one:

[michal.don]

1 minute ago, CliftonM said:

Which model?  I really want this one:

Yeah, by the looks of it, I guess mine has similar performance 

[mdkendall]

My Ike rover landed on the equator and, for reasons having to do with accepting a contract without fully understanding how big Ike is, has been driving south for quite a while now. Today, finally, the south pole is in view. It's that flat peak on the horizon on the left. Hooray!

Once it reaches the pole the rover is about two-thirds of the way to its final destination. Not quite so hooray.

[SSgt Baloo]

Today, I built a floating test rig to see what fuels were the most buoyant.

As you can see, only one pair sank. Those were filled with xenon gas.

The second test was a tank filled with LF/O (left) compared to one that was completely empty (right).

The last test was to see which had more buoyancy: a structural fuselage piece or an empty tank. As evidenced by the different heights at which the empty fuel tanks ride, I can assume that the blunt 1.25m fairings have substantial mass. I used them because I thought that without end caps, the structural pieces might sink. On the contrary, it seems there's so much buoyancy in a structural fuselage segment that the added mass of the nose cones make it ride only slightly lower, if at all. The nose cones hardly make a difference in how high it sits in the water.

This might be of use, if you're planning a boat or submarine.

ETA: In case I wasn't clear, liquid fuel, oxidizer, and monopropellant seem to have the same density, slightly less than water. Xenon gas is much denser than water, empty tanks are, as expected, even less dense than full ones, but structural fuselage sections seem to be the least dense of all.

Edited February 15, 2016 by SSgt Baloo

[Triop]

[Corscaria]

I spotted an E Class on a collision course for Kerbin, and redirected it into a nice circular orbit.around 200KM. I used up every bit of fuel doing so, but it's rapidly refilling the 7 orange tanks. It's going to be my refuel station for a while. especially after I add more docking ports, the Rock Catcher only has a Sr. on it.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Fooled around with the space elevator concept with some quick custom models and (ab)use of Kerbinside:

Bill plummets to his doom after losing his footing ~120km up.