What did you do in KSP1 today?

[eddiew]

Overspecced a mission to Gilly by... about the cost of a return ticket   Yes please, I'll trade my 300 data for 1500 science! (I play at 40% science return, so this matters more than usual.)

23 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

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).

Probably a good move   At kerbostationary, it does make the sky look very epic, but it really hogs Kerbin's SoI. I can put stuff up to ~600km orbit which just looks mental, because my brain clearly wants Kerbin to tear it away   Beware of the Kerbol Plus Remade mod, because that puts a planet, Havet, about 30 degrees behind Kerbin in its orbit and may conflict... (unless that's at L5. I'm not very knowledgeable here.)

But I'm very pleased to hear you're working on Rald further ^^

[KerikBalm]

i think L5 should be 60 degrees behind kerbin, mine is 60 ahead of kerbin. On the other thread, someone suggested putting Rald where minmus is, and making minmus a moon of Rald... which seems intriguing to me.

and yea... Ksp doesn't handle binary systems, and I doubt sigma binary would help here when you've got something orbiting rald at the edge of its SOI

 

The water issue:

Spoiler

Here at the boundary between the normal view and the scaledspace view, you can see how much the ocean extended past what was indicated from map view

^ almost fixed... Ive got it fixed now but didnt take a screen shot

 

How most of my landings went:

Spoiler

 

Close to success, but actually i'm hiding damage to the ship and payload with this angle

Spoiler

 

Close enough to success... deployed payload without damaging hte payload... I nearly lost it after initially setting down, and ended up losing an engine before I settled it down again... screenshots such that you can't see the missing engine

Spoiler

Olympus mons in the distance

Payload out and undamaged

Nom nom nom, ore... needs an engineer though because thats not very fast mining

 

glamour shots of olympus mons

Spoiler

 

[hellblazer]

 

 

Installed the P6 truss to the ISS. 

[Francois424]

Today I re-installed KSP with all the mods I wanted.
Now if I could just get some quality clouds for OPM (well Tekto) everything would be all set (no such thing exists as of yet).

Went on the Mun and on Eve (to test the clouds) boy is everything beautiful !
I am now ready for my September vacation !

Good news is that I didn't have to redo all my parts mod at all... I was afraid 1.1 would break them, but everything seems to work like a charm.

[Aragosnat]

My latest near miss and yes it has been a while since I last posted in this thread:

 

Finally got into the mood to play again..

[Overland]

I experimented with train length vs maximum speed on my old computer before getting a new one soon

Ive done extensive realworld research into "land trains" specificly the dotto type and AEV type trackless trains and trams around sydney,

 

visibly inspecting the technology on how to apply it to KSP and my upcoming diesel locomotive modeled on a 2ft gauge prototype

(with rubber tyres)

It seems KSP wheels have stablised since I was last in.. because this went well. even upto the interesting speed of 25ms without failure, A curious number since realworld trackless trains are limited to 25kph and below.. furthermore even the massive monster sized sno trains only did 33kph.. 

KSP simulates this perfectly ive noticed, what was once considered a flaw in the physics seems to have been a genuine challenge in the realworld

 

Soo.. howd she go?

Quite well!

 

Leaving KSC for the flatlands testing ground 

executing a 90 degree turn at 15ms with minimal correction, everything following the leading car as if she was on rails at this speed, the dance between physics. train momentum, framerate and land train capability reaching a sweetspot.. no longer just a 4 car entity feeding on its own wagon fuel stores, the KSP land train mirrors her own sugartrain and narrow gauge railbound cousins as a practical transport system

 

In attempts to challenge her capabilities , it was tried to loop the train onto herself it never happened.. instead executing a wonderful constant circle of safety

 

Sadly it was then time to push things until it broke in the name of science.. starting a turn at 24ms... train physics in effect saw the locomotive start to roll.. with the rest of the train upright.. slowly one by one the wagons turned.. hit the ground and their cargo exploding on contact

 

In a departure from the purely lethal history of the KTP and the general ideal that the survival rate of locomotive crew outweighs the surval rate of the most insane rocketry and aeronautics ... by order of several thousand tonnes headed ...down.. 

While the train did detonate her cargo.. the locomotives being powered by RTG these days vs being rolling fuel tanks ment that the crew survived..with even the train herself being able to be put back into service after being rerailed 

Edited August 22, 2016 by Overland

[capi3101]

Still doing early career stuff, mainly tourist contracts to Kerbin orbit for money. Got a contract for a series of temperature readings below 15,000 m in the vicinity of KSC, so I slapped a thermometer on the Bad Idea 2 (a vertical, Flea-launched Juno-powered near-lawn dart that lands with chutes and mini-lander legs), loaded Jeb in there and had him do the run. Despite the pitch issues with the plane, it did the job admirably. Retreiving Jeb was more interesting - I thought I'd use the opportunity to do a practice approach for the Runway. Couldn't keep the plane from wanting to nose down as time progressed and eventually had to blow the chutes about 30 kilometers short. I'd moved one of the chutes foward when I should've moved it back and as a result it came down tail first most of the way. Snapped off the front legs, but otherwise the plane was intact and I made a fair amount of money on the contract.

