What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Zeiss Ikon]

Today was the shakedown flight of Selene 1 Mod. 3a1.

 

(Pad shot posed, actual crew for the mission was Elyris and new recruit Leedra).

As previously noted, this vessel represents a convergence of the two branches of the Selene 1 family of launchers, with two boosters that pump fuel into the core, plus a second core stage.  This first launch, the vessel reached orbit with about 15% fuel remaining in the upper core stage, allowing deorbit of that core stage and needing only to circularize again with the transfer stage motor and fuel.

With Mun in a better position than last mission, a direct transfer to Minmus allowed the outbound journey to take only four days.  Leedra, flying the transfer stage, found the transfer setup easy enough, though in fairness, she did credit the assistance of Elyris, who flew that seat on the last trip.  Capture to Minmus orbit, lowering apses, and circularizing at 13 km was routine.  At that point, it was up to Elyris to accomplish something never attempted previously.

With careful setup, she arranged to land within walking distance of the descent stage and flag left by Val on the previous Minmus mission.  Never much for walking, despite coming down after local sunset and landing in pitch darkness, Elyris flew the instruments well enough to land gently just forty meters from the previous descent stage -- then took a gentle hop to allow extending the landing legs.  That detail taken care of, she settled in to wait for the sun to rise.

Fortunately, Minimus isn't tide locked to Kerbin as Mun is (rotation close to six Kerbin days), so it didn't take weeks to wait out the night, just a little over three days.  Once it was light outside, Elyris made the requisite EVA to plant a second flag next to Val's, then spent a few minutes hopping around, jumping over the lander, and pirouetting as she floated.  Eventually, it was time to reboard.  Not wanting to create confusion generations hence over which lander was actually that of the first landing on Minmus, Elyris chose to use the remaining fuel in her descent stage to return to orbit (very easy on Minmus), then jettisoned that stage into a suborbital path to be destroyed by impact on the pudding moon's surface.  That done, she had nearly full ascent tanks to use in flying her rendezvous and docking with the transfer stage, which she did neatly and quickly.

Once docked, Leedra set up the return, and it was time to break out the cards.  Despite being a little wet behind the ears, Leedra didn't let Elyris lure her into playing gin; so the journey from Minmus back to Kerbin was spent playing Old Maid.  The pair were last seen passing Mun's orbit, bound for a 35 km periapsis over Kerbin for reentry, with more than 40% fuel remaining in the transfer stage.

[eddiew]

First kermanned planetary landing in 3.2x. Despite the relatively low-tech conventional parts, nothing exploded and everything worked as planned!   (Except for the game locking up 3 times when trying to disembark Leo, the scientist. I haven't worked that one out yet...)

Also, got an unexpected contract to move Tripover rover around Rald a little - specifically straight down into the volcano I'd left him parked on the edge of...

Turned out to be surprisingly lucrative, chasing a chain of 4 waypoints. Didn't know that was stock  

Lastly, the first photo from the Eaglehawk I probe as it arrives at Otho and swings past the largest moon Augustus is frankly enough to make any kerbal a little turgid. 

[Jabbman]

I posted something off-topic in this thread...

[Ty Tan Tu]

I completed my tour of the Kerbol system! I have now visited all the major planets and moons.

Here is Bop

 

and here is Tylo..

I used the last two legs to try out a new simplified equation for ejection angles for Hohmann transfers. It works great if the target and your orbit are close to circular.

It uses a constant (1/(2*SQRT2)) which equals ~0.35355, I am not even sure what that number is, but it is amazingly useful.

I got me to Val...

And Pol

My diversion has been fun, and I am not sure I want to stop. I think I might go back to Kerbin and explore the "?" hovering about the planet before getting serious again. :-)

Edited February 12, 2017 by Ty Tan Tu

[septemberWaves]

19 minutes ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

It uses a constant (1/(2*SQRT2)) which equals ~0.35355, I am not even sure what that number is, but it is amazingly useful.

If you want a geometrical answer, that number is exactly one quarter of the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle when the other two sides are of length 1. It's also half of sin(60) or cos(30). The trigonometrical answer for what the number is is probably the reason why it's useful in that calculation you used. Geometrical numbers like that tend to pop up quite a lot in physics-related mathematics.

