What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Randox]

I made a new game and started by vising the Mun arch. Apparently I've not been there in so long that I totally forgot it takes more than a match and baked beans induced flatulance get back to Kerbin. The Eggheads back at KSC did some 'computer simulations' for me and concluded that the 800 dv Jab had left wasn't going to cut it.

Not a problem. A solution was quickly devised to take a surplus testing prototype, upgrade the automated control for proper remote guidance, and modify the lander stage for increased fuel capacity and endurance. The modifications were made in short order and the rescue rocket sent out. It arrived safely on the surface only a couple km off target...with 910 dv.

We're still running simulations. Some of the math boys are insisting that the rocket should be able to make it home, while others are telling us that the latest rocket is still roughly 60 m/s short on fuel, which is in line with the latest computer modelling results. These rockets were not designed with long term comfort or survival in mind, so work has already begun on a last ditch contingency using the final surplus rocket. It's an earlier revision prototype, but can be brought up to spec in short order. Unless the computer can find a way to bring Jeb home, he will have to use the first rescue ship to get into a high Munar orbit where he will meet with the second rescue mission. The fuel savings will more than ensure a safe and speedy return to Kerbin.

 

It's not all bad news though. The fist landing was done blind in IVA (no view of the ground). The rescue landing was completely blind as the landing target had become the dark side during landing. Ground survey during EVA transfer suggests that second landing almost took place on a highly inclined crater wall. If that lander had been lost, it is likely the persisting fuel issue would have been missed and the third rocket sent out without an adequate plan.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Randox

[cratercracker]

Hi guys! Launch a few things in KSP.

1. Delta- quick manned rocket for making speed records,it made 1678m/s below 10 000 m!

2. First orbit around Dres! Yay! I never visited Dres before! I also landed in one of the craters!

3. Launch of "Vismut" satellite that will explore kerbin's Van Karban's belts!

 

4. Flight of "Asterisk" to "Triangulurum" station. In previous post i mentioned a canadarm, so, here it is making its job.

 

5. New plane- Karambola 3!

 

[Freshmeat]

9 hours ago, AccidentsHappen said:

From memory there is a similar pod (not an external one) in Airplane plus:

 

Yes, the helicopter one. Thanks to both of you.

[Zeiss Ikon]

9 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

Landing is hard...

On the basis of a couple hundred hours flying radio control models, landing is the hardest part of flying.  Aerobatics are easier.  Soaring is easier.  Taking off is only hard if your aircraft is underpowered.  But landing is always stressful.

[Alpha 360]

I flew a spaceplane to minmus(launched from an SSTO rocket) with one hitch. The wings where upside down. Bill! You dared to forget to flip the wings around in the VAB! You dratted engineer. Well, using alot of rsc, I manged to land on minmus and return to kerbin. Imgur pictures below.

 

[AccidentsHappen]

1 hour ago, Alpha 360 said:

I flew a spaceplane to minmus(launched from an SSTO rocket) with one hitch. The wings where upside down. Bill! You dared to forget to flip the wings around in the VAB! You dratted engineer. Well, using alot of rsc, I manged to land on minmus and return to kerbin. Imgur pictures below.

 

Wait what? Imgur albums work!?

[Reusables]

For the first time, I got a second stage on the runway!

Forgt to take some screenshots of flight before parachute is deployed.

Even though it has wings, it flew like a dart. Didn't want to turn, which made this landing so hard.

Anyway, it's landed!

Edited March 22, 2017 by Reusables
Embedded Imgur Album

[MaxwellsDemon]

I figured out how relay antennas work.   I'd first underestimated the amount of antenna power I'd need on an interplanetary probe, and then in the next generation design, way overloaded it with antennas.  Now I think I've got a handle on it (including the inefficiency of putting a relay antenna on a space probe, rather than on a dedicated comsat).

Also, I made my first Mun landing in this campaign.   Jeb guided the Horus II lander to a safe touchdown in the Munar Midlands.   Val is slotted for command of Horus III to Minmus, and the mission is preparing at KSC.

