What did you do in KSP1 today?

[LordFerret]

On 9/15/2016 at 5:01 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

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*

LOL!... true!

On 9/16/2016 at 4:58 PM, kraden said:

@JadeOfMaar I also just sent a probe to Moho. My first planetary transfer (just because it's window was up next) and I totally forgot that @CatastrophicFailure swears it's cursed.... until I noticed that because of the difference in orbital planes I couldn't have picked a worse time to launch .  Good thing that probe has tons of extra delta V, I'm gonna need it.

Edit: while sending a satellite to mun for a contract, I got a message saying that my Moho probe's reaction will failed to 50% (Kerbalism). Thought to myself, "50% isn't too bad for a probe that size, I can compensate with a little RCS", then just a little while later I got a new one saying it failed to a further 25%. Turns out I'll be relying heavily on RCS for this probe. I haven't even made it to Moho yet and I can already tell it's cursed!

I'm sure I'd be frowned upon for overbuilding, but all of my trips thus far to Moho have included plane changes (matching) before a leisurely rendezvous burn... LV-N's.

Other than that, I'll agree Moho is cursed. Some tell me it's just the game's physics involved; Some the Kracken. Same difference if you ask me. I have lost 2 SCANsat probes in the past in high orbits around Moho. Left them there, happily orbiting, scanning, only to check back later and they're gone ... G.O.N.E. Nary a trace. Spooky. Frustrating. Low orbits aren't a problem.

 

In other news -
Playing a science game in Pre-v1.2 (of course), I managed to drop a probe on Mun and do science. It wasn't really that big of a problem. I just put 2 radio relay satellites into orbit first. Worked like a charm. Next will be manned missions.

[Guest]

Pre-1.2. Done enough basic Science to have what it takes to build a communications network, so going to start on that. 

Also, (re)learned that there are no easy missions in KSP. I had my one tourist demanding orbit around Minmus or his money back, plus a couple of Minmus-related contracts, plus a rescue mission, so I figured that I'll just do those plus a science mission there to get what I need for the comsats. Slapped something together based on the Deathtrap 1, including an RCS-powered lander, put Valentina in charge and the stupid/courageous tourist in the hold, and took off, figuring that I'll wing it as I go. Estimated that I have enough dV to burn straight for Minmus without fancy gravitational manoeuvring.

Problem one: I didn't actually have enough dV for a straight burn to Minmus and back. So, rather to my regret, I reloaded from the point I was in LKO and had picked up my rescuee, and did it over, this time with proper grav assists from the Mun, saving about 200 m/s in the process. I also parked in fairly high Minmus orbit, since it turned out my lander actually had plenty of dV to burn. 

Problem two: I didn't have a pilot onboard Deathtrap 2 when Val went to do her thing on the surface. That, of course, meant a highly annoying docking manoeuvre since I couldn't keep the ships oriented towards one another.

Anyway, I did finish the mission, but it was much more finicky than I had expected. Better preparation would've avoided most of that -- plan my transfers better, have a second pilot onboard, that sort of thing.

But everybody's back on Kerbin happily, and I have all the nodes I need for a basic comms network. Will do that, then take over the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system with probes EVERYWHERE!

[katateochi]

This seemed like an important thing to test in 1.2; can you land on the dishes of the ground relay stations?
(spoiler tags incase folk don't want to see 1.2 stuff)

Spoiler

Yes, yes you can. The only problem with it is they move and tip to quite steep angles so staying on them is another matter, had to keep running the engines to stop myself from falling off.

But take off is fun, and yes you can fly under them;

 

So clearly there is only one thing to do; build a base on a satellite dish (probably need KAS to anchor it though). 

 

[kraden]

3 hours ago, LordFerret said:

I'm sure I'd be frowned upon for overbuilding, but all of my trips thus far to Moho have included plane changes (matching) before a leisurely rendezvous burn... LV-N's.

Well my plan was for a plane change but Kerbal Alarm Clock lied (or more likely I don't understand transfer windows well enough) about the window and if I waited until my descending node to do a correction burn then I would be too far away for an encounter. I saved loads of fuel by shifting my path such that my descending node became my encounter. It's a ScanSat probe anyway so I'll be just that much closer to the polar orbit it needs. 

