What did you do in KSP1 today?

[panarchist]

Finally launched my new Deep Space Exploration Vessel to the Cercani star system.

It's kind of long... and large.

Looks good backlit, though.

Estimated 11 year flight time to Cercani (Other Worlds / Kopernicus mods, plus OPM and Keridani - will see them too with the next DSEV).  Using NearFuture, Kerbodyne Plus, DarkSide Technologies, USI-LS and MKS, and possibly a few random parts from SXT and a couple other mods (like the awesome JX2 antenna).  Here's an earlier version with a different antenna cluster (not used) - plan view thanks to Kronal Vessel Viewer:

Crew of 12, but capacity to hold 51.  All that space means the Hab timer for USI-LS/MKS is **19 years**. The ship was lofted in 4 parts on giant Kerbodyne Plus boosters and assembled in orbit.  The antenna cluster was designed and launched, but proved too troublesome to get into the correct orbit, so the crew built one in situ with the ship's UKS shipyard and MaterialKits from the onboard Kontainers, then moved it into place, split the ship, and docked it between the Hab and Control sections.  A resupply mission topped off the MaterialKits again.  The crew is currently several Kerbin-days away from home, already way out past Kerbin's SOI and on a solar escape trajectory towards Cercani, moving at more than 32km/s thanks to @RoverDude's amazing Nuclear Rockets mod.  The Medusa is an awesome engine, and makes this trip possible.

The whole album of current pics can be viewed here, and contains a couple of obscenely large renders of the ship and the boosters.  If you want to download the craft file and fly it, grab it off KerbalX and get ready to install 18 mods if you haven't already.  The craft file is the full ship, if you have Kerbal Joint Reinforcement installed you can launch it straight from the pad with the attached booster.

 

[PolecatEZ]

Using SpaceY Expanded, designed and successfully landed an SSTO that can put 2025t into orbit.  Cost of fuel is around 1.2 million credits.  Design is pushed by 7 Emu engines and 8 Super Ratites, has 64 stock air brakes to slow it down and 144 chutes of various sizes for an un-powered landing (hits at about 14m/s and nothing breaks).

Here she is on the launchpad:

Edited February 15, 2017 by PolecatEZ

[regex]

I did some fast-forwarding.

Klamath had a fatal flaw and I ended up de-orbiting it. I redesigned it fairly quickly and relaunched. The flaw? It would need another ship to refuel it, so I installed an RCS system on it, which will allow it to dock directly with the refinery. I also changed out the cupola for that sweet B9 cockpit, which allowed a second docking port without messing with the rest of the design. Klamath received crew and a life support slug for cargo two days before the scheduled departure. It will be leaving with eight other spacecraft for Dres, probably tomorrow night (I'll have to start early). I don't know if I'm exactly looking forward to coordinating and fine-tuning nine different transfers so I can manage all the braking burns...

Also, DMagic's EVA Struts are a breath of fresh air after the weirdness of KAS/KIS... Whatever happened to the earlier, simple KAS system without all the role-playing doodads and class-based stuff?

Edited February 15, 2017 by regex

[Firemetal]

Ok got it into orbit earlier this morning!

Alright this rocket is going to take some tweaking. It is basically the Atlas 3 in its looks, all except for the main engine and SRBs. Its second stage has about 8000 m/s and the first stage gets decoupled at about 4000 m/s with this payload. This satellite is less than a ton so I am going to have to do some calculating on its payload mass. I had some problems with the decoupling. First of all the procedural fairing interstage didn't separate making me have to revert. I decided to continue using the interstage but with a procedural decoupler instead. However thanks to a bunch of seperatrons that assist the separation, the spacecraft went into an uncontrollable spin. I am not used to RO and the probe core has about no torque compared to its stock counterpart. I am also not used to having a set number of ignitions and wasted them all on trying to regain control. However I was lucky to have a gimbal on the engine and catch it on its last ignition which happened about 20 seconds from apogee hence the high AoA in the fourth picture. I was also eventually able to get into a not very circular 600 by 200 km orbit around Earth. I need to perfect this rocket but it could become in the future a good LEO workhorse.

But that's it for now.

Fire

[DerekL1963]

7 hours ago, regex said:

I don't know if I'm exactly looking forward to coordinating and fine-tuning nine different transfers so I can manage all the braking burns...

I presume you're using Kerbal Alarm Clock?