EDIT: It's not half of sin(60) or cos(30). It's half of sin(45) or cos(45).

Edited February 12, 2017 by eloquentJane

[Kerbital]

I'm messing around with mods and Tweakscale:) I've build another giant thing, the aptly named Kolossus, a liquid fuel atomic monstrosity. The largest tank is 10m. Now that I discovered the hangar expansion mod, going nuts The huge reaction wheel actually works, it maneuvers without thrusters.

 

[RocketPilot573]

My rocket was sad because it didn't have a home so I gave it one.

 

[Maelstrom Vortex]

Remids me of my megalith I made for the lift challenge a long time ago. A jumbo jet that can ssto and re-enter.

 

Edited February 12, 2017 by Maelstrom Vortex

[Guest]

Launching CSMs for Hygieia and Hestia. I would've preferred to use the cupola at the top but 2.5m is my standard size most things are designed for and I want docking ports front and back for an indefinite number of inline attachments.

KVV cuts deployables off but you get the idea. It masses 60t laden (34t of which is food) and can feed a single Kerbal for 37 years with the recycler running. It has RCS to dock itself and potentially serve as an escape pod from the rest of the craft if one of those nuclear lightbulbs explodes, though delta-v is limited to something like 200m/s.

 

Even with it folded the launch employs a comedy fairing, which means just another day at the KSC really but I prefer to avoid these if I can. I originally designed the CSM to use Porkjet's small inflatable centrifuge, but the DarkSide one doesn't cause me technical issues.

 

The launch for Hygieia wasn't crewed, but the only unmanned control unit is on the launch vehicle's service module, so this will need to be transposed once the crew is inside. The CSM launch for Hestia involved a pilot.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Guest

[Jett_Quasar]

One of my favorite moments...

- Jett

Edited February 12, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[Kertech]

3 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

One of my favorite moments...

- Jett

whenever I do this I find myself humming the thunderbirds theme...

[eddiew]

Homeward bound...

The debriefing reveals that the crew are in good health, but kind of sweaty. The engineering team is sent a memo to consider the aerodynamics of the return capsule in future. Lyssa intercepts the memo, on the basis that flying the pod like a frisbee is way too much fun to not happen again. To avoid suspicion, she alters it to simply read "include barf bags".

As the scientists pore excitedly over the mission results, the Mo'dur station crew also get to work on their copy. Between them, much fine research is produced, and some exciting spicy flavours extracted from the sandy surface samples. The Council of Chefs is sure these will sell well on the open market.

[Puggonaut]

mucking about with visuals

[Kerbital]

36 minutes ago, Puggonaut said:

mucking about with visuals

 

 

[Puggonaut]

4 minutes ago, Kerbital said:

 

Riverdance the Mun Tour

p:s what did you use to add the bubble shapes for the speaky bits ?

[Kerbital]

It's a Photoshop Custom Shape called Talk Bubbles:

http://www.laughing-lion-design.com/2016/06/creating-speech-bubbles-in-photoshop-using-the-custom-shape-tool-2/

Edited February 12, 2017 by Kerbital

[eddiew]

The images returned from Eaglehawk's mission around Otho are frankly enough to moisturise pants all through the KSC.

 

[astroheiko]

As you may know, I flew from Thalia to Icarus and had only 63 m/s dV left on arrival. That was scarce but it should became even more extreme.
I knew that I would need over 7000 m/s dV to get back to Gael. After exploring the planet, I refueled the mothership and at the last start from the surface with the lander I left just enough oxidizer on board to reach the mothership to have little ballast.

My first attempt I had at a 70km Orbit, but during the maneuver the Periapsis went under the planet surface and so I had to try it from 100km.

Here is a picture during the planning of the maneuver. As you can see, I have 7381 m/s dV available. If necessary, I can still throw the rear away tank and leave the tractor behind to get more dV. 4507 m / s would consume the first ignition, a huge burn - almost 23 minutes.

 

In the second picture you can see that it should be just enough to stay in the Gael system. That will be scarce - And I'll have to make corrections too.

