What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Planetace]

This took my sweat, blood and tears to build and fly to the moon. Only to find out then quicksaving 3 meters above the ground means that it will phase through the terrain each time I quickload and then blow itself up in a glorious explosion.

So yea, this craft was a pain to land. Not hard to fly with its boosters but OH BOY, when landing I accidentally made it so I quicksaved 3 meters above the terrain, you can guess what happened everytime I quickload. In the end, I just downloaded hyperedit, use the landing command and replicated the landing but in a better style. Its not cheating, I was just trying to preform a thing, only for my lord to started to play with me. I hope the lord got enough satisfaction, or else I will have to sacrifice more kerbals. Anyways, I am pleased with this hunk of machinery! Now to rescue that kerbal...

Oh yea, and didn't I mention this isn't the first of its kind...

The first one didn't go smoothly...

Alright enough talking, more beauty shots!

The smallest cargo bay plays host to a small exploration ship.

The bottom of the craft holds 3 mining drills and a large docking port. Currently, the ship has none docked to the large docking pory, but I have orders from a certain company to make a scrapyard on the Mun... And this beast might come in handy for refueling their outpost...

Edited February 25, 2017 by Planetace

[eddiew]

Icarus probe. Because I got drunk and didn't think of the consequences when I accepted the contract.

Icarus is... challenging to reach in my playthrough. In fact, it requires somewhere in the region of 17km/s from Gael orbit. And you're going to hit Icarus' minuscule SoI at something like 12km/s and you have to shed all of it within about 10 minutes.

Kerbal Atomics engine to the rescue. Delivering over 30m/s of acceleration, the fearsome Emancipator engine chews through the entire hydrogen supply long before reaching periapsis - which is fine, since Swiftbird still needs to lose another 2km/s. But the nuclear engine has bought enough time to do it even with the piddly thrust of the efficient argon engine, and the probe parks up in a nice polar orbit and deploys its sensors.

It's going to be quite a long time before we plan a return mission here... But on the up side, with the data from Rald mostly processed, the tech tree is nearly full; and that means it's almost time to kick in Kerbal R&D! One more landing and return from a new body should get us there, so it looks like Eta or Geminus needs to be our next port of call.

[joacobanfield]

I landed on Minmus with a base, and did my first orbital docking.

Edit: Also, the base's processing lab made me some 5000 science...over the course of fifteen years. Hope Jeb and company liked Minmus, because they're not coming back.

Edited February 26, 2017 by joacobanfield
News update!

[Thrawn889]

Erm I spent all evening trying to work out what i can do to listen to all you awesome guys that replied with advice in 

Thank you a lot all of you for all your help. I have started playing around using SFB's to get to orbit rather than waste the money asparagus launching with twin boars. Using MechJeb and reverting a lot i needed to get to orbit safely and retrieve two Kerbal's from the mun as a rescue mission. My current attempts on a style the cost is about 60k so half my previous costs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[munlander1]

I Landed on duna for the very first time! about 2/3 through the return burn. 9 more minutes to go!

[Brownhair2]

Took a break from KSP. I was going to wait for the New Horizons update to make my grand return, but I figured while I waited I would try out GPP. I hadn't used it in the past because I didn't like the realistic look, but my extended break has cleared my palate enough for me to give it a chance.

I'm going to transfer a few of my ships from my New Horizons save, but not all of them because the VAB and SPH are a cluttered mess and I'd like to avoid that this time.

Aforementioned ships include:

MOTHER:

Reason: How could I not? It's my most-used interplanetary tug. It's also my only one, but that's purely coincidence.

Tryke:

Reason: This was the lander I used in my Jool mission. The little rover was a lot of fun to drive around.

Titanus Tellumo Ascent Vehicle:

Reason: Self-explanatory, although I'm not sure if I'll actually land on Tellumo after my encounter with Titanus.

Luna:

Reason:  I was a bit bummed out that the Luna's delta-v margins were a bit tight in the Sonnah system. Hopefully the Gael system will be more forgiving.

