What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Puggonaut]

10 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I was encouraged to make more Trekkie vessels, particularly older ones, and of course, ones from other factions/races. On my way to finding and deciding on the Excelsior Class of the Enterprise B, I stumbled over the Enterprise D's distant kin, the Nebula Class, particularly "USS Prometheus." Learning that the object mounted on the tail is different per vessel and seems very likely to contain scanner parts, I thought I'd kerbalize such a worthy ship. That part consists of procedural wings (but there's a hollow, thinner stock wing segments version too) and it's removable/swappable via Senior docking node.

 

 

Please for gods sake share the craft file on Kerbal X for this craft it's amazing .

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, Puggonaut said:

Please for gods sake share the craft file on Kerbal X for this craft it's amazing .

Done. But only this Procedural Wings version.

 

[Haruspex]

It is Year 48 of the Kerbal Space Age. After a 3-year long flight, The Fifth Interplanetary Expedition has finally reached Jool and is maneuvering to get a Pol encounter.

...Meanwhile, the Jool Atmospheric Probe separates from the mothership and begins its descent into the deadly depths of the giant planet... Derp, I accidentally the heatshield and it refuses to deflate back! Now it partially obscures the solar panels. 

It takes two passes and a brief Tylo flyby to enter a suborbital trajectory.

Surprisingly, the magical heatshield held despite the insane speed of reentry.

Deathly glow of metallic Kersplodium emanates from the depths of Jool. No living Kerbal had ever seen this terrifying landscape.

 

The heat shield is away and the probe deploys chutes. Those data are invaluable. The stream of raw, yummy SCIENCE from the probe continues until the end.

Finally, the fragile craft is squished by the immense pressure some 250 meters below the arbitrary line that marks the Joolian "surface".

Mission accomplished!

Edited September 15, 2016 by Haruspex

[LordFerret]

Ok, I'm officially creeped out.

I used and deployed the LT-05 Micro Landing Strut pretty much for the first time (in Pre-v1.2), and instantly I'm whisked off into the dentist's chair. Unfair, Squad, unfair.

[XB-70A]

Finally got an occasion to complete the XC-70A Comet trip :

This scientific journey just bring back about 6 points of science... but was also an opportunity to test the last version of the Kolibri Mk II, a simple 6 seats small shuttle.

Smooth undocking...

... and de-orbit after some time waiting for a daylight landing conditions.

Reentry was not really easy, the craft getting just the Mk2 cockpit and drone core for reaction wheels.

Overshot, but hey, that's a habit now.

About 400 of fuel on board at this time, more than enough to reach the island airfield.

On short final. Controls are terrible at such a low speed, the craft use to bank pretty fast and about to stall.

Touch a bit hard and on the left main gear first, but everyone's alive.

Taxiing to the hangar.

The crew seems to have no words to describe such a trip!

Total mission cost : 4882 funds.

Conclusion : she is not a bad craft, the climb to the orbit being pretty fast and smooth but still need some adjustments about the orbital and low speed controls. Perhaps adding a couple of small elevons acting as spoilerons on the delta upper streamline could also help without adding too much weight.

Edited September 15, 2016 by XB-70A

[eddiew]

Soldiered on through a jinxed mission to Moho. Possibly my fault for putting Jinx Kerman at the helm. I blame Roddenberry Kerman for wanting to sit with Nimoy, Kelley and Doohan during the trip.

Attaching the Nono rover took two attempts, since the first launch forgot to include oxidiser in his tanks. After the second launch and docking, during the escape burn it was discovered that the fuel routing was completely haywire and all the fuel drained from the top tanks first, leading to increasing torque. It took four launches and some on-the-pad testing to figure out what was wrong... and I'm not sure I know why it did what it did, but eventually a version arrived in LKO that remains balanced during flight.

The ejection, though executed flawlessly, failed to intercept Moho as predicted, and another 260m/s were expended en-route to get the encounter. The insertion burn of 3300m/s was long, and couldn't be done above 2x timewarp without bending the ship, and... it had to be done twice. Because after the first one, I realised I'd forgotten to pick up the Strategia mission to land on Moho, and it became invalid as soon as I entered the SoI. Which meant I had to revert back to LKO and perform the whole flippin' transfer and adjustments all over again  

And then, finally parked in a 25km Moho orbit with all the right contracts accepted... where are the materials bays on this thing? Which dimwit engineer launched an 600,000 root mothership without putting materials bays on it?!

