What did you do in KSP1 today?

[kraden]

5 hours ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

But, in all honesty, I don't think anybody knows. To-may-toe, to-maw-toe, you know?

According to how they pronounced it in the old videos you can check out, it's GEM-in-ee.

Edited July 12, 2017 by kraden

[Julien Kerman]

Today I started to build an entire fleet of probes for the outer solar system. The 1977 "voyager transfer window" allows me to fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with a single vessel using gravity assists. 

Here you can see the planet constellation and the planned flight path:

Earth --> Jupiter transfer will take 6800 m/s, then I will only need small adjustments.

Well, maybe I exaggerate it a bit 

Edited July 12, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[Freshmeat]

I managed to land on Tylo for the first time Note the resources, I had 22 m/s left upon touchdown

The craft is a recycled Vall lander. After transferring the crew to their return craft I examined the specs if I repurposed the equipment, life support and ore containers as fuel tanks (and a kind thought to @Angel-125 for making Wild Blue containers reconfigurable on the fly). Then I mounted the lander to the side of a tug as the front docking port was another type:

I had to shut down most of the engines, limit the trust of of two of four still usable and distribute all fuel to port side to get a linear thrust, netting an acceleration of whooping 0.55 m/s^2. The image is taken during the 13 minute capture burn at Tylo.

The landing operation itself took two tries, thank Kraken for F5/F9. Unfortunately, all science equipment was left at Vall, but I still feel as proud as when I touched down first time on the Mun.

And given the ISRU onboard, take-off to orbit was perfectly doable.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Freshmeat
Addendum: Back to orbit

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Been trying to figure out how best to land a space shuttle with a base on the Mun, as that will be required for some of the later STS challenge missions.

Also getting ready to do the STS-1b mission, been testing the altitude limits with a 40t payload. Currently having a few problems with getting a nice circular orbit from my launch script, but I'm doing a rewrite of it anyways so that's ok. (Rewrite was originally to make it simpler and easier to understand and modify with or without being me).

 

Also I've made a primitive collective script that will keep a prop/rotor spinning at a constant speed. In these two pictures you can see how it deflects the blades to keep them spinning at a target angular velocity. Usually the blades on this thing would be longer but I ended up knocking them against something due to a minor accident with one rotor deflecting its blades the wrong way, but the shorter blades turned out to give a better visualization of the working of the script.

 

I have a few kinks I want to work out before possibly releasing the script. I'm thinking of perhaps replacing the "if angular velocity is > x then deflect, else don't" method it currently uses with a PID loop just to get that nice buttery smoothness from it (although actually idk if it would be much smoother because that operation happens several times per second anyways).

I can see this script being useful for otherwise stock tiltrotors as it would automatically adjust their rotors during the transition between vertical and horizontal flight.

Also with the experience I'm gaining, I kind of wonder if at some point I might be able to create the cyclic script I've always wanted to do. Might require the use of weird looking rotors with the giant, fast moving control surfaces for blades, or at least as tabs at the ends.

 

[qzgy]

Fiddled with a large passenger SSTO, before fiddling with smaller gliders (yesterday)

Health and safety were not amused by the low building passes.

[CaptainTrebor]

Detected some anomalies on the Mun with my relay satellite. Guess that's an incentive to send a few more missions, then.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Put a new mining/science rover on Moho. Thought it would be nice to have refueling capabilities for the times when I misjudge what it will take me to get to the planet and back. I also wanna use it for a staging point for a low solar orbit space station.

 

 

However, no project of mine is complete without at least one major screw-up. This one has three. I forgot lights (important when you're in the dark for half the year), and worse, I forgot an antenna. And science instruments. 

 

In my defense, my KSP time is very short these days, so I'm always rushing projects. Still pretty stupid, though.

 

Here I'm launching one of my X Base class land bases to Eeloo. It's basically an entire base built, launched, and landed in one piece for ease of use.