Wader:

Reason: Hadrian.

And so, of course, I'm going to start my space program by not using any of those. Instead I built an SSTO because I felt like it:

This is the Javelin. I'm sending it to Iota. Now that I think about it I could've sent the Luna, which would've been easier to land with thanks to its VTOL engines, but I've managed to land planes on moons without atmospheres in the past.

Then I also put a MOTHER in orbit:

I haven't actually decided where to go, but I can take my time.

EDIT: Actually the Luna is useless now. It uses all of its fuel getting to orbit. I have no idea what changed. I really liked it

Edited February 28, 2017 by Brownhair2

[Gaarst]

Builded a plane !

Wings don't move unfortunately

(Handles surprisingly nice for a plane that I built, not sure why. Also probably the first plane that I ever built that I find genuinely beautiful, maybe because it's based off one of my favorite IRL planes, but still: I'm making progress!)

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 minutes ago, Brownhair2 said:

Reason: How could I not? It's my most-used interplanetary tug. It's also my only one, but that's purely coincidence.

That cockpit, what's it from?? And those engines just behind the radiators?

[suicidejunkie]

Add Moar Struts achieved:

It was still wobbly; the Kerbals fled the physics bubble in the truck.

The RTG powered DTS-M1 on top + Omni is designed provide contact with a matching reflector on Mun, and bring Kerbal Internet to the southern continents of Kerbin.

[Brownhair2]

16 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

That cockpit, what's it from?? And those engines just behind the radiators?

The cockpit is from the WIP mod Mk 3 Expansion, and the engine is from the Atomic Age mod

[Zeiss Ikon]

Today marked the first test flight of the new Munar Explorer, built with the latest available technology (for the moment) and virtually certain to be able to orbit either Mun or Minmus.  Might even carry a lander, if the engineers at KSC can ever get parallel (asparagus) staging figured out.  As it is, the fuel transfer from booster to booster and booster to core doesn't work, and the boosters won't stage off the core, even though the decouplers fire as intended.  More tests coming up.

However: even with the staging issues, Munar Explorer is more than capable of sending a Mk. 1 Command Pod and a large enough service stage for capture and return into transMunar trajectory.  Sherny Kerman was up in the rotation for this mission, and despite his dismay at the staging issues, handled the flight like a pro, eventually lowering both his periapsis and apoapsis below 11 km and collecting all the science from "In orbit above the Mun" that there was to collect before burning back to Kerbin.  He set up a 35 km apoapsis for reentry, and had significant fuel remaining in the service stage when he dumped it just as reentry heating started.

Unfortunately, during reentry, things got a bit hotter than on previous missions, and while the command pod itself and its parachute were fine, all the instruments except one thermometer burned off the exterior of the command pod (they've survived from a previous Munar flyby, suggesting reentry profile was wrong).  This wasn't much help in gaining enough data to turn into the technology to rescue Sigemy (who'd been stranded in his Orbiter Alpha Type 2 after running his tanks dry trying to make a Munar flyby ahead of schedule), so a simpler mission was set up.  Engineers quickly upgraded the Swiveler II, an early "spam in the can" vessel, with extended tanks to produce Swiveler III, and Jeb himself strapped into the command pod for a hop to the polar regions.

With careful piloting, Swiveler III has enough dV to fly to any point on Kerbin.  As a result, getting to the North Pole was a cinch -- Jeb let the vessel go far higher than needed, topping out above 400 km, and used the time in flight to take the requested observations -- but then made a discovery about suborbital reentry: even from a mere 400 km, and well below orbital velocity, plunging steeply into the atmosphere will subject the capsule and pilot to excessive stresses.  Not only did all the experiments (except one thermometer, again) burn off the exterior of the pod, but Jeb came within an eyelash of blacking out from the G load as the capsule plowed into dense air while still at high supersonic speed.  Landing was safe, however, and a small amount of science was retrieved.