[Corona688]

Built a VTOL.

It doesn't quite do what I was hoping, the fins generate zero lift due to their placement and the fifth engine in behind messes up its balance, but it flies.

[Workable Goblin]

9 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Started a new career in the 1.2 public beta. Figured out a better way to make low-tech, cheap lifters. I'm sure others here have as well because it's pretty obvious really: just strap together and stage SRBs. I could do basic Mun and Minmus missions easily with a three-stage lifter, consisting of four Thumpers (one central, three radial) in the first stage, a single Thumper as the second, and a Hammer as the final stage before orbital insertion; with this, the orbital inseration is more about adjustment than boost. These are cheaper than liquid-fuel equivalents, they're not as tall, and they're way less noodly and easier to fly. Once I got adjustable tail fins and radial decouplers, I turned that into an asparagus-staged medium lifter: the base is a seven-Thumper bundle; in the first stage, four of them fire, then are discarded, then two, which are discarded, then the last, central one. The second and third stage Thumper and Hammer were dropped. Works great, is very easy to fly, and not noodly at all. Basically after the gravity turn (5 degrees around 100 m/s), you just hold prograde and watch it go.

I also made a series of low-tech space tourism rockets, dubbed the Deathtrap series. The Deathtrap 1 was born of necessity: low on funds but with a five-tourist LKO contract, I had to do something. So I stuck a command module on top of a hitchhiker storage container and an Okto on top of that, and the whole thing on the heavier SRB lifter described above, with a small LF stage for orbital manoeuvring. No heat shields, no nothing. It worked! It did tumble out of control late in re-entry as the Okto lost contact with KSC and for a while there it looked like it was going to burn up, but it survived, just, as did all my satisfiied customers.

The Deathtrap 2 introduced a second hitchhiker storage container and, finally, a heat shield, and that one is actually quite manageable, much better aerodynamics on re-entry as well as proper heat resistance. Only annoyance was that Mission Control somehow failed to note that the VIP wanted to orbit Minmus, not just fly by Minmus, and now I'm going to have to do that again.

I, too, am noodling around in career with pre-1.2 while planning a proper career for the final version (with mods), and this is...kind of the exact opposite of my experience? I designed a launch vehicle which was basically identical to the second vehicle you describe, except with a liquid upper stage replacing the Hammer and Thumper, and it was awful. It basically did whatever it wanted while taking off until you managed to get through the first and second stages (that is, the four Thumpers and the two Thumpers), by which point it had usually lofted you high enough that you had time to line up for the final solid burn and final orbital injection on the liquid stage. Not to mention it was far too heavy to launch off of a T1 launch pad, so you had to upgrade that before you could do anything with it.

Then I designed another all-liquid vehicle which works a lot better. It's just a few TL-400s stacked on top of each other (I don't have the TL-800 yet, haven't got the science for it; rushed probes...) with a Swivel as a boost engine and a second stage that's a TL-200 and TL-100 plus an LV-909. It'll pretty reliably lift a capsule or probe to LKO, and I'm pretty sure it could do a Munar or Minmus flyby mission with a light probe (certainly it could with a few boosters). It's not noodly or wriggly at all.

[purpleivan]

I launched vehicle from Kerbin, that went to Mun, then back to the surface of Kerbin, then back to Mun, then finally back home again for the crew of 3 brave kerbals.

This was for the The Incredible Double Mun Double Kerbin Landing Challenge

 

 

 

[Leopard]

Disaster, Got my first rover to Mun, landed roughly in the right place. Follow up mission to take a newly recruited Kerbal, everyone is is on a mission, land nearby do the science then back to the orbit station - drop off a new larger lander in the process.

Easy...

Landing zone needs an inclination change to reach it, managed but then obviously have to wait for the rotations to align, which they finally did. in the dark.

Ho hum, have the rover so I know the altitude of the landing zone, figured it was worth a shot.

Slight incident involving some 200 m/s and the side of a crater that was a bit higher than expected later and we are looking at a flag as a memorial, though sadly it will have to be deleted shortly after to conserve memory.

 

Will try again later in the week.

