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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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Went to work late because of KSP. Yolo.

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Some of the crew seem to be wearing the wrong colours... there's only two pilots here and there should be at least three engineers.... One to fix for later. Still, nice to meet an old friend while out hopping.

Edited by eddiew
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I designed a Laythe lander (planning my first landing there soon). Got a nice crew compartment, science module, some RSC, enough dV to get back, parachutes, solar, the lot... It was a nice wide lander, which would not tip over if it lands on a hill. I did some test-flights on Kerbin, since the conditions are hopefully comparable. Even deliberately put some empty tanks under the legs before take-off, to simulate take-off at an angle... And then I realized that the damn thing needs heat shields because Laythe has an atmosphere, and I was totally planning to use the atmosphere to slow down! Oops.

The design was totally unsuitable to mount some heat shields below it. It was pretty much guaranteed to flip upon re-entry, and it was far too wide... so... back to square one and back to the drawing board.

But hey, at least I had fun trying to fly that lander off the launchpad. 

  1. Decouple from mothership
  2. Lowering orbit to LLO (Low Laythe Orbit)
  3. Put orbit within atmosphere
  4. Heat shields!!
  5. Parachute descent
  6. Land on Laythe
  7. EVA Jeb and his friends (ladders)
  8. Launch from Laythe
  9. Reaching orbit
  10. Circularization
  11. Docking with mothership

Start designing at step 11, and design every step up from there separate, while keeping the other steps in mind. And don't skip step 4 this time.

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in a continuing effort to salvage my currently doomed Duna mission (I sent off the vessel but it will likely have insufficient dV to return thanks to a Mun encounter) I sent up my second Fuel tanker unit to the Fuel Barge Intrepid. after a few 'simulated' trajectory changes the existing propulsion arrangement was deem to radical as it tended to detached itself from the payload section about 10% throttle. A third fuel and engineering section was sent up to replaced the propulsion module with a more traditional triple pusher configuration and the triple puller arrangement was removed and is presently de-orbiting.

Upside is that hopefully there will be a decent launch window for this mission in the next few days and there should be sufficient dV in the barge to arrive ahead of the manned science vessel, also I have perfected my small 'Minow-2b ORV' (Orbital Return Vehicle) two of which went up with the first and third fuel delivery missions. These now form a pair of lifeboat stations for future in case of Kerbals stranded in Kerbin orbit.

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I have to share.

http://imgur.com/a/LfvRS

I am playing with my SSTOs to the Mun and I discovered.....Finally.

That you can fair (Shroud) the Nuclear engine.

I know, I know, not so hidden for some of you but it never occurred to me that the engine had a shroud. I always used it on some SSTO never part of a rocket and you can't surface mount anything to it. I accidentally put a part behind it and saw the menu for enabling them (I can't imagine why you would want only half the shroud....).

This is my latest version with the shrouded atomic engines:

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And kicking them off above 60km before my next manoeuvre:

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I have two superimposed engines so the inside shrouds have to wiggle out (A bit violent but they do so well).

There used to be a long drag line behind the engine. Now there are 2 short ones (Decoupler and cone).

BONUS: The fairing cone gives LIFT when mounted backward.

Jkua2PW.png

Jeb looks amazed by it too.

ME

EDIT:

It just occurred tom me that by turning the engines 90° that I might avoid the separation violence as the seam would be Vertical.

Edited by Martian Emigrant
typos
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I tried to realize a new SSTO, this time clearly to pay tribute to the famous mach 3.2 capable Lockheed's wonder, named XC-71 Shadow :

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Just a crew of two and 5 tons of load onboard for this first flight.

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The Shadow climb like a crazy one.

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Even with four aerospikes the craft is still a bit underpowered for finalising the climb. She will stay at just 70 x 70 km.

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These lines... <3

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The traditional EVA look-around.

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With such a wingspan the aerobracking is impressive and much efficient.woPxpPe.png

Mmmmh, Habu !

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Flight 101 on short final runway 09. Extremely stable.

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The brakes were not even required during most of the landing.

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Well, I still have a lot to do to make her a full capable SSTO, but this flight was far from being disappointing.

To be continued for sure!

