What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Martian Emigrant]

13 hours ago, eddiew said:

A manouevre I named after my first pilot to manage it   Direct ascent to an orbiter such that you reach it's altitude at the same time it passes closest to you. Takes good timing,  but great fun when it works ^^

 

 

I thought it had to do with the Planet "Jinx" from Larry Niven's "Known Space Series".

 

ME

 

 

[Martian Emigrant]

Yesterday I built a two piece rocket to send 100 Kerbals to Duna, with a chance of returning, for the "The Elon's Problem Challenge".

The bottom "One piece" turns into 3 on staging......I can fix that. They all come down down intact in the ocean.....I can fix that too.....I think.

 

Made it to Duna....Without enough fuel.....Aaaaaarg!

 

I figured landing with 10m/s was safe. It touched with 30m/s after running out. (Ship blew apart. No loss of Kerbals in the "Simulation"....)

 

Darn you Red Baron bad luck. A lousy 20m/s.

 

Today I try again. A little more fuel....Better transfer perhaps.....T'was my second time actually reaching Duna.

 

ME

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

I made a plane. Now I need to figure out how to get it to Laythe.

I wanted to make this as light and small as feasible, while being able to carry a pilot and a scientist and a full science payload, being easy to fly, being able to land in rough terrain, and being able to refuel in orbit.

This turned out to be much harder than I thought. My first designs were all Mk 1 single-engines, and I just couldn't get all of those constraints in a single craft. Eventually I ended up with this: the smallest Mk 2 I could come up with. It was a bit underpowered with a single Rapier, so I stuck on a second one and now it goes like the proverbial bat out of hell. Very well-behaved in all respects and happily meets all mission criteria.

Tomorrow I need to figure out how to get it there.

[eddiew]

29 minutes ago, Martian Emigrant said:

I thought it had to do with the Planet "Jinx" from Larry Niven's "Known Space Series".

ME

Sorry, that series is... unknown to me  

[eddiew]

It's mystery mission time! We're taking the Telemachus rover, partly based on the successful Nono which tackled Moho so well, but the design has been markedly improved for a lower CoM, higher delta-v, and 40% higher crew capacity.

Mission commander is 5-star pilot Ellie Kerman, with engineer Rei Kerman, and scientists Ollie Kerman, Yuki Kerman and Merlin Kerman, and none of them know where they're going yet!

Suspense!

The sum total of Kerbal knowledge after the Tylo data now stands at 90,205 science points... warp drive... I can taste you!

(Ed: Suspended yet? Well, you won't be waiting long because I can't sleep!)

It exists? It exists! And holy smokes look at those mountains... suddenly mission control is less than sure that a rover was the right choice here... Fortunately Telemachus packs a whopping 3400m/s and the Odyssey carries enough spare fuel to refuel him fully, so he should be able to manage at least three biomes.

Insisting on an ore scan before departure completes a contract that covers the cost of launching Telemachus, and reveals some good news even with the threshold set to 60%. Non-existent Dres, it seems, might actually be a pretty good mining spot...

(Ed: now I will go to bed because I'm nodding over my keyboard.)

Edited October 4, 2016 by eddiew

[Starman4308]

Kinda-sorta action shots today: the Kerbin space station is in operation with a crew of 4, and a bucket of science is on its way in... probably 11 days or so, given the need for a bielleptic transfer from the polar science-collecting orbit to the equatorial orbit of my station.

The Ike package on ascent to parking orbit:

The big design for today is the lunar space stations: at 26 tonnes each (after emptying the food/water/O2 tanks), they required me to design my heaviest booster yet, the Sarnus IV. The booster masses nearly 1000 tonnes on the pad, the upper stage powered by seven Poodles, the lower 1.5 stage by five Mainsails and four 110-tonne Linebacker SRBs.

First stage image:

Station (from an awkward angle, I know). Goes from a 2.5m to 3.75m stack, room for 9 Kerbonauts, four Gigantors for power and an absurd stack of batteries to keep the science labs going through the dark side of the moons.

[loch.ness]

10 hours ago, capi3101 said:

Set your rear brakes to 200% and make sure to set the friction to about 1.4 in the SPH, and make sure to lock their steering if available. Forward gear to 0.4 friction, no brakes, full steering. Generally works in 1.1.3 at least. What kind of gear are you using for the aircraft in question?

As for the tail strike issue, I could give you pointers but I'd need to see your plane. Depending on the design and your tech level, you might be able to get away with a "kicker" on the tail.

