What did you do in KSP1 today?

[LN400]

Nearly absolutely nothing at all as time wouldn't allow it but I did, for the first time ever, because I'm that slow, some preliminary experiments with SRBs and staging for a better TWR profile.

[The Raging Sandwich]

Did a test flight of my cargo SSTO in space

[Boganaut]

Jebediah Kerman flew a recently rescued scientist over to the Inland Space Centre in a rather slow research plane called Timothy II. They will be leaving the plane there to act as a beacon for future landings. Their own landing ended up being a bit too "on target" - nearly clipped the VAB! Given the nearly two hour flight time, it has been decided all future transfers from KSC are to be supersonic!

[Andem]

I launched a few sounding rockets. Nothing too special.

[Sharpy]

A lot happened since the last time.

First, I was running low on funds, so I had to diversify into chemical industry for profit.

This allowed me to begin construction of a Space Village - a base around an asteroid. I began, by launching the central hub.

Then... oh, just for profit! Such an easy task! Deliver 3250 units of ore from Mun, land it on Kerbin.

Yeah, easy. I think I spent some 4 hours just trying to land this thing. It was top-heavy, with too little control authority, and would tip over over and over. At long last I succeeded, and it appeared the location is entirely devoid of ore.

I rebuilt the thing with heavier bottom, ISRU to refuel on the surface, and an engineer. And a scientist, just because. And on launch it would discard all it didn't need - drills, gigantors, cooling, etc.

Here, ISRU and the surface scanner are being removed.

And then I had to land it. See how much resources I had on splashdown...

...which was all for nothing as the ore had to be LANDED and not SPLASHED DOWN. At least the last save was fairly recent.

Then I put the orbital survey scanner in orbit of Moho.

On topic of this scanner:

- running on xenon, it had to be light.
- light means even the small reaction wheel has too much control authority. The whole thing would shake like crazy if I go with OKTO2 + small reaction wheel.
- So I need something with less control authority. Old Okto 1. Heavier, but not by much, and just as much control authority as needed.
- but it has absolutely crap SAS capabilities...
- All the probe cores with good SAS have too much control authority. And I can add OKTO2, but I'll miss Node SAS mode.
- hey, but... I already have a probe core, even if crappy, so... how was that thing called? CH-J3 Fly By Wire Avionics Hub. Now just to make it look good...

So, I put the scanner in orbit.

And then - The Temple has landed.

Damn, was it hard. I was running really low on fuel. I mean, I didn't have enough for a suicide burn!

I got it right at last, when I started a suicide burn -only with the nukes- -too late-. I'd smash into the ground at some 60m/s. But I switched the Vectors for just a fraction of second, shortly before the surface, 1and their murderous thrust adjusted my speed to just the right value.

Flag planted, science collected, drills are drilling. Now the boys are busy collecting ore for a contract. Luckily, just to be used, no need to deliver it anywhere. Once that's done, I'll activate the ISRU, and refuel, hopefuly for a few hops around the planet.

[Maverick_aus]

Posted a blue print of my Kerbal Sea Program vessel The Waarn.

 

[Van Disaster]

17 hours ago, String Witch said:

The Eden flare. I removed the 'dirty lens effect' by changing ghost3.png to a 1x1 black image.

Excellent, thanks.

[Salvator]

Today i designed and succesfully flew my second VTOL ever, this time i used the jump jet engines, that come with K.A.X.

And because this is getting fun i had to get the K.R.X. mod and make myself a helicopter! I have to say, that the helicopter is not so clumsy to fly than the VTOLs are. Controls are much more responsive and the engine spool up/down times are shorter. Still looking for a mod with good helicopter cockpits though.

And i made myself two more wannabe wallpapers.

[Curveball Anders]

Mainly various house keeping stuff, refuelling, shuffling personal and such.

The main Doh! was when I had was bringing 2 peeps guided by Jeb back down to Kerbin and managed to land way short of KSC.

I actually landed on a steep mountain side like 1800m ASL, fell over and had to roll all the way down to about 300m ASL to find land flat enough for the lander to stop and be recovered.

According to the mission report the peeps claimed that they had a 'wonderful and exciting time', despite those 20m in a spin dryer ...

Edited August 21, 2016 by Curveball Anders
Gramer

[eddiew]

Mad scientist in a cage.

...alas, total failure. Turns out external command seats do not react well to hollow structures such as this Near Future girder, and she invariably appeared somewhere up near the bow when leaving the seat. Also she had a good chance to bug out when getting back in, and couldn't reset the experiments without leaving the chair anyway

So, after three reverts all produced the same results, I had to settle for something a little more mundane to carry science to my station.