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My plan is to go interplanetary earlier than usual in this game, so after 2 visits to Minmus and one to the Mun I've sent some ScanSat/RemoteTech probes to Duna and Ike, 2 probes destined for Ike are still attached to the transfer stage waiting to get a contract to explore Ike, but Duna now has 2 satellites, once they've finished scanning I'll lift them to a higher orbit to give better surface comms coverage

 

Who needs farings?

 

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Decided to follow up on yesterday's success with what I think is the first Boeing B-17 bomber to be made in KSP with stock propellor engines. She -barely- flies, climbrate is much less than 1 m/s (well, she weighs over 100 tons), and framerate is absurdly low (she has over 1000 parts, and makes a lot of smoke). But... well, just look:

1ztGdTz.jpg

b9K1N1D.jpg

FoHaGOR.jpg

And yes she does have working bomb-bay doors, but I need more powerful engines to be able to carry a bomb payload!

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18 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Decided to follow up on yesterday's success with what I think is the first Boeing B-17 bomber to be made in KSP with stock propellor engines. She -barely- flies, climbrate is much less than 1 m/s (well, she weighs over 100 tons), and framerate is absurdly low (she has over 1000 parts, and makes a lot of smoke). But... well, just look:

1ztGdTz.jpg

b9K1N1D.jpg

FoHaGOR.jpg

And yes she does have working bomb-bay doors, but I need more powerful engines to be able to carry a bomb payload!

I might be able to tune those engines!

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mEbj65F.jpg

Having gathered a slew of data from three different biomes, Yumi is down to just 760m/s in the tank and mission control calls it quits. 

Tora Kerman, piloting for the ascent, decides to try a little number she's heard tales of from the Moho expedition - probably egged on by the pilot from the Moho expedition in the chair next to her. She aces it, and Yumi ends up within 2km of the Odyssey at its apoapsis. Any closer and she'd have poked it right in the eye.

The return window to Kerbin is some time away, but that will give the onboard lab a chance to process all the rocks from Ike's surface.

Despite the perfectly successful mission, it seems a shame that Yumi didn't get biomes covered. Noticing that the Odyssey has unused space for oxidiser aboard, it is decided that future short-distance missions like this one should probably top those up to allow the lander to have multiple runs.

(Ed: really annoying issue has surfaced whereby the rear docking port is mysteriously rotated by ~25 degrees. Telling MJ to 'force rotation' thus results in a really ugly docking with the lander out of kilter with the mothership. I hoped that plugging the science lab into that port would solve it, what with the lab's port now being the one exposed to the lander... but now THAT port is apparently twisted too! It's like the whole ship is spring loaded and trying to unwind :(  I am however getting quite fond of launching to rendezvous. It takes a couple of attempts to work out the timing, but it's still quicker than faffing around matching planes and planning transfers.)

Edited by eddiew
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I began a redesign of my launch vehicles. Launch stages are keeping my standard naming scheme (Cinnabar (1.25m), Tano (2.5m), Jool (3.75m), Sarnus (5m)) but I'm replacing all upper stages with new variants that can be interchanged for different payloads. This should allow me to cover a far greater payload range with the redesigns, and achieve much better efficiency whilst maintaining a nice aesthetic.

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2 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Decided to follow up on yesterday's success with what I think is the first Boeing B-17 bomber to be made in KSP with stock propellor engines. She -barely- flies, climbrate is much less than 1 m/s (well, she weighs over 100 tons), and framerate is absurdly low (she has over 1000 parts, and makes a lot of smoke). But... well, just look:

1ztGdTz.jpg

b9K1N1D.jpg

FoHaGOR.jpg

And yes she does have working bomb-bay doors, but I need more powerful engines to be able to carry a bomb payload!

You should put this up on the "do something nobody has done before" thread in the challenges section.

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Mostly coding, the third ground-up rewrite of what started as a ridiculously simple mod & has grown out of all proportion, as these things do...

However, did another trial run for Pine's Kerbal Charter Challenge with an attempt at a rather more graceful older looking aircraft ( even if it's a bit long for something from the early 50s ). Anyone with an interest in aircraft should give the challenge a shot, there's a considerable number of different things to attempt & no time limit.

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Unfortunately still not economical enough :S looks good though.

