What did you do in KSP1 today?

[CatastrophicFailure]

4 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Mark Thrimm has just releasd, or is working on, a SpaceX ITS mod. It has EXACTLY what you're looking for. xD!

fwwwoooooooooosharglbarglegarglenasdknfasdjnasjktsakgkaajkgkjsaknskjsadkjalknjkdasfasdfasfsjnjkgyhaxkjagkjahdgfksjagasjkdgkjshgaskjhsduasdhliughasugasgnsagsajcnelaijunepibpipibajsdhfasdjtsjkdadkljasfladhsjkhfajksfaksjfkjgwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaskjtkjsdhakjsdncacjnasldjkhaskjtyhadskjasdkjhcdskjnkjansdlkdsjnajkdhltkjhpop!  is the last thing SpaceX needs to be doing right now.  They need to just keep it to a nice, boring dull roar for a while. 

[Guest]

I made a nuclear-powered automated shuttle with plasma OMS, based on the idea of eventually tackling the Laythe mission in the STS challenge thread, but that's apparently now defunct and due for an overhaul. Still, I made it 'cause I wanted to. Maybe I'll come up with my own crazy mission plan. The overall shape is based on the presumably proven design of the stock Learstar A1; as such it flies very well... as an aircraft, I mean. During ascent it's quite wobbly, but it doesn't lose control. The MPD thruster can only run at around 25% power, but even so it still provides more thrust than any other electrical propulsion.

 

 

It requires careful management during reentry though...

Edited November 12, 2016 by Guest

[JadeOfMaar]

Looks like I did go to space today, and good thing I did.

Siecie and Bob went on a serious test flight. They took a true measurement of the stamina of the reincarnate NOX Crown SSTO and tagged the first moon Iota: a 2-day transit from Gael, then a capture burn and soon after, an exit burn to descend back to atmosphere. They should have stayed a bit and buzzed Jeb who's in low orbit there. Bob has confirmed that the plane is somewhat unfit now even for Minmus landings (Iota has Minmus gravity). Siecie points the plane at Ceti which has Mun's gravity and basically shakes her head. The consensus is mutual between her and Bob "...Not happening."

Here they are after the initial 4-day return and the first aerobrake pass to cut their orbital period by half. From this view they get interesting new images of their home planet and record these to the ship's log.

After about 3 more reentries the pair have to face the inevitable dark side landing. Good thing Fort NOX kept the memo and installed chutes. The CoM remained a huge problem after the catastrophic engine failure was remedied.

They land on a tiny island barely larger than a stadium (I'm not sure...I didn't mind it too much since it was so dark but it was shocking to zoom out just a bit and see water all around), off the west coast of the mainland that KSC is on and were promptly recovered by noon the next day. With this experience the spaceplane is revised again from being a science vessel and returned to its original purpose and then some-- a crew shuttle now with cargo space and without the CoM issue.

Spoiler: They forget to deploy the wheels and break a few things.

 

 

 

[RocketPilot573]

I set up a relay network around Kerbin.

 

Full Album:

https://imgur.com/a/sPAMa

 

-Rocket

[nholzric]

I made a new space cruiser I was able to launch the habitat portion in career but switched over to sandbox to test out the design before launching the drive portion. Here I'm getting ready to test out the heatshield over Duna. This test was only from an orbit near the edge of Duna's SOI down to 20km altitude - I have a hard time waiting for launch windows so I expected this test to be fairly tame since I was *only* at the edge of Duna's SOI.

By the way, I love the new cheat menu. It makes it so easy to jump over to a sandbox game, copy over some craft files, and do some testing. I've been practicing launching from Duna and now I get to test out my cruiser design without spending the time launch, refueling, and transferring it in career. Love it.

So the test didn't go very well. As you can see this design is not stable during such an extreme aerobreak maneuver; it spent the next couple of minutes flying backwards through Duna's atmosphere. The good and bad news is that 20km is way to low, it didn't escape the atmosphere for another go-round so maybe if I test with a higher periapsis it will fly straight. The other bit of good news though is nothing blew up from over heating!

After more testing:

1) The radiators seem to be complete overkill, I fired the engines at 100% for about 1/3 of the ships fuel with the radiators activated and nothing overheated

2) The heatshield may be worthless, in orbit of Kerbin I went to the edge of Kerbin's SOI and then set a periapsis of 40km. Things got very explody very quickly... and then the ship started tumbling and things got even more explody - including, ironically, the heatshield.

Edited November 12, 2016 by nholzric

[Brownhair2]

After having all of my refuelers use nukes, I finally got sick of having a really low TWR and decided to use Kerbodyne engines to make my life easier. Several ironic hours later and I have finally managed to refuel the Sundiver

Oh by the way I got the Sundiver to space.