Finally, the decision was made to attempt something entirely new: Sherny made an EVA from a command pod still on the launch pad, collected surface samples and reports, and returned those data, finally providing enough knowledge to let R&D produce the final, critical component needed to rescue Sigemy: Reaction Control Systems.

A variation of Munar Explorer was dubbed Rescue Alpha.  With the science experiments deleted, and what the engineers swore was a fully rebuilt and inspected parallel staging setup, a second command pod was added to provide a seat for a single rescued Kerbal, provided he could fly his suit jets well enough to board via the crew hatch.  Maltrey won the drawing to pilot the rescue mission (Jeb  swore up and down his name had been left out of the helmet, even though Gene found it after going through the rest of the pilot slips).

Unfortunately, the staging still wasn't right; all six boosters remained attached and failed to transfer fuel as designed, but again, even with the booster running in "big, dumb" mode, there was enough dV for the mission, which was to do another thing never done before: rendezvous with a ship already in orbit, and "park" close enough at low enough velocity for a Kerbal to cross in EVA, using the never-tested suit jets.  The mission was complicated by the high apoapsis and periapsis (hence long period -- close to that of Mun, in fact) of Sigemy's orbit, combined with a significant orbital inclination, but Maltrey had spent tens of minutes on the simulator (which suspiciously resembles a video game), and went from closest approach of 400+ km to parked at less than 5 m separation with aplomb.  Then the cowboy, Sigemy, made it look easy as he jetted across from his vessel (the only thing still working being the reaction wheels to let him stabilize) to the second command pod's hatch on Rescue Alpha.

Once inside, there was minor concern whether there would be enough dV to return to Kerbin, but Maltry quickly put those concerns to rest; not even waiting for an apsis (apparently unwilling to spend a week or more to adjust that long, long orbit), he did a radial burn that brought him to his chosen reentry periapsis, and by doing so saved enough fuel to be able to decelerate by a couple hundred m/s just before atmospheric interface.  The two capsules (the lower festooned with RCS tanks, the upper with parachute canisters) proved to be stable during reentry, and fortunately the "anything on the right planet" landing put the pair on land, so they didn't have to find out if the stack would tip over, or leave Sigemy under water until the recovery crew could get him out.

[Boganaut]

Earlier test flights of Spaceplane 2 had been performed, but performance records were erased when Gene Kerman spilled some Koke on his laptop. A second test flight was performed with a test payload of an orbital crew return vehicle. Whilst in space, the ship was ordered to recue a wayward engineer who decided to return with the plane due to his lack of piloting skills, leaving the crew return vehicle adrift in orbit.

Spaceplane 2 landed between the end of the KSC runway and the shore. It was incredibly rough and there is some debate surrounding where one of the wings and landing gear ended up, but the crew survived!

In the days that followed, Suina Kerman was escorted from her refuge on the LKO fuel depot, laboratories and docking facility to rescue Nelfry Kerman from a very low orbit. The escorting pilot Doodcal took both Suina and Nelfry to the re-entry vehicle left by Spaceplane 2, but things got a bit scary when he refused to undock unless they would fully refuel his ship. Suina refused at first, but eventually agreed after computing the remaining reserves would be plenty to de-orbit.

Nelfry and Suina are currently cruising at 14km altitude looking to splashdown shortly. Doodcal Kerman has been advised he will be arrested when he next makes landfall.

[Tyko]

13 hours ago, Numerlor said:

my rover was HOT (for no reason)

Is that planet Thalia from GPP?

[Hesp]

Spaceplane time! Engineers at KSC designed the first career plane to bring small payloads and life support to the LKO station. Test pilot for the maiden flight: Jeb, of course.

The plane is a basic Mk2 design with 2 tweakscaled aerospikes as boosters (0.75m, 50kN each) and procedural wings

Variable geometry wingtips improve stability over Mach 3

The orbital insertion burn lasts about 5 mins at a constant altitude of 40km

Payload check while waiting for the rendezvous with the station. The cargo mass is about 4 tons (20% of takeoff weight) 

Launch timing was clearly wrong, as I had to wait the station in a higher orbit instead than chasing from below.. dV budget was really tight

Reentry was mostly as expected. The plane is really stable through all the descent, starting from 80° pitch at atmospheric interface to 30° at 30km.

