What did you do in KSP1 today?

[eddiew]

Thanks @eloquentJane, I'll bear it in mind if my fave mods don't update before my 1.1.3 career is drawing to an end   Got my eye on Galileo's planet pack for 1.2 though, complete system replacement, needs a good investigate methinks. 

[kraden]

@eddiew I love that picture of the Telemachus IV landing, Lyssa's face is great.

[Bomaye]

To many contracts for Jool system......... re-fueling soon complete at the orbital fuel station 

[eddiew]

Finished up at Slate... and thank goodness for that. This moon seems to have a curse, in that it is impossible for anything to stand still on its surface. The rover, the surface experiments, the crew - everything slides at a few cm/s. In the end, the crew gave up trying to lay out experiments and just settled for what they could get with the onboard instrumentation while driving through the marked zones.

Faced with almost-impassible terrain and a heavy, fuel-sodden rover, Lyssa makes the call to engage the engine and perform a suborbital hop after the second biome, cutting 200km and many hours off the journey. Landing with just 2400m/s in the tank, she knows it's tight, but feels confident in her ability to pull off the ascent, and the mission continues as quickly as she can drive.

As fascinating as it seems from orbit, Slate proves to be very inhospitable to rovers. The high gravity and steep slopes give real issues to Telemachus, although burning 5 tons of it off does improve matters slightly, allowing him to climb slopes of up to 12 degrees. Even so, the conclusion is that Telemachus is the wrong rover for this job. A Grenadier class lander and Ranger Rover pair would have been vastly better suited to the steep terrain, and would have made quicker work of it even allowing for the return journey.

By the time the crew find themselves in the flood plains and ticking off the final parameter on their contract, everyone is more than ready to just get out of there, and Lyssa sparks up the engine as the Odyssey passes overhead. Rather annoyingly, she nails the intercept, getting into RCS range with just 24m/s left in the main tanks. Mission control wonders why they put up with stroppy pilots, though the 1.8 million roots from the survey contract are probably quite a large part of it.

(Ed: when I said there were two choices of landing zone - I should have chosen the other. This one offered Sarnus in the sky. The other one was flatter, and required a shorter travel distance, may not have needed a suborbital, and would have therefore had better fuel margins. Overall this was a highly stressful drive full of choosing the routes of least incline, following riverbeds, avoiding hills, and constant reloading because the same stupid wheel kept getting 'blocked' without good reason. Basically, it was 2 hours of tedium and not going where I wanted to go. I will not be using this class of rover on high-g locations again. By the third biome I wasn't even thinking about screenshots because I just wanted to get the contract over and leave. Slate seems to be Tylo's angry half sibling )

Edited October 9, 2016 by eddiew

[cubinator]

I now have a science farm orbiting Minmus as well as on Duna...Now I've got a Minmus base on the to-do list, as well as rotating the crew on the Duna base, maybe dropping a rover too, and landing on Ike. Or maybe I'll land on Ike first, then bring the data down to the lab on Duna to science the **** out of it. Either way, I've got my hands full for a while.

[Benji13]

@eddiew the image I have requested does not exits?!?! Seems the second image has gone rouge. 

[Notanerd]

15 March, 1940.

 A strange aircraft takes shape in the sky. It seems to defy the laws of physics. But you know that the German war machine knows no bounds.

Not yet...

http://imgur.com/gallery/vFCJH

First person to guess which aircraft this is based on will get rep if I knew how to give rep...

[Kuansenhama]

Built a base in sandbox to get myself back in the swing of things for 1.2. Would keep going, but the Gyro kraken seems to love spinning it to pieces. I've tried re-arranging the modules. It seems like a less linear design helps reduce the likelihood that it will spin apart. I want to add an observation tower and maybe bring some rovers or hoppers to explore Minimus.

[Starman4308]

My major lunar operations are coming together. There's a load of moving parts; per moon, two refueling stations, two rovers (to bring the fuel from the station to the lander), two refueling landers (basically a 1-man capsule on a giant hydrolox fuel tank), two hydrolox-propelled science landers, two hypergolic-propelled emergency landers, the space station itself (requiring three* auxiliary launches to add modules to it), and two 4-man transfer vehicles.