[regex]

35 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I presume you're using Kerbal Alarm Clock?

Yes but there's also things like time from SOI boundary to end of braking burn, braking burn precision (TWR), course adjustments at AN/DN, stuff like that. Managing one or two craft and doing that isn't a huge deal since you're only worried about two times, but every extra craft messes with that.

[Numerlor]

      

Made SSTO but bill made slight misscalculations

Edited February 15, 2017 by Numerlor

[capi3101]

(1.1.3) Signed the lease on a new house yesterday, which put the kibosh on any KSP playing and likely will continue to do so into the near future.

I had some time to play on Monday. Began the day flying an Auk II passenger spaceplane to the Kerbinport space station with pilot Jenwin Kerman and three one-star utter rookies (i.e. ex-rescuees pulled from LKO) aboard. After docking, the four were transferred to the ferry ship Next Objective, with Jenwin taking operational capsule command of the craft, ex-commander Buremy Kerman being transferred to command the sister ship Strange Cargo while Jeb is off to Duna. Strange Cargo departed for a Mün expedition and the remaining ferry ship The Great Artiste left for Minmus shortly thereafter. Next Objective departed Kerbinport last of the three and conducted a mission to rescue scientist Kelbus Kerman from LKO before burning for Mün. Strange Cargo and Next Objective should arrive at Mün in about two days, and The Great Artiste should reach Minmus in twelve days. I've confirmed that the Munport space station is fully fueled at the moment and I can go ahead and warp ahead to Strange Cargo's arrival when next I play, which is good since there are two expeditions inbound at this point. I imagine that the crew at the Piper Alpha refinery on the münar surface will be quite busy when those two ships arrive, especially given that there are no fewer than four surface excursions planned when they get there...

[Thrawn889]

1 hour ago, Numerlor said:

      

Made SSTO but bill made slight misscalculations

I am very jealous of you people who can build SSTO and fly them around. I struggle to get my vertical rockets into orbit without drift. i blow up every plane that i build. XD 

[Numerlor]

16 minutes ago, Thrawn889 said:

I am very jealous of you people who can build SSTO and fly them around. I struggle to get my vertical rockets into orbit without drift. i blow up every plane that i build. XD 

I didn't even expect to build SSTO with that I was just fooling around and when I tried it, I suddenly was in air with 2000m/s velocity and 40km apoapsis so I just went with it, I wanted to make something so I can launch my satellite out of atmosphere with plane

Edited February 15, 2017 by Numerlor
Typos, Typos everywhere

[Red Shirt]

On 2/13/2017 at 3:14 PM, eloquentJane said:

If you're visiting Plock-Karen, there's another mod that can add a couple of moons to it that you should check out: Xen's Planet Collection. When using OPM, the moons from XPC that would ordinarily be around Eeloo are moved to orbit around Plock (or Plock-Karen if you also have SigmaBinary installed). It's nice because it provides more analogues of Pluto's moons.

I had XPC installed a few versions back and never got around to re-adding the moons for Plock (when OPM is used otherwise they orbit Elloo). So before leaving the system I grabbed and installed. 

Beros was first to be orbited. Note Plock/Karen in the background:

Next was Kyx:

While this mod is a fun add on, I would love for someone to go all out and add the two other moons, putting all in the proper resonance. Not sure if the crazy orbits are possible but bonus points if you can make it happen. The Plock system is so far away it deserves to be special. 

I actually did the Beros and Kyx orbits late on Monday along with transfers to Urlum and then Neidon because the probe was way over designed dv wise, I almost completed trips to all the moons. I had one moon left to visit when I shut down. Why wait until today to post? Yesterday as I was trying to finish up, this happened:

Loaded up the game on Valentines Day to find Thatmo had transformed into a shiny Mun. Didn't realize what was going on at first, but when I set up a transfer back to Neidon. Uhhhmm, well it was also Mun. Map mode confirmed the Kerbal system was filled with Muns. Spent the rest of my game time trying to figure out how I had messed up the game. (Hint it wasn't my fault) Today Valentines Day is over and the Kerbal system is normal. Yeah, yeah, the Mun is romantic, whatever you jolly joker. (Well done) 

Edited February 15, 2017 by Red Shirt

[Red Shirt]

One more picture:

Make it full size so you can see. Far left side of Neidon, first bright dot is Jool. The Reddish one is Duna. The next bright one is the sun (Kerbol if you prefer), Just to the right of the sun, the first dimmer dot is Kerbin with Eve next to it. Also I find this interesting, with the skybox I'm using (Prood's Milky Way), Orion can be spotted below Neidon.  

