What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Oliverm001x]

I constructed a new heavy rocket: The Xenon-Heavy!

 

 

 

[TheEpicSquared]

7 minutes ago, Oliverm001x said:

I constructed a new heavy rocket: The Xenon-Heavy!

 

In the words of Scott Manley... "Check yo staging!" (no, seriously, check your staging, at the moment the only place that'll be getting to is the ground )

Spoiler

Cool rocket though  

 

[Oliverm001x]

15 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

In the words of Scott Manley... "Check yo staging!" (no, seriously, check your staging, at the moment the only place that'll be getting to is the ground )

  Reveal hidden contents

Cool rocket though  

 

I fixed that before launch. It was a cool angle so I opted for it ( Did not actually fly on that screenshot).

Note: No kerbals and/or property was damaged in the making of these screenshots  . 

Edited March 5, 2017 by Oliverm001x

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

And they're away! After hundreds of days of sitting in Minmus orbit waiting for a transfer window, the two main components of my Duna mission (my first krewed mission outside of Kerbin's SOI) have finally ejected from the Minty Moon, propelled by a pair of four-engine Interplanetary Pusher tugs.

The first vessel, a fully-constructed space station contains the crew of this mission, consisting of all four of the original Orange-Suits along with Katgee (scientist,) Lanster (engineer) and Fordun (pilot.) It's already made its ejection burn at Kerbin periapsis and will be arriving at the Red Planet in an estimated 341 days, 2 hours and fifteen minutes (with a small correction burn along the way.) Upon arrival it will put itself into orbit of Ike to support the next vessel.

The second ship, a surface mining/converting installation, is still falling towards Kerbin (having had to take a less-optimal ejection path to avoid an encounter with the Mun) and should arrive at Duna roughly nine days after the station. It will land on Ike (in a high-ore location already scouted out by orbital probes) and ensure that I have an abundant on-site supply of fuel for any future Duna missions. It's unmanned at the moment, but one of the engineers and pilots from the station (I haven't decided which ones yet) will transfer to it upon arrival.

In other news, my probes to Moho and Dres have made their final correction burns and are verified via F5F9 simulation to have enough fuel to enter into polar orbits around their target bodies. That only leaves the question of where to go next. Year 4 is pretty lean on transfer windows, but it looks like there will be one to Jool on day 307. I'm a bit apprehensive about using that window since my probe mission will still be en route when the window arrives and won't have been able to scout out a landing spot, but I suppose if I send the mine unmanned all I'll risk is money. There's also a "blue area" for Dres at around day 236 that doesn't register as a transfer window on Alex Moon's Launch Window Planner but still has low enough dV requirements to be feasible, and could be a good test of the style of there-and-back-again, flag-and-footprints missions that I hope to eventually send to Moho and Eeloo.

[eddiew]

Luckily, there was one mission already launched before the recent incident at KSC could cut its funding. Arriving at Gauss, Icebird I catches a gravity assist from Catullus, ducking its antennae to avoid having them bashed off by Tarsiss, a little moon that orbits entirely too close to it's parent for comfort.

Sadly, Catullus' gravity well is quite deep, and having mapped it's pinkish surface, Icebird cannot spare the fuel to do a full orbit of Tarsiss. Instead, the probe uses it as a slingshot to kick out of Catullus' SoI, somehow ending up in an almost polar orbit of Gauss.

Matching periapsis with Loki allows a couple of close encounters, though again fuel constraints prevent orbital capture. With its reactor fuel running low, Icebird takes aim at the upper atmosphere of Gauss, sniffing the chemical composition of the cloud tops and sending the tasty data back home.

Mmm, ammonia ice cream...

[kjagodka]

On 3.03.2017 at 8:59 PM, kjagodka said:

My Sarnus (Saturn from Outer Planets Mod) mission is finally departing after quite lot of preparations. I'm going to land on every moon with 5-kerbal landers and return safely.

For attentive readers: As you can see, I'm burning on the day side of kerbin. It is because I'm going to take Eve gravity assist first.

Full succes
Slate (Tylo sized moon):

Eeloo:

Ovok (very small moon)

Hale (moon even smaller than Gilly)

Tekto (moon with very dense atmosphere, slightly bigger than Mun)

[Leopard]

Tinkering really today, prototyped a small cargo spaceplane, which after a few attempts handled with a brush, hose and a bit of paint on the runway managed to get in the air, this is not the work of genius by a long shot - the prototype eventually made orbit, just, unloaded with just enough fuel to come back - but no solar panels.

