What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Shadowmage]

Played a bit of pinball last night with a Jool probe (during the rare chances I get to actually play KSP):

Eventually I got this to be a capture into Jool by way of Laythe, followed Vall flyby, Tylo flyby, and finally ending in a flyby of Pol (as far out as I could get stable orbit predictions).  Sadly the orbits are still not fully 'stable' when projected 2 years and 6 SOI changes out, so the final flybys will have to be plotted again after arrival in the Jool system.  With patience I can probably get a Bop intercept with only a few more dV and a couple more gravity assists and phasing orbits.

All for a grand total of ~60m/s dV after the Kerbin-ejection burn (~20 at mid-course correction, ~40 at the apo after the Laythe capture to redirect to the 3 fly-bys), without using any aerobraking.  That is 4 flybys with only one in-system maneuver   (and probably more if I could get accurate/stable predictions, especially if phasing orbits could be predicted).

Obligatory rocket pic of the satellite launch :

[astroheiko]

13 hours ago, _Rade said:

Made a propeller driven plane that can fly faster than 900 km/

Cool.....

Do you think this would work on Tellumo too? Does it only work with electricity or do you need fuel? That would be a nice alternative for ISRU.

By the way, I updated my mission report. Here are some impressions ...

 

I have marked all biomes, so I do not forget any.

 

Then go to refill

 

On the way to the next Biom

 

Greetings

[McFarnsworth]

Tried designing an Eeloo probe. Wanted to make it look like a TIE fighter, ... ended up looking like ...

Baymax?

 

Can't win 'em all I guess, back to the drawing board.

[eddiew]

Cracked and increased my science income. 10% is too low for a scaled up Galileo's Planet Pack.

15% it is.

[Slam_Jones]

SlamTek Seeker II in SPH.  It can be differentiated from the original by the wider stance, and the forward-mounted retro-thrusters.

SlamTek Seeker I cruising over Munar Surface

Built what I am calling the SlamTek Seeker, which is a two-Kerbal spacecraft that carries nearly 10,000 m/s of dv, and maintains a solid enough TWR to land and take off from (sans further testing) any airless body in the system.  Its purpose is twofold: one, to give me something fun to fly around the various moons (since I very rarely land anyway), and two, to allow for precise scanning of ore nodes and easy area marking.  Since it uses MPDTs for thrust, it needs a tremendous amount of Electric Charge to run constantly.  As such, I put two small Nuclear Generators on board, as well as 3 very large (but light) batteries to sustain flight while using more power than can be generated.  However, the bonus is that it carries an impressive amount of dv in a relatively small package.

Sunrise launch of the Hangar and the two Seekers

It is equipped with three sets of thrusters: the main set consists of two medium-size MPDTs to provide forward thrust.  The next is a set of two small MPDTs to provide retro-thrust.  Lastly is a set of 4 small MPDTs attached to the bottom of the vessel, to allow for VTOL capabilities.

I then (using the Hangar Mod) built a new Station Section that can store at least two Seekers, loaded them in, and sent it up to dock with the Munar Research Station.  Once there, we loaded a Goelogist and a Pilot into one of the Seekers, and sent them down to the Mun.  It landed safely with about 8,000+m/s of dv remaining, and then cruised just above the surface at a height of less than 1,000 meters and a horizontal speed of 150m/s for nearly a quarter of the planet.  Once horizontal speed was established, I switched to the VTOL thrusters and set the throttle so I had a TWR of 1.00, so I could maintain height and speed.  Landed again to mark a decent ore node, then headed back up to the Munar station.  During the expedition, the Seeker made two landings, cruised low over terrain for nearly half an hour, then returned to the Munar Station with more than half of its fuel remaining.

After that, I made some slight modifications and sent up another Hangar (with two Seeker II ships in it) to be sent off to my Joolian Research Station, which is currently orbiting Pol.

Low Kerbin Orbit

Docked at the Station above Pol

Edited February 6, 2017 by Slam_Jones
Now with pictures!

[Jabbman]

On 05/02/2017 at 5:26 PM, String Witch said:

 

The first one I recognise from the Mk2 Expansion, but what are these other two cockpits from?

This one is from Airplane Plus:

 

And this is from Kerbonov:

[AccidentsHappen]

7 hours ago, DarkOwl57 said:

is that 2 cockpits stuck together? Or a mod? I know I'm nitpicking, but GREAT DRAWING!

Thanks, and don't worry, it's not nitpicking . The cockpit is from a mod. I can't really remember which one, but I'll check tonight. 

Edited February 6, 2017 by AccidentsHappen

[DarkOwl57]

21 minutes ago, AccidentsHappen said:

Thanks, and don't worry, it's not nitpicking . The cockpit is from a mod. I can't really remember which one, but I'll check tonight. 

