What did you do in KSP1 today?

[XB-70A]

4 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Seriously, stick a Vector on the MK1 stack and try to fly it. Worth it.

 

Agree, I got a single seat cheap launcher for the tourists and unexperienced kerbonauts with 2xReliant as side boosters and a Swivel for the core made to reach 400x400 km then some months ago I decided to try a simpler single core variant with the Vector.

Pretty fun and accelerating, mmmh... crazily.

[Sharpy]

27 minutes ago, XB-70A said:

Agree, I got a single seat cheap launcher for the tourists and unexperienced kerbonauts with 2xReliant as side boosters and a Swivel for the core made to reach 400x400 km then some months ago I decided to try a simpler single core variant with the Vector.

Spoiler

 

 

Pretty fun and accelerating, mmmh... crazily.

How do the cheap fins like it?

[N_Danger]

Launched a tanker to Duna

Mean while back at Duna, Jenya's landing zone has 3 biomes and 1 anomaly within 15 KM

Road Trip!

And then she finds this

 

[XB-70A]

15 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

How do the cheap fins like it?

Not so bad about the temp'. I tried a fully manual ascent at full thrust, starting to turn at 700 m (can't remember the speed) at full thrust and a MechJeb controlled climb with a turn shape of 45 degrees, starting the turn at 300 m and limiting the acceleration at 50 m/s. In both cases there was not enough fuel to reach a dangerous temperature level for the fins before the stage shut down.

But the Vector gimbal really had to be put at 0.

[cosimas]

Finally did the big one

Jebs will be Jebbing

[Guest]

Astarte Station is on her way to Eve, via a refueling stop at Minmus. 

Everything worked more or less as intended so far, although now I know how to design a big long-range ship for easier refueling... and how to make a tanker that makes the job easier too. I had to do a quite a bit of running back and forth between Astarte Station and Fueling Station (moved to within 100 meters of each other), because of carelessness with placing the docking ports.

[eddiew]

Something feels odd about this road trip...

(Reloads aren't fixing it... kerbals are now on top of everything in the game. Help? :()

Edited September 8, 2016 by eddiew

[Red Iron Crown]

10 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Seriously, stick a Vector on the MK1 stack and try to fly it. Worth it.

ChallengeAccepted.png

Jeb does look rather entertained.

[CaptRobau]

On 9/4/2016 at 7:39 AM, Francois424 said:

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.

2

That would've been for quite a while now. Can't remember clearly because it was so long ago, but I think I made this change in June 2015 looking at the logs. Why I made the atmosphere a bit shorter? To make the descent less tedious, as at it's very thick and slows you down a lot. No fun in spending who knows how many minutes descending at max physical warp. It's still not short, due to design of the moon, but it's just a little bit less tedious than before.

[Fearless Son]

20 hours ago, KerrMü said:

So this is what I came up with. It´s an automated mining and fuel depot with 4 drills, 1 ISRU unit and 2 orange tanks, which is enough to fill up two Beagles. Currently it´s 5km away from my base (partcount) but it´s mobile as well. Though... launching it to orbit has been a nightmare, finding a nice flat spot was difficult and landing it exactly there was hair raising and exhausting. But hey, landing on it was pretty easy . And my Mun Traktor is now free for caravaning or other important missions.

I want to know, how do you land on that so easily?  I have always wanted to do, if not a landing pad, at least something I could drop rockets/base parts onto vertically and have them dock for resource transfer, then do a vertical takeoff.  But a) hitting one of those from orbit without burning an excessive amount of fuel for corrections is really tough and b) the backwash from the rocket itself will blow the parts I am landing on around.  

But you seem to have made it work, and work well, and I am curious about the details.  

50 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Something feels odd about this road trip...

(Reloads aren't fixing it... kerbals are now on top of everything in the game. Help? :()

Do you have the cutaway view turn on?  The one you use to see inside of cockpits?  That would be my first suspicion.  

[Samniss Arandeen]

45 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

ChallengeAccepted.png

Jeb does look rather entertained.

He's trying to sing his favorite space-themed opera piece.

