What did you do in KSP1 today?

[RoboRay]

I made something so stupid that it works beautifully:

Thread:  http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/147025-dynamaks/

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by RoboRay

[NightshineRecorralis]

I did this challenge. I feel quite proud.

[Sharpy]

Two things.

1) I built a 2STO using Flight Manager for Stage Recovery. A carrier airplane that brings the rocket to 1000m/s, 2000m and angled good 20 degrees up. Then the rocket is released and flies to orbit, while the airplane turns and returns to KSC. Second stage was not recoverable, but the Standard Benchmark passed.

Then I decided Rallian has enough of sitting in a dim, tight cockpit, she did an awesome work maneuvering the asteroid, and so, she deserves a reward. So I built her a house worthy of a Kerbal Engineer.

It seems she likes it!

Edited September 4, 2016 by Sharpy

[CatastrophicFailure]

Got distracted from my usual game and started a little side project. More to follow.

 

[Triop]

So today our spy sat took a picture...

They are up to something....

Edited September 4, 2016 by Triop

[Francois424]

Today I continued to fix Tekto from Outer Planet's Mod.

I had noticed her atmosphere was reduced from 105,000m to 95'000m... so I went in the file and put it back to the former ( anyone know why it has been changed in the first place? @CaptRobau ?)
Then using the config file @Galileo did for me last week or so, I started to play the wizard's apprentice.

Galileo had told me not to put too much clouds... "it's going to drop your frame rates to abysmal levels", he said...  Everybody knows the apprentice never listens to the master.

So I put such thick clouds that I could barely rotate my craft when looking straight down to the planet (I had to look to space for decent frame rates).  After a few tweaks, I was able to space the cloud layers enough as to encounter them between 80k and 30k atmosphere height. Took me a few hours of trial and error to finally get the correct mixture of "layer volume size" to get the effects I was looking for.  I now get about 30% drop in my framerates in certain layers but I love the results.  It makes my video card works, I can tell you this much, I could feel the heat being pushed out of my PC tower...  I love that feeling.  I also change the RGB values of the Green clouds to make them a bit more blueish (+20 to the Blue setting) which is extremely close to the original without being as much blue as them.

So my config would not work on a worse computer.  I understand why you did it that way now, Galileo.  At least I was able to beef things up in the upper atmosphere.

Not much interesting pictures today as everything happened mostly under the hood...
but I guess I post a few,  For eye-candy's sake.

Just over the first cloud layer, around 90k :

The first gap between layers around 75k :

The Rusted-tint hued clouds around 52k:

Another very thin gap just below the orange clouds, but before another layer of Thick green clouds (44.5k) :

The final gap before entering the final cloud layer that will give on the surface... Around 18k: (Starting to get dark as I am getting close to the night side).

On the Surface (Riding the dark oceans) :

Edited September 4, 2016 by Francois424
moar pics !

[eddiew]

Messing about with rovers... first time using these wheels since 1.0.2  

My word, what a fun ride this was! Operating in 0.32g, Ranger Rover is basically unstoppable. No matter which way you roll it, the only parts that can touch the ground are wheels (never broke but fixable anyway) and girders with 80m/s impact tolerance - which is probably more than the kerbals have, and certainly more than the motors can deliver. Mostly drove with just the front wheels, but switching to 4wd gives it a mighty hill climbing ability. There were many flat spins, and a couple of flips despite the low CoM, but the hotkeyed reaction wheels are enough to flip it the right way up again. Since he has a probe core, he'll be hanging around on the island ready to transport crew between their landing sites and wherever the base actually ends up being. Meanwhile, Rover Contracts is constantly asking me to drive him a few km for a small profit, which I don't mind doing. 

