What did you do in KSP1 today?

[HalcyonSon]

3 hours ago, Martian Emigrant said:

Yes, it is "Witch Craft". A "Kraken Drive". I didn't invent the tech. This is the engine:

Both parts of it are floating next to the ship. I forgot it's forbidden and used "Warp to next manoeuvre" the engine phased out of the fairing. The engine is actually "Debris" and has it's own trajectory.

Here is the craft since you seem interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9wauxldo5uwfcq3/Kraken Cracked v2_1.craft?dl=0

Place the ship on the Pad or Runway. Press "space", Engage SAS on Radial out, press "G" (Gear).

You will float like a toy balloon. Over 600m or 1000m if the drive hasn’t gone crazy on it's own. Disengage the gear for a moment the re-engage. Sometime it will engage if you jiggle the ship a bit with the SAS. As you get really fast select Prograde. Do not use "Warp". Ever.

I am getting tired of the technology. I made a simpler engine but very unstable. Can't quite "Pin" the how and why. It doesn't seem to be ultimately usable. I will probably play a bit more with it. But unless I happen on a breakthrough...

ME

I see a fuel tank and a separator?  I'm baffled.  Will try to remember to download the craft and play with it this weekend.  Got a date playing old-school games at an actual arcade tonight.

[Dr.K Kerbal]

I made a giant 3 stage spacecraft to go to Eeloo. Even with time warp on, it still took me about 10 minutes to get there. All I used was 4 nuclear engines. I did about 5 gravity assists with Kerbin, and then escaped Kerbin gravity and was then orbiting the sun. Deployed my first stage, and then had 6 nuclear engines. 12 gravity assists later, we were on our way to Eeloo.  

 

6 years later...

Nurfed my velocity down to just 500 m/s and then deployed the lander. Sweating like mad, used my lander engine to fly me down. Made it with just 3 fuel units left . Stayed around for a bit. OMG got so many acheivments. (Why do some contracts say "get to Eeloo" and then their contract expires in 1 year?) Then took off again, and then docked with my mothership.

BUT NOT SO FAST!!! I ran out of fuel on the way up!  And then drained my RCS, so then I switched back to my mother ship and had to alter its orbit to about 300 meters above the ground. Embarrassing bit: Forgot the docking port  so I had to EVA everyone out. Jebbo was still in. And he was the last on on the lander. The mothership was drifting away, reeeealllly slowly, hovered over to the Mothership and then got going. 

 

Pro tip 1. Remember your docking ports

Pro tip 2. Bring lots of fuel

Pro tip 3. Next time, get something else other than nuclear engines. 

Lets just say that When Jebadiah cam back to Kerbin, he was 12 years older then when he left.

 

[Triop]

This is my 1000th post !

*pressing F1 for a screenshot

                                                                        I'd like to thank the KSP forum community for keeping this game a joy and a challenge.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Triop

[The Destroyer]

70 ton SSTO! Probably my biggest SSTO yet, with 1 km/s of delta-v when in orbit. Good cargo plane, 500k funds

Edited December 15, 2016 by The Destroyer

[TheSealBrigade]

This is a comparison of all my 1st Stages I use from smallest to biggest. The biggest one is 7.5m!

Names in order:

Spinnaker, Vulcan, Wyvern, Dragon, Hydra, Basilisk.

The 4 bigger ones (W,D,H,B) are fully reusable and can land back in the KSC area.

[Clipperride]

Prior to 1.2, I was a solid "average" at building space planes.  I could get them to orbit the Mun and back with only around half a dozen test flights / tweaks.  Now I'm struggling to get into LKO with a Mk2 and nowhere near with Mk3 parts - even after 4 hours of building/testing/swearing!?!

So, the SPH has been repurposed as a design centre for a fairly large expansion module to the Minmus "Hut" base, increasing it from 6 to 28 berth's and adding mining and processing equipment.  It's going to be fun getting it there (wheels have been added to counteract any landing errors) and a nice payday when it's done.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Clipperride

[Gaarst]

I made a thing:

All my RSS launchers, ordered by payload mass. (Smallest one is 1.25m wide, largest is 7.5m)

 

Edit: apparently I've been ninja'd by TheSealBrigade two posts above 

Edited December 15, 2016 by Gaarst

[JadeOfMaar]

I got inspired to design and launch stations again. 1kt at launch, 16 day transfer, 108t with half-full Kerbodyne tanks in Minmus Ceti orbit.

I had to perform a roll during ascent while shedding the fairings so they wouldn't collide with the solar panels, and I slipped at circularizing and skidded back through atmosphere. Fortunately I thought to put Vectors up there in case I needed their power and gimbal during initial ascent. The transfer stage/booster tanks were sent on a collision course with the surface and orbital insertion was done with verniers.

[fourfa]

Minature toy science hopper I've been playing with.  5T, 3000m/s, plenty to strip-mine all of Minmus in one go.  The combo of one Oscar-B clipped inside a stack of two Round-8s is my new favorite way to store fuel.  Full load of science, two science containers to get three copies of re-runnable experiments, avionics nose cone so the scientist inside can press the Go button.  Dead minimum of anything else.