[septemberWaves]

I did quite a lot yesterday but did not have time to post about it, so I'm doing that now.

Firstly, I noticed that M.O.L.E. had had a few significant updates, so I updated it and redesigned my entire low-tech infrastructure (which needed doing anyway to suit updated style objectives), all of which (except for the Ranna 2 and Ranna 3 transports) do not require the science building to be upgraded in order to unlock the required parts.

The Janus spacecraft now have 4 main variants, most of which have a couple of sub-types depending on their intended mission.

The Cinnabar rockets (same name as old ones but different designs) are designed for low-mass payloads and are primarily for use in the early game. Most have several variants.

The Ranna-class transports are a series of early non-reusable interplanetary transport vehicles. Ranna 1 is a monolithic (single-launch, no modules) spacecraft designed for 2-kerbal flybys of Eve or Duna. Ranna 2 is a 2-module (crew/science module and propulsion module) vehicle designed for basic orbital missions of the aforementioned planets. Ranna 3 will be much larger, and will be designed to conduct a low-tech Jool 5 mission - it will be the only one capable of carrying cargo (the landers) as well as the only one that uses nuclear thermal propulsion. Ranna 3 will be constructed during a transitional period between low-tech equipment and more advanced space exploration technology (I have a vague idea of what will be my early-game, mid-game, and late-game infrastructure, and Ranna 3 will be used in between the first two). I have yet to design Ranna 3, and will do that today.

I also have to design a series of early station modules, and some uncrewed cargo transports. I also need to work on some early-game landing vehicles.

 

Below: a Janus 2 CT-1C launches on a Cinnabar 224 (type 2 core, 2 SRBs, C4 upper stage). This is the only Janus 2 variant, and it is an early attempt at multi-kerbal spacecraft.

 

Below: launching the 2 modules of a Ranna 2 transport, and assembling the vehicle in Kerbin orbit.

The propulsion module is launched first, on a Cinnabar 5.

Next, the crew/science module launches on a boosted Cinnabar 4A.

The completed Ranna 2 transport in Kerbin orbit.

It has only 30 parts and has low mass, making it perfect for early-game interplanetary missions. It has 3000m/s of delta-v, so it could potentially do flybys of Mios, Dres, Richell, or Moho, although most of those are unlikely to be done whilst still using the early-game infrastructure.

Edited November 12, 2016 by eloquentJane

[ThatHomelessGuy]

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Duuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnn Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Dooo
Doooooo dooooooooo doooooooooooo

doo dooo dooo dooo
BHRR BHRR BHRR BHRRRRRR
bom bom

dooo dooooo doooooo
BHRRR BHRRR BHRR BRHHHH

Doooooooo
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DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
                                                              bhrrrr


Wish me luck on this one I have 4 separate cirularisation burns all coming in within a couple of minutes of each other.

[Curveball Anders]

My bright idea to gain some extra cash from tourism didn't exactly play out well.

First Space Minibus failed to catch up with Space Bus and will now have to wait for the next intercept directly to Solar Station One. A quick calculation says it'll happen within a year, I just hope they don't eat all the snacks.

Secondly I had been too cheap when putting Solar Station One in orbit so it was way to close to the Kerbin system. So when Space Bus was closing in for intercept it was shifted of course by Minmus (it just had to worst possible spot in it's orbit ...). They too will now have to chase the next intercept, that too will happen within a year, I hope.

But onwards and upwards! (and sometimes down again)

300 days to next Dres window and 500 to Duna window so the construction of the big and complex That Standup Guy and That Other Standup Guy continues. Together with the never-ending stream of rescue- and gawker-missions for funds and crew.

[Sharpy]

Trucky approaching Midland Sea through Western Canyon. Witness the epicness of Duna Dust Storm.

[N_Danger]

I downloaded a mod (Gravity Turn) and then sat around for an hour tweaking my launch profile for a heavy satellite launcher. 

 

I squeezed an additional 200 m/s of D/V out of it

[Tw1]

Went for a bit of a drive.

Bit underwhelmed by KSP's wheels right now, these are struggling on the small slopes, when I used to be able to take a vessel 2.6 times the mass of this up 30 degree slopes on planet Eve, with the same four wheels. 

Edited November 12, 2016 by Tw1

[Talos]

Built a sequel to my previous lifter. Capable of lifting up to 45 tonnes to LKO, such as my first single launch space station for my career mode save. Fully operational in one go with the ability to expand if need-be, ya know, future proofing and stuff.

[Bran Baxy]

I maybe burnt up my ship...