 

Also Duna 2 is now in orbit of Duna, out of fuel, but processing science, need to construct a recovery craft, plan is that Duna 3 will be a revised lander with its fuel, then Duna 4 will be a fuel module for Duna 2, may be a bit wobbly but hoping manageably so, if not will abort the return and send something else out - designed to use the fuel thats already there...

 

Progress of a sort...

New mission rule, only land during daylight..

[Mjp1050]

I MADE A SPACE SHUTTLE-THING!!! I feel so accomplished right now!

I am genuinely surprised it made orbit. I was just mucking about in the SPH and thought I would give it a trial run; I didn't expect it to go very far.

The shuttle even managed to complete four rescue contracts before de-orbiting, and it still had 2/3 of a tank left! It worked a lot better than I ever thought it would.

...mostly.

[eddiew]

With the Odyssey parked in LKO, holding over 100 science reports and 10 crew, the engineering team had to scramble to work out how to get them down. Apparently they have indeed been doing nothing for 6 months while the Moho expedition was ongoing.

On the grounds of not wanting to waste a good design, they pulled the back end off a tried-and-tested Investigator class, swapped the cargo ramp for some additional fuel, added a passenger cabin and attached an internal docking port in the bay. Result, a highly capable, long range vessel with large crew capacity, space in the trunk for a good sized 2.5m lander, and reliable aerodynamics. With a good pedigree already, the maiden voyage of the Investigator MPV Edition goes swimmingly.

The Moho expedition and Nono rover are collected from LKO, and 5,000 units of LF are donated to the Odyssey. While the big mothership still has room for another 16,000, this trip brings to light just how good the MKIV spaceplane hulls could be as fuel tankers, and excited engineers scurry around the hangar with reams of paper and computer printouts. 

As the crew stops off at Starcrossed, mission control requests that only the surface data be transferred for processing, since the station is already backlogged quite severely. Ollie Kerman is rotated off duty and Llew Kerman stays behind. Returning to ground with 665 points of orbital science, all 3-star members of the Moho expedition are promoted a rank, while rescuee/new recruit, engineer Lily Kerman, comes complete with three stars of her own. World Firsts pay handsomely for returning from Moho, and combined with the bonus for rescuing Lily, the whole mission ends up roundly in the black, making a clear million roots of profit.

Over the next few months, Starcrossed Station is expected to kick out several thousand points of science. The only question is... what will they be used for?

*edit* Also, retired Thomas the Tanker. He's done well, and been a silent partner behind several missions, but he carries less than half as much fuel as the Odyssey does, which makes him pretty high maintenance as a refueller.

The engineering team have already been asked to produce a version 2 based on the MKIV spaceplane parts, which should offer a lot more fuel in LKO. Their unofficial target is 20,000 units, but nobody's sure whether that's really practical just yet.

Edited September 18, 2016 by eddiew

[Corona688]

Quickly made a much better (slightly) aerodynamic VTOL, the Q-Wing.

The engines (four Junos) are angled 22.5 degrees back from vertical so the plane can tilt upwards to gain aerodynamic lift without actually pointing its engines backwards.  It can easily make it to the Insular Airport, land, turn around, and land at KSC again in one flight, at speeds of up to 100m/s inbetween the two.

As proper for a VTOL, landing is a nerve-wracking adventure every time, more or less a switch from aerodynamic flight to intentional stall to suicide-burn.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Corona688

[JadeOfMaar]

I got Alien Space Program working. But Stock Visual Enhancements doesn't agree with it. That deflates my new and wonderfully evil side project a bit.

[Ultimate Steve]

I landed on Eve with a crew of five. My first steps on Eve!

More on this coming soon in my mission report.

[eddiew]

Well this didn't take long.

Need to give the engineering team a shake up, they're getting lazy and relying on the same old design patterns. Maybe I should point out they failed to lift the full 20,000 LF that was hoped for... I mean yes, it's perfectly balanced when dry despite the lack of weight at the front, but you know, 2k short and all lads. Going to be hard to protect your budget with that kind of shortfall.

46 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I landed on Eve with a crew of five. My first steps on Eve!

But can you get off it again?

