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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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(1.1.3) Yesterday was a pretty good day overall. It began with a surface excursion to Mün of four scientists - Isavie, Shersel, Alra and Danwig Kerman - from the Munport space station aboard the station's Spamcan 7a lander. The four scientists made it safely down to the surface and planted temporary flags:

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Spamcan 7a with Kerbin in the background. Pictured from left to right are scientists Isavie, Shersel, Alra and Danwig Kerman.

While the four scientists were waiting for Munport to come back around so they could rendezvous and re-link to the station, an assessment of the crew aboard The Great Artiste, the ferry craft that had brought everyone to Munport, was made. Of the four remaining passengers, only one - engineer Barna Kerman, formerly of the Minmus refinery Deepwater Horizon - needed to make a surface excursion. To save time, Barna was loaded aboard the station's Fireball 7a science lander, a one-Kerbal craft:

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Fireball 7a departing from Munport.

Barna successfully made her way down to the surface and conducted her flag-planting training:

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Barna Kerman, citizen of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol apparently. Guessing Saggitarion, but there's no real way of knowing.

The Spamcan returned successfully from the surface while Barna waited for the station to come back around to pick her up. At that point The Great Artiste was refueled from the station's stores in preparation for her departure, and it was realized that the station was in the proper position to release her Old Bessie fuel lander for descent to the surface. The lander successfully touched down approximately 55 meters from the Piper Alpha refinery on the Münar surface and the crane rover MIRV was put into position to bridge the distance between the two. At that point, the station was in position to pick up Barna, so the Fireball 7a launched and returned safely to Munport. A double-check was made to ensure all eight passengers had completed their assigned missions; having checked out, The Great Artiste left Munport and burned for Kerbin:

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The Great Artiste burning for home.

The refueling mission for the Munport space station took place at that point. Engineer Liztha Kerman hooked station to rover and then rover to lander with KAS winches, fuel was transferred, ports were unplugged and Old Bessie 7 made its way back to the space station successfully. Another fuel run will be necessary but it is currently nighttime at Piper Alpha, so further refueling operations have been suspended for the next three days, until sufficient daylight will be available to power the refinery. The refinery does have fuel cells, but I'm not certain whether or not it has a sufficient number of them...

Meanwhile, I noticed that Munport's orbit had decayed. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon were uncertain and unimportant; the station was in a 21x9 orbit - too low for continued safe operations - so the decision was made to raise its periapsis using the onboard engine that had brought it to Mün in the first place, despite there being four landers (Old Bessie, Fireball 7a, Spamcan 7 and Spamcan 7a) docked and the load being assymetrical as a result. To make slightly life easier on me, I decided at long last to send the original Spamcan 7 lander on to Minmus - with only 1500 m/s of delta-V and monoprop as its sole fuel source, it was never really a good Mün lander. I'm hoping it has better success at Minmus:

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Spamcan 7 burning for Minmus.

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Spamcan at Kerbinrise over Mün.

The Spamcan will arrive at Minmus in just over eight and a half days.

With the Spamcan out of the way, Munport conducted a very slow burn as it approached apoapsis, re-establishing itself successfully at a 21x20 orbit over Mün. I will continue to monitor the station over time to make sure its orbit doesn't slip again.

Without much else to do at that point, I warped ahead to The Great Artiste's arrival at Kerbin, and what was apparently that ship's first powered aerobraking maneuver:

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The Great Artiste's first real flame kiss.

She held up well and survived the aerobraking maneuver, and was put into a trajectory that would bring her to the Kerbinport space station in just under three hours. Meanwhile, her sister ship Next Objective returned from its trek to Minmus, performing a near identical maneuver safely. Her rendezvous course with Kerbinport brought her there about an hour ahead of The Great Artiste, and both craft wound up docking successfully to the space station. Their engine's safed, passengers from both craft boarded waiting Auk II and Auk VII passenger planes and prepared to make their way back to KSC. The Auk II departed first. It'd been a while since I'd flown an Auk II and I forgot some of the details required for a safe re-entry of the craft; I wound up burning off the plane's high-gain antenna/aerospike about 35,000 m up and 50 klicks from KSC 09, but that was it; the plane successfully landed at KSC 27:

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Auk II safely on the ground at KSC 27.

Everyone who returned on the Auk II received their 2-star rating and two VIP passenger contracts were cleared in the process. Neither replacement contract is of much interest.

The Auk VII will depart the station at the next opportunity, and after that I imagine my time will be spent with refueling runs pending the next set of contracts. Means another Auk VIII flight to Kerbinport - I should really get around to fixing the problems with that design one of these days. I also have another refueling run to make at Mün. Minmus is secured from all operations for the time being at least. I'll also need to make another assessment of KSC staff to see if anybody's left who needs 2-star training; if so, they'll be making their way for another set of excursions in the very near future.

Still 29 days until the first craft of the ongoing Duna expedition reaches their correction burn point.

Edited by capi3101
finding and correcting typos
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Missing my target, 4km, inclined launch sites... (Cape Canaveral)

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One man orbital SSTO 10.7kdV for crew pickup and return. (Not a space plane, they are harder for me on earth.)  Add boosters and it can do free return lunar pick up too.

Pod can separate and stay in orbit with 15 days life support. Has crew safety jettison using a pair of ullage motors.Costs 99k funds but most of it is refunded with a descent landing.

