What did you do in KSP1 today?

[kraden]

10 minutes ago, TheKorbinger said:

I am continuing to test my replicas, trying to fly inverted in my C17 and rage quitting after hitting the water at 260 m/s

I remember playing a flight SIM as a kid (about 20 years ago) where I managed to fly a Boeing 777 inverted. It's a good feeling when you pull it off.

[Leafbaron]

20 minutes ago, kraden said:

I remember playing a flight SIM as a kid (about 20 years ago) where I managed to fly a Boeing 777 inverted. It's a good feeling when you pull it off.

sounds about right, I used to play Combat Flight Simulator with an old Top Gun joystick. Despite being WWII series I added all kinds of aircraft. Nothing like flying a B-17 flying fortress inverted though, what a thrill!

[Julien Kerman]

I launched a probe to perform a Moho fly-by and to receive some science data there.

[NISSKEPCSIM]

A few hours ago, in my new career, both the Soviet Union and the United States of America performed manned orbital spaceflights as part of the 'Vostok' and 'Icarus' programs respectively. More here.

Vostok-1:

Icarus-Liberty-1:

[sh1pman]

Wilfurt Kerman wanted to take some cool pictures of himself today. So I had to lift him up. From Eve surface base. I guess he was happy 

Edited April 14, 2017 by sh1pman

[DarkOwl57]

Well I was *going* to launch the main habitation module of the MunBase up today...

The first run didn't make it up due to a problem with fuel

the second one didn't get the Gravity Turn done properly

The second and a half one turned into a shimmying snake demon due to a lack of struts

and the 3rd one met an un-timely demise due to the SRB's simply RKOing the main engine on separation, causing a rage-induced coughing fit and a game crash

and the 4th one led to another game crash and serious doubts about my ability

5th one decided to tilt around on the rotation

I'm seriously questioning my life...

On 4/13/2017 at 0:06 PM, Leafbaron said:

chitty chitty bang bang, chitty chitty bang bang, we love you

Oh my gosh it's been forever since I've seen that movie! The nostalgia is real

[cratercracker]

Hello! I couldn't do a lot of launches today, but i did some.

1. The "Visit-2" initiated a fly-by of outer moons of Jool,using a gravity assist from Vall! It already completed 60% of the mission. (Low pass over Jool,Laythe's poles,very low pass over Vall and Dive into the atmosphere of Laythe.

 

 

2. Launch of the "Temple" spaceplane. If you ever had a hard mission ,it wasn't THAT HARD  for sure..

 

 

3. 789m/s on the runway!- the "Photon" ultra car.

 

4. New a better looking a better placed Dunaris base. Much better. Ahhh.                     (if you are wondering why is there no wheels? because they were decoupled and everything useless was decoupled and terminated.)

 

5.Fully reusable rocket ROAR (reusable orbit achieving rocket). When i said "fully reusable" i was fully serious.

 

6. Brand new SSTO rocket that uses linear aerospike engine finishes a test. Great for deploying small satellites into an LKO. Uses a small fin to look and function like linear aerospike (plus to manueverablity and stability)

  

 

 

 

[DarkOwl57]

On 4/11/2017 at 9:40 AM, Stratzenblitz75 said:

Today, I went fast. Very Fast.

 

What's that thing that moved down to pick up the craft?

Edit to post about habitation module: Test #6 or 7 (I've lost count) Resulted in another game crash. As soon as I hit 244 m/s, pffth dead. Either my computer's terrible, I've got to many parts, or my KSP's really wanting me to go back to the good old days of fighter jets

 

[Fearless Son]

On 4/12/2017 at 8:27 PM, Spacetraindriver said:

I'll look into that, but occasionally blasting the Vectors keep it aligned.  

I noticed you have a large monopropellant tank just behind your cockpit.  That honestly probably contains much more monopropellant than you actually need.  Especially if you are including vector RCS nozzles which fulfill the same purpose just with a different resource requirement (LF/O) and more thrust.  I would recommend replacing the monopropellant tank with a similarly sized LF/O tank, and replacing the other RCS blocks with more vectors.  Not only will this give you better RCS control, you will save on some of the excess monopropellant weight you are (probably) bringing along with you, give your vectors more fuel, and allow you to shift weight between the fuel tanks.  