Had another contract to take surface temperature readings, again in the vicinity of KSC. Slapped a thermometer aboard Bad Idea 3 - an OKTO probe core controlled robot drone that has never made it off the ground - and rovered its overpowered butt out there to pick those up. Brought that one back to KSC. Made a fair amount of money there.

Earned enough money to get the Launchpad up to Level 3 and got the Mun exploration contract (having already got the Munar flyby contract), so Bob was loaded aboard the Munar Prospector 7, a 233 tonne asparagus Thud-cluster monster designed to deliver a science lander to either Mun or Minmus with nearly 5,000 m/s of delta-V when it lands. The idea there is to go biome hoping and haul back as much science as possible. Craft was designed for Minmus, though KER says it should be able to handle Mun as well. Craft is en-route to Mun as of this morning; going to see if I remember how to land on the Mun tonight as likely as not...

[eddiew]

This... was tricky. The problem in this case was not thrust (Pol is only 0.03g) or delta-v (3km/s in the tank) but rather sustainability.

Turns out that even these marvellous Near Future solar panels only produce 0.17ec/s each out at this distance from the sun. Between the three of them, that's worth less than a single RTG, and the minimal 1200ec battery capacity only provides around 100m/s bursts.

However... it turned out that by shutting down everything including the lights, the sustainable TWR was in the region of 1.02. Which basically meant climbing to 20km and performing a suicide burn at high altitude. With a pure vertical descent, the feeble trickle of power proved to be just enough to control the drop and provide a 'gentle' 4m/s touchdown  

As for Bop, oh how it taunts me. Nearly twice the surface gravity of Pol and 250m/s orbital velocity means that there is no chance that this probe can make it to the surface, so the lucrative exploration contract must await the next mission. Meanwhile, Joono will take a few weeks to map out the biomes. On the up side, the transmitted science has unlocked... RTGs! And with a little left over to allow Kerbal R&D to lessen their weight a tad, future probes will be running on internal power so's not to be at the mercy of the pale and distant star that shines upon Jool.

Also, it turns out that the key to incredible efficiency in the Joolian system is... laziness. There are so many gravity assists available that it's surprisingly easy to ping between the moons, and most of the time you can get part of your orbit somewhere close - then you just wait for your target to catch you  

Also...

...is that coral and seaweed? I had no idea that was down there!  

Edited August 22, 2016 by eddiew

[TheEpicSquared]

After a long break from RSS/RO, I opened it up, regained familiarity and put my first kerbal in orbit in my career mode save.

[Galileo]

34 minutes ago, eddiew said:

.is that coral and seaweed? I had no idea that was down there!  

surprise!

Edited August 22, 2016 by Galileo

[eddiew]

3 minutes ago, Galileo said:

surprise!

Oh, lol, is that SVT in action? I had no idea ^^;

[Galileo]

Just now, eddiew said:

Oh, lol, is that SVT in action? I had no idea ^^;

indeed

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 hours ago, Overland said:

I experimented with train length vs maximum speed on my old computer before getting a new one soon

Ive done extensive realworld research into "land trains" specificly the dotto type and AEV type trackless trains and trams around sydney,

 

visibly inspecting the technology on how to apply it to KSP and my upcoming diesel locomotive modeled on a 2ft gauge prototype

(with rubber tyres)

It seems KSP wheels have stablised since I was last in.. because this went well. even upto the interesting speed of 25ms without failure, A curious number since realworld trackless trains are limited to 25kph and below.. furthermore even the massive monster sized sno trains only did 33kph.. 

KSP simulates this perfectly ive noticed, what was once considered a flaw in the physics seems to have been a genuine challenge in the realworld

 

Soo.. howd she go?

Quite well!

 

Leaving KSC for the flatlands testing ground 

executing a 90 degree turn at 15ms with minimal correction, everything following the leading car as if she was on rails at this speed, the dance between physics. train momentum, framerate and land train capability reaching a sweetspot.. no longer just a 4 car entity feeding on its own wagon fuel stores, the KSP land train mirrors her own sugartrain and narrow gauge railbound cousins as a practical transport system

 

In attempts to challenge her capabilities , it was tried to loop the train onto herself it never happened.. instead executing a wonderful constant circle of safety

 

Sadly it was then time to push things until it broke in the name of science.. starting a turn at 24ms... train physics in effect saw the locomotive start to roll.. with the rest of the train upright.. slowly one by one the wagons turned.. hit the ground and their cargo exploding on contact

 

In a departure from the purely lethal history of the KTP and the general ideal that the survival rate of locomotive crew outweighs the surval rate of the most insane rocketry and aeronautics ... by order of several thousand tonnes headed ...down.. 

