What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Kerbital]

Here is the strangest thing I've built this week:

And the largest thing I built so far, I had to use cheat to get it to orbit:

 

Edited January 27, 2017 by Kerbital

[Odonian]

52 minutes ago, Tyko said:

That's just awesome! How'd you get that monstrosity off Kerbin?

Four SpaceY Quad-Emu engines and a lot of fuel did the trick quite handily. Not too many problems that can't be solved with a few Quad-Emus and a lot of fuel.

[CaptainTrebor]

Performed my first orbital rendevous (sort of, with use of the jetpack for the last km or so). Jeb is safe in the craft, but Bill is still out there. Going to try using the prodigous amounts of RCS fuel the craft have though. 

Edit: So I've decided to sent the craft containing Jeb and Val home, then come back for Bill.

Edit 2: Performed a very dangerous aerobrake, with only 39.92 out of 800 ablator left on Jeb and Val's capsule.

 

Edited January 27, 2017 by CaptainTrebor

[Tyko]

51 minutes ago, CaptainTrebor said:

Performed my first orbital rendevous (sort of, with use of the jetpack for the last km or so). Jeb is safe in the craft, but Bill is still out there. Going to try using the prodigous amounts of RCS fuel the craft have though. 

Edit: So I've decided to sent the craft containing Jeb and Val home, then come back for Bill.

Edit 2: Performed a very dangerous aerobrake, with only 39.92 out of 800 ablator left on Jeb and Val's capsule.

 

wow! that's a crazy amount. A typical re-entry from Mun / Minmus usually uses less than 100. Was your re-entry really shallow? Craft seem to get a lot hotter as they plow through the upper atmosphere. I've found that setting my PE around 30Km gets the ship into the middle layers more quickly and reduces heat.

[DarkOwl57]

1 minute ago, Tyko said:

wow! that's a crazy amount. A typical re-entry from Mun / Minmus usually uses less than 100. Was your re-entry really shallow? Craft seem to get a lot hotter as they plow through the upper atmosphere. I've found that setting my PE around 30Km gets the ship into the middle layers more quickly and reduces heat.

Yeah; most guides I've seen have recommended going in anywhere from 25 to 35k for maximum slowing-down potential

[Jett_Quasar]

This is what an eclipse looks like on Duna

 

-Jett

Edited January 28, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[CaptainTrebor]

Yeah, it was a real shallow re-entry as I only has a limited amount of RCS fuel - the craft escaped the atmosphere twice before slowing down enough to stay in the atmosphere, and before the first re-entry the apoapsis was up around the Mun.

Edited January 27, 2017 by CaptainTrebor

[KerrMü]

 

Hi Folks

After circumnavigating Duna two times in my propeller plane without wanting to (Don´t ask. contract shenanigans... 6000km flight that took a long looong time), I took a break for a week. And then I just wanted to build something after all that flying. So I needed a late career project.

I´ve never attempted a Jool 5 mission, but since 1.1 I thought the part count level could be high enough to design such a mission the way I want to.

This was my 1.1 design:

I thought it could be nice if I could land on Pol to refuel, so I put the Tylo(and all other moons)lander with the mining equipment at the bottom between the main fuel tanks. But the way things are, Pol isn´t nearly as flat as minmus, so landing could be hazardous. And the Laythe SSTO doesn´t work that well in 1.2 anyway. So this went into the bin. Let´s start from scratch.

 My first concept for a Jool 5 Ship in 1.2. I really liked it, but the tanks are too small I think, and the ring is cool, but too much dead weight. So I kept the good aspects and changed everything else. Premise: If you can´t have a ring, make it at least 100m long.

This is now my official Jool 5 ship, the "KSS Kubrick", lauched in 5 parts in my career save. Assembled in LKO with just enough fuel to reach a 100 000km orbit. That´s where I park my E-class asteroids for refueling. It sucked 1 and a half asteroids completely dry, but hey, that´s what they´re there for. It´s designed for a crew of 8 Kerbonauts, driven by 12 LV-Ns and a Rhino (for initial boost and hairy maneuvers) and the mothership without lander and SSTO has got a fuel capacity of 235575 Lf, 43725 O and 18000 units of ore. I suspect that might not be sufficient, but I´ve already put an automated mining station on pol for a contract.

So long story short, today I began my very first Jool 5 mission with Val, Jeb, Bill, Bob and 4 other brave Kerbals who might not come back. For now they left Kerbins SOI to meet up with yet another asteroid to top off the tanks. Transfer window to Jool is coming up soon.

 

And on a sidenote; I finally found a use for my Clawlifter that I built almost a year ago. It´s perfect for picking up small asteroids that didn´t land exactly where I wanted.

So long, have fun!

Edited January 27, 2017 by KerrMü

[Fearless Son]

23 hours ago, Carl said:

That sounds fun. In the DF sense of the word...

!!Urist McKerman!! cancels job: Pilot airplane - craft unavailable

[Carl]

1 minute ago, Fearless Son said:

!!Urist McKerman!! cancels job: Pilot airplane - craft unavailable

That is exactly what would happen if we could have a KSP version of DF.

[Fearless Son]

4 minutes ago, Carl said:

That is exactly what would happen if we could have a KSP version of DF.

Kerbals and DF dwarfs are a lot alike, now that I think about it.  Both are extremely industrious, both are prone to starting massive over-built projects that they may or may not even finish that may or may not even be practical, and both are so focused that they are almost unaware of the danger they regularly place themselves in.  

Oh!  And both are prone to do ridiculous things FOR SCIENCE!

Edited January 28, 2017 by Fearless Son

[Carl]

True, though where unlikely to get an incident like the one that got the "worst things you've done in DF thread" deleted...