Thanks

[Gameslinx]

I managed to push out a new update for my planet mod! Unfortunately I'm not getting  as much feedback as I need to develop the mod, so it is tough going, as every release I need to check every planet to see if they still work.

Im also looking for someone who is able to take a look at all the planets so far and give constructive criticism! Here is the link to the mod:

 

Edited February 6, 2017 by Gamel0rd1

[Zeiss Ikon]

This morning, with a half hour to spare on a half-day off work (due to illness overnight), I got time to "review" the staging setup on Selene 1 Mod 3a, the no-boosters version of my Mun/Minmus vessel.  I say "review" staging, because this was intended to be an orbital test, but when the booster ran dry and I hit the space bar, the second stage motor didn't ignite -- check throttle, yep, it's up.  Looked back up at the rocket, and the lander and transfer command pod, still coupled together, were breaking out through the side of the fairing.  Well, that was unexpected.  Fortunately, everything was falling clear of other parts, so I was able to manually deploy the four parachutes, then decouple the transfer command pod before jettisoning the lander's descent and ascent stages.  Once both command pods were under parachute (a good demonstration of an abort procedure, anyway) I reverted the launch and returned to the VAB.  I found that something about the rebuild surrounding inserting a stage break in place of a larger first stage apparently had rearranged my staging order.  Once I got that straightened out, I was out of time to retest the vessel -- so, off to do that tonight.

[eddiew]

Unleash the robot bug!

(Combined @KerikBalm's Rald with @Galileo's planet pack. Feels like a good fit, imho, nice dinky oxygen world with a clear view of the look-but-don't-touch big momma of the system.)

[regex]

9 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Is this some sort of screenshot filter for Photoshop or do you hand-edit these?

[eddiew]

5 minutes ago, regex said:

Is this some sort of screenshot filter for Photoshop or do you hand-edit these?

Manual editing   Sometimes with brightness/contrast/hue adjustments when the screenshots are a bit dodgy. The skybox is in-game though, and provided by @JadeOfMaar

...mostly it's so I can bear to delete vessels and screenshots in a few days time. This way I don't feel a need to keep my save cluttered with ancient probes just to prove they once existed  

[regex]

11 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Manual editing   Sometimes with brightness/contrast/hue adjustments when the screenshots are a bit dodgy. The skybox is in-game though, and provided by @JadeOfMaar

Oh, I was talking more about the layout you were using.

11 minutes ago, eddiew said:

...mostly it's so I can bear to delete vessels and screenshots in a few days time. This way I don't feel a need to keep my save cluttered with ancient probes just to prove they once existed  

I hear you there.

[Red Shirt]

Fly by of Sarnus and its amazing rings. 

Then after finding how easy circularing Ovok was (dv wise) I decided to land the satellite with a Dawn engine.

Not only did it not explode but I made it back to orbit before heading to Slate. 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

This way I don't feel a need to keep my save cluttered with ancient probes just to prove they once existed

More than once, a screenshot is all I have to re-create a vehicle in another save or in a later version of KSP...

[Jett_Quasar]

Updated Kerbal-X with my Star Wars Corvette craft file.

Click the link in my signature below to see the details and download the craft.

- Jett

[cantab]

@Slam_Jones love your craft. Back in the day I did something loosely similar, built it to hover on the electric thrusters on low-grav worlds like Minmus and cruise around at highway-ish speeds. It was great fun, really a new way to explore those places, faster than a rover but more relaxed than a chemical 'hopper'.

As for me now, designed the O-Zone relay sat. Simple design but I kind of like it. Got about 2500 m/s using a Twitch engine, and I have a 909-powered kicker stage for another 4000-ish.

This one's orbiting the Moon (not in shot), I'll also be sending one to Mars to support some other probes going there, and two more can go into solar orbit and drift towards the Sun-Earth L4/5 points.

[Angelo Kerman]

I finally finished the D2 Centrifuge:

Onward to the next set of parts in DSEV's next update!

[regex]

I finally managed to refuel the Cascadia which took a major weight off my shoulders. I'm sending it to Eve for refueling and refit, it'll be getting a communications array and will function more as a command ship/transport. Clearly it isn't intended to push cargo around the inner system.

I also got some great orbital ballet in with the Jool probe, got fly-bys of Laythe, Tylo, and Val before getting a slingshot into low Jool orbit for even more science.

There's a survey probe on its way to Dres and I'll be exploring more options for how to extract science from Eve (with Realistic Atmospheres installed) while I wait for that. KSPIE is starting to pay out, the Thermal Nozzle with a Pebble Bed Reactor is looking very enticing as a main drive system so I may be quiet for a few days while I let that stew, I have to play a few hours of Deus Ex or something and step away.