*Though turns out the giant "fill it up the first time" life support probes were made redundant because I forgot again that pump-enabled fuel clamps will refill all resources, not just propellant as it sits on the pad. Could've been bad were my rockets not ridiculously overengineered and indeed capable of bringing a 26-ton station to lunar injection with 3-4 tons of life support resources that were meant to be delivered separately.

Probably the biggest misadventures were figuring out the ideal tanks for the absurdly cryogenic liquid hydrogen. I noticed some of my vessels were leaking 0.5-1L of hydrogen each second; my best guess right now is that cryogenic tanks work well when you don't have 20+ parts surface-attached to them, and do not work well when you have surface-attached parts. Most of my vehicles have had cryogenic tanks replaced with heavier but less leaky command module tanks as a result.

What I'm proudest of is landing my first rover in forever; a roughly 5-ton vehicle intended to bring fuel from my refueling stations to the landers. I didn't use a separate skycrane; I just slapped a couple engines roughly distributed around the CoM on the bottom of the rover, which is, after all, mostly just a giant hydrolox fuel tank. Wrestled a bit with Throttle Controlled Avionics doing it; I'm not sure how to set that mod to say "just act like SAS, don't change my flight vector". Fortunately, it had more than enough control authority to compensate with default SAS; a quartet of RCS blocks and a 1.25m reaction wheel.

I think I'll nickname it the Bumblebee; when it's still on the second-stage booster, it looks kinda like a queen bee.

And yes, this means I'll have to wait for lunar sunrise to get my first rover to its destination 16 km away:

Finally, the Duna/Ike stuff is mostly on its way, after minor correction burns shortly after leaving Kerbin SOI to maximize gravitational assist from Ike, with the Ike stuff generally entering Ike SOI directly (approaching from behind to minimize crossing velocity). Here, for example, is a lander plunked beneath a few relay sats it will help deploy.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Broke the game

http://imgur.com/a/Nx7Pl

Then again, not to surprising considering I was on prerelease

[HazelPine]

I patched up my BDArmory, and had some fun with a VTOL fighter-bomber I made yesterday!

 

Then I decided that the best way to test its weaponry would be to shoot down the civilian version of it down.

Didn't even need to use missiles! A couple hits with the 20mm Hispanos took it out quickly!

Edited October 10, 2016 by Pine

[kraden]

I started a mock-up mothership in the VAB.  My idea was to build a ship that could make it to and from Eeloo with a 9 man crew.  Having Kerbalism, that meant a lot of food, and that far out it's pretty rough.  I tried adding several greenhouses but it just didn't cut it .  In the end I came up with a design that included a Deep Freeze compartment so the crew could sleep through part of the trip.  I'm definitely not sold on the design I came up with, but it did get some things rolling around in my noggin as far as what I needed, what I wanted, and how I can design some parts of it.  After saving the design for "just in case", I started a simpler, smaller one and realized that I should totally build this thing in Minmus orbit since I have my launch facility on the ground there.  I can just send up containers of parts that are too difficult to launch assembled from the site and attach them via KIS KAS.  I am now in a happy place 

[RoboRay]

Orbital scanning found an island on Laythe with potential for very rich ore deposits.  So, I dispatched an aerial probe to take a closer look...

 

Low-level reconnaissance has identified two possible good sites to set up a mining operation.  Let's set down at the best candidate...