[Arni01]

I rescued Valentina, Bill and Bob from the Mun.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Arni01
Added image instead of link

[The Raging Sandwich]

Eve A Docking Probe 2 (Launched via a Kerbin 1-0 rocket to save fuel in the upper stage into a 300x300 km orbit. Mun 8 docked with it and it extended the apoapsis to just under Mun orbital height and lowered the periapsis to 0.): Success

Starbird F.12 (Training flight): Success

Starbird F.13 (Training flight): Success

Mun 8 (Launched into a 110x110 km orbit. Docked with the Eve A Docking Probe 2 with only 8 units of fuel remaining. After reaching ~Mun orbital height, it came back down to Kerbin for reentry. It came very close to burning up, but Billble and Camly Kerman survived.): Success

Discovery 9 (A Minmus orbiter and lander launched via a Kerbin 1-0 rocket. Successfully entered Minmus orbit by the onboard fuel of the orbiter. After making scientific measurements of the gravitational field and temperature of Minmus from orbit [Discovery 9 Orbiter: Success], the lander detached and landed 23 days later. [Discovery 9 Lander: Success]): Success

Next flight: Mun 9 (Even though the Mun program is finished and the Minmus program is underway, KerbinLab 1 has not been used for its original intended purpose. To fulfill its still long life, 5 more Mun spacecraft and crews will dock with the station.)

 

Billble Kerman ready for takeoff

Mun 8

View of Kerbin

Discovery 9 orbiter and lander

Lander on Minmus (Sort of looks like a Venera lander)

 

[ThatHomelessGuy]

3 hours ago, Tw1 said:

Bit underwhelmed by KSP's wheels right now, these are struggling on the small slopes, when I used to be able to take a vessel 2.6 times the mass of this up 30 degree slopes on planet Eve, with the same four wheels. 

Try adjusting the friction on the wheels. I found that adding downforce and mass to lighter vehicles helped them climb slopes. If you are interested in preventing accidental takeoff at the crest of hills then more mass and higher friction are options that might help you.
These are modified smaller faster racing versions of the same wheels but other than speed and size they haven't been adjusted for traction, but the extra weight seems to give a bit more going uphill.

And downforce with the same modified wheels lets me do crazy speed and still not go crazy while cornering. That car is doing 166mph and 93mph by the way respectively.



That's 2 examples of weight and downforce helping with traction in KSP without the fin or weight they skit about and struggle uphill at times.

[Brownhair2]

 

Kill me now

[septemberWaves]

@Brownhair2 I've had nodes with similar or longer burn times before. Usually it's best to install MechJeb and have that execute the node autonomously so you can go do other things elsewhere - especially if your framerate is already low. Some 15 minute burns I've had in the past have ended up taking twice as long because of the lag, but were bearable because I could execute the burn automatically.

[Freshmeat]

I just spent three hours of terrain driving at some 70-130 kph on the Mun, using the Akita cockpit an first person EVA courtesy of Hullcam VDS continued. A small inline reaction wheel for stability, but even then I crashed twice and had to reload. Rover times are so back  

@Brownhair2: That is a really nice space whale you got there

Edited November 12, 2016 by Freshmeat
Whales!

[HazelPine]

Got back into my KSP career, and launched a Mun science orbiter to complete a contract and save my space program since it had no cash left at all. Had fun with the Hullcam mod now that it got updated, since I loved that mod!

 

 

The LAY Mk1 Orbiter

 

The first images of the Mun to be beamed back to kerbin:

[Brownhair2]

Some of them are hard to see, but I managed to get a picture with all of the moons of Sonnah:

EDIT: Actually, you don't have to kill me yet. I was just joking.

Now you can kill me.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Brownhair2

[Clipperride]

Yesterday was one of those "Doh!" - Revert Flight days.  After the success of my low tech Minmus Biome Hopper, I thought I would see how it faired in the higher gravity environs of the Mun.

Minmus Biome Hopper (Full Stack)

Spoiler

The Lander

Spoiler

After touching down in the Farside Crater followed by a sub-orbital hop to the Polar Crater, the drop tanks were empty, so Bob headed home for snacks and medals.  

In order to gain more science in a single mission, I build myself a lander with a lot more fuel and sent that towards the Mun.  As I entered the Muns SOI, I realised that I had forgotten to fit any relay antennas and, as Scientist Bob was driving, I reverted back to VAB for a fix.  Despite a pretty much perfect launch the first time, the next attempt resulted in a flip, due to turning to quickly at too low an altitude. Revert. Then a couple of launches got to LKO, but with a lot less propellant remaining than the initial attempt. Revert, revert.  Another flip followed. Revert.