Same basic science cage in the bottom-left image. All experiments are reachable while on the mk1 pod's ladder, allowing them to be reset with each change of SoI. Saved a lot of money over just loading a probe with 4 of every experiment, and it doesn't hurt to have an extra crew member on-side at Skyball I    

At 50% data load, the station is now kicking out 5 science per day, and looks set to run for at least 300 days. One day all those shiny doohickeys in the Community Tech Tree shall be mine!

[Leopard]

My rebooted game saw the first test of an improved mun lander under remote control, ran out of fuel about 3k up, tweaked and the second, now manned, version successfully landed. Some damage but not to anything needed for the return trip so that mission was a success. Scored as a solid 'B', few tweaks and will try a third later

[Leopard]

Oh yes, also rendezvous contract was up, nailed it. Two probes for safety, first to a more or less circular orbit at 160k. Chaser probe got within about 3km at low speed mission complete.

yeah right, got close enough to get the probes to kiss, if they had docking rings could perhaps have managed it...

need to try again a few times but seem to have the concept sorted

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Salvator said:

And because this is getting fun i had to get the K.R.X. mod and make myself a helicopter! I have to say, that the helicopter is not so clumsy to fly than the VTOLs are. Controls are much more responsive and the engine spool up/down times are shorter. Still looking for a mod with good helicopter cockpits though.

The Mk2 Expansion's sideways cockpit might do you. Centre top here.

 

[Salvator]

@String Witch Thanks, i know about that, but it's not exactly my style. For now i'll go with the Meadowlark from SXT and the Osprey from Fantomworks KAX extension, although neither is perfect.

[Mikki]

I shared a rocket launcher in the spacecraftexchange:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/146294-kemaz-mobile-launcher-vals-dad-icbm-vehicle/
 

Its mere fun!

Launch your kerbals to orbit from anywhere!

[MaxwellsDemon]

I finally managed to make up for an error in construction in the KSS space station-- I had neglected to mount a docking port in a particular spot on one of the modules, and it was causing me some difficulty.  I launched a capsule to the station with a docking port aboard, and after feeling my way through it for a a while, managed to have Heltha Kerman mount it successfully on EVA.  It's the small victories.  

Jeb and crew are 'sneaking up' on an anomaly in the Munar Highlands-- I'm puzzling out how to make short hops to get to a specific place, though it's not a skill I've mastered yet.

[Guest]

Work on Mun base continues. I think I've got most of the hard problems solved. My current iteration features numerous improvements and refinements, notably --

• Made everything skycrane-capable with a docking port at top and centre.
• Turned my fuel storage unit into a tanker/skycrane. It got some serious lifting power, a better command pod (the others use Cubes), a heavy reaction wheel, and other stuff. A complete redesign in other words.
• Put landing struts on my command module, which will naturally be the bottom-most module in the lander stack. I'm now planning on landing the whole shebang in one go; I'll have to do some arithmetic to make sure I have sufficient TTW to do that on the Mun (on Kerbin, no way). If not, I'll have to do two launches; I want two tankers in any case, with one fueling up and the other docked on my space station, so I'd have made one anyway. (If I'm doing that, I'll add another module, for science, so each landing will deposit two modules + crane/tanker.)
• Switch to a shorter but wider wheelbase rover base. This only slightly overlaps the biggest rocket modules which ought to make for an easier launch, as well as makes the modules much stabler and less likely to topple over.
• Switched the drill module from lengthwise to crosswise. With one radial tank of ore (full) on the opposite side, I get a near-perfect centre of gravity. I tried skycraning the previous setup and the off-balance drill module made it really hard; now it should drop as easily as the others.
• Moved a lot of the fiddly bits -- batteries, command pods, small fuel tanks where applicable -- inside the rover chassis instead of dangling outside.

Some minor tuning remains -- another ring of solar panels on the refinery unit, some adjusting of them on the command unit, tuning the springs and dampers on the wheels etc. -- then I'll be able to give another shot at stacking them into a rocket, or two, as the case may be. By far my most complex project so far.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Guest

[eddiew]

Accidentally pulled off my most efficient Jool insertion ever... 8m/s. May have slightly overspecced this one, but hey, perhaps when the magnetic survey is done, it can tour all the moons and touch down on Pol/Bop? Find out next time on What Did You Do in KSP Today?!

[Corona688]

On 8/20/2016 at 0:05 PM, Bogen said:

Do you have the craft file? I want to test fly this beautiful disaster.

Afraid I do not...  I recreated it from memory and all I got was a beautifully working 25t-class superlifter, I don't know what I did wrong  

[Ty Tan Tu]

I finally docked for the first time. It took me three attempts. I am still in training mode.