 

Edited October 10, 2016 by RoboRay

[Benji13]

10 minutes ago, kraden said:

I started a mock-up mothership in the VAB.  My idea was to build a ship that could make it to and from Eeloo with a 9 man crew.  Having Kerbalism, that meant a lot of food, and that far out it's pretty rough.  I tried adding several greenhouses but it just didn't cut it .  In the end I came up with a design that included a Deep Freeze compartment so the crew could sleep through part of the trip.  I'm definitely not sold on the design I came up with, but it did get some things rolling around in my noggin as far as what I needed, what I wanted, and how I can design some parts of it.  After saving the design for "just in case", I started a simpler, smaller one and realized that I should totally build this thing in Minmus orbit since I have my launch facility on the ground there.  I can just send up containers of parts that are too difficult to launch assembled from the site and attach them via KIS KAS.  I am now in a happy place 

Why did I just get 3 email notifications for this post? Spooky...

Also, what career mode settings do you use @eddiew? I have many of the mods you do and I am planning on starting a proper, realistic career save once 1.2 and my mods drop and I would like to know what you think are good settings for realism and balance. Thanks,

Benji13

[Francois424]

Spent this extra week mulling around and doing my Jool-5 before the big patch day.  So lots of pics and mission reports that I'll break into categories with spoilers.

 

[ Departure ]
So this was the big day, between having last departure scrubbed because of a KSC blackout last week and with Mission Command being busy, the crew was getting restless and worried they'd never even leave for the Jool-5 mission.  But Wednesday around 1am (Kerbal Standard Time), the order came in... You are GO at mission start, godspeed and fly safe !  Bob plotted the burn node and Sugee (the mission commander and Mothership pilot) started maneuvering to exit LKO.  Minimal wobble, electric charge nominal, things are finally going our way !

Spoiler

All fueled-up and ready to go...  The Explorer II Mothership, fuel, Tylo Lander and Laythe Ascender.

 The Explorer II is about to leave Kerbin SOI for a very long time... The crew takes a final, long look at 'home' ! 

 

[ Arrival ]
After years of sailing the stars, the crew is finaly here.  Jool.  Knowing the hardships ahead everyone gets ready for some hard deceleration burns and slingshots.  Jebediah suggested doing the 0.23 maneuver of using Jool for a huge Aero-braking thing, and it wasn't until Valentina made him remember that Jool now eats ships (and Kerbals) that way that he let go of his dare-devilish plan.  Calculations where made and after a few slingshot we'd end-up captured in the Joolian system no problem.

Spoiler

The ever majestic Jool... as beautiful as Galileo made it up to be! Unfortunately we won't be kissing it's atmosphere anytime soon.  Sorry Jool.


First slingshot capture: Laythe.  She will then throw us into Tylo, which in turn bumps us back to Laythe. What bullies, sheesh.


Isaselle, one of the ship's engineers, had a special music piece playing for us this afternoon: «Dance of the Joolian Moons»

 

[ Laythe ]

After spending far more Delta-V than everyone, including mission command, thought,  the final adjustment are made and stable Laythe orbit is achieved.  Everyone agreed that flying the "Laythe Ascender" spacecraft down to the surface and back up should fall onto Jebediah...  Nobody wanted to think of what would happen if we didn't let the hotshot pilot have it's way on the first landing. But nobody could find him until Valentina found him strapped into the lander's cockpit with a few spare snacks.  Looks like Jeb was a little too eager and would not be left behind no matter what on this one.

Spoiler

The final adjustment are being done and BAM!  Laythe orbit achieved !  Everyone agrees that Laythe is getting more beautiful with age ! 


First a sapphire, then an amethyst, and now an aquamarine, Laythe's beauty is beyond belief. The lander splits her gentle atmosphere and begins the decent.


Jebediah aims for a patch of land, deploys the chutes and the landing legs . . .


 . . . then opens a snack bag and enjoys the view.


Touchdown.  Jeb heads outside to gather the science and stretch his legs.  He plants a flag, gather a sample, and heads back inside.


Having served it's purpose, the science package is ejected and Jeb begins pre-flight check-up before lift-off.


Jet engine to maximum, ladders/landing legs ejected... Liftoff complete !


Jebediah: «Laythe Ascender is ascending and on it's way to orbit !»


Now on internal cycle using a Terrier, the Laythe Ascender is circularizing as much as possible . . .


 . . . until it runs out of fuel and Jebediah finishes orbit the 'Kerbal Way' by EVA-pack. Of course he downloaded the science before leaving.