 

Note, for the uninitiated, farming sentient mermaids for their bones to sell for money was amongst the mid-grade evil things people gleefully do in DF. It gets worse from there. This got a thread deletion, a ban on further such thread and a complete community consensus without any discussion to never speak of the details or the offender ever again.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Carl

[AccidentsHappen]

Fooled around in my Sandbox save. Made some more planes that didn't work very well. Realised I forgot to feed my lizard. So I did that.

And then though it would be cool to make a lizard in KSP. I'll probably have trouble articulating the limbs, but I'll work on it. 

[Guest]

Made BillyBob a HD and he went Outlaw!

 

[Sharpy]

So, I decided to try building a radio mast, to reach farther over Kerbin curvature.

It's currently 1.2km tall. I still have enough segments to make it over 2km tall. Needs a wider base though, tips over if I decouple the blimp. (although using the same technique as the mast, I can make 50m long supports in all directions easily, which should suffice.)

 

[The Raging Sandwich]

My older computer is about to die, so we got a new one. The file for my main KSP game where I put all my stuff may be corrupted, so I may have to start a new game. I hope not and at the same time, I do sort of want to start a new game.

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey ho Guys, Gals and Kerbonauts.

The last few days were busy.

Val was assigned to work with the research Sien cient seentiss smart guys.

They are working on designing a better Mun Lander.

Jeb and her conducted high tech simulation of the upcoming Gemini-Surveyor-Mun shot.

 

They later helped test the Ejection seats on the Gemini-Mun-Ship. From Zero speed-Zero height all the way to MaxQ.

 

Later Jeb Went flying (To unwind).

 

And then (In his euphoria) decided to Buzz the launchpad.

 

The Director of Flight Crew Operations knew about that one before Jeb made it back to the Grass strip......

 

He is grounded......

 

For now.

 

ME

 

 

 

[septemberWaves]

Updated my long-term career with both the first spacewalk and the first orbiter around another celestial body.

[Brownhair2]

This week, on Messing with Config Files:

Edited January 28, 2017 by Brownhair2

[regex]

The Dres transfer window was a lie, so I put a sat into space for nothing. Well, nothing at least for now, there's a Jool window, an Eve window, and the actual Dres window open before the DTV comes home, plenty to do.

Speaking of which, I went ahead and got everyone into nice stable orbits around Duna. Supply raft first, then we had some EVA action in interplanetary space before I remembered that the science lab could reset experiments. Plenty of fuel left after the braking burn, I think I'll end up at Ike scavenging fuel from the supply raft and maybe even from the DTV tanks to make a few landings after the main landing at Duna, depends on how fun that ends up being. The lander will be left in orbit, no need to ferry that dead weight back to Kerbin. Once I rendezvous with the supply raft I'll decide how long we'll stay here, maybe send additional fuel out for the lander and really farm Ike for all it's worth. Of course, I've already stuffed the science lab full of data but I'm going to need every bit for all the KSPIE stuff if my 0.23 game involving the old KSPI was any indication.

[Jett_Quasar]

And now for something completely different.

-Jett

Edited January 28, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[JadeOfMaar]

The Science Van grew, coming to have 4 Juno engines for forward and reverse drive. That old kerb Bob drove it across the sea and onto the mainland to explore and do science but it was discovered upon leaving the water that 1/3 of the total dV that was thought to be there is not; the tanks having returned to containing LFO and not LF alone.

At the end of the day... the Leapfrog family of flying science farmer vessels emerged, starting with 0, a probe that failed to make high altitude, then Leapfrog 1, a taller, manned version able to make 85km going straight up. Bob flew it once simply for his ability to reset the materials bay and the goo. Jebediah piloted for him from within KSC...

But then he got his turn to escape the confines of the sky again. His bones creaked with glee at the opportunity to step outside drift around the ship. Both fellows were captivated by the familiar thrill of going way up and coming back down. The two of them also forgot to activate the magnetometer in space and get that science......

* GPP with Texture Replacer makes the orange-suits into (un)retired seniors.

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

Last night, I made my second Munar landing ever.  It was remarkably like the first.

Getting to the Mun is easy(ish) in sandbox.  Getting down to the surface without burning way too much fuel is a bit harder.  Elyris wound up burning back into a vertical rebound -- three times -- before getting the landing legs planted.  And then, when she was sure the lander was stable, she switched off the SAS and RCS -- and the lander promptly tipped over, pointed upslope.  Fortunately, I put a lot of RCS authority on my ships, so after retracting the legs, Elyris was able to stand it up with the combination of RCS and the command pod's reaction wheels.  Unfortunately, when it was time to leave the Munar surface to rendezvous with Jeb in the return pusher, she was late tipping horizontal, with too much vertical velocity (= wasted fuel), and wound up suborbital with a high apoapsis and a subsurface periapsis (probably would have been suborbital even with a perfect launch, though).  And, due to the weird order RCS fuel is used when maneuvering the whole second stage/lander/pusher stack, her RCS tanks ran dry about 30 m/s short of getting a positive periapsis height (Jeb was sitting in orbit with a nearly full RCS tank).

With no practical chance for Jeb to rendezvous and dock to give a push (she'd also launched from Mun too late, he was ahead of her in a ~25 km orbit), Elyris bailed and circularized with her EVA pack, while Jeb headed back to Kerbin (because the pusher and lander were both Mk. 1 command pods, so Jeb didn't have a seat for her).  He's now en route back with another identical ship, and will attempt to get close enough (after multiple rendezvous and docking practice flights in LKO) for Elyris to board the new lander so she can come home...

[eddiew]

Unleash the science lab!

[Kosmonaut]

On 11/27/2015 at 2:46 AM, KerbMav said:

The memory leak - and my mods - limits the time I can play before a restart, so I often drift back to marathoning Dr Who. (I want David Tennant back!)

The struggle is real