The mission is module recovery, I have a tug probe in orbit (out of fuel naturally) attached to the target module, needed a way to get it home so trying a spaceplane.

revised design with solar panels and a bit more fuel made orbit on the first try, flies ok on the way back but its a pig when loaded, anyway its in orbit.

Lobbed a second tug, to take over from the first, got to about 2km away before I realised I;d forgotten the RCS fuel... ok so the mission changed to claw it, then transfer remaining fuel to the otherwise operational tug and let it carry on..

 

Hooked up but thats as far as I've got as the eggbox at that point decided that while it would save progress it would no longer allow me to select components, guessing there is a 'Y' in the day or something so couldn't transfer the fuel, will try again tomorrow.

 

Discovered its not that hard to make a plane that flies, just a bit harder to make one that will lift off, the current one relies on flying off the end of the runway to get airborne, then very gradually lift as it builds more speed - its fast enough, just not enough control wing area when loaded.

Still, its all unmanned so worst case is repainting the runway, again

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Whisky Tango Foxtrot said:

it looks like there will be one to Jool on day 307. I'm a bit apprehensive about using that window since my probe mission will still be en route when the window arrives and won't have been able to scout out a landing spot

The probe will still arrive a year or two ahead of the second mission...  more than enough time to scout for landing spots.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

2 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The probe will still arrive a year or two ahead of the second mission...  more than enough time to scout for landing spots.

That makes sense from an in-game perspective, where the moons of Jool are all-but-guaranteed to have at least a few places with high ore concentrations and unexpected developments are minimal (at least those not caused by player error,) but from a role-playing perspective that probe will represent Kerbin's first up-close examination of the Gassy Green Giant. Who knows what perils could lurk there?

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Whisky Tango Foxtrot said:

That makes sense from an in-game perspective, where the moons of Jool are all-but-guaranteed to have at least a few places with high ore concentrations and unexpected developments are minimal (at least those not caused by player error,) but from a role-playing perspective that probe will represent Kerbin's first up-close examination of the Gassy Green Giant. Who knows what perils could lurk there?

It all depends on your personal (or roleplayed) tolerance for risk.

[Triop]

2 hours ago, kjagodka said:

OMG, great pictures, welcome to the forum mate !

[Kertech]

So inbetween fifteen minute probe burns (4,000-7,000m/s takes a while at twr 0.2...) and many many course corrections I carried on working on building up infrastructure for a concerted attack on minmus and muns biomes.

Station 2 now named Ynys Afallon was built to its full scale over the course of 16 launches! (due to world scaling mass to orbit is significantly reduced, 40 tonnes is pretty much my limit till I hit space Y! Another problem is I like things to look kind of, well, realistic (for a game about little green bug eyed aliens with parts made of high explosive...)

Core module, basic lifesuppport, initial docking equipment, 4 large construction docking ports. Almost all of the external parts (e.g. solar) are meant to be removed when finished.

Solar Trusses added

Adding in 4 docking trusses

Completed base, has all station science facilities and experiments, standard lab, lifesupport for 6 kerbals for 2 years, 4 capital ship docking gantries (3 for current use and the fourth for refuelling them!) crew transfer docking node and a hell of a lot of power. Sent Bill out on a part reduction mission, so all radial attatched rcs, batteries and cores solar array!

Then just for good measure on the frame rate, I docked up my three current exploration vessels. The intrepid class is turning out to be oneof my favourite ever ships, just versatile. 6,000m/s and up to a year in lifesupport for a standard crew. They are the backbone of all of my current missions. 

The Intrepid (oldest and flown 3 missions to the mun is top right (with a broken battery, Bill is gonna fix it when they get out of 2.5km of this frame rate dropper!!). The Valiant is top left, flown one unmanned deep space test flight and one unmanned minmus flyby, being prepared for the first minmus expedition. The Kydonia is docking to thecentral gantry, youngest and yet to fly a mission. Most likely will be the first kerballed extra KerbinSOI mission. (Always a scary one!) 

