What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

(1.3.0) Another triumph for my litterbox save, comrades:

 

Log for my career save is backed up by almost a week at this point, so I might as well tell y'all about that too. No screenies there, though.

Last Friday I picked up some garbage from LKO with a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe, returning with the paywad about 40 klicks from KSC. Ordinarily I wouldn't use a BC7b for LKO; I don't recall what the garbage was other than that I felt it was large enough and heavy enough to warrant the design's enlarged heat shield. Next up was a set of quick contracts, some orbital Kerbin science, a satellite adjustment and a parts test. I also launched a pair of tourists on an LKO contract aboard a Kerbal Tour Bus 7d orbiter. Six more tourists - Mitry, Sidly, Jaoly, Katsen, Joedon and Obtrey Kerman - were also sent up to the Kerbinport space station aboard an Auk II passenger spaceplane. Took the weekend off.

On Monday, tourists Organ, Frandous, Lemski, Mitrey, Sidly, Jaoly, Katsen, Joedon and Obtrey Kerman boarded Strange Cargo, with Jeb giving up his pilot's seat for Obtrey, putting the ship on automatic for a journey to Minmus. The ship departed Kerbinport and got the single best burn I've ever had for a Minmus transfer - an arrival of only three days. After doing some planning for an upcoming Duna expedition, I picked up a new space station contract fulfill-able with the specifications of one of my Superfortress 7 ferry craft. Forgetting the requirement that it be a new craft, I loaded up Jeb, Val, Bill, pilot Lazor Kerman, engineer Eriemy Kerman and tourist Hanby Kermin aboard Necessary Evil and launched the craft to Mun, which meant for the first time in a while my entire ferry fleet was in flight. After moving a satellite for contract, I picked up a contract to rescue pilot Agamore Kerman from LKO and dispatched an Auk Va engineering plane to conduct the rescue. I remembered belatedly why I don't use the Auk V for much (it's a tail-less delta with lousy pitch authority), but still completed the mission successfully.

Tuesday began with the dispatch of the Spamcan 7b lander from the Munport space station, picking up pilot Catfrey Kerman from the surface for contract. After planting a flag, Catfrey boarded the lander and returned to the station, punching the clock when she got there. I then conducted a four-point seismice survey with the rover Bad Juju at the southern Highlands near Mun. Next Objective then arrived at Minmus and was put on a course to arrive with the Minmusport space station. Necessary Evil burned for Munar orbit and rendezvous with Munport at the same time Next Objective was approaching Minmusport for docking, so I had to do some juggling there. The first batch of Next Objective's tourists went down and landed at the Deepwater Horizon refinery, with refinery engineer Leedorf conducting a quick refit on their Spamcan 7a lander before the group returned to the station. Scientists Paley and Bobkin Kerman along with pilot Phildan Kerman went down next, landing safely in the Greater Flats 1.6 kilometers from where Bob had previously planted the region's marker flag, and the trio conducted their own flag-planting training mission before returning to the station. Day ended with yet another satellite adjustment.

Yesterday began with the return of the three KSC staffmembers to Minmusport; they punched their tickets and reboarded Next Objective. After the ferry was refueled and final departure checks were made, the ship departed and burned for Mun, where it will arrive in eleven days. Strange Cargo arrived in Minmus's SOI shortly thereafter and docked with Minmusport successfully, while Necessary Evil finally arrived at Munport. With the need for a new craft to fulfill the aforementioned space station contract, Agamore and tourist Herhat were loaded aboard a new Superfortress 7 passenger ferry, which was dubbed Laggin' Dragon upon reaching LKO, the fourth and final planned craft of my ferry fleet. The craft departed for Mun, where it will arrive in two days. I also had a contract to build a new space station over Minmus, so I designed and launched Moneybux 7; the module burned for Minmus upon reaching LKO and the plan there is to dock it to Minmusport once its contract has been fulfilled - I really just don't need two orbiting Minmus space stations. Tourists Organ, Jaoly and Joedon were sent down from Strange Cargo to the surface of Minmus, arriving safely. The trio were returned to Minmusport this morning, and after refueling and final departure checks were made, Strange Cargo departed Minmusport bound for Mun, where it will arrive in ten days.

 

So yeah, not much in terms of excitement going on in my career save right now. Litterbox is waaaaay more interesting. Can't wait to be able to afford an Alcubierre Drive engine in my career save so I can start replicating some of those accomplishments.

I probably should see about updating my ribbons at this point...

[jakebomb]

16 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I got a major chunk of the mass driver model done for Pathfinder's new Pipeline part:

I hope this turns into an orbital launch loop!

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

9 hours ago, obi_juan said:

Today I decided to try the new kind of SSTO showed by @wiskeytangofoxtrot3 few weeks ago.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Ok, I like it I think that I could improve the design, but is a good solution.  

Also is my first upload to KerbalX. 