As for the Ranger SSTO... in a word, ugh. The engines, beefed up with KR&D and an awful lot of science, are magnificent, and she packs 4.5km/s in LKO. Handling however... for some reason, I the engineering team forgot all my their design principles. There are vertical stabilisers hiding within the double wings, which are completely insufficient for the job. This is massively compounded by failing a basic plane principle; always have a fuel tank near the front. While the dCoM technically remained good, the LFO tank in the rear is used to power the ventral vernors, and resulted in a surplus of oxidiser at the tail. Result was a bird that loved to go into a flat spin at anything more than 5 degrees off prograde 

Jay Kerman somehow wrestled it down on the runway at KSC using its drogue chutes to keep it pointing forwards, then immediately smashed the cabin controls with a hammer. A mk2 is needed, since the mk1 will never fly again due to being a deathtrap. 

Also, I don't know why Jay Kerman is happy in Rald's thin atmosphere but Thystle Kerman is not. I think his time as an immortal energy being may have left him with a few advantages. 

[RizzoTheRat]

Having not touched it for probably 4-5 months, I downloaded 1.1.3, plus KER, ScanSat and RemoteTech, and have started a new career...

[purpleivan]

Put my Laythe mining base into Kerbin orbit.

Just need to send up a couple of my standard nuke tugs to haul it there now.

 

Also I made a new wallpaper image for my More Wallpapers thread. It was based on an screenshot I took of my One with Everything challenge entry back in April.

 

[Leopard]

Fun and games, starting with good news, by deleting all planted flags, debris and anything that could be functionally covered by another unit, then going into the VAB and wiping the saved designs down to about four I managed to get the game to actually work again (eggbox, go figure).

First up, a choice between a third attempt at docking the fuel module to my Kerbin station, or try for the Mun station... Mun it is.

Then the comedy started.

Core stage into orbit fine, its basically the same as the Kerbin station so no problems, there then followed the science module, which took three attempts despite and identical one for Kerbin working first time, on the plus side I've discovered the Poodle engine makes a passable heat shield and as such my little transfer tug, equipped with parachutes is actually recoverable, mostly.

First attempt failed to make orbit, got the gravity turn wrong, muppet error really.

Second attempt got to about 2m from the target, then when changing from linear to rotation for the RCS thrusters just exploded, guess the Kraken is real after all.

Third attempt worked fine.

The fuel tank module was easier, launched it empty to keep the weight down, all docked, nicely in line, trans-stage of the core module still attached, the various tugs having refuelled it, very carefully aim for Mun.

Then exit and try again to get the manoeuvre nodes to actually work.

All lined up, ignition!, umm... yeah, not sure what went wrong really, the whole station just pinwheels like its seriously out of balance, still its entertaining so while its obviously useless, expensive and doomed I played with it dancing for a while before it broke up on re-entry. To be honest I was amazed I managed to get it to hit the ground..

Hmm.. obviously assembly on orbit is a bit harder than it looks.

Still, this is why we are here, second attempt!

Build in Mun orbit this time, similar design for the core, this time launched with crew, but with the stations own fuel tanks depleted and its engines removed to save weight - the trans stage got it to a nice circular Mun orbit about 60k up, EVA and everyone is happy. Trans stage still has a bit of fuel, transferred to the stations tanks then dumped - and deleted.

Next up, the science lab, my normal little Kerbin tug lacks the fuel to go to Mun loaded so went with a beefed up one.

First attempt.. Made it to 20k, broke up, fell over, much amusement

Second attempt, with struts, Made it to 65k, just. hmmm

Third attempt, deleted the tug, stuck a probe core on the second stage of the lifted and lobbed it up, worked, left the 2nd stage attached with about a 1/3 of its fuel.

Launched a modified tug on its own, larger tank, first time to orbit and it worked, met up with the science lab, docked, robbed the fuel and dumped then deleted its second stage. Aimed for Mun, again reset to get the nodes to work (Grr), and Ignition!

 

Annnnd pinwheeling.. Though controllable at about 1/6 thrust, so thats what we did, got to Mun, docked to the station, tug has the fuel to get back which will be tested later.