Edited September 18, 2016 by eddiew

[Francois424]

Today I decided to fly a float plane.  Searching for inspiration on YouTube I found on @Matt Lowne's channel a good candidate.   I started taking notes and noticed he's offering it for grabs.  I went ahead and downloaded it and adjusted it to suit my needs.  The fact it was already well built meant that I could concentrate on a few things like swapping it's submarine (was made for Laythe) for a small Nuclear reactor, and switching the jet engines for electric propellers.   I wasn't sure it would fly properly so I set a course for the north pole shortly after taking off.

Of an older era of KSP, the "SeaGull" floatplane shows some tail jittering at low altitudes and leans on the right side when pulling the stick... But performs admirably regardless.

The quad-electric motor design, flying northwards into the ever-rising dawn. Electricity is provided by a nuclear rector stashed into the ventral bay, just at the wing's level.

 

Having flow for a little while, we encountered the first test... A Mountain range.  We eagerly headed for it and try to maneuver over it.

Soaring to 4'533m, the 'SeaGull' shows no problem getting high enough to tackle the mountain range.

A nice view of the mountain range as the crew flies over it.  So far the terrain has proven to be no obstacle, and the 150m/s speed is far preferable to a wheeled-rover. 

 

Continuing onwards to the North-pole and having cleared the mountain, we now end-up in a nice Bay. 

 Many of the crew wouldn't mind owning real-estate on the bay's coast.

What a nice mix of mountains, water, coastlines, and clouds.  Flying on Laythe in the future will most likely not produce as nice vistas...

 

Having flown for the better part of a few hours, the crew decides to set down and land using the wheels this time.  Throttle cut to 1/3rd, airbrakes on, now gliding to a relatively flat landing site.

Throttle cut to 1/3rd, airbrakes on, now gliding slowly to a relatively flat landing site.  The "SeaGull" is holding very firmly on course, even at only 55 m/s.

The 'SeaGull' has landed.  The antenna/solar panels can now be extended and the engines, shutdown. If we wanted, we could open the dorsal bay, just by the scientists cupola to do science. But the crew needs rest.

 

I loved using this floatplane, still needs a few tweak to make it how I really want her to be (nosecones to cover the back engines, redoing the science package, getting rid of a few batteries, maybe removing the breakable solar panels in lieu of flat static ones on the wings, an unbreakable KSP1.2 antenna might be a good idea).  But the basic fuselage and design is soooo good that I might just have found the kind of plane I wanted to use on Laythe.  My own design, the Condor, is smaller and even more stable but cannot do floatplane capabilities, nor does it feature a science cargo bay or a bay for the Nuclear reactor.

I might resume the flight to the North Pole later, but I've tested what I needed to test.

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

14 minutes ago, eddiew said:

But can you get off it again?

Short answer: I don't know.

Long answer: In every test before the actual landing, the lander landed above 1500 meters. The lander is currently at an altitude of 968 meters. I also used a bit more fuel than I wanted to. I de-orbited from a 1000 by 500 KM orbit rather than the 100KM test orbit. And the landing burn went a bit long. However, in the tests, the lander could make it from 1500 meters to a 250-500 KM orbit with fuel to spare. I can take my mothership and fly it to it if it runs out of fuel. All I have to do is get the lander to a 91KM orbit. This will be interesting  

 

[max_creative]

4 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Short answer: I don't know.

Long answer: In every test before the actual landing, the lander landed above 1500 meters. The lander is currently at an altitude of 968 meters. I also used a bit more fuel than I wanted to. I de-orbited from a 1000 by 500 KM orbit rather than the 100KM test orbit. And the landing burn went a bit long. However, in the tests, the lander could make it from 1500 meters to a 250-500 KM orbit with fuel to spare. I can take my mothership and fly it to it if it runs out of fuel. All I have to do is get the lander to a 91KM orbit. This will be interesting  

 

Something tells me you will... Just with a little help...

[JadeOfMaar]

If @Ultimate Steve cannot get off of Eve, then he is not an Ultimate.

Oh, hi Dres. I have a special plan just for you. And no, I'm not aiming for the canyon.

Edited September 18, 2016 by JadeOfMaar

[322997am]

I landed a science and ground relay to minmus in my mid end career save. So I had to use the deployeable tiny relay because I didn't have any others unlocked. When commnet gets fixed it will relay signals to nearby rovers that will be running around collecting info and science.