I am not sure what is next yet. I the short term I move Valentina to the  Mk3 Passenger Module for a bit of R&R after over 12 days,

1) Add a science module to my space station.

2) Continue my training by building a ship with an Advanced Grabbing Unit, and see if I can't grab a bit of junk from launching the space-station, then deorbit it.

3) Put a 'space ski' into the cargo bay of the space-station.

4) Move the whole space-station to a Mun orbit where it would be more useful..

[Samtc]

Progress continues on evacuating all Kerbals from all facilitys before I introduce Kerbalism.

I have been working on a little crew shuttle based off the dreamcatcher and today it ran one of the evac missions to test it's reentry capabilities; they are passable but the water landing proved a bit harsh.

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/a/5WbQj

In other news, I repurposed an eve orbital flyby (cancelled due to immanent life support issues) as a munar rescue which netted a decent amount of incidental science.

Lastly I flew another couple of hundred km's towards Kerbin k1 with my dropplane/rover.
 

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/a/m4Din

 

Edited August 21, 2016 by Samtc

[Puggonaut]

Today an a few days before I have been playing with GemFX , almost there now , still a few tweaks needed

[Alchemist]

Got my power cut short by the Mun

And after all these detours I finally completed another ocean for Elcano challenge:

Going to the huge crater

From one ocean to another

[Guest]

I... I have created a monster. 

Tomorrow will tell if she flies, and how far.

[KerikBalm]

Well, I did a lot in KSP today.

In my career save, I did a little biome hopping in Ike to get the last few biomes before the Duna-> kerbin return window opens up (i had been neglecting that mission after I got all the duna biomes and some ike ones quite a while ago). I switched over to my much more spartan Dres mission, in which I had purposefully not brought ISRU to maintain some challenge. I did the last of the landing with the LFO for the lander (the mothership is a LV-N craft). I checked the dV remaining in the mothership... and checked the transfer windows... not enough dV for the closest return window. Due to dres' inclination, there will be a more favorable window in 2 years which is within its capabilities... or I can send it to duna a bit sooner to refuel... decision postponed for a while.

Then I went to attend to my Rald mission... the pseudo-lagrange version of it, not the binary companion of kerbin version in eddiew's post (quoted below).

I had sent my now standard mobile base package to it using the laythe template with RTGs replaced with solar panels, and the fuel cells replaced with modded fuel cells that use LF and intake air.

(My mun version of the base)

Spoiler

Then I remembered... I never actually tested my laythe lander on Rald... Rald's atmosphere is quite a bit thinner. I went to sandbox and tested it... many crashes later, I found a technique that works (and also requires 3/4 of the fuel to be gone to reduce weight).

I also set about making a Rald spaceplane for just crew transfers and getting science... not deploying 2.5m payloads to areas with smooth terrain. I did some testing of various engines.

*Turboramjets are best jets on Rald

- The air is too thin for the juno.goliath/wheesely/panther in dry mode. Forget their high Isp, they likely won't be enough to keep you in the air even skimming the waves.

- The panther in afterburning mode produces significantly less thrust than the turboramjet for the same Isp. I had trouble getting my planes going fast because they started just barely wallowing into the air.

- the rapier is faster than you need, both the turboramjet and rapier can get you above orbital velocity. The turboramjets static thrust is *much* better, its Isp is better, its got an alternator. The Turboramjet is the king of Rald airplanes

Then I started looking around my planet more, I'll be sharing an updated version soon

On 8/20/2016 at 4:04 PM, eddiew said:

Built my first rover since 1.0.5 and had more fun with it than expected 

Cheerful, but not very cheap once all the science packages were on board, so mission control decided to attempt to bring him home. This also gave them opportunity to test out the physical requirements for departing from @KerikBalm's Rald before sending a crewed mission. (Numbers and planetary data in spoiler.)

  Reveal hidden contents

Transfer from Kerbin to Rald: 680m/s
Insertion burn: 350-500m/s
Orbital velocity: 900m/s
Recommended de-orbit: ~100m/s, very shallow to allow for atmospheric braking
Brief rocket burst + parachutes for landing
Ascent to orbit: ~1900m/s
Return to Kerbin @35km PE: ~240m/s

Pressure ASL: ~10% Kerbin
Oxygen: yes
Gravity ASL: 0.33g

Behaved much better than expected on the ground. Usually I eschew the RoveMate due to its lack of SAS, but what with all the wheel changes I decided to have a go at a torque-less rover. Despite Rald being about the size of Duna, only once did Fido lose his footing, and that was my mission control's fault for turning at speed on a slope. Faced with a steep climb, he just went straight on up it without complaint, which was a very pleasant change from the 1.0.x days. For the full 14km round trip, his low centre of gravity kept him completely secure, even when braking heavily.