 

On different missions, Leon 1 (one of my standard inner planet probes, a vagrant 1a) was going to change orbit when I found that both its engines had developed faults! They had two to begin with incase one dies, but both was just irritating! Science functions were shut down and it was turned into a relayfor future missions to cerillion (hopefully spelled right)

Minmus station was set up

And lander transferred 

Nothing particularly game changing, but been fun pretending to be a space agency. This mid game stuff feels kind of like current tech level, (well excluding my reliance on nuclear thermal!) Looking at the tech tree though things should get interesting soon with a combination of NF stuff and interstellar...

[cantab]

Concluded that 4.5 tons isn't enough to make a useful Moon miner. I have a design that should just about land, fuel up, and reorbit, but with negligible excess fuel. And it doesn't even have RCS for docking.

So I'll have to make something bigger, and then deliver extra fuel to the freighter to be able to carry it out.

[Kertech]

7 minutes ago, cantab said:

Concluded that 4.5 tons isn't enough to make a useful Moon miner. I have a design that should just about land, fuel up, and reorbit, but with negligible excess fuel. And it doesn't even have RCS for docking.

So I'll have to make something bigger, and then deliver extra fuel to the freighter to be able to carry it out.

Ahh but that design was cute,also nice use of fairing nodes

 

Bigger eh, how about a Lion

20 tonnes LKO-Mun, and can land 10 tonnes and return (if refuelled in munar orbit) all in 6.4 scale! (lalnding is theoretical currently however)

My current unseen workhorse, theres two of them floating about the system

 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Kertech

[Triop]

Today I build a flying submarine . . . . .

[cantab]

6 minutes ago, Triop said:

Today I build a flying submarine . . . . .

Wonder what would happen if it flew into Jool.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/139/

[PanzerAce]

Finally got around to fixing my CKAN setup and actually coming back to KSP after too long away. Wishing OPM worked with the current version of KSP and thinking about getting the mods to actually flesh out the CTT....

[JadeOfMaar]

31 minutes ago, cantab said:

Wonder what would happen if it flew into Jool.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/139/

Scott Manley did it.

Spoiler

 

 @Norcalplanner @eddiew I just added a section about capacitors to my tutorial. They need a bit of micromanagement but they can supplement a reactor very well for an ion ship that's going to cross several SOI.

_{What I did in KSP today? I went and screenshotted (screenshot?) for this:}

 

 

Edited March 6, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[Triop]

Dropped some bombs for freedom and democratie, now I can sleep peacefully.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 hours ago, Triop said:

Today I build a flying submarine . . . . .

Awesome! Now... make it yellow... 

[Norcalplanner]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Scott Manley did it.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 @Norcalplanner @eddiew I just added a section about capacitors to my tutorial. They need a bit of micromanagement but they can supplement a reactor very well for an ion ship that's going to cross several SOI.

_{What I did in KSP today? I went and screenshotted (screenshot?) for this:}

 

 

Thanks for the heads up.  I'm not a huge ion guy, but I do use them occasionally.  Right now Karborundum is the shiny new hotness in my GPP career, so I'm working out architecture to make best use of it.  I'm also sending another larger ship down to low Ciro orbit to get some more. 

[JadeOfMaar]

1 minute ago, Norcalplanner said:

Thanks for the heads up.  I'm not a huge ion guy, but I do use them occasionally.  Right now Karborundum is the shiny new hotness in my GPP career, so I'm working out architecture to make best use of it.  I'm also sending another larger ship down to low Ciro orbit to get some more. 

I've always been very tight with Near Future Tech and I have yet to design a ship with Karborundum engines.  I'm eager to see this infrastructure.

[DerekL1963]

6 hours ago, Kertech said:

The Intrepid (oldest and flown 3 missions to the mun is top right (with a broken battery, Bill is gonna fix it when they get out of 2.5km of this frame rate dropper!!).

You can considerably increase your frame rate by going above 250km (the point at which the game drops detailed planetary surface rendering).

[Kertech]

27 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

You can considerably increase your frame rate by going above 250km (the point at which the game drops detailed planetary surface rendering).

I think that Afallon is at about 350km, it's just the 6.4scale making everything seem closer!

[septemberWaves]

I tested out the Soyuz spacecraft which I will be using for the Doing It Soviet Style challenge. No mission report this time, just a couple of pics.