After a few hour of weightlessness fun and games, the 'Explorer II' meets up with Jeb and he climbs on board for the next leg of the trip. 

 

[ Vall ]

After four days of R&R in Laythe's orbit  The crew sets sail towards Vall.  Four more days later the ship is in orbit.   A departure from the usual order, into which Tylo came second to lighten the lander.  However during simulations, Valentina and Bob always reported running on fumes by the time they got to orbit, so the decision was taken to get to Vall second.  According to Mission Control, the large fuel tank being carried with the ship should have more than enough fuel to indulge in a bit more safety.  As such Valentina and Bob started preparing the Tylo lander for a Vall landing.

Spoiler

Entering Vall's SOI, under the watchful eye of her father, Jool.  Valentina and Bob are ready to go.

 
Where we were (Laythe), where we are (Vall), and where we will be (Tylo). For now, let's land this baby and complete this leg of the mission.


Having successfully landed, Val steps out, grab the science and plants the flag.  The land is so slippery, the crew hurries-up and lifts-off asap.


Successful rendezvous with the Mothership...


Aaaaand we're docked... This leg took so long because of landing gear exploding/slipping bug.  Was that ever annoying or what.

 

[ Tylo ]

The air was a little too serious this morning.  Tylo was scaring everybody off... well except for Sugee, since she is responsible for the Mothership she gets to stay behind.  As the ship neared orbit, Jebediah volunteered, and Kertris wanted to be that mission's scientist.  So they both boarded the Tylo lander, made sure the fuel tanks were full and begun repeating the landing procedures to pass the time.  Even Mission Control was on edge about this one, they called in to wish everybody luck.

Spoiler

Tylo, that huge bullying grey ball of doom.  If we crack this nut, then the mission is all but won.... *IF* we crack it. *shudders*

 
Tylo orbit achieved, the lander is decoupled in absolute silence.  The air is as heavy as Tylo's gravity.


Even the colors have left... The crushing feeling gripping the crews increases as the distance between both ship gets longer.


All 6 engines roars... As Kertris is starting to regret her choice she looks at Jeb... and see a broad smile.  The moods lift as Jeb cracks a joke and tell everyone he's got this covered !


 Very smooth 2.7 m/s landing and everyone cheers on the radio.  Kertris does some science, plant the flag, and rejoins Jebediah in the capsule.


Shortly after takeoff, the external tanks and their 4 poodles are ejected to lighten the craft, which makes it in a 31x30km orbit with 277 m/s left.


Sugee in the 'Explorer II' only has to perform a plane change, and 14 hours later they are within sight of each other.  The tug is dispatched and docks with the Lander.


Minutes later, the whole crew is docked together again. 10 days of R&R before Bop window so the crew throws in a party then gets back to work.

 

[ Bop ]

Everyone is in high spirits and even tho it was another week or so of travel to Bop, nobody felt bored.  Bill and Isaselle performed maintenance on the now very slim "Tylo" lander, Jeb and Val are starting to work on their future mission, Jeb wants to go to Sarnus, Val want to explore that new solar system the "Galileo Telescope" detected last September.  The other three are just catching-up with their families.  Then the alarm went up.  Time to take care of Bop.

Spoiler

Bop is really something else, from looking outside you wouldn't think we are 25km above the surface. Jool can't help himself in every shot it seems.

Having achieved orbit, Valentina and Bob are taking the Lander down. There are rumors "there be Krakens here", but nothing sighted on the way down.

Having landed, science'd and planted the usual flag, Bob sits on top of the lander taking-in the view. Then it was an uneventful return to the 'Explorer II'.