[Triop]

Exploration day !

Mission "Skull Island"

Spoiler

Edited April 14, 2017 by Triop

[Fearless Son]

On 4/13/2017 at 0:44 AM, netbumbler said:

Jeb likes to drink alone....   

 

How are they drinking through their helmets?  I think I have an idea...

[KerikBalm]

Having gotten bored of Stock KSP... and all the mod planets too,  but not quite ready for RSS because KSP parts are underpowered for a real scale solar system (I've tried before, I could get to orbit, but payload fraction was horrible), and I don't want to make the leap to real fuels and all the extra parts and downloads for an RSS overhaul.

So, I finally got around to using Sigma Dimensions:

I rescaled almost everything to 3x the size and 3x the SMA, Config details here:

Spoiler

    // Base Settings

    Resize = 3
    Rescale = 3
    Atmosphere = 1.5
    dayLengthMultiplier = 1.7320508076

    // Advanced Settings

    landscape = 1.5

I'll ignore the changes I made to the rest of the system for now, as I was only playing around in kerbin's SOI. The most pertinent change here, is that I swapped the orbits of Mun and Minmus - Mun being where Minmus is actually makes it a much better analogue for Earth's moon. Minmus will probably end up being a major staging area for me in this game.

I also turned heating way down because LKO orbital velocity is about 1.7x as fast, and with a V^3 relationship, I was expecting heating to be 5x higher.

I had previously thought that with this rescale, I'd be able to get my old SSTO that had a payload capacity of something like 160 tons to get 60 tons to orbit.... Well aerodynamic drag was much higher than I anticipated, the wings needed to generate much more lift at the same air density, because of the difference in orbital velocity

I figured I'd try a 72 ton payload and use fuel from the payload as needed.... I was disappointed in the result:

So, I embarked on an "enhancement" program to get it to 1.5 orange tanks of payload (54 tons) to a 150km orbit (in this version, Kerbin's atmosphere ends at 105 km)

More engines, slightly more fuel, 2x LV-Ns and 2x aerospikes for better vacuum performance:

Didn't perform very well, LV-Ns didnt have a lot of excess LF to use. Aerospikes didn't give it enough TWR without the rapiers, and the top airbreathing speed was reduced... so, aerospikes gone, more LF, 4x LV-Ns

... still came up short, so I switched out the short mk2 to 1.25m adaptors for the long ones (more fuel, less drag), switching the back tank from the old "oil drum" to an orange tank, changed the chines on the front to the ones that carry 100 LF each, and some small aero surface changes:

Success! 54 ton payload released, redocking the center section in progress:

Redocked, just as it flies into the night:

Daylight images:

Spoiler

 

Ok, its not a very big payload, but hopefull this thing can handle bulky but not so heavy payloads... I think I'll try to make a more conventional SSTO that just brings up fuel.

So... still, it didn't have much in the way of fuel left... going up to a 150km orbit was perhaps pushing it a bit. I used up all the LF lowering the perapsis to about 50km (this is equal to about 33km in normal KSP)

I was able to deorbit well enough (there was no heating problem, gauges didnt even show, I guess I nerfed heating too much) that I landed it on the runway my first try

(I think those mountains are too big)

531 tons takeoff weight, 54 tons into orbit... better than 10% payload fraction... 

Then I decided to do an apollo style mission. The first rocket:

That was supposed to get it to orbit, and have fuel to get a Mun intercept (requires ~1650 m/s in this config)... looks like it may be a 1 way trip, as the service module propulsion used almost all of its fuel just getting the intercept, and the LEM descent stage fuel will probably be needed to capture.

So I made a bigger rocket.4 LFBs instead of 2, with an extra orange tank on top of each one +an extra big white tank on the center stack. I need to reinstall KER, but it got the 3rd stage to orbit over half full, so I think its in buisiness. This staged rocket was 870 tons on the pad, and got 92 tons into orbit (subtracting empty tankage that was used to put it in orbit, but including the KR-2L that finished putting it into orbit, but was also going to be used to transfer to Mun)... so about 10% payload fraction as well. 10% is what SSTO rockets could easily get in stock KSP... this crossfeeding staged rocket is barely getting 10%... I like the increase in difficulty.