Reuniting with the mothership was a little tricky, since Fido's tail magnetometer pops up a bit higher on Rald than Kerbin and kept obstructing the docking port, but he made it eventually. A little tap of the mothership's engines completed the connection, and his precious science packages came home full of data.

Following the success of the Fido mission, full funding is granted to set a crew down upon the surface of this mysterious moon.

Unfortunately at this point my game bugged out repeatedly. Orbits changed, revert stopped working, and F9 took me to an earlier quicksave for a different ship, discarding all my progress. After the third time this happened, I rebuilt the Badgerald's launch stage and the bugs went away. And now you know why it's the mk II.

Landing was a nervous moment for the crew, since Rald's atmosphere is wispy thin and parachutes alone are not enough. A quick tap of the lander's engines brought them to a just about survivable graceful 5m/s touchdown, and beers were opened as the view of an alien coastline filled the cabin.

Three flags were planted, although two of them fell over immediately. The green Rald-goo upon which the Badgerald II came to rest turned out to be the slipperiest substance in the known universe, setting the ship on a gradual descent 50 metres down the slope to more level ground. With the crew disembarked, the goo realised its mistake and returned the ship back up the slope to where it started, with the engineer chasing after it to try to extract the surface science packages from its locker. After a while, however, gravity prevailed and the Badgerald II settled into a shallow rut. 

Fortunately, these peculiarities did not spoil the mission, and after a few rehearsals, all six science packages actually survived deployment!

Primary mods used in this mission: Near Future Propulsion, DMagic Orbital Science, Surface Experiment Package and Tweakscale. Clouds and sunset are probably improved by Stock Visual Enhancements. I really need to make a mod list that I can copy-paste into these footers...

I'm glad your enjoying it, the slippery slopes are not rald specific... thats just 1.1's landing legs.

You may have noticed that there is more ocean than what you see on map view. Near the rift valley and outflow channels which are relatively steep, its not noticable, but the shallow plain near olympus mons... very noticeable. I made the biome boundaries with that color map in mind, I chose that water height because I liked it the most... I'm going to change the water level to match, not remake colormaps and biome maps.

So I adjusted the water level to match what you see when zoomed out/in map view. The problem is I was using the same colormap for the terrain and mapview. That means where the ocean is the ground is blue even if you remove the ocean. The terrain near the shore in many cases has an unappealing blue tint to it that I don't like. I initially covered this up by just raising the water level, but I didn't realize how much that changed the shoreline, particularly along the bay west of olympus mons. Initially I had one colormap to cut down on memory usage... when I had 4 gb of ram and my videocard had 256mb. Now its 16 and 2... and I run 64 bit KSP... so I'll do like the other planets do, and have seperate colormaps. I'll remove the blue from the terrain colormap so the blue terrain around the waters edge wont be there.

Also I fixed some issues with the sciences definitions, I'm looking into changing the tint of the sky to be a bit less blue and more pinkish/dunaish... maybe something like what I did for duna when I made my "Duna with seas" mod (before my new computer, before scatterer)

Spoiler

I've also made a version with green "life" around the edges of the water on Duna... similar to what I did for Rald/Mars... I wonder if I should share that too)

 

Now as I'm using Rald at kerbin's pseudo L4, not Rald at geostationary orbit, I can't comment on his dV requirements somuch at this time (I just know a kerbal X can make it there and back).

I will be a bit more accurate about the atmosphere:

Spoiler

The pressure is not ~10% of Kerbin's sea level, at Rald sea level its 13.4%. Its about 10% of Kerbin Sea level on the Karsis Plateau... which isn't actually that high.. only about 2.5km at least 2 of the volcanoes are over 7km, the one derived from olympus mons is over 8.5km high... the air is pretty thin up there.... worse than Duna's lowlands, better than Duna's highlands

Pressure is not everything though!

The average MW of the gas is intermediate between kerbin and Duna.. 35.97 This makes it about 25% denserr than kerbin's atmosphere when the pressure is the same (the temperatures should be similar, but Rald should get colder at night). On the other hand... at the same pressure, its only 85% as dense as Duna's atmosphere.

Overall, the atmosphere at sea level is about 66% denser than Duna's, while the gravity is 10% higher. SO you should be landing at about 80% of the speed you'd need to land at on Duna. Also many areas are much flatter than on Duna... so its much more friendly for horizontal landings... but its still challenging.

Also... I have not excluded ore from the ocean/water biomes... so you may be able to find ore underwater if you desire to mine underwater.