[eddiew]

2 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

Do you have the cutaway view turn on?  The one you use to see inside of cockpits?  That would be my first suspicion.  

Not by intent... I think a mod is doing wacky things. Time to roll back the newest...

1 minute ago, Samniss Arandeen said:

He's trying to sing his favorite space-themed opera piece.

Jebbie and the magic flute?

[Triop]

Today, we had klingons on the starboard bow . . .

Jim.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Triop

[Francois424]

2 hours ago, CaptRobau said:

That would've been for quite a while now. Can't remember clearly because it was so long ago, but I think I made this change in June 2015 looking at the logs. Why I made the atmosphere a bit shorter? To make the descent less tedious, as at it's very thick and slows you down a lot. No fun in spending who knows how many minutes descending at max physical warp. It's still not short, due to design of the moon, but it's just a little bit less tedious than before.

Okay, thanks for the heads-up.  I put it back to 105k myself by changing the file, I just did not want to cause bugs or anything.
Thanks for taking the time to keep the mod up to date, and I hope it'll be part of stock one day !

[Samniss Arandeen]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

Jebbie and the magic flute?

"The Booster Concerto in C4"

[Francois424]

Today I continued the 'Explorer I' mission :

 

After achieving orbit around Kerbin last time, the 'Explorer I' needed somewhere close to refuel.
See, most of the lander's fuel was spent escaping the atmospheric pull of Kerbin, and the engine section was only showing half fuel as well.
Thankfully for everyone, Mission Control knew just the place !

Minmus is just overflowing with fuel if our scanners are to be believed. Just melt those lakes a bit and we'll find what we need !

 

After finding the sweet spot, landing coordinates were computed and the lander settled down on Minmus' lakes. 
It took the better part of a week (7 kerbal days), but the mothership and the lander were refueled. By sheer randomness, filling the lone ore tank did offset the cost of raising the fuel to the mothership, greatly speeding-up the whole process.  The lander has about 3k dV when fully loaded with ore and fuel, but quickly convert that ore if the Refinery is not shutdown. With fuel alone it's 3.5k dV.

The lander hard at work in a sweet Minmusian evening.  Keep the solar panels perpendicular to Kerbol's path and the batteries will do the rest overnight.

 

The 'Explorer I' is now ready to depart for it's next destination... wherever that might be.  Maybe the Mün to test something with a bit more gravity. 

Edited September 9, 2016 by Francois424

[KerrMü]

4 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

I want to know, how do you land on that so easily?  I have always wanted to do, if not a landing pad, at least something I could drop rockets/base parts onto vertically and have them dock for resource transfer, then do a vertical takeoff.  But a) hitting one of those from orbit without burning an excessive amount of fuel for corrections is really tough and b) the backwash from the rocket itself will blow the parts I am landing on around.  

But you seem to have made it work, and work well, and I am curious about the details. 

Son, you have to practice (sry, couldnt resist )

But seriously, before I got more into interplanetary stuff and SSTOs and so on (back then with 19.x) I had the most fun with building bases on Mun and Minimus. That meant I had to land a LOT of modules relatively close to each other. First I was very happy when I got them 5km away, then 2 and then I got closer and closer. Minmus is a great place for practicing because of the lower orbital speeds.

Here is what I do:

1: I lower the orbit periapsis over the target. On Mun for example about 5km

2: I try to get the inclination as close to the target as possible

3: Breaking burn. This is the point where you have to know your lander well. How fast can it decellerate with how much fuel? etc

Theese Beagle landers are very well balanced, have a good amount of torque and engine wise a bit overpowered.

Here the gimball markers are your best friend. Try to keep the retrograde marker always a bit over the target marker and use the markers for course corrections, so you don´t drift away sideways to your target. Estimate how much gravity will pull you down and counteract.

4: Then I´ll try to come to a hover or slow decent near the base. If it goes well 200-300m above ground.

5: For the final approach I turn on RCS and use the target markers for fine tuning the landing.

At first it can be a bit frustrating and you can forget fuel efficiency. But you´ll get better with every try and hey, its really satisfying when you get it right.  And after all: I´ve put that base there, so I don´t have to watch fuel consumption all the time.