Its put the fun and challenge back in getting to orbit, and doing a Mun landing.

Although... I'm tempted to throw in my Rald Space Program config, to make it easier to start a game... with the 3x rescale, velocity in low Rald's orbit should be about the same as low orbit around stock Kerbin

Edited April 14, 2017 by KerikBalm

[Numerlor]

Landed my first probe on Eve

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 4/11/2017 at 10:40 AM, Stratzenblitz75 said:

Today, I went fast. Very Fast. <Snip>

I thought my old 1300m/s jet/rocket cars were fast. I was wrong. This is fantastic.

[Kerbal-Willie]

I rebuilt my tourist rocket today, holds 8 tourists and can orbit Mimus and Mun with ease. (In the first picture , can anyone tell me if thats an eclipse or a glitch in the sun? Cool either way!)

My old one:

My new one:

[Kromey]

11 minutes ago, Kerbal-Willie said:

(In the first picture , can anyone tell me if thats an eclipse or a glitch in the sun? Cool either way!)

Looks like a solar eclipse; that's the Mun blocking out the sun for ya there!

[Bornholio]

29 minutes ago, Kerbal-Willie said:

(In the first picture , can anyone tell me if thats an eclipse or a glitch in the sun? Cool either way!)

 

Kerbol Eclipse. Once a day, every day.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Bornholio

[Zeiss Ikon]

56 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

Kerbol Eclipse. Once a day, every day.

Nah, can't be any more than every 6 Kerbin days -- once per orbit of Mun.

[qzgy]

I tried to recreate the Mallard

[TheJollyDodger]

Well pretty new to KSP, so today I finally managed to get the whole orbiting Kerbin thing figured out and I thought to myself "self, you're so good at this now you should try a rescue mission"

I managed to get to a decent rendezvous on my third try (yay!) I was so pleased with myself. Right up until I realized I forgot to build a rescue craft with enough seats for poor Jeb plus the rescuee.....

 

poo 

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

29 minutes ago, TheJollyDodger said:

Well pretty new to KSP, so today I finally managed to get the whole orbiting Kerbin thing figured out and I thought to myself "self, you're so good at this now you should try a rescue mission"

I managed to get to a decent rendezvous on my third try (yay!) I was so pleased with myself. Right up until I realized I forgot to build a rescue craft with enough seats for poor Jeb plus the rescuee.....

 

poo 

Have you unlocked Electrics? If you have an OKTO probe core then you can build a good rescue craft by putting one of them on the nose of a Mk1 Command Pod and leaving the pod empty. Much easier than trying to build a two-seat rocket.

As for me, I figured since I'd already landed at the Island Airport I might as well take a trip to the other disused launch facility on Kerbin.

The first vessel of my three-ship Duna mission finally arrived and is now orbiting Ike.

I also discovered that eclipses in KSP make even less sense than I thought they did.

[TheJollyDodger]

Yeah I have that. I was just so excited I figured out how to get to orbit reliably that I plumb forgot about the need for the extra seat (Or to make an unmanned pod) haha

[Bornholio]

Several Gael Missions tonight.  toursits for money

Flyby Missions for Iota and Ceti (made with the same vessel)

Second Radar mapping/Comsat to Ceti

Ceti Manned Lander Missions

 

 

[Martian Emigrant]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Nah, can't be any more than every 6 Kerbin days -- once per orbit of Mun.

Actually.

 

There is one eclipse a day on Kerbin.

The Mun change place everyday so it will take a full orbit or the Mun to have an eclipse at the same spot.

There will be one a day in different spots along the equator.....Everyday.

 

ME

[Bornholio]

3 minutes ago, Martian Emigrant said:

Actually.

 

There is one eclipse a day on Kerbin.

The Mun change place everyday so it will take a full orbit or the Mun to have an eclipse at the same spot.

There will be one a day in different spots along the equator.....Everyday.

 

ME

Okay, i've just about figured how to draw the diagram... ah farg it, good enough description. /smirk