 

 

I've been using these lately cuz they make base building pretty simple. Looks a bit funky with the engines and skycrane still attached but, once it's on the ground, it's not so bad. If you're wondering about the oddly placed modules and parts (some of which are completely unnecessary), I had to put them on in a way that would balance out the weight and make the thing launchable (not to mention flyable and landable).

 

 

This giant rover is going along as well, to act as the fuel truck.

 

 

This thing is every bit as much fun to fly as it looks. Very ungainly. I could just use an all-in-one rover on Eeloo, like I did on Moho, but I wanted to do something different. Plus, I like these huge rovers. They're fun and rugged.

 

 

Lastly is the fuel shuttle that's going along to complete the package. Kinda tough to tell from this pic what's what. Just looks like a lot of orange tanks.

 

 

Here in orbit, you can start to see what's going on. All those hitchers at the top are extra seats to fulfill a contract. I'll dock it with the X Base at Eeloo to complete a station contract (every mission needs financing), then the hitchers will be staged away. If you notice the outside tanks themselves, it's a design I've been using lately. The tanks are drained and staged from the top down. It's basically a drop-tank set up, but I dump the tanks from the top while keeping the engines. It works great for dumping the dead weight, though it's obviously not an ideal set up when you're burning. You have to kill the engines, turn slightly sideways, and then stage the tanks away.

 

 

You can see how it ends up looking after the drop tanks are done. Next time, I think I'll attach Sepatrons to them so I won't have to turn sideways. I'll just need to kill the engines, stage the tanks and Sepatrons, and kick the engines back on. I like the results, so I'll keep working at it.

And now you can finally start to see the fuel shuttle itself as well. Should be useful at Eeloo.

 

 

[Jouni]

Last time I stopped at 35N after crossing two major craters. Today my Tylo expedition continued north.

At first, the terrain was quite interesting.

 

The mountains started getting higher, though not as high as the Mountains of Utter Ridiculousness in the south. Some serious mountaineering was required.

 

The mountain range ended at 49N. The edge of this relatively flat summit area was at 10.5 km, though scanners revealed that the highest point nearby would have been 11.2 km.

Spoiler

 

The plains were almost 5 km below the summit area. After driving 3/4 around Tylo, I was familiar enough with the rover that I could just drive straight down without looking for an easier route.

 

Then it was hundreds of kilometres of boring flat terrain. At around 73N, the ground around the prime meridian got rougher, as I saw the first signs of the ridges rising towards the north pole. I moved a bit east for easier driving, and then continued until 76N.

[purpleivan]

I took the Space 1999 Eagle from MajorTom69 for a spin.

 

That's not a good start.

 

Better.

 

Now where should we go.

 

On the surface (I feel a new wallpaper image coming on.

 

Heading for home.

 

Back in Kerbin orbit... now how do I land this thing.

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by purpleivan

[luizopiloto]

Flew around Eve for a bit...

[Tw1]

I was testing a one kerb missile, when I was forced to abort, somewhere in the middle of the southern ocean. No land in sight.

My kerbal, weighed down by equipment, began to sink.

I decided to see where this was going. Doing "experiments" all the way down.

It got darker and darker. By 1Km down, There was no natural light at all.

Touched rock bottom,  Allock kerman planet a flag. It was a new frontier. 

Naturally, I decided to make a base here. Getting it down in one piece was not easy.

It's tricky operating under water. With about 0.2 tons of extra ballast, a kerbal will slowly drift down while swimming.

The base is touchy, and prone to exploding new additions.

It's dark, cold, dangerous. It's also quite finicky, drop something the wrong way, and the physics engine may decide it's time stuff started floating to the surface.

 

Also, I might have started trying to revived my longest running save. The Oceans of Eve save. 

Edited July 13, 2017 by Tw1

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Tw1 said:

I decided to see where this was going. Doing "experiments" all the way down.

Mod list plz. 

Dat water, doe! Is that just stock 1.3?