Looks cool. I want to point out, though, that the idea behind my SSTO was that all of the parts meant to get the ship through Kerbin's atmosphere (wings, jet engines, oxidizer tanks, etc.) would be left behind in LKO while a central core section, optimized for space travel, would detach and continue onward. When its mission was complete, the core section would then return to the aerodynamic section and re-attach for re-entry and landing. It looks like you still have some wings attached to the core section, which would just be dead-weight in space. It also looks like you're detaching the nose in a way that can't be re-assembled.

[Angelo Kerman]

2 hours ago, jakebomb said:

I hope this turns into an orbital launch loop!

Well, it's actually designed to transfer resources and KIS items from the active vessel to an unloaded vessel that's hundreds of kilometers away.

[Omaha]

After years of looking outward and sending manned missions to Duna, we finally decided to see what was on the big purple rock circling the sun beneath us.  We had launched a lander probe toward Eve many months ago, and it arrived yesterday.  After an interesting aerobraking process, the probe touched down safely on a small island in the northern hemisphere.  Very shortly after landing, it was treated to an Eve sunrise, captured here:

Album a/GTlTI will appear when post is submitted

Once the oohs and aahs subsided, we began transmitting the data that the probe had gathered during its descent.  As its original Eve orbit was almost exactly polar, it had a chance to pass over multiple areas of the planet and take many measurements on the way in, including its surface measurements after touchdown.  I think the net haul was about 1000 science points, though that is kind of meaningless since all research has been completed in this game.

Based on what we learned about landing on Eve as part of this mission, plans are in way to send another spacecraft carrying three updated probes and pepper the planet with additional robotic landers.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Omaha

[regex]

Prepared for the Sarnus mission today.

This is Josephine, a much better designed craft than my recent previous stuff. I really tried to focus on what it should be doing rather than bring along the kitchen sink, kind of like my earliest expedition craft to Duna. This is a dedicated expedition vessel, with orbital science instruments, powerful antenna, and good hauling capacity to bring along landers. In fact, you can see that I launched it with one of the landers already in its bay.

Here I'm bringing in the second specialized lander. The one already docked on the left is designed for Tecto and is basically a carbon-copy of the Laythe lander but with two fewer engines, and actually packing science equipment. It also has ladders. This one has no need for the large heatshield used on the Laythe lander due to the slower orbital speeds which is fantastic as I have no need for counter-balancing mass on the other side. The one on the right approaching for docking is intended for landing on Slate. Without parachutes and airbrakes it has more delta-V but it needs it for the propulsive landing, and it will use all of the fuel in the deorbit modules rather than simply ditching them once a good trajectory is achieved. The central lander is for the other small bodies and is basically my standard lander updated to include some RTGs for outer system usage. In the second picture I've tilted the craft to better show the profile.

Josephine comes in at 372 parts and has some 30km/s of delta-V with payload (and actually has a pretty decent TWR); I'm finally into the really powerful engines in KSPIE but there's still a lot of tech tree left.

[winged]

Perun - an air-launched rocket capable of carrying small payloads of up to 1050 kilograms into Low Earth Orbit . The vehicle consists of kerolox powered first stage and upper stage powered by hypergolic engine. First stage has wings and a tail to provide lift and attitude control while in the atmosphere.

Album a/h89Qf will appear when post is submitted

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

Explorer 1 has embarked on her second mission and is now en route to Dres.

Her crew this time consists of pilot Obgel Kerman, engineer Joezor Kerman and scientists Wehrely and Mirtha Kerman. The role of lander pilot was deemed redundant and omitted from the roster. Attached to her stern is a small orbital outpost based on a similar design to the one now orbiting Moho. Unlike my full-sized stations it consists mainly of a fuel depot and relay, with no on-board science lab and minimal habitation space. It will be used in conjunction with the mining equipment already en route to the planet to give future missions a quicker turn-around time by providing a easy access to a large supply of rocket fuel.

Two landers are being brought along for this mission: A two-person reusable lander which will be left with the station and a single-occupant, single-use lander which will be used for Explorer 1's main science landing. This vehicle lacks any kind of landing legs of its own and will instead touch down on the wheels of the science rover attached to the bottom. After running its science experiments and allowing its pilot to plant a flag and gather samples from Dres's surface the lander will detach itself from the rover and re-unite with Explorer 1 in orbit. It will be returned to Kerbin for analysis while the rover will be left on Dres's surface permanently, ensuring that it will always be possible to obtain scientific readings from the planet. Hopefully this will help quiet some of the conspiracy theorists who insist that Dres's entire existence is a hoax, but I'm sure that will remain an ongoing battle.

[something]

Today, I landed my carrier next to the Minmus base. I didn't realize the carrier would scale the base and the vessels parked next to it...

With all those parts in one place, I forced my timer into the solid yellow regime revealing some slide-show effects.

[Zeiss Ikon]

On 10/18/2017 at 12:40 PM, adsii1970 said:

Made a new header for my profile here:

You might want to correct the spelling of Robert Zubrin's name on that...

Just saying.