Plenty of mods I could suggest to make plane flying easier, if you're not adverse to mods. 

 

Thanks for the help on the wheels.  I'll do that for sure.  (I was using the lowest tech steering wheels which I think have usually low brakes).

 

On the tail-strikes its completely my fault.  I built a very early tech plane with a LFO tank and LV-909 to help reach higher altitude survey points though I don't wind up using it.  I'll likely rebuild the plane since the LV909 basically just functions as a weight keeping the COM and COL in place.

 

On Mods, I love mods.  I've got a suite of mods I plan to upgrade to but I'm currently running Pre-1.2 because the VAB tabs are just so much nicer than 1.13's that I can't really go back yet.  Before I took a break my mod-suite was Eve, USI-LS, USI-MKS Lite, Texture Replacer, Final Frontier, Kerbal Alarm Clock, KAS, KIS, Dang-it!  (I'm sure there were a few more in there).  I typically like mods that expand my gameplay options (KIS, KAS), are largely aesthetic (EVE),  add some difficulty (USI-LS) while also adding some realism.  

[Starman4308]

Okay, this is just too funny for words. I accidentally sent up my (first, at least) ISRU station with a full load of Karbonite. I think I dumped ~25% of it before I realized "oh, hey, I can just use it to refuel the main tanks mid-flight". Not as planned, but it'll still work out.

[RoboRay]

I always wanted to gravity-assist off Tylo for a free capture at Jool...

...so I did!

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by RoboRay

[RX2000]

Had 3 contracts to rescue Kerbals out of low Munar orbit, so I got the 3 person command pod with a probe core to fly it & sent it off to the Mun to pick them all up. It took a while but I finally got all 3 of them in the pod.

After that I got a contract to make 4 Kerbals pass out from G forces while on a suborbital trajectory. I tried a few things to get them to pull Gs in space, but so far I havent been able to pull more than a couple Gs while in space. I guess I'll try more SRBs at apoapsis. I dunno.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

Kinda-sorta action shots today: the Kerbin space station is in operation with a crew of 4, and a bucket of science is on its way in... probably 11 days or so, given the need for a bielleptic transfer from the polar science-collecting orbit to the equatorial orbit of my station.

Where did those batteries and capacitors come from?

[JadeOfMaar]

Made a version of the Runabout craft replacing the Malemute Rover parts. And I removed 1 mod (Procedural Parts Extended) from all my Starfleet ships. So this Runabout is -2 mods (hence 5 mods) versus the first one.

Added into the existing thread and posted on KerbalX.

No loss in features except for one seat and you can't exit through the hatch on the back.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

The crew of the NANC Brown awaken to a sensor pinging, registering something shadowy, but sufficiently solid in that path, as they had hoped for. Valentina, then the seasoned scientist Sigmund Kerman take turns stepping outside to confirm this shadowy figure with their eyes. After being deceived by the onboard KER and overshooting the node, NANC is forced to hike her skirt up and dig her heels in, unleashing nearly triple her nominal pushing power to potentially avoid having to correct a distorted orbit later, and wisely shedding some weight in the process.

   

Like Eddie's women and the Odyssey NANC Brown and crew also, simultaneously elated and perplexed, confirm the existence of the planet Dres! Two probes are launched at Periapsis and made to circularize individually in their discrete orbits. The inexperience of copilot Nancy Kerman, however, not anticipating that the probes would control from their docking port by default, causes her to launch them both in the wrong direction and risk them both colliding with the ship while burning in the proper direction.

   

The GeoProbe, a highly unconventional SCAN probe, has to do both the exclusive 750km high orbit for terrain mapping, and the low 250km orbit typically taken by ResourceProbes, but does not itself carry resource scanners. Once again, and even more surprising than with Moho, a patch of bad data emerges in the terrain map. It's as if Dres has a Mohole of its own in the equatorial region. The crew now draw straws to see who will have the displeasure of staying alone on the ship while the other three descend and investigate... But while they waited on the SCAN results, they've also detected four mysterious entities in the immediate area. The novice scientist Munney Kerman seems to have been as productive as he has been entertained with the discovery equipment.

Oy, @max_creative I think you'd especially enjoy this.

[Boganaut]

Erm... did anyone else get the urge to interrupt their main game and mark the 59th anniversary of Sputnik 1 by launching their own "Stayputnik" based satellite with 4 antennas on it? I even launched mine to about 65 degrees inclination and same kms Ap & Pe (as given by the Sputnik Wikipedia entry)!