 

[ Pol ]

The final leg of the mission consisted of 14 days waiting for the window, and another 14 to get to the moon in question.  At this point everyone is starting to realize that the mission is almost over... and as these things go, it always feels like the longest part.  However the mission commander, Sugee, got permission to land on Pol.  Long ago this spiky moon was supposed to be the spot for a huge refueling base with living accommodations for 32 kerbals.  Although the KSC always kept the project alive, other commitments and multiple software versions always kept the thing conceptual at best.  First there was thoughts of Kethane deposits, turns out it was ore deposits, then there were these 32-bits limitation of the KSC itself.  Still, Sugee would like nothing better than to go back there in the future to make it happen.  The other member for this landing is going to be Isaselle, the only kerbal to not have landed anywhere yet. Sugee and the KSC both wanted her down there to evaluate sites for a future mining base.

Spoiler

As Pol grows larger, everyone is getting ready for the trip back home.  Except Sugee and Isaselle who are eagerly awaiting the landing.

With Sugee and Isaselle on their way down, the crew decouples the fuel tank with the tug. There are still fuel inside it, and it might prove useful to future expeditions.

This looks like a promising spot... Isaselle thinks a good concentration of Ore could explain the overabundance of spiky rock formation in that spot.  They decided to land there.

Sugee and Isaselle had no problem landing on Pol, which in many regards is similar to Minmus back home. They do their thing and pose for a picture. 


With the crew back safe and sound, the engineers decided to get rid of the lander as it's mission was done and there was no need to bring it back home.


Ready for the trip back home,  the crew takes one last family shot of the Joolian system. Bop is there but very faint between Laythe and Vall.

 

[ There and Back Again ]

It has been a few years since our crew left home for the famed "Jool-5" challenge (or mission as KSC calls it).  Having discarded every once of weight possible, the flight computer reads a tad over 6'000 m/s of Delta-V.  According to Bill and Mission Control, it's less than was planned, but more than enough to return.  And so they did.  A 3'000 m/s maneuver will bring the ship 250km over the north pole of Kerbin, and another 2'000 m/s one will settle the orbit in a nice 250x250km circular pattern.

Spoiler

The ship's engines feel stronger than ever... Back at Jool they capped at 66% else the power ran out.  But here at Kerbin, the sun provides more than enough.

Roughly circular 232x268km orbit achieved with only 843 m/s left in the tank... A tanker will be needed for future missions. A rescue craft was dispatched by the KSC to bring the crew home.

Simple but effective, this 2'000 dV craft (once in orbit) carries 7 kerbals from space to the ground. It was fittingly dubbed the 'Falling Star'.

The last one to leave the 'Explorer II' is Jebediah. « It was a privilege to fly with you old girl » he sais just before joining the others on the 'Falling Star' .

Not knowing the next time he will head on an 'epic mission' again, Jebediah takes in the view taking his time to board the return craft.

 
Mission commander Sugee having already taken the commander's pod on top, Jeb heads inside the 6-man - 5 tons Korion Capsule. 

The crew brace themselves for the 3G deceleration provided by the new inflatable heatshield.  How Jeb & Val find the strength to keep cracking jokes and laugh, nobody knows. 

The sun reflecting on the South Pole's snow is making the crew thirsty. Bob had to mention it looked like a huge bucket of fresh cow milk. 

Touchdown.  Wow that inflatable heatshield thing is indestructible, it survived a 5 km fall ! Auroras welcome the crew home.

 
Left-to-Right: Sugee, Bob, Kertris, Jebediah, Valentina, Bill, and Isaselle. Well done crew !  You completed the Jool-5 challenge.

 

Wow writing this report down took me like... 5 hours (with a few breaks here and there).  But well worth the time.  It was my FIRST Jool-5 completion, and I started in 0.22. I had previously started another one back in Nov-Dec 2014 (same mothership but different landers), but abandoned it for some reason.   I kept the landers 100% stock (except for some radial fuel tanks, better landing gears on the "Laythe Ascender" and more lightsssssss) for retaining legitimacy in the difficulty, but my Mothership was end-game future propulsion tech (which I legitimize by the fact that I could've carried 10x fuel weight, and only used stock nukes... In the end, the real challenge is landing, planting the fag and getting in orbit with the lander... IMHO.  If it still qualifies as worthy of the Jool-5 badge, let me know, but I had fun regardless... and in time before version 1.2 WOO !