[purpleivan]

Brought Jeb and Dotty in their Space 1999 Eagle back to the KSC after their trip to Mun.

Landing it was more than a bit tricky until I realised that there was RCS on-board, after which a safe, if not soft landing was made.

[Tw1]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Mod list plz. 

Dat water, doe! Is that just stock 1.3?

That fantastic water is from a fresh installation of  scatterer- they've done an amazing job.

The Arm thingies are an unreleased creation of my own - some parts still don't quite work. Needs KIS, and BD armory to work.
 Peridot's Limb Enhancers

As for the other mods, what I've got here is mostly KAS, KIS, Lack Luster Labs, BD armory, Hyperedit because I didn't have time to fly it all the way there, the old Weight Additive gismo mod for ballast, (old, and pretty dodgy).

 

[Cupcake...]

Just a spot of ice fishing...

Enjoy!

 

Cupcake...

[Julien Kerman]

Today the Kerbals left Earth's SOI. It was a very exiting mission.

Dibel Kerman launched on a Saturn V

Wohooo!!! Interplanetary Space

Earth is still visible. After one month in space, she set a maneuver to get back. Actually I planned to stay in orbit around the sun a little longer, but I did not know if I could get back in time, 

her ship provided one year of life support.

She landed safely in the Sahara desert and is now ready for her next assignment.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[qromodynmc]

Had a photoshoot with this cute plane.

Edited July 13, 2017 by qromodynmc

[joacobanfield]

I sent my first rover to Eve-the Churchill II. (N°1 was a mess that we do not speak of.)

Here it is, losing over 3000 m/s of speed using Eve´s atmosphere.

Heat shield ejected, waiting for chutes...

Landed. Wohoo!

[XB-70A]

I finished a small craft this morning which should be used as a Mun/Minmus touristic craft or a transfer vehicle but simply don't find what could be the best looking for it :

With a cockpit, which gives another seat, just in case...

 

or without, which was the original looking of the craft and making it a pure remote controlled spacecraft.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

3 hours ago, qromodynmc said:

Had a photoshoot with this cute plane.

I've never really thought to call a fighter jet bristling with weapons "cute" before lol. 

Nice work though! F-16 is one of my favorite planes.

Anyway, I've been working on a monopropellant rocket to get to Duna and back for the KSP sort-of-weekly challenge.

This picture is slightly out of date, the boosters are a bit bigger now and the core has another tank.

 

Also been working on a kOS script that will do both collective and cyclic. I think I've got the basic format of it worked out, and it's looking easier than I thought it would be. The main question is:  

Does the game physics update frequently enough to allow the script to keep up with the spinning of the rotor?

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[Cydonian Monk]

Today (or rather last night) I fired up an old version of KSP, 0.90, and was pleasantly surprised at how stable, responsive, and playable the game used to be.

[NISSKEPCSIM]

I started my first ever mod!

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, Cupcake... said:

Just a spot of ice fishing...

dat everything doe!

[Ultimate Steve]

4 hours ago, XB-70A said:

I finished a small craft this morning which should be used as a Mun/Minmus touristic craft or a transfer vehicle but simply don't find what could be the best looking for it :

Actually, I made a similar craft today!

I present the "Raven."

I don't remember exactly which missions I did, but I will try to recap the best I can.

Raven 1 - suborbital atmospheric glide test (with reusable solid rocket booster). Raven landed okay, but we made changes to Raven 2 so that it has separate control surfaces for both pitch and roll. The booster landed fine.

Raven 2 - suborbital space re-entry and landing test (with re-usable solid rocket booster) (manned). This mission fired Raven's engine to get the apoapsis out of the atmosphere. The utility bay, solar panels, and RCS were tested in space. Re-entry went well, and it was found that it is easiest to land the Raven using only pitch. However, the gear is too bouncy. Gear settings were adjusted and a drag chute was added.