While the train did detonate her cargo.. the locomotives being powered by RTG these days vs being rolling fuel tanks ment that the crew survived..with even the train herself being able to be put back into service after being rerailed 

 

Ah, KSP... come here to see exploding rockets, learn about trains. 

is that 2ft gauge rig you mentioned something you're actually building yourself?

38 minutes ago, eddiew said:

This... was tricky. The problem in this case was not thrust (Pol is only 0.03g) or delta-v (3km/s in the tank) but rather sustainability.

 

Also...

...is that coral and seaweed? I had no idea that was down there!  

Must be a Scatterer update(?)

Just gotta say, I love your stuff. Do you paste all the images together manually or have some app to do it?

[eddiew]

46 minutes ago, Galileo said:

indeed

Well now that I know...

5 world firsts and finally got a deep reading from my DMagic bathymetry experiment  

Underwater graphics are... kind of glitchy though. The distant terrain insisted on being slightly translucent, and there's no water surface from the underside xD  Which I don't blame you for, it's just a thing

Edited August 22, 2016 by eddiew

[Curveball Anders]

With 265 days (+/- 7) to the next Duna window I was faced with a big decision.
Normally I want to proceed gradually, unmanned probes and landers followed by manned missions, but with only a 14d window (and years to next) I decided to go big and send a flotilla of ships and probes at the same time.

This created a new dilemma for me.
I needed a big honking mothership/station plus a bunch of probes, manned and unmanned landers and at least one return ship.

But should I dock all the bits and peices in LKO and ship the entire expedition in one go or should I send them in several small packages?

After pondering for some days I decided to cheat.

I simply copied and renamed that career save so now I can do both

Once that was done I switched over to the 'simulation save' (ie sandbox) and have started to design and test all the various bits and bobs I'll need.

So far I've got the core and side extensions designed, launched and docked.

[Galileo]

33 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Well now that I know...

5 world firsts and finally got a deep reading from my DMagic bathymetry experiment  

Underwater graphics are... kind of glitchy though. The distant terrain insisted on being slightly translucent, and there's no water surface from the underside xD  Which I don't blame you for, it's just a thing

Blackrack,  the dev of scatterer,  I believe is planning on eventually adding underwater effects in the future.  Until then,  we have clear water lol

Edited August 22, 2016 by Galileo

[Corona688]

On 8/18/2016 at 7:24 AM, Corona688 said:

You already have lander cans, now see the Canned Lander:

It's a re-deployable rover which fits inside an accessory can.  There's a mini docking port in the ceiling which it -- successfully! -- latches onto on return.  (Only in low-grav, mind.  In Kerbal grav, it needs a split-second kick of rocket engines to settle it.)  It can land most places on mun, visit multiple nearby sites, and refuel itself to biome-hop to another indefinitely as long as I stick the landing.

This is the third revision...  V1 digested its own wheels enroute, somehow -- all just gone, not even broken stubs left.  V2 was unwilling to leave its can due to 'wheel blocked'.

Problems to fix in V4:

1. Landing lights.  I always forget those and always curse myself for it.
2. Cooling issues.  The drill slowly overheats.
3. Thrust balance problem.  It looked perfect in the VAB, but I obviously forgot something.
4. Engines.  The thuds are too strong, heavy as all get out, and monstrously inefficient.  If I can somehow attach a pair of terriers that'd be better.
5. The rover could use more power and better antenna placement.
6. Clipping issues with the gigantor arrays.

v4 unintentionally duplicated a radiator INSIDE the can, preventing the rover from re-entering the pod.  It will still fulfill a role as an ore-mining vehicle under contract.

v5 forgot the landing lights.  AGAIN.  *smash*

v6 had landing lights and made a proper night landing!  The rover can re-enter the pod, and the radiators are where they should be.  ..it being a night landing there aren't a ton of pictures, of course.  It doesn't really look much different from v3, in any case, just a pair of terriers on girders where the thuds used to be.  Cooling fixed, thrust-balance is "better", not perfect but better...  The SAS can handle the imbalance at full thrust now.  It can land with fuel left over, unlike the thud version.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Corona688

[Fearless Son]

On 8/20/2016 at 8:53 AM, Corona688 said:

It was a Chernobyl of rocketry, designed so poorly its brakes accelerated it.  I am not kidding about 600RPM, I tried to clock it, it was amazing.