Today I did a stack of gentle aerobraking orbits to bring an ore barge down to a good height for a low fuel usage rendezvous with a large interplanetary rescue expedition (including replacement ascent vehicle for the folks with the horizontally landed rocket on Duna). I've been cutting it fine with making orbit recently and having to do more refuelling in LKO. Keeps the cost down, but gets fiddly!

Edited October 5, 2016 by Boganaut

[Draco T stand-up guy]

May possibly be my messiest station ever:

 

The problems of lining up manually - no MJ and

Not thinking about it when the contract calls to simply double what's up there and so simply launching another of the first station launched

 

Network's taking shape though

It's not that I've been purposefully building one but that I keep getting contracts for satellites and decided putting a full relay antenna on sounds like a Good Idea.

[Starman4308]

8 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Where did those batteries and capacitors come from?

The batteries come from KW Rocketry, Procedural Parts, and Near Future Electrical, the capacitors are from Near Future Electrical, and some stock parts are reskinned by Ven's Stock Part Revamp.

[eddiew]

Landed on a planet that may or may not exist.

Thanks go to @kraden for some good suggestions about how to stabilise the surface experiments

 

4 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Like Eddie's women and the Odyssey NANC Brown and crew also, simultaneously elated and perplexed, confirm the existence of the planet Dres!

Hehehe... I mean... sorry for ninjaing your subject  

[capi3101]

10 hours ago, loch.ness said:

On Mods, I love mods.  I've got a suite of mods I plan to upgrade to but I'm currently running Pre-1.2 because the VAB tabs are just so much nicer than 1.13's that I can't really go back yet.  Before I took a break my mod-suite was Eve, USI-LS, USI-MKS Lite, Texture Replacer, Final Frontier, Kerbal Alarm Clock, KAS, KIS, Dang-it!  (I'm sure there were a few more in there).  I typically like mods that expand my gameplay options (KIS, KAS), are largely aesthetic (EVE),  add some difficulty (USI-LS) while also adding some realism.  

For planes, three mods I'd suggest are Atmosphere Autopilot, RCS Build Aid and NavUtilities (which I guess is called NavInstruments now). Atmosphere Autopilot adds a fly-by wire system that can be toggled on and off and flight autopilots if you want to use them - if your plane has a shred of stability, it makes flying it a lot less tedious. RCS Build Aid is useful for plane design because of its Dry Center of Mass indicator, which will show you how your plane's center of mass with shift as you burn fuel, helping ensure that you can maintain general stability regardless of your fuel status. And NavUtilities/NavInstruments is an ILS system that can be toggled for any Runway in the game and any glide slope you're comfortable with. There's also FAR, which I use for the stability analyses primarily. Dynamic Controls is also a useful one; it ensures that when you push a button to turn your plane that it the control surfaces involved don't deflect so much that they rip themselves off the plane. All good mods for aerospace craft if you're wanting to get into that part of the game more. 

I very rarely need weight aft...more often, I have problems keeping it amidships. Having a ballasting tank sometimes helps (say, an FL-T400 with the fuel and oxidizer locked, adjusting the amounts as needed). LV-909 isn't the best engine for those rare jaunts into the upper atmosphere. I'd suggest a pair of Thuds on side tanks set to a somewhat reduced thrust level. That way you can still attach a somewhat traditional tail to your plane.

 

(1.1.3) Last night was spend doing more early career mode work. Successfully completed a contract to test a Thud while splashed, and then sent Bob around KSC in a low-tech science mobile for EVA reports, crew reports, materials bay samples, goo samples and temperature readings. Got about 200 science from his efforts, enough to unlock fuel lines and the OKTO probe core, which is generally where I really like to be in the early game. Did another sub-orbital tourist contract wherein I re-discovered an old FAR bug; had to revert and come in with my service bay's doors open to prevent drag where it shouldn't have been (might've just been a one-time fluke). Picked up a rescue contract; should've read the details about it before I accepted - the Kerbal I'm supposed to rescue is going to have a close encounter with Mün and will be gravity boosted right on out of Kerbin's SOI. The replicated Gurney 7 may or may not be capable of making the rendezvous. On the other hand, it's 70k if I can pull it off. Probably will be another lousy pilot...

I'm hoping the game gives me some decent contracts in the near future. Right now it's all high-altitude crap and observational readings on the far side of the planet.

Playing on my laptop last night, didn't plug it in, thing died on me before Gurney 7 circularized. I've checked this morning and the craft is still there on a sub-orbital trajectory pre-apoapsis, so I'll be continuing the rescue mission this evening.