Edited December 15, 2016 by fourfa

[Angelo Kerman]

I built an aircraft carrier:

[Sharpy]

4 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I built an aircraft carrier:

Dear @Angel-125,

git commit

git push

please?

[aramil]

I built the:

"Pillar of falling into snacks"

[capi3101]

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Found some time to play a bit yesterday evening despite being up since 12:45 AM. The passenger ferry Strange Cargo with Jeb at the helm arrived at Mün and docked with the Munport space station, staying just long enough to transfer the four refugees he'd been sent to collect and top off the tanks before returning to Kerbin. After a single powered aerobraking pass, Jeb rendezvoused his ship with the Kerbinport space station and docked, transferring his passengers to a waiting Auk II passenger spaceplane ready to take them down to the surface. The Auk shoved off, deorbited and ultimately affected a beautiful landing at KSC 09, clearing me four contracts and netting √600k in the process. The Auk's departure allowed me to re-deploy the station's solar panels and radiators, so I can finally process the ore that Nostromo brought back from Mün a few days ago. I may need to send up an engineer to oversee the process...I think Bill is available. If I can do it, it may mean that an Auk III run to refuel Strange Cargo will be unnecessary...

Replacement contracts were a junk hauling mission at Mün, an EVA mission in the vicinity of the Hojo Delta outpost on Mün, and two rescue missions at Minmus. After lauching a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe to conduct the Mün junk mission, I dispatched the Spamcan 7a lander at the Minmusport space station to conduct the two rescue missions. Pilot Genezel Kerman and scientist Megissa Kerman were successfully retrieved and brought back to Minmusport; it's looking like once again Buremy will have to be left behind at Minmusport when Next Objective arrives so that his seat can be made available for a refugee. After the rescues, I launched a Hellhound 7 rover to Hojo Delta, seeing as the distance between the outpost and the Piper Alpha refinery was a bit too far for MIRV - the original Hellhound on Mün - to traverse in a reasonable amount of time. The rover, dubbed "Merv Griffin", arrived and affected a landing two kilometers away from the outpost - and about 1500 meters up; those were some pretty damn scary hills it had to go down to get to the outpost itself. Nighttime, of course. I'll conduct the EVA mission at the next opportunity, and I'll be waiting for daylight. Finally, the Bill Clinton probe arrived to conduct the junk hauling mission; the target turned out to be a J64 fuel tank - also known as "an orange one". That oughta be all kinds of fun when the craft gets back to Kerbin...I'm not sure two radial chutes are going to be able to bring down 4.5 tonnes safely, even with an airbag. I'd better check that and see if I need to send up a repair op to attach another chute or two to the Clinton (again requiring an Engineer).

[loch.ness]

Completed most of a landing simulation with my KASE duna habitat in a new configuration and with docking ports.  Duna's atmosphere is light enough that it didn't bend too much even when the chutes deployed.  Forgot to add mono-prop so the RCS was useless and I couldn't balance near Duna's surface (This sim failed to land).

Game crashes prevented further testing.

Also tried and failed to design a Duna aircraft for the KOSMO team.  I found a mission profile idea from the 1960s Russian science division that I want to try to create with a Constellation like flair.  One part of it calls for an aircraft (Not necessarily manned but would be nice) which can take off and land at a mobile platform).

My attempt to make a VTOL rocket powered flying wing which could land comfortably on Duna had mixed results.  (Test 1 had Ions which had no where near enough thrust to be useful.  Test 2 replaced them with small rockets which could fly but ran out of fuel far too fast to be useful.

I managed to glide it and land VTOL style just fine but with little to no accuracy.  I think I'd want a quad-copter for this mission profile ideally but none of my mods involve electric propellers.  I might wind up scrapping this part of the mission as I think its beyond me to make a Duna plane that can fly well and land on top of a mobile platform for refueling - carrying people or not.

This was my first attempt, there will be more but only after I get the other 3-4 parts of the mobile habitat mission designed.

 

[UnusualAttitude]

After disaster struck and stranded half of the crew on Phobos, and the other half in Low Martian Orbit, Camwise came up with a brilliant plan to save the day. By returning the crew shuttle Quissac to the surface, and using the abandoned rover shuttle as a booster to get Quissac up to Phobos, everyone will get to go home.

About to begin refuelling ops on the surface:

Believe it or not, it flies!

Staging...

Quissac is free to continue to LMO with fuel to spare...

...and make it to Phobos to relieve Bartdon and his team, a place she was never designed to visit. 

As always, full story here...

[justidutch]

Five contracts were taken aboard by the admin types at KSC in the recent days, and fulfilled at a leisurely pace.  It seems the initial flood of new and exciting missions has slowed, no outside agency wants to do anything exotic at the moment.  Perhaps when the 3 ships currently hurtling towards Duna arrive and fulfill their missions, the imaginations of the public and other enterprises will once again be stoked.  Or, the admin types at KSC could just get off their duff and do missions for the hell of it.