[Rock3tman_]

On 2/5/2017 at 5:07 PM, BadOaks said:

I made a horizontal lander design for landing rovers and base modules. Jeb managed to stow away on the first test vehicle and, even though it was completely computer operated, claimed credit anyway.

Some other stuff I did:

That is quite the nice design! I've tried to make a horizontal lander like that for a while but the COM-COT offset always gets me. I should probably either get better at balancing or suck it up and install Throttle Control Avionics.

[kraden]

After putting some probes in orbit for the next Niven transfer, I decided to have a go at building a rover to fine tune the location for my Iota base.  I ended up with my first halfway decent rover which was very nice, and my first rover I felt was good enough to try to land on another body.  Jeb and Bill headed to Iota in the new Lander 3 ship which is designed around dropping off a rover.

They headed to the poles and Jeb hopped in before Bill could give his two cents.  After a bit of fun, Jeb settled down and got to work analyzing the surface for "resources of sufficient quantity and quality to merit the construction of a long-term or even self-sustaining base", whatever that means.  Jeb planted a flag anywhere that seemed to get big numbers, that will make the eggheads happy, right?

Jeb stopped to oggle at Gael over some mountains then discovered that this location had the best numbers yet.  It also happened to be fairly flat.

Since this was almost 2k away from the landing site and Jeb was wanting some snacks, he coaxed Bill into flipping the probe core on to come pick him up.

After an uneventful polar departure from Iota and a surprisingly smooth reentry, Jeb and Bill are back home on Gael.  Now its time for the eggheads to design a base.

[MikeZDB]

Today the KSC start the day launching the programmed liftoff of Merkury 3 “Libertad” with Alan Kerman on board!

We continue doing it well!

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 hour ago, MikeZDB said:

Today the KSC start the day launching the programmed liftoff of Merkury 3 “Libertad” with Alan Kerman on board!

Wasn't Alan the one who (historically) opened the hatch too soon after landing and sank his Mercury capsule?  Glad to see your Alan didn't make that mistake...

 

Last night saw the first successful test launch of Selene 1 Mod. 3a, an upgrade of Selene 1 that grew out of the near-fistfight in the design review meeting previously referenced (this design was advanced as "staging is better than just adding more boosters").  As one might expect, performance was less spectacular than the model with strap-on boosters pumping fuel into the core, and liftoff more sedate than the previous Selene 1 Mod. 3 due to the mass of the second stage engine, but the (so far) standard upper stage stack was handily delivered to orbit with approximately 85% fuel remaining in the transfer tanks, and debris (stages, fairing, nose cone) left in immediately suborbital trajectory.

Val and Elyris were in rotation, Val in the lander and Elyris piloting the transfer stage; their mission, barring difficulties getting to orbit, was to plant the first flag on Minmus.  Elyris has previously walked on Mun, and Val has done a Munar flyby, but both commented on the difficulty of setting up a Minmus encounter.  "That little ***** has a teeny little gravity well, and it's hard to hit at this distance" was Val's quotable.  Of course, it didn't help that, due to a failure of mission planning, Mun was directly in the way for any sensible transfer to Minmus.  Solution: wait in parking orbit before burning for Minmus.  The time was spent with binoculars, watching transfer stages from two previous missions finish deorbiting (one with a spectacular mid-air explosion leaving only a shower of lightweight debris to impact at low velocity, the other less brilliantly as the tank and adapter survived the meltdown of the Rhino engine, stabilized base first, and impacted on land at near sonic speed).

Once the light show was over, and Mun had moved along, came the orbit planning session that led to Val's comment.  In the end, a burn was made to extend apoapsis to between the orbits of Mun and Minmus, then another burn at apoapsis to plane match and set up a phasing orbit (technique learned from rendezvous practice in LKO).  Now, it's a matter of waiting for an encounter close enough to make a correction that will permit a capture.  Elyris accused Val of failing to bring a deck of cards because she'd beaten her so badly at gin on their last mission together, but the real deal is that, with the ship still in launch configuration (far less flexible stack, to kept as long as possible), they don't even have the docking hatch to reach through -- so they were reduced to playing Twenty Questions over the intercom.  Fortunately, there's lots of fuel cell power, with the SAS shut down during the long orbits.

Getting home after the landing will be easier -- Kerbin's a nice fat target, and there's no need to hoard dV for capture or stress over plane changes -- the atmosphere does a fine job of slowing down a command pod, if you don't mind sitting under a radiant heater for a few minutes, and inclination really makes little difference in reentry, as long as you can avoid reentering retrograde as Elyris did after her rescue from Munar orbit.

[AccidentsHappen]

@DarkOwl57, the cockpit is from Kerbal Standard.