Thank you all for your attention, and fly safe !

Edited October 10, 2016 by Francois424
Formatting & Spelling

[CatastrophicFailure]

Was going to post something else, but instead, this:

Farting around in 1.2pre. Coming back from Minmus, the Science Jr. that was below the pod overheated and exploded. The heat shield that was supposed to shield the SJ was now pasted up against the bottom of the pod by air pressure. Somehow, it managed to stick, and Ceralla there made a successful landing with over 2500 Science! points.

[kraden]

3 hours ago, Benji13 said:

Why did I just get 3 email notifications for this post? Spooky...

I have absolutely no idea. Spooky indeed.

[DerekL1963]

Started designing the lifters for the various pieces of my Jool 5 mission...  It's probably crazy that I spend an hour optimizing a booster that I'll only use once, but I can get obsessive about the details.

[eddiew]

5 hours ago, Benji13 said:

Why did I just get 3 email notifications for this post? Spooky...

Also, what career mode settings do you use @eddiew? I have many of the mods you do and I am planning on starting a proper, realistic career save once 1.2 and my mods drop and I would like to know what you think are good settings for realism and balance. Thanks,

Benji13

If I started new I would use...

- 20% science with 200 up front. Maybe even 10%...
- 40% funding
- no rep loss for decline
- I personally don't care for comm nets unless I can make them affect only science transmission (see Antenna Range)
- a personal rule to only use labs for experiments that don't transmit for 100%

I recommend Strategia to help the game reward you for playing the way you like to  Also grab contract packs for things you enjoy ^^

[Sharpy]

NOTHING!

For the first time in over two months I didn't touch KSP or anything KSP-related. I went for a walk through autumn forests, visited an old monastery and the astronomical observatory, which are kinda tourist attractions of my city but I had never visited them before, took some photos of the sights, and slept off the rest of the day.

Admittedly though, my dreams involved messing with Blender trying to get some KSP part right.

[eddiew]

@Sharpy careful, you know what happens when you start skipping doses! 

[UnusualAttitude]

Finally, after successful fuel extraction operations on Phobos, the Quissac shuttle was ready to make her landing on Mars.

Re-entry and landing went as planned, although Quissac overshot her primary landing site and came down somewhere in the south of Lunae Planum.

Didn't quite bring 100 Kerbals with me but anyway, in your face Elon Musk. 

As always, full story here.

Edited October 10, 2016 by UnusualAttitude

[Broke dead dogg]

A bit small fry compared to you lot but I've accomplished quite a bit yesterday, I finally landed on the mun and returned my faithful Kerbalnaut home, then I managed a second landing just over 200m from the first.

Then i attempted to land a fully assembled mun base from orbit (partial success) don't know if I hit the surface too hard or if my landing gear wasn't level but half of it exploded on touch down. (The landing gear not the base) on to the next challenge

Edited October 10, 2016 by Broke dead dogg

[Leopard]

Bit of a play in the new save last night, survey contract... hmm, idea! Build a plane, ok only basic tech so built one, got it airborne. But not above 9k. Hmm, mooor engines, marginally higher and a lot more interesting to fly. Landing by parachute currently.

need to get to 18k...

thus the 'insanity' was born, not worked out how to do pics but think of this.

mk1 capsule, a pair of 400 fuel tanks and a swivel engine, cruciform tail of tail planes, then a pair of swept wings, four parachutes and to my amazement it flew, very well, indeed it glides nicely as well.

added a pair of basic jets under the wings and have nice fly back capability on a survey craft for stuff not too far from KSC, can probably go a lot further if the rocket is used to launch, then powered down and the jets used to transfer before rocket to altitude again.

Jebs face was a picture, great fun to fly as well

[TheEpicSquared]

Well since I'm in school I haven't done anything yet, but I have some ideas for a small crew shuttle SSTO... pictures will arrive when I'm done. Who knows? If it's really good I might send it in to Mark Thrimm...