I think the issue is trusting with the docking ports as the connectors being unstable so inducing the wobble which causes the pinwheel, still if 1/6 thrust works, then thats what I'll use. Does mean I think getting Bill levelled up on a mission to reenforce the docked modules before going further, but for now I can cope.

 

Day ended with a new station round Mun, Jeb, Val and Bob on board, ready to do science... Although they as yet lack a lander, or indeed a return to Kerbin craft (the Tug lacks a crew space, a are & fuel tug is in the works). Contract accepted for Flag on the MUn which will fund the lander test and mission, plus more Science! 

Aiming to have a fully re-usable lander, which means a new design, but one that doesn't need the range to get home or re-enter atmosphere.

 

Also starting to try and work out how to grab screen shots from the eggbox..

[eddiew]

Spaceplane to Duna! Personal first, although I did top up the tanks in LKO because I never trust my piloting the delta-v map   Took the original Ranger design and fixed it. Proper tail fins maintain yaw stability and the LFO tank at the front means fuel can be pumped forwards to stabilise the CoM.

The big engine on the back is the first/only mod/config I've ever made; a 2.5m rapier. I gave it the stats that Tweakscale assigns when you ramp up a rapier to that scale (5.65x thrust and mass), but as a separate part it is Kerbal R&D compatible, so in future I can invest science into it for better thrust and fuel efficiency   And I will need to, because this bird needs to fly dead level to crack mach 1, making the ascent slow and inefficient. The nervas are KR&D'd to the eyeballs, delivering a godlike 1040 ISP. Overall, this ship is somewhere between stock and Near Future, but has actually cost more science than the NF parts would have 

If anyone would like the rapier, the config file is downloadable here. No textures, no nothing, shouldn't have any significant memory footprint and just needs Module Manager to work. I had to give it the jet trails from the panther engine because I couldn't figure out how to scale up the stock rapier emissions, but frankly I think it looks good this way. And yes I clipped it into the rear tank because it's massively long at a 2.5m scale  

Landing was... worrisome. Simulated runs at Duna had assumed a weight of ~65 tons and aimed at the lowlands. This contract? That was in the highlands, a full 4km higher, and Ranger II was carrying an additional 15 tons of fuel. Wasting capitalising on that extra fuel, pilot Tora Kerman pulled the Ranger II around in a wide circle to find the optimum approach vector. Kicking in the powerful Space Y ventral vernors allowed a controlled descent speed and effective retro-thrust, but consumed the last of the oxidiser, meaning the ship is going to have to get off the ground without the rapier's thrust... fun times ahead!

[numerobis]

Playing around with the Juno: I let it fly overnight with a kOS script and topped 10,000 km of range. And crashed; my script doesn't handle landing -- it would need to know to lower the flaps and gear, and then it would be a fairly gentle landing.

The Juno is a remarkably useful engine for this kind of long-distance runs. I'm fairly confident I could increase that range a lot by adding more Big-S wings to get both more lift and more fuel. I think flying slower might help too; I'm pushing Mach 0.9 at the end of powered flight.

[eddiew]

Having consumed several strong cups of jasmine tea, the crew managed to get over the adrenaline rush of the terrifying landing and get on with the mission at hand.

While mission control was tempted to send the girls down to the south pole, after 30 minutes the girls had only covered about 20km with over a hundred to the edge of the ice caps. Since the Duna Bug only carries two science instruments, it was deemed a poor investment of time and the extended expedition was cancelled. Next time, more sciences shall be fitted, perhaps to a rover that is a little more suitable for long distance travel.

Also, turns out that some ground scatter in my game is solid... pretty sure this is SVT at work - which is also the likely culprit for the dust storm, and the 100% GPU usage I get on Duna now   Worth it though, looks beautiful! 

Ascent is almost easy, aside from there being a dangerous rock lurking just over the brow of the 'runway' that nearly took the Ranger II's wing off. Fortunately the supercharged nervas are worth 2.3TWR on Duna, and Tora kicks the control surfaces to maximum deflection to get enough leverage for a steep ascent.