[michal.don]

Playing gravity-assist-billiard in Jupiter's system. Slightly harder than in the Jool neighbourhood, but not by much

Flyby of Io

Michal.don

[Space Kadet]

i had a small explosion and some dead kerbals!
 

 

[MaxwellsDemon]

5 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

I figured out how relay antennas work.   I'd first underestimated the amount of antenna power I'd need on an interplanetary probe, and then in the next generation design, way overloaded it with antennas.  Now I think I've got a handle on it (including the inefficiency of putting a relay antenna on a space probe, rather than on a dedicated comsat).

Also, I made my first Mun landing in this campaign.   Jeb guided the Horus II lander to a safe touchdown in the Munar Midlands.   Val is slotted for command of Horus III to Minmus, and the mission is preparing at KSC.

Snuck in some KSP time at lunchtime today.        Jeb made an EVA and planted the flag, and the crew collected soil samples and other data.  The next EVA will set up the Surface Experiment Package.

My KSP-time to AFK-time ratio still sucks.  

[Curveball Anders]

18 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

Landing is hard...

Some are.

Hard landings are easy, soft landings are hard ...

[astroheiko]

I finally got time to land on Tarsiss.

 

When I am exploring, I am almost drowned.

[qromodynmc]

I was working on an open-top tank destroyer for a while and i think it's coming up nicely. I made whole fuselage from metal plates, then welded them. At the end i decided to change texture of metal parts and replaced it with digital camo.

TD has doors and ladders for kerbal use, also has robotic control unit so it can run unmanned, it has nice view inside, kerbals can run, sit, enjoy their tea ))

Edited March 22, 2017 by qromodynmc

[eddiew]

Sent up the third vessel in the hydrogen mining set!

Weighing over 250 tons when full, Full Stein Ahead is no lightweight, but the engineering team paid extra attention to balancing with the result that the RCS produces less than 1kNm of torque at any fuel percentage. The result is a behemoth of a tanker that is completely happy to be the active participant in a docking, and can return to low Gael orbit with a good 1.5 million units of hydrogen fuel to donate.

Which is good news, because the design team have a new concept that they're trying to get funding for, and it looks like a thirsty little chap.

Massing almost 700 tons, Epcot I is designed to be the new carrier ship for the next generation of interplanetary explorers. Packed with over 6 million units of liquid hydrogen, this cutting edge vessel is capable of carrying a crew of 19 and a 100 ton cargo to 13km/s - or more or less anywhere and back again.

How does it get to orbit? Very, very slowly. And with no crew onboard.

(Spent all afternoon on this thing... careful use of welding got it down to "only" 87 parts, which while not slimline, should be acceptable. Despite the asymmetry, Epcot I delivers less than 0.5kNm of torque under full thrust. Using the 5m trusses from Near Future Construction provides a total of five co-axial docking ports in 3.75m, 2.5m, 1.25m, and 0.625m flavours, giving options to dock either one very large cargo, or multiple small ones without upsetting the vessel's balance. It would theoretically be possible to strap even my huge 17mt/5m ISRU to the front and a miner on the back, but it takes a LOT of ore to fill this thing, and either the miner would have to be built for nothing larger than Minmus, or it would require several runs to the surface. More likely is that I'll be using some minimal lightweight landers that daintily sip from the huge fuel reserves. The engines are mounted on 2.5m docking ports for easy swap out when upgrades become available.)

[StupidAndy]

https://db.tt/MSEnsFqA8h

you can move fairings

[MaverickSawyer]

Two major milestones:

Found a DSN station and set up a Surface Experiments Package on the nearby ridgeline. Also flagged the DSN station for future use.

 

Later, went to the North Pole of Kerbin:

Pro tip: Do not touch the North Pole. Weirdness ensues. Not Kraken-grade weirdness yet, but still... Not going to touch it anymore. Nope. No sir. 

Edited March 23, 2017 by MaverickSawyer

[eddiew]

Seeing as I woke up at 5am, I've been looking for ways to reduce the part count on my mothership. Soon discovered that a lot of these DMagic + stock science experiments can be welded into a single part

Everything animates as expected, experiments all got their own button, materials bay and goo can be separately restored. The imager lost it's ability to be a Scansat biome scanner, but I'm ok with that. You can't weld stock goo + materials bay it seems, so using the DMagic micro goo.