A fresh cup of tea helped me guide the next launch out of the atmosphere, but for some strange reason, rather than hitting "0" to trigger the fairing ejection action group, I hit the space bar and watched as a load of unburnt fuel and oxidiser drifted away. Revert and much cursing.

Then success! Or so, I thought.  As, after landing, I realised my new craft was way too heavy and returning to orbit would burn most of what remained in the tanks.  Certainly not enough for "biome hopping". Revert.  I went back to a light lander design, with an over powered transfer stage and docking port for refuelling the lander.  That launched cleanly, but a lack of batteries on the transfer/refueling stage and absence of RCS on the lander led to another revert and fix.  

Finally everything looked good.  The refuelling stage was suitably equipped and the lander was nice and light.  It was at this point I learnt that Kerb Net (which I use to find the elevation of my landing zone) requires a signal back to Kerbin!?!  (My previouse 1.2 game saw me launch satellites around both Mun and Minmus as soon as I could, so it hadn't been an issue before)

So, I gave up on landing and spent another hour or two positioning 3 relay satellites around the Mun.  The 3 satellites were launched on a single rocket which deployed them with just one incident.  After releasing the final relay, I went to map view to start tweaking it's final orbit when I heard a "bang".  I hadn't moved far enough away from the launch vechile and had hit it at some speed.  Luckily the only damage to the satellite was to one of the solar panels smashed into its component parts. I had fitted 2 to keep things balanced which should be enough to keep it online.

Moral of the story?  Double check your vechile has the parts needed for the planned mission before heading to the launch pad!

[SmashingKirby148]

1 hour ago, Brownhair2 said:

Some of them are hard to see, but I managed to get a picture with all of the moons of Sonnah:

EDIT: Actually, you don't have to kill me yet. I was just joking.

Now you can kill me.

 

Alt + . x4. You're welcome.

As for me, construction has begun on the Laythe station! This project has been planned for a long time, but finally my Kerbals are technologically advanced enough to find a new home.
Specifically, I attached two arms to the station. They're both wielding two mega solar panels from Near Future Solar and one has a Comms 88-88 and the other has a Relay Antenna capable of sending signals throughout the entire expanded Jool system. I say expanded because I have my own mod installed which does... Well, you can find it here. I might make more in the future. In fact, I have one I should probably put up, so keep an eye out for that.

No pictures yet, I forgot to take some.

[Martian Emigrant]

Good day to all Kerbal Space Programmers.

Today Jeb "Accidentally" got himself back to Kerbin.

Jeb was the designated Token Contract Pilot Essential Navigational Component on the Minmus Science Station.

After 270 days on the station he accidentally fired himself in space with one of the escape pods.

When the other guys notice that Jeb wasn’t showing up for cleaning the experiments they contacted Operations to complain. After a brief search they realized the horrible fate that came to their comrade.

Operation: Jeb what happened?

Jeb: I was enjoying some Kerbykola with my Kurlykrisps when I accidentally sprayed the console. It must have shorted and released the clamps.

Operation: We will sue the manufacturer of the Kola and the guy that made the switch. Don't do nothing. We will come and retrieve you. Your excape-pod has an untested engine and was never meant to be more a way to DE-orbit from LKO.

Operation: Where is Jeb?

Tracking Station Duty Officer: We don't know. We can't find him around Minmus.

Operation: We have Millions of Roots invested in Tracking equipment and you can't find him?

Tracking Station Duty Officer: He is not replying. It's as if is transmitter was dead.

 

KSC Operation Receptionnist: Jeb is on the phone . He want's to be picked up.

Operation: What?

KSC Receptionnist: Jeb is on the phone. He want's to be picked up.

Operation: I know what you said......gimme the phone.

 

Operation: Jeb what are you doing here?

Jeb: I am not here. I am floating on the ocean.

 

Operation: Why aren't you orbiting Minmus?

Jeb: The De-orbit engine came on while I was attempting to clean the console. And first thing I knew I was on my way to the Mun.

Operation: Why didn't you try to orbit the Mun?

Jeb: I did. But the engine being mounted backward got me facing the wrong way. Then I was going to Kerbin.

Operation: .....

 

Operation:

We are currently suing the manufacturer of Kerbykola, kurlykrisps and the guy who made the switch. We will get to the bottom of this.

 

But you are back just in time. We need a pilot to fly to a newly captured asteroid with some mining equipment.

 

Jeb: We capture asteroids now?

Operation: Yes we do. We are cataloguing them too. Starting with A-Roid, B-Roid, etc...

Jeb: Which one am I going to?

Operation: M

Jeb: Swell.

 

ME

 

Edited November 12, 2016 by Martian Emigrant