Not wanting to seem any less heroic, Leo Kerman dives out of the airlock at 35km in order to grab a sample of the upper atmosphere.

Return to Kerbin is pretty uneventful. A couple of aerobraking passes resulted in 1000m/s left in the tank, so a rendezvous was set for Starcrossed station to get the best returns out of the gathered science. Had anyone realised the target site was on a biome boundary, mission control would have provided a bigger scientific payload, but unfortunately the crew was limited to basic instruments, reports and samples. Still, should be worth a few hundred science points, and all of them will be put into beefing up that 2.5m rapier engine for better efficiency and thrust. One day, the engineering team assures mission control, it will be possible to send a Ranger class vessel to Duna without the orbital refuel. Mission control does not hold its breath.

Happily the Ranger II handles much, much better than its predecessor when fuel is low. Pumping the remaining LFO to the forward tank results in a calm, controlled glide down through Kerbin's clouds to a perfect landing on the runway.

Also no, no, there were never more than two air brakes on Ranger II. *cough*

Edited September 4, 2016 by eddiew

[Sharpy]

I built a rover for ultra-low gravity environments, and tested it in a simulated environment.

Once it passed the tests, I applied it to inspect infrastructure on the asteroid.

It has proven to be a valuable tool. Some faults in the pipelines were detected.

Oh, who am I kidding...

[eddiew]

6 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

I built a rover for ultra-low gravity environments, and tested it in a simulated environment.

Lol, I like it, but I can't help but feel that some RCS and a command seat would have been easier  

[Sharpy]

Just now, eddiew said:

Lol, I like it, but I can't help but feel that some RCS and a command seat would have been easier  

Staying on Kerbin is even easier

[Kenobi McCormick]

 

It almost looks like an early 60s F1 racer. Probably the best handling rover I've ever built. There's a probe core nestled into the nose of the thing, stressed member too, I decided to hide it under some fairings from the sounding rockets mod. I forget entirely what mod I got the wheels from, but they're great. Buffalo chassis parts, stock fuel cell, couldn't forget the hood ornament.

 

 

Named it the 'Duna Buggy'.

[Mikki]

Yes i tried... looks like using asteroids as heatshield while aerobrakeing doesn`t work so well, this was once a real big Potatoroid dragger... 50 km above surface. I guess the rock survided.

Edited September 4, 2016 by Mikki
tell:D

[Crocket]

40 minutes ago, Mikki said:

Yes i tried... looks like using asteroids as heatshield while aerobreaking doesn`t work so well, this was once a real big Potatoroid dragger... 50 km above surface. I guess the rock survided.

It completed its purpose!

[Salvator]

I admired some distatnt mountains of Kerbin bathing in the rays of the morning sun while hunting for one of the monoliths.

And i created and succesfully tested my first SSTO!

Edited September 5, 2016 by Salvator

[Firemetal]

I decided to Yolo to Laythe in a random untested mk1 SSTO. (When I say untested, I flew it into LKO once this morning, then begun the mission #Yolo to Laythe)

Spoiler

Instead of going directly to Jool, I decided to save fuel by just using Kerbin assists to get the AP up to Jool. It took four Kerbin assists. The third one didn't do much. The escape (1st) and 2nd got the AP just under Dres's orbit. The fourth one got me way over Jool at max to get an encounter on the first orbit around Sol after assist #4. This however made a Tylo/Laythe gravity assist insertion impossible. I reloaded and got the orbit to just intersect Jools orbit. I then found an encounter that didn't take any DV (except a 92 m/s plain change). Unfortunately, that is in another 60 years and I don't have better time warp installed so it will take around an hour to reach. That's where I am right now.

Now even though when you leave the mission, the option to revert is gone, I quicksaved at the start to make an artificial revert option. I am actually counting on it going wrong. The last SSTO that went to Laythe, (it had refueling, see Laythe Mission in my sig) required a rescue mission since I am so in-experienced in gravity assists. But now, I am convinced that I had the planets in the wrong position. Plus, using this more efficient flight path, will boost the mission time well over a century.