Raven 3 was an unmanned suborbital test flight (I think) which used a prototype reusable liquid booster which would flip engine forward and glide back to KSC once its job was done. Unfortunately, the booster did not make it back to KSC, and the probe core was upside-down, so the gliding to a smooth landing did not work well. The Raven was being tested to see how landing with a full fuel load worked. It worked well, although the bounciness problem wasn't gone.

Raven 4 - the first interesting mission. Its objectives were to test Raven's ability to enter orbit, test docking by docking with ALPACA station (placed into orbit by ALPACA 1, a reusable* VTOL interplanetary spaceship which, on its first flight launched that station module, landed on the Mun, and failed at VTOL-ing on Kerbin), boost the orbit of ALPACA station (which for some reason had a periapsis of 69km), test re-entry at orbital speeds, and test crossrange capability. It made orbit fine, but the reusable liquid fueled booster (which had been modified with extra fins) proved to be aerodynamically unstable and crashed shortly after parachutes were deployed (deployed them a bit late).

Raven docked with ALPACA station an orbit or two later - and it looks SO COOL!

I mean, that bay fits perfectly, and the orbit was boosted just fine despite the off center thrust! I'm considering building a long range version like this, but with a fuel tank.

Re-entry went well.

However, the crossrange capability got a bit more of a test than I meant it to, we overshot KSC and landed at the island airport (first picture).

Raven 5 - Deliver two crewmembers to ALPACA Sta-WAITWAITWAIT!

For an unknown reason, EvilBadGuyVillains(TM) have launched an evil computer into space to crack the nuclear launch codes! The computer will function even if you blow it up, so it needs to be recovered and neutralized using special scanners! It will complete its calculations in ten orbits. Take longer and the world explodes!

And it just so happens we have a rocket sitting on the pad ready to intercept!

Cue Raven 5 - crew transfer mission Evil Robot Recovery Mission!

Oh, by the way, did we mention that the probe was in a polar orbit?

The Raven was already running low on Delta-V due to the high-inclination launch and the massive plane change it had to do, so it could not rendezvous with the evil probe until the ninth orbit, whereupon realizing they had the wrong sized docking port and had to carefully wedge the probe in between the doors of the docking bay.

Re-entry went well, but the Raven 5 fell short of the KSC by about a hundred kilometers. The probe was still calculating - the situation was dire. So, what did the crew do? They landed upside-down in the water, drenching the circuits in the computer (and destroying the Raven's engine and wings).

The original Raven a museum piece, the Raven 002 (unnamed, referred to as simply "Raven") was built. They were working on another station crew transfer mission when, suddenly, a random ICBM took off from the runway.

Nobody knows where it came from, only that it was on a suborbital trajectory and would impact the continent, wiping out all life for (insert large number) kilometers in each direction.

But never fear! Raven 6 is on the launch pad (hey, this seems to be happening a lot!). The lone pilot launched and intercepted the missile, reaching it right before it hit the atmosphere.

Having no weapons, the pilot rammed the ICBM, cutting the computer away from the warheads and destroying two of the warheads. Unfortunately, the pilot's engine also exploded. Four warheads were still re-entering - who knows if they still could go off.

Thankfully, the warheads did not explode. The pilot, however, had to land in the mountains. She barely survived the resulting crash, which wrecked the plane.

So there is what I've been doing today.

 

 

Anyone have any mission ideas for Raven?

 

 

[Jouni]

I was already at 76N, so it was only a short trip to Tylo's north pole. The terrain was a bit rough at times, but it didn't take long to reach the polar region.

From distance, the north pole didn't look as bad as the south pole.

 

About 1 km from the pole, the ridge became too narrow to drive, so I sent Jeb to scout ahead.

Spoiler

 

The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — it's full of stars!

 

Apparently somebody had misassembled the planet.

 

This may be as close to the north pole as it's possible to go. I'm going to try the lowest valley tomorrow anyway.

Spoiler