[septemberWaves]

16 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

While this mod is a fun add on, I would love for someone to go all out and add the two other moons, putting all in the proper resonance.

Having analogues for all five moons would be pretty nice. Isn't there one which has a very high spin rate too? That would be interesting to see.

[Red Shirt]

3 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

Having analogues for all five moons would be pretty nice. Isn't there one which has a very high spin rate too? That would be interesting to see.

Check this out http://www.space.com/31071-plutos-moons-orbit-pandemonium-new-horizons.html

 

[Kertech]

So as stated earlier, weird but where the orbital view of kerbin was changed to be the mun...

 

i remove all mods, delete game, redownload, play kerbin is normal, install all mods (fresh download) kerbin turns into mun. Install mods one at a time (taking 3 hours of real time) kerbin remains normal, and is now stable! (Insert expletive here!!!)

[kraden]

@Kertech check Red Shirt's post 4 above yours. I think someone was playing a prank.

[DarkOwl57]

2 minutes ago, kraden said:

@Kertech check Red Shirt's post 4 above yours. I think someone was playing a prank.

Probably a mod owner deciding "You know what I'll do? I'll turn everything into the Mun!"

[Galileo]

11 minutes ago, Kertech said:

So as stated earlier, weird but where the orbital view of kerbin was changed to be the mun...

 

i remove all mods, delete game, redownload, play kerbin is normal, install all mods (fresh download) kerbin turns into mun. Install mods one at a time (taking 3 hours of real time) kerbin remains normal, and is now stable! (Insert expletive here!!!)

Let me guess, you had sigma binary installed? Lol this is too funny

[kraden]

@Galileo that's funny. As soon as it started to click that it was likely a joke, I thought to myself, "well it wasn't Galileo's doing".

[The Budgey Admiral]

Today, I was bored and it was getting late. You will see why that is important later.

So I decided to do something I normally won't do: A VTOL. A small one. And I wanted it to look something like a bug. Somewhat cute. And it should still (more or less) fly. The result was this:

This beauty bears the name "Fragonfly" ( Now you see why the time was important, was a typo and I was too lazy to redo the blueprinting. Normally I won't be this lazy but hey, it turned out well at least). She is somewhat flyable, however forward thrust is worse than horrible, so you can not really sustain an ascent with the single Juno.

 

Made in KSP 1.0.5. No mods, sandbox mode.

[septemberWaves]

I tested the aerodynamics of an unconventional space shuttle design. Full mission report can be found here.

[Kertech]

I've been doing assessments so not scanning the forums, not even April yet!!!

[eddiew]

Finished up the rover expedition on Niven with a trip to the Lowlands. Since Desert Willy proved to be basically indestructible during the excursions to the Trench and the Midlands, the crew decide to send pilot Jay out with scientist Ollie for the final run, risking the inability to repair a puncture but gaining some good field data.

It's always a little sad when you have to leave a rover behind, but Desert Willy's RTG will keep him going for many, many years after the solar panels dust over. Also, he's really heavy and we can't spare the fuel.

The ascent is a little tight on fuel, but Jay's piloting is accurate and catches an intercept with the orbiting transfer stage just barely after their AP. Docking however... may not be his forte.

Despite having their head on backwards, the crew decides it probably isn't a major problem and prepares for the return to Gael. Not like anyone at mission control has their heads screwed on right after all...

[astroheiko]

Today I have my mothership fully equipped again. There was an additional tank, another satellite, a rover and a parachute.

 

Afterwards there was a meeting with the tanker and then everything was ready for the trip to Gratian.

 

The maneuver node is set, tomorrow it starts.

Greetings

 

[regex]

Welp, it's done. 9 spacecraft on their way to Dres. It's certainly not the most I've seen done on these forums but it feel like a lot, took nearly one and a half hours. I let MechJeb handle most of it, aside from creating the adjustments burns (due to low TWR as usual), while I responded to requests from work.

All nine will get further adjustment burns tonight in order to space out their arrival somewhat, make things less hectic. I'm hoping this is already the case but I'm going to shut the game down now and come back to it later tonight.

Here's Klamath making its adjustment burn and the parade of craft leaving Kerbin.