*argleblargleargleflarble foams at the mouth*

Fortunately, the Nono rover has us covered, and the precious materials science is gathered despite this massive oversight. Perhaps when it returns to kerbin, I can attach a science package with the missing experiments. Or maybe I'll be really lucky and KIS will let me do it more gracefully. Time will tell.

But still, here we are. Mission control is none the wiser, thanks to a swift coverup by the engineering team, as headed by Doohan Kerman, and as far as Flight is concerned, there were no problems at any point. With a solid 25x25km polar orbit, and with a massive 10km/s left in the tanks, the mission is green lights all around. Nono rover is now ready to be dispatched to check out an anomaly that showed up on the surface scans.

Edited September 15, 2016 by eddiew

[Puggonaut]

Finally got 1.1.3 ,SSRSS and GemFX to my personnel liking, looking forward to more of the same or better in 1.2.............eventually , coz its taken ages an lots of tweaks to get the config to my liking . not everyones taste , but i love it .

 

[Firemetal]

Yesterday I built my first mk3 cargo SSTO that has landed on another body, (The Mun) This was easy thanks to the new 1.2 wheels.

Today,  been playing with comsats.

[septemberWaves]

I designed several replicas of real-world launch systems. The Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy (without recoverability because I wanted to keep part count down), and various SLS versions (potential cargo variant of SLS Block 1, cargo variant of SLS Block 1B, SLS Block 2, and SLS Block 2 variant with the Pyrios LRBs). They all have the same payload mass to low orbit as their real-world counterparts, and I've tried to maintain the aesthetic of the real launchers (though this led to some major design inconsistencies in the SLS series - mainly the fact that the Block 1 and 1B are 3.75m diameter whilst the Block 2 variants are 5m diameter with significantly larger boosters). I also put together a near-replica of the Dragon 2 (though it only carries 3 kerbals as opposed to 7) and it's designed to be used with Kerbalism.

Here's the Dragon 2, launched on a Falcon 9:

I saved around 15% of the fuel in the launch stage, so it could theoretically be recovered.

The upper stage gets the Dragon 2 to the intended 100km apoapsis, but the spacecraft will have to circularize as the vehicle is slightly above the 22.8t rated mass of the Falcon 9.

It's not a perfect replica of the Dragon 2, but I feel like it's reasonably good. The service bay contains some monopropellant and some life support supplies.

After de-orbiting, the service module can be jettisoned for re-entry.

I slightly undershot the KSC and had to fire the engines early to avoid landing in the mountains, but luckily this vehicle has a good margin for error.

I don't have any screenshots of the other launch vehicles yet, but I probably will soon once I've created an Orion replica as well. I'm also considering making replicas of several vehicles currently used by the United Launch Alliance (such as the Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy), as well as their Vulcan rocket once details and images are released. I may look into the Atlas 5 series, but I anticipate that SRB placement will complicate things as I can't angle the exhaust.

Edited September 15, 2016 by eloquentJane

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

 

The ejection, though executed flawlessly, failed to intercept Moho as predicted, and another 260m/s were expended en-route to get the encounter.  

Ah, I see you have discovered the Curse of Moho. Even the most perfectly executed trajectory will miss, and one that doesn't right away may slowly drift far from the encounter as time progresses. 

Its almost like someone... or some thing... doesn't want you there.... *cue eerie music*

[eddiew]

Had a choice between a lander with 6km/s, or a rover with 3.

Made the wrong call  

[TopHeavy11]

Just doin' some beta testing. 1.2's frame-rate is AMAZING! It's like 60 FPS! And the wheels...oh the wheels...ohhhhhhh.

[Martian Emigrant]

Built a Light Flying wing. That worked well.

So some Kerbal friends took me along on a wild midnight drive, in a staff vehicle,  around the KSC.

http://imgur.com/a/RT25k

It was good fun then it ended somehow at the administrator's pool.

Nobody knows how that happened.

By morning there was no one there and nobody knew nothing.

 

ME

Edited September 16, 2016 by Martian Emigrant

[SpaceastronautX]

I do apollo 11 replica but I don't know how to dock a ship to other so FAIL!  But I do the replica!  

 

[RobFalcon]

With the 1.2 pre-release, I have finally built a spaceplane which could make orbit, survive reentry, and land back at the KSC.  In a couple years playing, it's the first time I've ever pulled it off.

And, the pre-release still being as new as it is, this was done completely stock.  No math.  Completely seat of the pants.    Maybe I shouldn't be as happy about it as I am, but man am I happy about this!

[kotomikun]

Playing around with 1.2... Jeb made an, uh, unconventional spaceplane:

Yeah, he neglected to include, y'know, wings, relying instead on RCS engines and good old fashioned overpowered reaction wheels. Really wasn't expecting that to reach orbit, especially given how long it took me to build a working spaceplane, as opposed to a space jet-car or whatever the heck this is.