Sry if I´ve made few mistakes or the instructions are unclear. It´s very late here and I urgently need to hit the hay. If you have further questions just send me a PM.

Have Fun.

(tock...snore...snore...snore)

 

[Diche Bach]

Started my 3rd career mode with modlist pruned from 76 to 50 (1st one I shelved was at about 100).

Seems much better. My RAM doesn't start clattering like an old lady wearing dentures in the antarctic, and so far the game hasn't seized up like it was fainting in the VAB.

[GwynJHawke]

Launched and returned the Discovery II mission to Duna. The mission shared the same insertion window as my Duna Recon probe, so I had to juggle both at the same time. The recon probe had a low-thrust, high efficiency xenon engine and had about a 5 minute burn to slow enough to keep the probe from leaving the SOI. The Discovery II inflated it's 10-meter heat shield and used it with a 15,000 meter perigee to save fuel and slow down into a low orbital speed. The atmospheric lander used air brakes and a shallow descent profile to bleed off velocity, deploy it's chutes, and safely land at an equatorial lowland site. Half an hour later, I managed to time my launch and ascent angle perfectly so as to rendezvous with the Discovery II mothership before even stabilizing into my orbit. Afterwards, instead of breaking orbit I sent the runabout, a secondary two person variable thrust craft, to Ike. The runabout is a 10 ton craft that let me leave low Duna orbit and intercept Ike, circularize, land, and then return to low Duna orbit and rendezvous back with the Discovery II without even going through a quarter of it's minuscule fuel supply. I left both the lander and the runabout docked together in low Duna orbit before making a burn for home. I had two options for the trip home, either transferring orbits from Duna down to Kerbin and then burning to set up a rendezvous over a year later, or burn retro long and hard to swing low towards Kerbol and rendezvous with Kerbin. The only issue with the second option is that the intercept with Kerbin would be at very high speed.  Because I still had my inflatable heat shield, i decided to chose the fiery option. I set my perigee at 30,000, pulled in my radiators, and pulled out the marshmallows.

http://imgur.com/LcMQeVm

 

Edited September 9, 2016 by GwynJHawke

[Guest]

I'm developing a huge respect for you folks who make space planes.

I just made my first one that actually got into orbit and back in one piece. That was... not easy. They're also not easy to fly. The controls are at least a part of the problem -- it's just not possible to give gentle control inputs, which means that those things tend to flip out of control really easily. I've flown a quite a few flight sims back in the day and that part was a bit frustrating -- I'm trying to pull a gentle turn at 10k altitude, and the thing just jerks all over the place.

Anyway, yeah, orbit and back. At least now I know how the basic design works. Picture related.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Triop said:

Today, we had klingons on the starboard bow . . .

Jim.

That contraption looks fast.

...

How fast? Or, put another way, how high, and how fast?

[MaxwellsDemon]

I mostly sat through several CTDs.   I eventually traced the problem back to a change in a graphics setting I'd made the previous day in an effort to boost performance; when I rolled that back, things worked better.   Sigh.  I need a new machine, really.

[Guest]

Still figuring out this space plane thingy. I scaled up the basic design of the surplus-parts-bin contraption in my first post -- basically put twice as much of everything in more or less the same places -- and eventually ended up with something actually useful. Behold, the Swan 11C.

The first mission from which the publicity photo has been taken did not end well though; the pilot lost control after touching down on the runway, and the Swan ended up crashing into the astronaut complex. Miraculously, the crew and passengers survived the crash although the craft itself was a near-total loss.

I learned from my mistake and added drogue chutes to the design. I tested these with another landing, and they do serve well to both stabilise and slow down the craft after touching down.

[Sharpy]

 

I tried building a gantry that can be folded for launch, and then restored to original shape and reinforced with EVA struts while in space.

It didn't exactly go according to the plan.

 

[septemberWaves]

I started a tutorial thread. I've already uploaded a guide for getting into Kerbin orbit, going into great detail about my construction process and the flight method. I'm going to continue this series.