Note: badly overshot KSC, I still need to familiarize with these flights...

The optimistic use of rudder surfaces as airbrakes led to a complete detachment just during the runway approach...   Jeb performed a 360° hard turn to bleed off some speed and saved the plane as usual.

Better add proper airbrakes in the next revision! 

[Jett_Quasar]

I just finished uploading the Simplex Shuttle to Kerbal-X

- Jett

[Angelo Kerman]

After a lot of aggravation, I finally got the Mobile Emitter KIS part done:

Edited February 26, 2017 by Angel-125

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

After a lot of aggravation, I finally got the Mobile Emitter KIS part done:

...?

do tell, do tell...

 

[astroheiko]

And suddenly it was dark, in the middle of the day. This is very impressive.

 

And here we have the reason, a moon

 

This is a really huge solar eclipse.

 

Here it ends straight.

On Gratian you get guaranteed to see one. This was my first ever. Pure coincidence.

AWESOME

[Planetace]

Meanwhile, In our Universe!

Soooo yea, the Gargantua (the large rover.) Had strut deficiency, AKA it didn't have enough structs and thus it exploded when it jumped a little bit upwards every time I quickload (because you know, wheels always phase through the terrain for some reason). Instead of doing an annoying mission, I decided to pull the good old "The exploding rover was from a parallel Universe, this is the real universe!" And so here we are...

[NISSKEPCSIM]

I launched a base to Minmus, and put a station into orbit of the Mun!

More here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/109123-the-apollo-applications-program-10-edition/&page=22

My post is at the bottom.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

I launched a base to Minmus, and put a station into orbit of the Mun!

More here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/109123-the-apollo-applications-program-10-edition/&page=22

My post is at the bottom.

It didn't stay at the bottom...  better to use the little triangle/arrowhead shaped widget at the top right corner of a post (it says share this post when you mouse over it) to get the direct link, then paste it here.
 

 

[Numerlor]

7 hours ago, Tyko said:

Is that planet Thalia from GPP?

That is long forgotten planet from one legend, you may refer to it as Dres

[SickSix]

Last night I spend nearly two hours (it felt like) setting up my custom categories for parts. Started using subcategories for the first time. I also put up the first stage of my first Kerbin Space Station. This morning I docked the second stage after a few orbits and lots of little corrective burns. Then I ran out of RCS on the second stage and had to switch to the first stage lol. I got it done and got my mission reward. Next up is a Minmus station.

[Angelo Kerman]

9 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

...?

do tell, do tell...

 

The model wasn't difficult to do, but the real pain came from figuring out which bone to associate the part with, and hours of trial and error to position and rotate the part into the right location.

The EMH is a fun little gadget that lets you change the kerbal's class on the fly. It's particularly helpful for story writers who need a "stunt double" to take care of certain things in setup for screenshots and such. It's also helpful for those who don't want to use the class system.

[Planetace]

A new HQ has been set up!

Jebediah and his Company needed a HQ to run their operations, as well as provide as living space, for their employees and Company to gain profit. The HQ has 4 docking ports, all nearly perfectly aligned with the Gargantua! I hope to get 3 more Gargantua class Rovers over to the HQ, then things can pick up pace!

And speaking of Jebediah...

Yep, had to get the legendary kerbal himself. The stuntman, the most explody kerbal! Welcome the kerman himself! JEBEDIAH! *A invisible crowd roars in applaud as Jebediah's craft ignites its backside in silent deceleration. The craft attempts 10 quicksave/quickload landings in complete darkness before I got too angry, in turn making me cheat the landing using hyperedit. Then waiting till it was daytime and replicating the landing to pay for my cheaty method.*