With the gliding capabilities of a clogged pipe and most of the landing gear already destroyed by aerodynamic stresses, landing it was out of the question. So, after deliberately wobbling through reentry to stave off disintegration, he decided to "fly" semi-horizontally and then open hatch, insert self while skimming over the ocean at 750 m/s.

For whatever reason, he survived, with a little help from his jetpack; probably broke some diving velocity records, and/or bones.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

With the success of the third design for a commercial hypersonic craft, the shadow company that's been sprouting them finally approached the media and revealed themselves. The firm calls itself Fort NOX. The spokesman only said this......._{"Oxidizer? ...Forget about it..."} then he opened a big ol' pack of snacks. (In reality, I finally designed a flag for the NOX: No Oxidizer family of spaceplanes and tested it out via the NEBULA mod.)

 

Later that day, Valentina took up their flag and finally went to orbit to retrieve Jebediah. Then being a pair of badS, they decided to leave the station with exactly enough fuel to deorbit. They went and got rekt at sunrise wherever on Kerbin that is. Fort NOX is not too happy with this stunt of theirs, but any landing a kerbal can walk away from...

 

Meanwhile at Muna Industria, Bill et al finally received a shipment of Enriched Uranium and assembled a Monoprop hover-trolly with a claw on the front. to lug that 15t payload around. Between the trolly and Graveheart the primary fuel hauler, Eiyuu Kerman (pilot) and Eligy Kerman (engineer) took on the task of preparing the next generation of OmniProbe for launch. Where to? Everyone's favorite red planet. The probe itself needed to and did meet up with a payload satellite waiting in orbit for it-- the portion of the earlier Xenon Gas shipment that wasn't meant to arrive at the base. With 13km/s dV and 1.5+ TWR in Mun orbit, that probe has the power to go places. After releasing the probe body the LV has quite enough dV to return to base and be recycled for MaterialKits.

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by JadeOfMaar

[eddiew]

...there is a rover destroying kraken living in the mohole. Whenever a rover tries to stop within 500m of him, he reaches out his invisible arm and crushes it within a few seconds

Given that the waypoint turns out to be 3km overhead, I don't think I can fulfil this mission on the ground, and may have to wind back my save and attempt to descend through the waypoint... not optimistic about making a safe landing afterwars though :/

*edit* Upon reflection, it's possible that SVT changes the terrain around the Mohole to the point where this waypoint is less reachable than it should be. I shall investigate further, and if that turns out to be the case, I'll try to move the waypoint to a more reasonable spot  

Edited September 16, 2016 by eddiew

[Sharpy]

7 hours ago, Martian Emigrant said:

Do they get ejected into the roof when they disembark, or do they land ON the roof?

[TopHeavy11]

4 hours ago, kotomikun said:

Playing around with 1.2... Jeb made an, uh, unconventional spaceplane:

Yeah, he neglected to include, y'know, wings, relying instead on RCS engines and good old fashioned overpowered reaction wheels. Really wasn't expecting that to reach orbit, especially given how long it took me to build a working spaceplane, as opposed to a space jet-car or whatever the heck this is.

With the gliding capabilities of a clogged pipe and most of the landing gear already destroyed by aerodynamic stresses, landing it was out of the question. So, after deliberately wobbling through reentry to stave off disintegration, he decided to "fly" semi-horizontally and then open hatch, insert self while skimming over the ocean at 750 m/s.

For whatever reason, he survived, with a little help from his jetpack; probably broke some diving velocity records, and/or bones.

 

Yeah, that spaceplane looks more like a space pencil. As for getting out and jetpacking to saftey, I do that too if my parachute fails. Like'd!

[Martian Emigrant]

6 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Do they get ejected into the roof when they disembark, or do they land ON the roof?

They are re-spawned higher up.

The forward ones reappear on the corner of the "Windshield" and promptly slip down inside the cockpit from which they can walk out.

The rear ones reappear on the roof above their seat.

I once had a science lab landed on Duna with a docking port on the bottom side for my rover to dock to. Because of the terrain the station was leaning over the port a bit. So when the rover was docked and the kerbal left their seat they would reappear magically on the roof of the station (IDK maybe 40 m). The game seems to use vertical to respawn the Kerbals over the obstacle. Not ship Vertical.

If I were to roll the land rover and leave the seat the Kerbal would be on "Top" of the rover's floor".....

....I'm going to play with that now....