Edited by Van Disaster
Edit box you are terrible, stop randomly turning things into links.
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As I've not yet got any docking ports my first Duna landing is planned to be a single stage lander/return vehicle with an extra drop tank and possibly stage for the transfer out.  Tested it with a trip to rescue 2 kerbonouts stuck in orbit and then go on to land on Minmus...but that netted me an extra 700 science meaning the design is now obsolete.  D'Oh.

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Edited by RizzoTheRat
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Yesterday, I started assembly of a new orbiting Fuel Hub around Kerbin (which will slowly expand), and I'm slowly assembling an orbiting Mun Station. I'll say this much, though: Clamp-o-Tron Sr's need to have a stronger pull. I expect bigger docking ports (that are magnetic) to have a stronger pull. I tried probably between 5 to 8 times to get the docks to clamp, and every time they'd weakly bump away from each other. I wasted a lot of Monoprop to do this.

 

Screenshots will soon follow.

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Made a single digit change to the cost of the Alcubierre Warp Drive on my tech tree...

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...imma be chasing that bad boy for a while.

(Even with KR&D I'm sitting on 6k science and 2 labs full of data, so summing to ~13,500 science when it's all processed, and probably double that when un-data-ised experiments come out of storage. And I haven't been to any of the OPM planets with a crew yet. It is crazy how easy science points are to get, but that might be my fault for adding mods with additional experiments. Either way, I wanted a long term target that will make me choose between dumping another 2000 points for 5% efficiency on an engine, or saving up for the big daddy at the end of it all.)

Also... this is really hurting my OCD:

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Need to find a way to edit the save file and make all of those ports line up. Telling MJ to 'force roll' is all kinds of unsightly :( 

Edited by eddiew
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@eddiew I've seen a couple different warp drives, who's do you have? Also yeah, that docking porport misalignment would drive me crazy.

Last night I discovered that my new minmus base couldn't be properly landed due to the docking port glitch (really hope 1.2 fixes that). I had two halves of the base bottom to bottom with docking ports on top over their CGs. Due it being a base and me therefore giving not a single crap about aerodynamics, I simply put a fairing around it for launch. This was all well and good until I got one half of the base landed and could not undock from it. I reverted to orbit and tried to diagnose if it was a single docking port or all of them. It a was all of them.  I then switched to my failsafe save back at KSC prior to launch and tried widening the fairing. This also didn't work. In the end, I had to launch this non-aerodynamically designed base with no fairing whatsoever. This led to intense drag and the launch section got a couple SRB additions to try to muscle through it. Got into orbit and on my way to minmus, but I doubted if my attached tug would have enough fuel to bring both parts down separately.  So I decided to just wing it and take them both down at the same time and see how bad it goes.

It went poorly. Though for being a total mess, it is now sitting where and how it's supposed to. I am actually suprised I didn't destroy everything.  The tug was attached at one end so the base was set down on its nose. Luckily I put an excessively large reaction wheel and RCS system on this tug.  I actually managed to slowly angle sideways, and disconnect the tug before the point of no return. The base fell and broke nothingI then disconnected the hab portion but couldn't get it to slide entirely off the supply half. The tug ran out of power (I pulled the solar panels in during the tilt so they wouldn't break) so I had to EVA over to deploy a couple so I could control the thing again. That done, I carefully brought it over by the base and used an engine (this design had the engines protruding a bit) to knock the hab off of the supplies. At that point something exploded. However it turned out to be a docking port that held the supplies in place, something to be discarded anyway. Using the tug I managed to flip the supplies as well, then docked with them and connected them to the hab (which is hard when you don't have wheels).

Now that it's all said and done, I have a science lab siting on a karbonite and metal ore rich site on minmus and the crew has enough supplies to last over a year before a resupply. Can't wait to unlock some ISRU to send up there. :cool:

 

TL;DR

Struggled with getting a base on minmus,  but pulled it off. Hope to eventually make it a launch and resupply site.

Edited by kraden
Autocorrect is the devil
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Hiya Kermen & Forumer,

I didnt post in here for awhile... since 3 or 2 years ago. Anyway today this is... space station, I cannot decide the name of station. So really simple mission... 7 pictures...

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Command Core already deployed as science pod arriving for dock with station.

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Jetted Stage.

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This is my launch rocket... all of them use same kind stage as this one.

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Fuel & RCS storage docked with science pod.

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Final piece of station apporach Station

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The Uiltity pod apprach for dock

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Mission Completely 

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