11 experiments, 15 parts reduced to 1 that fits into a mk2 cargo bay. Might save an fps or two here or there ^^  Probably fiddle with the layout though, tis a bit scruffy atm. 

Sensing a need for a similar science assemblage that fits in lander-sized service bays...

[AccidentsHappen]

8 hours ago, StupidAndy said:

https://db.tt/MSEnsFqA8h

you can move fairings

And there's a new budget armoured vehicle 

[Urses]

17 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

Some are.

Hard landings are easy, soft landings are hard ...

They come all down...

The question is come they down as a piece or as a 3D-Puzzle...

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

[dangerhamster]

9 hours ago, StupidAndy said:

https://db.tt/MSEnsFqA8h

you can move fairings

Mutant Ninja Kerbals?

[Urses]

5 minutes ago, dangerhamster said:

Mutant Ninja Kerbals?

I don't know Why.. .

But i think this way ;-) :

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation

 

[kraden]

5 hours ago, eddiew said:

Seeing as I woke up at 5am, I've been looking for ways to reduce the part count on my mothership. Soon discovered that a lot of these DMagic + stock science experiments can be welded into a single part

Everything animates as expected, experiments all got their own button, materials bay and goo can be separately restored. The imager lost it's ability to be a Scansat biome scanner, but I'm ok with that. You can't weld stock goo + materials bay it seems, so using the DMagic micro goo.

11 experiments, 15 parts reduced to 1 that fits into a mk2 cargo bay. Might save an fps or two here or there ^^  Probably fiddle with the layout though, tis a bit scruffy atm. 

Sensing a need for a similar science assemblage that fits in lander-sized service bays...

This seems handy even just for ease of running experiments. What mod do you use to weld parts together?

[eddiew]

Further mothership planning; realised that the 3.75m docking port is so large that you can embed a 1.25m port inside it and offset to exactly the same degree as a mk3 spaceplane nose cone, thus opening up a huge range of on-axis cargos! Tested with a little doohicky and indeed both ports connect to their respective sizes.

...in fact this is so good I may dump the 2.5m port off the back, because it's not quite large enough to allow the same trick and the port rims overlap. Also realised that the docking port itself causes torque, but that's fine, it just means mounting them in pairs, and it won't matter which one the payload is docked to as long as the rotation is correct.

 

29 minutes ago, kraden said:

This seems handy even just for ease of running experiments. What mod do you use to weld parts together?

It has limits; e.g. not more than one leg/light/rcs in the same assemblage, and you may lose transparent cockpit view if there's a pod included, but it's very good for sticking multiple fuel tanks or reaction wheels or girders together. Bit of a fiddle in that you have to reload the database every time you make a new part, and I always end up having to edit the config and trim a few spare nodes, but for the most part it's well worth it. All of my fancy ships have been welded to some degree or other, else I'd never keep up a decent framerate   

Edited March 23, 2017 by eddiew

[justidutch]

Our fleet of four ships are finding themselves ever closer to Duna, arrival of the first ship is now only 27 days away!  While we all wait for this momentous event, two small missions were accomplished over the past couple weeks.

 

First was a contract we accepted to expand our primary station orbiting Minmus.  The requirements were to add an additional science lab and crew capacity of five.  The contractor didn't care what happened after that, they just wanted us to demonstrate this could be done.  So, what we did was create a nuclear powered ship that we sent out and docked to Minmus Stayshun, and our customer was happy with that.  Then, we refuelled the ship there and recalled it into a 300km high orbit back over our home planet.  This ship will now be used as a science station for future missions around unexplored destinations like Eve or Dres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second mission was just completed this morning, rescueing a pilot who was shamelessly abandoned by a rival space company, orbiting Kerbin in a derelict lab module.  We sent up a rocket topped with a rescue pod - basically a command module with Ant engines and parachutes, caught up with the poor soul, and dropped her back to ground just east of KSC.  She is now resting comfortably in our cafeteria with snacks and cherry soda, eager to join our program and perform great heroic piloting feats arond distant moons and planets!