 

ME

 

EDIT:

I did some experiments and the Kerbal respawn forward of the command chair. If there is an obstacle the game move him "Up".

Edited September 16, 2016 by Martian Emigrant

[n.b.z.]

Tried the 1.2 pre-release. Absolutely smashing release in my opinion. Fantastic performance improvement.

Trying to figure out to which degree the increased performance could help me expand my insanity, I built me a cute little cargo space plane.



Engines not visible in the picture are 20 more Rapiers and 10 more Vectors, mounted inside Mk3 bays as VTOL engines. Yeah, that's a total of 52 Rapiers.

I haven't even looked at the part count of this thing. It does impact performance substantially, but I'm sure that this monster would have burned down my computer in any previous release.

From a space plane design standpoint, it's probably rubbish, but it's neither completed nor tested. It attains orbit easily, but probably not with a cargo weight that's reasonable given the massive volume of the cargo hold - which is made from 2 of the longest Mk3 bays.

[CatastrophicFailure]

8 hours ago, eddiew said:

...there is a rover destroying kraken living in the mohole. Whenever a rover tries to stop within 500m of him, he reaches out his invisible arm and crushes it within a few seconds

Given that the waypoint turns out to be 3km overhead, I don't think I can fulfil this mission on the ground, and may have to wind back my save and attempt to descend through the waypoint... not optimistic about making a safe landing afterwars though :/

*edit* Upon reflection, it's possible that SVT changes the terrain around the Mohole to the point where this waypoint is less reachable than it should be. I shall investigate further, and if that turns out to be the case, I'll try to move the waypoint to a more reasonable spot  

Cursed, I tell you! Cuuuursed! Cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*hackhackcoughgarglegag*rsed!

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Cursed, I tell you! Cuuuursed! Cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*hackhackcoughgarglegag*rsed!

It is, it really is 

But at least I've found the waypoint altitude in my save file and if I bring it level with the top of the mohole, it'll be within range of a return trip by jetpack. I discovered that if I park Nono a bit further away, he doesn't explode, so I can salvage something out of this mission (by removing at least one of the curses)   First I will check whether it's SVT that has changed the terrain height however, and if so I'll re-run the landing+roving on stock terrain.

*edit* Ok, investigated. SVT not only makes the polar terrain MUCH more dangerous and... puckered... but it drops the surface down by about 2.5km. Had no problems getting the waypoint with stock terrain. However, since I've gotten this farm, imma move the waypoint rather than lose the terrain   Even though that will mean that my plan to check out other biomes will be hard AF given the brutal, brutal canyons.

Edited September 16, 2016 by eddiew

[Technical Ben]

 

20 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I designed several replicas of real-world launch systems. The Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy (without recoverability because I wanted to keep part count down), and various SLS versions (potential cargo variant of SLS Block 1, cargo variant of SLS Block 1B, SLS Block 2, and SLS Block 2 variant with the Pyrios LRBs). They all have the same payload mass to low orbit as their real-world counterparts, and I've tried to maintain the aesthetic of the real launchers (though this led to some major design inconsistencies in the SLS series - mainly the fact that the Block 1 and 1B are 3.75m diameter whilst the Block 2 variants are 5m diameter with significantly larger boosters). I also put together a near-replica of the Dragon 2 (though it only carries 3 kerbals as opposed to 7) and it's designed to be used with Kerbalism.

[snip]

I saved around 15% of the fuel in the launch stage, so it could theoretically be recovered.

[snip]

The upper stage gets the Dragon 2 to the intended 100km apoapsis, but the spacecraft will have to circularize as the vehicle is slightly above the 22.8t rated mass of the Falcon 9.

It's not a perfect replica of the Dragon 2, but I feel like it's reasonably good. The service bay contains some monopropellant and some life support supplies.

[snip]

After de-orbiting, the service module can be jettisoned for re-entry.

[snip] I slightly undershot the KSC and had to fire the engines early to avoid landing in the mountains, but luckily this vehicle has a good margin for error.

[snip]

I don't have any screenshots of the other launch vehicles yet, but I probably will soon once I've created an Orion replica as well. I'm also considering making replicas of several vehicles currently used by the United Launch Alliance (such as the Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy), as well as their Vulcan rocket once details and images are released. I may look into the Atlas 5 series, but I anticipate that SRB placement will complicate things as I can't angle the exhaust.

Very nice! I'm currently porting my attempt at a Falcon 9 to 1.2, and seeing if I can emulate their design. You did a good one there. Have you found any success getting the second stage to flip over for landing? That and keeping any of them from overheating, except for the crew capsule, is really hard!

Edited September 16, 2016 by Technical Ben