 

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I decided to test the muscle that I built into my life support showroom plane. It has shown the ability to SSTMun. It previously had 2 scramjets and 1 nuclear engine but I swapped the number to see if it would get Mun-landing TWR... Barely there but yes. I'll flip that number back as this configuration wastes fuel in atmosphere and Mun-landing ability is not worth the trouble for me.

With very few things installed in this game I finally got to enjoy Scatterer (GPP's version, specifically) in its full glory (for a change) --didn't bother to turn off the Ocean shader. <3

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Zm4Yeg0.jpg HbFWUuc.jpg buMUwOQ.jpg xAsk9QD.jpg dLCPTX8.jpg

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I built and tested a Gilly lander.

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Given Gilly's low gravity and Eve's low potential for continuing develpment (I plan to send a single flag-and-footprints mission there but nothing more) I'm taking a different strategy here than I normally would. Whereas my usual procedure for offworld development is to land a mining/ISRU base that will send regular fuel shipments to an orbiting station, here I've decided to forego the permanent base, incorporate mining equipment into the lander and convert the ore to fuel at the station. Given that a mere two Oscar tanks and Spark engines are enough to land on Gilly and launch, fully loaded, to a stable 20km circular orbit with fuel to spare the usual advantages to converting the ore on the surface and just transporting the fuel don't really apply, and this strategy will let me simplify my operations on Eve's satellite, requiring only two craft instead of three.

This is all just F5F9 simulations, though, as given the timing of transfer windows and my limited supply of interplanetary transporters it may be a while before I actually launch this mission. I only have two transports suitable for carrying heavy payloads over interplanetary distances at present, and both of them are currently en route to Duna and not expected back for quite some time. I could justify building a third but I would likely use that for the next Jool mission (Laythe being a much higher priority target than Eve,) and building four or more would be excessive. Still, at least this part of the mission-planning process is complete.

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At long last, the RSN Antonio Vivaldi was sufficiently fuelled up to fly back to LEO.

At long last! The Vivaldi burns back for Earth.It only took 2 1/2 years, but Jeb and the RSN Antonio Vivaldi are returned to LEO

 

Now to get Jeb and the lovely science down, and then start work on bigger and better stuff. The Apocalyptica mining rig remains at the Moon and that's a key part of my strategy, because I will design a bigger and better miner that can be fuelled up in lunar orbit before making its own first landing. I'll also be wanting a LEO fuel station of some sort.

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More lander tests, this time for the one that's going to accompany my planned Explorer-class science vessel on its journeys to Moho, Dres and Eeloo (i.e. the planets that I want to plant flags on but don't want to bother setting up surface bases and space stations around.)

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I've confirmed that it can land on Moho and return to a 50km circular orbit with comfortable fuel margins, and as Moho has the strongest gravity of the three target planets I'm confident that it can land on the other two as well. Now I just have to design the Explorer itself.

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I solved a problem in Kerbal Komets where, when you install/uninstall the mod, any asteroid that you've visited changes shape and size. And in the process, I kept the komet sample experiment. Best yet, I might've solved the incompatibilities with Kopernicus! :)

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Hey Kerbalomites.

I am sure you all missed me.

I was around.

Not much worth reporting.

Today I went Soviet Style. All stock.

Imgur Album: http://imgur.com/a/w31op

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Val and Jeb are back at the KSC.

Still need to do a mission report.

It was interesting. Learned a lot about days gone by.

The LK had a nice retro look to it.

but ....That project was doomed.....

 

Keep on playing stimulating simulating.

 

ME

Edited by Martian Emigrant
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I finally got my KC-135 boom to work consistently - now to actually refuel something!

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I also played around making some settings for a cinematic.

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This is in the "normal" lighting stage. In the "Defcon 1" stage, the lights turn red and spin around like crazy. It's perfect.

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So last night I finally rescued my stranded Mun mission. Their lander ended up not having enough DV to get back into orbit of the Mun. So in a political miracle, the USSK sent a rescue ship.

The United States of Kerbal (USK) Mun launch.

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Utilizing an Apolo style(ish) lander and command module docking.

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First Kerbals on the Mun!

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Look at that view!

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The USSK Mun rocket with rescue craft. The USSK lander was not built for reentry to Kerbin but to get the Kerbonauts off the Mun and back to their command module.

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The USSK rescue lander. Turned out to be poorly designed as the lander legs didn't quite reach past the bottom of the Poodle engine. (F9 was used more than I'd care to admit to get the landing pictured below)

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The Kerbals jetted over to the rescue pod with all their science in their pockets and then launched toward their command pod. Do to different controls in the USSK lander much DV was wasted trying to get the rendevous but it was successful. Fuel was transferred to the command pod along with the science reports and the Kerbals themselves of course. The command pod got them safely back to Kerbin and much rejoicing was had at the USK and USSK command centers.

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6 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

I made a GIF of the Millennium Falcon flying on Eve

Awesome! Is that the in-game performance (speed/FPS) that you get or is it sped up?? Either way, awesome GIF and great craft too of course.

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7 hours ago, Dafni said:

Awesome! Is that the in-game performance (speed/FPS) that you get or is it sped up?? Either way, awesome GIF and great craft too of course.

In a word no.  It's Star Wars, you gotta take advantage of the debug menu.  It does fly pretty much like that on Kerbin though.

- Jett

Edited by Jett_Quasar
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