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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I love the "natural relationship" between parts in KSP.  A perfect example from today was my newly designed Kash Kows Tourer which is destined to fleese wisk passengers around the Mun and back.  The main power is the newly unlocked Twin Boar LF engine.  It needed a touch more fuel to place the transfer stage into LKO, so I radially mounted 4 x FL T800 tanks and, worried about the extra weight, I bolted on a Hammer Solid Fuel Booster to the bottom of each.  Imagine my delight in discovering that the LF tanks drain in almost exactly the same time as the SRBs burn out.  So with one set of radial decouplers, I can dump them all with a single tap of the space bar and head for the Mun. Love it!

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Juat did a Minus Group photo. Before shipping tehm off back to Kerbin for some R&R:

2325A0DF1827C0884400B5C3CA834CF15452AC7D

Also should have mentioned in my last post with my silly Craft heading to the sun. That it was a straight up launch from KSC with very very little course correction befor running out of fuel....

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Technically its yesterday but I spent it cleaning up the first four pages I'd made for my mission report and then building the set pieces show below (Page 6).  I still need to play with the bubbles a bit more since they both take up more space than just having a box and don't always fit right - but I think I'm getting better at the overall layout.

 e9ymao.jpg

 

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Went and grabbed me an asteroid. It was on a collision course with Kerbin. I've a second one on the way in, just waiting for the right time to go get it. I thought these things had fancy colors in them? Mine is dull gray, looks like clay or paper mache or melted wax or something... weird. Anyway, it's now in orbit around Kerbin. The 'AstroCatch' is still attached to it, the pilot is chillin while the scientist does her thing... whatever that is.

z6W8EoG.png

 

She's happy anyway.
5mK9yNT.png

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14 hours ago, LordFerret said:

I thought these things had fancy colors in them? Mine is dull gray, looks like clay or paper mache or melted wax or something... weird.

The colorful ones are rare and speshal

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Made it back into orbit!  ok, this image wasn't taken from orbit, but trust me

Clear.png

*phew* Imma be honest, I was a bit worried. Takeoff was a bit tricky (thank Squad for quicksaves) and I wasn't sure if I'd have enough delta-v to make it to orbit. But I managed to make it with 200 m/s to spare!

Time for the next one!

Tidus_Re_entry.png

Oh boy, here comes the fun part!

*countless attempts and several hours later* (I wish I was joking)

YESYESYES

Yes.png

OH COME ON

Noo.png

You know what? No. I don't need nosecones. NOSECONES are just for SHEEP who BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT'S LIES ABOUT NEEDING NOSECON--

Edited by Brownhair2
WAKE UP SHEEPLE
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11 hours ago, Sharpy said:

These tiny wheels under these 2.5m tanks with drills make me really uncomfortable.

Where did you get these cupolas from?

fNK7K4j.jpg

 

This is a career game.  The small wheel are used before I could unlocked the larger ones.  I couldn't wait to get this on Mun.  Yes, the wheel will break if landed too hard or side slipping to line up docking ports.  Otherwise, the Mun's low gravity will not break the small wheels if driven slowly.  During testing on the runway, the default wheel settings would do a crazy dance, then explode.  (One of the many humorous things I've come to expect from this game.)  The spring setting need to be increased to 2 to remain stable.

This is all stock except  a Surface Lights mod.  I use these modular rover type vehicles as I am a horrible pilot.  Just land somewhere in the general area, then drive to the sweet spot.

 

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Got my first crew up to the CTV Hyperion and finished 3 more pages for my mission report.

Featured below is the screenshot for the Orion nearly docked to the Hyperion.

1fit0w.jpg

From left to right you can make out the Biology and Astrophysics labs (KnK base parts).  Eclipsed are the M.O.L.E. backups for each.  Next is the The USI centrifuge and main habitat followed my Monoprop fuel cluster, docking ring and life support systems, and then the engines.

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(1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday was mainly one of those administrative and sorting days I do occasionally to keep things flowing smoother. First thing I did was switch from a pen-and-paper system to an Excel spreadsheet for my daily logbook, tourist manifest and contract organization. So far I think it's made things a little less obfuscated (especially on the contract front - sometimes it was difficult to spot which contracts were still in progress). Right now the program has fourteen contracts - six Duna-related, six tourist and VIP contracts, one Minmus rescue contract and one Minmus junk hauling contract. The Minmus junk hauling contract should come to a close in another five days when the Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe doing the mission finally returns to Kerbin (24 days after leaving Minmus due to poor return-burn planning), and the subject of the Minmus rescue mission is awaiting the arrival of Next Objective ten days from now to make the trip back to Kerbin. 

With seven of thirteen tourists (representing three contracts) still at KSC, I did a quick redesign of the Auk II passenger spaceplane to change its docking port to a "bomb bay" configuration, the idea being to be able to dock with the station without taking off the plane's tail in the process. The redesigned Auk was successfully launched and docked with the Kerbinport space station, though the plane dinged Strange Cargo coming in (no permanent damage was noted to either craft). I already had an Auk II parked at the station, and at this point I only have three Kerbals up there that need to return to the surface, so I'm debating as to whether I want to take that plane back down again. Doing so would clear two tourist contracts...

I also decided to spend some time investigating the ongoing problems I had with the Auk I rescue plane bouncing and tearing off its engines on every mission at landing. I began by replacing the aft Medium gear with Large gear and flew a once around, but noted the problem remained even after a very gentle landing on the second go around. Ultimately I traced the problem to the nose gear, which was tilted off the vertical. A third go-around resulted in an intact plane, so I'm hopeful the problem has been corrected.
 