 

In the meantime, I actually had to leave the tank and the tractor overboard. When I arrived in the system I saved and the first two attempts failed. Out of fuel. Aerobraking does not work if you arrive with nearly 5000 m/s at the Periapsis. But a little braking, i dont need much, just a little bit .... Hmm

So I chosed a periapsis of 58km and tried it, plus burning. And it worked - the solar cells were very hot. But I had to leave something to get the periapsis out of the atmosphere. After the first brake maneuver I had an apoapsis of 71000km. Just so stayed in it.

 

3 times I went through the atmosphere, then I have used the last drops to get a stable orbit.

 

Ap at 12307km and Pe at 505km. Now comes the tanker. That was close

Edited February 12, 2017 by astroheiko

[Puggonaut]

Erm

[NISSKEPCSIM]

Today I launched two of my Bricklayer spacecraft to rescue some kerbals from orbit. The first one was relatively straightforward, Claudena Kerman was in a 150 by 150 orbit. The other one, Dunbas Kerman, was slightly harder to reach, in a 7 million by 7 million orbit, but I got to both of them and returned them to Kerbin safely (kind of).

I forgot to take pictures of the first mission and the launch of the second mission, but here are the other ones from the second.

Rendezvous:

Come on Jeb! Line the cursor up with the maneuver node on the navball. Whats wrong? You can't read the navball, because it's black? Don't be daft, Jeb! It's not a glitch with raster prop monitor!

Aerobraking:

And.... touchdown!

And, yes. I did forget to turn off autocut on my drogue chute, and forgot to deploy my main ones during the first mission.

 

 

 

[Tex_NL]

Kerbal Camping Program

Jeb took out his truck and invited Val for a road trip.

The thermometer hinge worked like a charm but I had to resort to some dirty trickery to prevent the trailer from jumping off on rough terrain.

 

[Planetace]

I completed a new task I set for myself, Geostationary Orbit!

What's more! I made a GIF of Satellite Alpha in orbit

 

My hands have never felt this tired...

Edited February 12, 2017 by Planetace

[DBT85]

I got Valentina stuck in orbit around Minmus AGAIN. 

 

I got greedy, landed on the surface, got a ton of science and then flew across and got more from another spot. Leaving me not enough to get back off the surface and back home. So she's sitting in a weird orbit with about 600 science and I now have to try to go and get her. 

Except that I don't have great relay satellites yet so while I can do probe things in LKO, I can't do anything as far away as Mun let alone Minmus until I install new relays. So the mission tonight is to upgrade my relays so that I can then get a probe out to Valentina.

Grrrrr.

[Francois424]

On ‎2017‎-‎02‎-‎03 at 6:10 PM, Haruspex said:

It's Year 50 of the Kerbal Space Age. The Fifth Interplanetary Expedition has reached Bop.

( Previously: Jool - Pol )

Bop is the last moon where it's practical to refuel the mothership for Laythe and Tylo flyby, because Vall's gravity is too high to shuttle ore with the Explorer lander. We'll have to fill the tanks to the brim here.

An orbital survey satellite is deployed. Alas! There is no connection to KSC. On Pol, there were a few lucky moments when we were able to communicate with Kerbin, but not now. Well, Bop's gravity is low, so we'll just land in a random place and hop around blindly until there's some ore. There should be enough fuel for more than a few hops.

The crew is aboard the Explorer and we're going to boop Bop!

- Heya Bop!
- Yo Bop yo ole lump of...!
- Hi Bop! We love you~ <3
 

...And, on this historic day of 50-274, the proud flag of New Keralonian Republic flies high over the rocks of Bop. The Fifth Interplanetary has successfully landed.

But what's next? Tylo, of course!

Your Mothership fully assembled resembles the Cyberlab from Captain Future a bit (god I loved that show... well most of it).

Looks great !

[N_Danger]

After breakfast Val steps out for a morning drive

Duna is big

And 25 KM later. I found a thing

Spoiler

 

Val noted that the rover handed better without the deployable solar array. And when asked what happened to the solar array she was quoted as saying "Never Mind!"

The return to the station went well. Aside from running out of fuel and needing rescuing by Jeb. Really well.