That is one of the most Kerbal things I have ever heard.  

[Corona688]

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

...is that coral and seaweed? I had no idea that was down there!  

Looks like jellyfish.  Maybe you DID need a spacesuit to get here.

On 8/19/2016 at 6:45 AM, MaxwellsDemon said:

i see what you mean about wheel blocking from the 2.5m can... I keep ending up with a rover that steers like a shopping cart.  It's the same two of the six wheels each time, though, so I'm wondering if some additional adjustments can clear it.   (Still a great idea!)

With the wheel bugs and symmetry problems I had, I didn't even try to wholly depend on the wheels.  Mine incorporates a "small reaction wheel" which on mun is enough to breakdance.  It definitely needed separate controls for the wheels though.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Corona688

[eddiew]

7 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Just gotta say, I love your stuff. Do you paste all the images together manually or have some app to do it?

Manual  I take a lot of screenshots and pick the best 4-6 to montage ^^

[Curveball Anders]

After tuning the Monster Station in simulation (sandbox) I copied the design over to my career save and did the real launch.

What could go wrong? I've tested this several times in the simulation save.

Jeb decided that he wanted to be on the ride ...

So now I have my Monster Core for Duna assembling in LKO, with that darn Jeb as a stow-away ...

[Sharpy]

Recently no new Class E asteroids spawn, the one Class E is nearing depletion, and it really makes no sense to haul Claymore for anything smaller.

So I built two younger brothers for Claymore.

 

 

Curtana is a miniaturized Claymore with just one (full sized) ISRU, one big ore tank, two Junior drills, and two Vectors for 2000kN of thrust. 3000 delta-V max, 1800 ms for chasing asteroids asteroids after launch into LKO.

It's meant for Class C. Once I encounter a Class D, I'll decide whether it's good enough for them, or if to leave them for Claymore.

The launcher is funny - the only LF engines in the discarded stages are Spiders - the Vectors have enough thrust, that other than some SRBs for initial kick, it just carries four droptanks. But rightclicking and watching the fuel level is bothersome, so I attached the Spiders to the droptanks so that you know when to stage them.

I have it in two versions - Stock, and with KIS/KAS goodies plus mood lights (which I use as indicators for switching ISRU and drills on/off.)

And this is Dirk. 360kN of thrust across 6 nukes. Almost 4000m/s of delta-V, 2600 of which are in the tanks upon arrival to the orbit.

I took it as a challenge, to make it quite low-tech without sacrificing all the goodies.

Obviously ISRU and the drills are Level 8, Nukes and Gigantors are Level 7, but in general, I built it with assumption that you are around level 6 with your progress, with few rare nudges into level 7, and that one single grab for the ISRU node from level 8.

Also, all parts would be stock, MK1 sized, or (rarely) smaller (Okto 2 + Fly By Wire hub, because seriously, no Maneuver SAS mode sucks.). So, small ISRU, small ore tank, MK1 inline cockpit, monoprop RCS since it doesn't carry any oxidizer (and quite a few reaction wheels to save on it). The weak MK1 joints are reinforced with a lot of struts, which I managed to lean neatly by the body, through use of stack separators - which extend a little beyond the MK1 profile, allowing to draw struts right above the surface. Also, the launcher is purely SRB. I had a kind of nefarious motive behind this... with so many joints between the MK1 parts I'm afraid it would be quite bendy... meanwhile, Kickbacks kept it perfectly stable through the worst atmospheric grinder.

On unrelated note, I was testing how the new MK3 Structural Plates work as angle joints (very well, that thing was spinning at good 2 revolutions per second when it finally broke apart),

experimenting with badass looking idea for a habitat for my 'Space Village' (I came up with something entirely different, I'll show you when I dock it)

and testing whether adjusting the 'Deploy Limit' of a cargo ramp quickly can be used to catapult kerbals. (it can't).

[The Raging Sandwich]

Nothin', cause I got no time!

[LN400]

Continuing my quest for the kOS script that will perform magnificent g-turns time and time again. It's a long way to the top if you want to automate things.

[Maverick_aus]

@LN400 You can do it. kOS my crappy programming skills can be hair-pulling, but automation with that thing is so worth it in the end, hey? (Great song reference too, BTW).

---

Today, I completed posting the last part of the rescue of the Elcano exploration vehicle. The Dolomedes Triton is finally rescued by the Protector of the Waterways - the Waarn!

Highlights include:

-crane-lifting the vehicle then...
-Kerbal crane rides
-chilled beverages
-tacos
-beach party

Now, the circumnavigation can finally continue!
 

Edited August 23, 2016 by Maverick_aus