Edited September 18, 2016 by 322997am

[Xyphos]

 

[-ELF-]

My tourists got a really nice view of KSP just before the circularization burn.

Meanwhile, Jeb piloted this plane with 4 probes 300kg each on underwing mounts. There was a contract to take temperature readings on ground level around the area (4 sites).

Probes were deployed on parachutes precisely where needed, only the Alpha site probe landed 40 meters away from needed area, so jeb landed the plane and pushed 300 kg around to get it into the zone. Contract complete.

[Guest]

Nothing.  Still waiting for the console port to get fixed. 

BTW do y'all not have "interior overlay" lights on the PC version?

Currently browsing for PC screenshot with overlay=ON.

[XB-70A]

I finally interrupted Demeter inaugural flight tonight to test her re-entry attitude :

Starting with a catastrophic de-orbiting from the polar position as the KSP was eastern at this time.

Everything went fine at this time, then about ten seconds later the craft became instable and start to bank on starboard. I tried to recover her as softly as possible but she keep on banking hard and adopt an action of yo-yo.

This just ruined any hope of successfully reach the KSC or island runways, forcing to take the decision of a sea-landing.

Add to this a terrible gliding performance. This little winged block actually falls faster than none of my precedent craft!

SPLASH! Hit the surface around 30 m/s, but with most of the speed being vertical.

Well, that is not what I would call a success, but it is not a total failure too.

I saw during the uncontrolled fall that aerodynamic forces where produced by the space lab module in the cargo bay (sigh). This and a too important AoA during the first seconds had probably ruined the re-entry. I will re-work this small cosmic beattle and her launcher to share them.

Edited September 19, 2016 by XB-70A

[-ELF-]

21 minutes ago, DOCTOR DEMENTAL said:

BTW do y'all not have "interior overlay" lights on the PC version?

We have option to turn lights in cabin on or off, they go bright yellow when you do so. I never used that actually... Why?

[CatastrophicFailure]

 Bit late to the party here, and sadly no pictures, but here's my tale of Moho woe.

A long time ago... in a version far, far away...

Like .23 or before. I've still got my installs of the newer ones. Anyways, we didn't have no fancy contracts back then. No, we did it purely for the science! And the lulz! Mostly the science. But also lulz. Where was I? Oh, yes...

I had built a thing of Kerbal beauty... a thousand tonne space train, to bring an entire Station Science setup all the way to Moho and it's glorious, glorious science! Landers, rovers, all lofted over dozens of launches! I manually calculated a handful of apo-raising burns, the meager acceleration of the two oversized nukes wouldn't allow a single ejection burn. At first, it was going well... the ship left Kerbin orbit on course for the sunbaked little world, and all seemed normal...

Then, the walls started bleeding. 

The crew gave Jeb a very stern talking to about stashing his jelly sandwiches behind the insulation panels.

But then, they noticed... they were hopelessly off course. A huge correction burn was required to put the ship back on an intercept, consuming precious fuel. When they arrived at Moho space, it was obvious there wasn't nearly enough left to brake into orbit.

Now, the ship was laid out as a string of modules, all joined by Senior docking ports. All the fuel was carried at the rear, spent tanks to be undocked and tossed as needed. The crew came to the difficult decision that in order to save the mission, they would have to undertake a risky reconfiguration of the ship and ditch the heavy cyclotron modules, then redock to the fuel, all while hurtling towards the dark planet. It would be a difficult task, such maneuvers had never even been considered with the RCS design, but it was worth a shot. 

They never got the chance to find out. The docking ports... every... single... one...

were bugged!

DUNH DUNH DUNH! 

The ship was helpless. Nothing could be undocked, the crew clicked buttons in vain. This also meant, they could not separate the return module, and with so much fuel already spent, were now cursed to wander through the empty void of space, never to see their home again.

As they passed helplessly by the infernal planet, they could swear they heard someone... or something... laughing. 

 

It is said that even to this day, on a quiet night in orbit, if you tune the the radio just right, you can still hear them... futilely clicking away, seeking separation that never comes.

 

Abandon all hope, ye who venture there...