 

Anyways, two of the recent missions were to place simple satellites in orbit, one around Minmus and one in a Kolniya orbit around Kerbin.  Same designs for both, and profits were above 80k funds for each.

 

 

Twice over the days there were contracts to plant a flag on the mint moon, so the opportunity was taken to gather science on the ground.  Both missions were completed basically at cost, not net gain or loss on them but the scientists were giddy with all the new rocks and data from the sciencey thingys to play with.

Because of the over-engineering of the Minmus missions, there was enough fuel remaining that the ships could rendezvous with the fledgling station orbiting Kerbin and drop of copies of all the experiments.  This is just in case the same data could be used in the future somehow.  The Minmus ships didn't have docking ports, so an EVA was performed both times to manually carry the data over.

 

Lastly there was a contract for a new Mün station, the exciting bit here was that the newly proposed science lab be included as part of the requirements.  After a couple different designs and testing, the following was finalized and flung into space.  It reached orbit around the grey moon, then docked with the tiny station already parked there.

The three Duna missions are about 50-80 days away from arrival, so there may not be anymore local missions until those are finished...

[Angelo Kerman]

6 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Dear @Angel-125,

git commit

git push

please?

Aiming for a weekend release.

[septemberWaves]

I worked on some launch vehicles optimized for 6.4x scale. Full flight profile of this one can be found in the WIP design thread.

[Slam_Jones]

Did a couple things last night.  Having been on another break, I decided to start off easy and build a mini-shuttle.  It launches like a regular rocket, but still has some small wings and such.  Regardless, the Mini Shuttle had the glide properties of a half-burnt paper airplane, and splashed down on chutes alone (at 15m/s).

After that, I decided to try out the new Relay Sat thing, and built 3 basic satellites, each for progressively further locations.  I decided that launching just one on a rocket seemed like a waste, so I stuck four onto a launcher and sent them up.  I intended for the launcher to work SpaceX style - be able to de-orbit itself and land upright for refurbishing.  Well... the first launch, I forgot to put a drone core or reaction wheels on the launcher.  The second lanch I remembered that, but realized I never put reaction wheels on my relay sats.   So after cleaning up 8 satellites and 2 launchers, I set out yet again and managed to accomplish everything smoothly.  The launcher, during de-orbit, didn't quite make it to KSC and splashed down in the ocean on chutes alone.  The engine came disconnected from the fuel tank, but no other damage was observed.  (Oh, forgot to mention... the launcher ran out of battery power at about 15,000m altitude.  I was able to deploy the drogues in time, but there wasn't enough juice to hit the main chutes.  Still surprised the damage wasn't worse!!)

The four relay sats were equipped with Ion engines (and nearly 4k dv) so I sent one to a higher Kerbin orbit, one to Low Munar Orbit, and one to High Munar Orbit.  The fourth I left at its 72km x 72km orbit.

Lastly I built a quadcopter for Jeb to play around in.  Not super easy to fly, but rather fun regardless.    Took a short video, but forgot to upload it.  (Since my current version of KAX, I believe, is out of date, the propellers do not animate, but still function in providing thrust).

Edited December 15, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[steuben]

Got 1 kt to a 115km x 120km orbit in a single lift, in stock. Now beginning design iterations to get it up to 1000k x 1000k in a single lift. Projected payload mass fraction will be about one ninth though.

[Firemetal]

Right now coming back from Tekto! Had an issue with the lander where I forgot the fuel lines connecting two of the external tanks to the main stack, However I was able to do the transfers manually. Also with the help of some winglets, I was able to half glide down to the surface.

However being at Tekto is very hard on my game and the FPS wasn't the best. But now, Jeb, Bill and Bob are on there way back to Kerbin. The mission time will be at least 40 years and the save time will be over 70. But I'm sure after I'm finished my conquest of the outer planets, it will be a much bigger time.

I plan to use ISRU for the next few moons as making one big mission for each of them might be a bit much. And maybe I will return to Eeloo on its own mission too.  We'll see how the ISRU craft building goes.

Anyways that's it for now.

Fire

[Fearless Son]

7 hours ago, aramil said:

I built the:

"Pillar of falling into snacks"

Nice!  No joke, the designer of that ship used to be a co-worker of mine.  

[Firemetal]

1 minute ago, Fearless Son said:

Nice!  No joke, the designer of that ship used to be a co-worker of mine.  

Wait which one? The Pillar Of Autumn in Halo? How?!

Fire

[Halfdan]

having a bit much trafic on the minmus depot

docked are:

Buran LR (longrange crew transfer shuttle)
Korolev Class automated Freighter 
colony module for duna docked to korolev
and a ore freighter docked to the storage modules

[RoboRay]

I got tired of the huge LEO communication gaps in RSS, so I put up four omni relays in 2.5 hour orbits (about 2900 km up)...  just high enough that they can see each other over the horizon.  This provides good coverage to ground-level up to about latitude 45.  So, I can launch unmanned stuff now without having to deal with ground comm sites going under the horizon.