I also did some further analysis of my existing hardware for the upcoming Duna missions, scheduled to go in another 24 days. Final count of the armada being sent that way is fifteen craft, which oughta be all kinds of fun. Mainly I was looking to see if the craft involved would, without modification, be able to transfer to Duna without aerobraking and then survive a landing without parachutes. I came to the conclusion that both the Piper Alpha refinery design and Bates Motel outpost design would need additional fuel for landing, and that the transfer stages on the Nostromo 7 ore hauler, Piper Alpha 7 refinery and Fireball 7a science lander are marginal for the transfer. I'll be revisiting their designs in the near future. I also am uncertain whether the Hellhound 7 rover will make it down with its current design, which uses the final booster stage as its transfer stage also. I will be launching another rover to LKO to do the analysis that way. Meantime, I did some drop testing of a rover near KSC to see how it would fare if I added chutes to it. I'll probably wind up adding chutes to the skycrane, but I still had fun putting a 4.5 tonne rover into a free-fall. Blew the launchpad more than once...which is why I play with reversions......

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Today I successfully orbited the Mun and returned Jebediah to the Kerbin Highlands - unfortunately he rolled away and exploded when I tried to get him to do an EVA report. He is currently 'missing in action'.

I also spent a large chunk of my day trying to get ScanSat to work. I've installed it, re-installed it, taken it out of it's package and installed it and generally got very frustrated. I can see it loading and have the latest version of Module Manager but the damn thing thing still doesn't work. I'm not even getting the Scan Sat options toolbar thing. I seem to have problems loading some mods and this is one of them. I want it for MKS / OKS Kolonization so this is a major pain.

 

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--AND THAT'S WHY THE MOON LANDINGS WERE STAGED ON DRES

Anyway, turns out spaceplanes do need nosecones or else they can't go fast enough to take off :mad:

So it looks like I'll have to re-land it anyway...

*1 hour later*

I'VE FINALLY DONE IT!

YAY.png

And you know what? It was all through hard work and determination.

Any by "hard work and determination" I mean "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Huh.

(Ok to my credit I actually made slight tweaks now and then. But it was mostly doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results)

Edited by Brownhair2
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Today, I made the Imgur album linked below, showing the mission flown the previous day.

It was the first crewed flight of my ITS, and took place in my first ever career game.

E9XeV5S.jpg


It was a test flight to Minmus, then the Mun, and then back to the KSC. It went very well: it uncovered some bad glitches that need to be fixed before venturing further out, but didn't come too close to crashing along the way to be uncomfortable. And I got all the expensive kit back.

I have this vague feeling that somehow, in some way, my design style might still be somewhat influenced by ages of playing sandbox. I mean... I've heard of solid boosters being used as sepatrons before... but using a Flea as an attitude thruster... in a career game?

sBUkEVy.jpg


I have worked on this stack since September. It is a rip-off, but by no means a replica, of the SpaceX ITS concept. It has a lot of ITS features and properties, but also differs in many ways, as it was shamelessly kerbified to make sense in the stock solar system.

Among the similarities are, for example, the number of engines (42 on the lifter, and 6 vacuum plus 3 atmo engines on the ship) or the passenger capacity (100).

Among the differences are the use of chutes on the lifter (they are just too effective and reliable in KSP to not use them), and the wholesale replacement of the orbital refueling method via tanker with a mining trip to Minmus instead. The ship reaches orbit with enough juice left to get there, and comes factory-equipped with a fuel refinery and no less than 12 large drills, and the cooling and electrical equipment to run these.

The whole stack would be 100% stock, if it weren't for the two kOS units that control, and completely automate, the entire ascent to orbit. Yes, the 42-engined monster lifter returns and lands in one piece at the KSC, which is why I can afford it in a career game. The ascent is unusually steep, to get around the problem of in-atmosphere vessels being deleted when outside of the physics range.

Short Imgur album

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Damn, I'm mad. Really mad. :mad:

Bug-Drop-1, a probe designed to drop 4 little rovers on Moho, its encounter finally came up (SOI change). So I set a maneuver node for orbital insertion. Then, I got distracted; Dinner was cooking, time to take it out of the oven. I should have known better... hit the Esc key... but no, I wasn't thinking... but I was thinking... thinking dinner, food, my baked chicken. And so, Bug-Drop-1 soared on past its Moho encounter. Imagine my surprise when I returned to the computer. Ha.

Goodbye Moho...
zQYCQGO.png

 

Damn, I'm mad. Really mad. :mad:

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Nothing too exciting ... I resurrected my most recent Career save from the run-up to 1.2 and the first week or two thereafter, right before my ancient Mac finally became unusable for KSP (dying logic board/GPU). I got a new laptop last week and just yesterday managed to get my old saves uploaded to Dropbox and back to the new machine. It was fun to open up a save I haven't seen in 2-1/2 months or more and try to remember what I was doing and why. :D 

RO6PU44.png

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Just a note:

My AstroCatch ship, which I've now cloned 6 times... yea, I've got 6 of them roaming around out there, grabbing asteroids. 4 of them have grabbed asteroids so far, and put them into stable orbit around Kerbin (just for fun). None of the asteroids I've grabbed thus far have any 'pretty' coloring to them, they're all dull gray. A bit disappointed. I know @Brownhair2 said they're rare and special. But how rare and special? Anyone have an idea of the odds of finding one? :/

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2 hours ago, Triop said:

VNpD1sR.png

My eyes!

5 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

I know @Brownhair2 said they're rare and special. But how rare and special? Anyone have an idea of the odds of finding one? :/

According to this it's about 1/20

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Takeoff was much faster this time, in both time and number of tries

Bye_Tidus.png

I must not have done as a good a job as I thought I did though, since this time I made it to orbit with only 92 m/s remaining. That was close!

Vanor_from_Tidus_Orbit.png

Now to recover them!

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