[Flamingo]

While driving my rover on 3x timewarp, I wanted to slow down to plant a flag after 40 Km. I should have pressed "," but my big fingers instead pressed ".". So i went from cruising quietly through the highlands, to explosions everywhere in less than a second. So guess ill have to drive it again 

 

 

The only way i can feel right now is:

Edited October 5, 2016 by Flamingo

[DerekL1963]

Yesterday's activities posted this morning because once again I was so tired last night.

- Tackled the next difficult moon, dropping deep into Jool's gravity well to land on Laythe.  The margins are tight, but the run was successful.  Two (the most difficult two) moons down, three to go.

- Overall, the fuel situation is starting to look a little dicey. The rules allow one refuelling mission if you run out, but I'd like to save that for unexpected contingencies - planning on running out of fuel is against the spirit of the challenge.

- I also found a booster design with performance to spare, so enlarging the mothership to increase the amount of fuel available *shouldn't* be a problem.  (Famous last words.)

Sorry for no pictures at this stage, but I'm saving the "cool" shots for the actual Jool 5 run.

 

[Mycroft]

Today, I haven't done anything yet. Yesterday, I spent my time on perfecting a long range, orbit capable missile defense system capable of landing ten fully functional rocket launcher turrets anywhere on the planet. We'll see if I can make it interplanetary capable later.

[eddiew]

Developed a new love for rovers that can do a couple of suborbital hops.

Merlin Kerman unravels the mystery of why so many experiments kersplode when set down on the ground! So far Rei has only lost one out of the seven, which is a 100% improvement on the usual survival rate.

The highlands give Rei some issues. As soon as the experiment station is set down it decides to flit away over the undulating terrain, requiring an energetic chase. Somehow, it doesn't explode, and eventually she gets it back under control and waddles slowly back to the ship because it's too heavy to jetpack with.

[eddiew]

(Ed: I was going to do the return and landing in this post but... it's taken an episode and a half of Dr Who to split the 500 day return into 10 day chunks and transmit all the science from the lab. My lord that's such a poor mechanic. Labs really need to just drip feed everything they have while on rails...)

With four biomes down, the Telemachus crew can see from the map that there are at least two more within reach. One is pretty easy, a gentle 20km ride over undulating terrain. The other...

So yeah, that last one was a doozy. The edge of the highlands plateau turns out to be a terrifying 45 degree slope, and Telemachus doesn't really have the fuel to get down the easy way, so pilot Ellie Kerman had to grit her teeth and try to find the most auspicious route down. She manages admirably, keeping the wheels gripping and the Telemachus remains under her control all the way down. Mission control think they have found their champion rover pilot.

Six biomes in one mission. Great success!

Technically there are two left; impact ejecta and the poles, but neither is within 200km of Telemachus and frankly the crew just can't be bothered any more. Indeed, Rei has gotten bored of setting out the surface experiments, thus costing the mission some 400 raw data. Maybe next time mission control should assign two engineers to extended expeditions... or they might notice that the total haul was in the region of 30,000 science points and not really mind about 2k here or there.

[cubinator]

I just landed my first proper surface base on Duna! It came in two launches, one for the hab and one for the lab. I successfully landed them within about 800 m and docked them. Flag-planting will be tomorrow, as it's getting late today.

http://imgur.com/a/CKveD

[Starman4308]

First ISRU station on the Mun. I'm having trouble with this one, though; for some reason the cryo tank is leaking LH2 all over the place. My best guess is that I have too much surface-attached to it, so I replaced the simple radiator panels with the extending ones (which pipe from all over the ship), and changed the tank type to command module for the second batch. Speaking of the second batch: despite ensuring the Karbonite tanks were empty in the VAB editor, they come out full on the paaaaaaad and I just realized they're probably getting filled by the launch clamps! One semi-finicky thing about that: because my config creates LH2/LOX in a 2:1 molar ratio and the engines usually consume more of a 3.5:1 ratio, my refill-in-flight shenanigans are followed by dump-excess-oxygen shenanigans.

Otherwise: the first of my Duna flights is away, this one a RemoteTech relay satellite. Three Yagi antennae from the Antennas mod (one pointed at Kerbin, two at equi-Kerbin relay sats in case Kerbin is occluded by the Sun or another planet), a  Log-Periodic that'll be pointed at Ike, another Log-Periodic just in case I need an extra for something, and a Communitron 16 for basic omni coverage around Duna.