I believe this whole Jool insertion will take a total of around 1500 m/s. This saves 500-600 m/s. Well every little bit counts when doing a Laythe SSTO!

(Btw, why isn't this post stickied yet?)

 

[KerbalMan23]

Im making a black hole right now!

Based of of interstellar. this is what it looks like in map/tracking station.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/267224187171411630/1784154A2CA09F0D909787E7B4D616275A5C214C/

This is what its like from Millers World. Well not really because for some reason it has land. and on map it looks like Laythe so yeah.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/267224187173686134/3B5D8E697CB7A8773024A380D09726A4B63BE118/

 

[eddiew]

MK3 ramp isn't wide enough for my Ranger Rover  Tried to redesign and gave up after 2 hours of "Blocked: yes". 

MK4 to the rescue! Loosely based on the Ranger design (biplane with sandwiched engines).

First impressions; heavy slug of a thing. Then again, tis 225 tons wet, and somehow still hits LKO with 7200m/s (although it did reach 'orbit' at 60x50km). Could probably lose 20t of fuel and still get where I want to.

MK4 spaceplane parts + Tweakscaled wings + my homebrew 2.5m rapiers and intakes + KR&D. Dammit, I will get this thing to orbit and I will carry that rover in a recoverable fashion  

[Dire_Squid]

What I did yesterday: Sent science from around the Mun, changed a satellite's orbit a bit, got a five-Kerbal Minmus, non-mobile Base landed with no problem... and failed, multiple times, to get a Lab truck ALSO landed on Minmus due to center of mass issues (Wanted to use an "airless skycrane" as a final stage to get the truck to and ON Minmus... but the centering for the REST of the payload's travel is an issue).

What I did today:.. still figuring out HOW I can get a Lab Module to Minmus that's ALSO mobile, but doesn't HAVE to be a Lab Truck... but also makes use of a docking port (I have some Surface Science I'd like to do research on... help?).

[Diche Bach]

Finally finished construction of my first Mun lander ship. I initially tried to do it "for cheap" and when I'd run it in "Simulation mode" (Kerbal Construction Time) I kept find I was cutting things very close on fuel. Found landing on Mun suprirsingly not too difficult:

1. Get down to about 10 or 15km

2. Burn Retro until horizontal speed drops from the ~550m/s down into the ~25m/s ballpark.

3. Descend from ~4500 m above terrain with periodic radial burns (well, at that point, that direction is pretty much retro too) combined with RCS translation burns to minimize horizontal speed(s).

I managed to land it 3 out of 5 times in simulation mode, and now I just have to get enough cash to build the first instance of my high-fund Lunar expedition module.

After fiddling with cheaper models (~250k funds and no bigger than 3.75m base) I decided to go for a solid "over-built" desgn that would leave plenty of margin for error on the delta-V supply. The one I intend to land here soon (for "real") costs about 800k funds but it will be worth it. Includes a 2-Kerbal rover, and command seats for up to 4 kerbals. The orbital service module will seat 6 and total mission endurance is in the 37-day ball park with 4 crew. After having some issues with geting the rover lose from the belly I decided to go with three pilots and a scientist. One pilot stays orbital (she has an Advanced Pilot Mission with a Mun flyby that will bump her from level 2 to 3) the other two pilots go EVA get on the lander and take a ride down to the Mun. Once landed, one pilot gets in the rover, and if the terrain is not ideal, rover disconnects, and second pilot will gently reposition the lander to a more level spot (thus a solution to nearly any "rover wedged under lander by enormous Kerbal head + slope issues). Once the lander and rover are disconnected and both are on surface, the science stravaganza will ensue. Based on what I was getting from simulation mode, I'll come back with something like 300 to 500 science which will be a nice topper to the ~750k funds and rep/sci rewards for the "Plant a Flat on Mun" mission.

Took me a whole day of fiddling to finallly come up with this design/mission plan.