[Space Kadet]

 

[MoarBoostersRUS]

Made a new GPP install for 1.3.1 with 10x resize, near future, USI and some other goodies under unmand before maned tech tree should be fun. It's the smallest modded install I have only 5k mm patches 

Edit: Realized I forgot tweakscale up to 5.6k mm patches still tiny compared to the rest of my installs 

Edit #2: Noticed I was missing other mods now at 16.5k mm patches now it is in the normal range 

Edited October 20, 2017 by MoarBoostersRUS

[Angelo Kerman]

Finished Pathfinder's ground and orbital Pipeline mass drivers:

Orbital variant:

Unlike the ground variant, the orbital variant doesn't come packed in a box. But, it fits in the Mk3 cargo bay.

And here is the new Buffalo Recycler Arm:

It's getting there... If you don't have a Level 2 Engineer available to go outside and recycle parts, then you can attach the Recycler Arm to your vehicle and point the blowtorch at the space junk.

Almost done with the latest Pathfinder release!

[Space Kadet]

4 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Finished Pathfinder's ground and orbital Pipeline mass drivers:

Orbital variant:

Unlike the ground variant, the orbital variant doesn't come packed in a box. But, it fits in the Mk3 cargo bay.

And here is the new Buffalo Recycler Arm:

It's getting there... If you don't have a Level 2 Engineer available to go outside and recycle parts, then you can attach the Recycler Arm to your vehicle and point the blowtorch at the space junk.

Almost done with the latest Pathfinder release!

This is lookin sexy as usual!

[capi3101]

(1.3.0) Not much of note happened yesterday. In the wake of the recent expeditions of Strange Cargo and Next Objective to the Minmusport space station, I decided to take an administrative day and double-checked the resources at my space stations and refineries in Kerbin's SOI. I wound up doing two fuel resupply runs with the Old Bessie 7 fuel lander at the Munport space station to the Piper Alpha refinery and a nearly identical run with an identical craft from Minmusport to the Deepwater Horizon refinery. Only noteworthy thing about those runs is that I finally learned the true power of the Trajectories mod - it was nice to be able to set both landers down within KAS winch range of the refineries, without any necessary finagling at the last second. Refueled the refineries after the landers left, so at this point my remote bases at Mun and Minmus are ready for the next set of expeditions.

And that was it for yesterday...

In other news, I spent a good chunk of the day working on Alcubierre Drive calculations for a navigational aid I'm building. I'm hoping to have that out and ready for general download later today. Plus I posted a KSP tutorial on YouTube that is in dire need of annotation...

[Julien Kerman]

Today I finally finished the space station by adding the second solar array.

One of those arrays costs over 108,000 so they are the most expensive parts of the station.

Anyways - this is how it looks now:

[Tyko]

23 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Well, it's actually designed to transfer resources and KIS items from the active vessel to an unloaded vessel that's hundreds of kilometers away.

"No, really! It's just extra snacks we are slinging at you...trust us and prepare to receive our care package"

"Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. We are dealing with something that could be perverted into a dreadful weapon." - David, Star Trek - Wrath of Khan...

Edited October 20, 2017 by Tyko

[PaperAviator]

So... My KSP just disowned Val and Bill...

[obi_juan]

12 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Finished Pathfinder's ground and orbital Pipeline mass drivers:

Orbital variant:

Unlike the ground variant, the orbital variant doesn't come packed in a box. But, it fits in the Mk3 cargo bay.

 

Are you taking a revival of the "Netherdyne Mass Driver Mod"?

Because I think that mod will be interesting for my moon and orbital stations... 

[Angelo Kerman]

1 minute ago, obi_juan said:

Are you taking a revival of the "Netherdyne Mass Driver Mod"?

Because I think that mod will be interesting for my moon and orbital stations... 

No, this is a mass driver that lets you transfer resources between the active vessel and an unloaded vessel. You select the destination craft and resources and KIS inventory items that you want to transfer:

Then you go to the destination craft and collect the delivery:

It's great for having multiple bases on a planet where, say, a mining base isn't a good location for a base that builds new vessels.

[klond]

 'Got official government authorization for my Probodobodyne QBE spy satellite  

 Of course it's only going to actually be used for [REDACTED].

[Delay]

I did a tourist contract today. I needed to perform a fly-by and orbital insertion around the Mun. I decided to use a MK1-2 for that, because I have can have a pilot and both tourists in the same capsule and it would be independant from connection to Kerbin. So I built a vehicle capable of performing these tasks, go there, and got back safely. Except...

The parachute decelerated the pod too quickly. One kerbal got unconscious, the contract failed. To solve this, I decided to redo the upper stage. I got rid of the decoupler between tank and the pod, removed the Poodle, moved the heat shield down, added some legs, 2 thuds and an extra fuel tank and did a powered landing instead, just for fun.

I was already used to performing powered landings with Mk1-2s, because the only other time I use the pod (for docking to my space station) always lands this way.* But I never did it with such small amounts of fuel (157 units of LF instead of over 600), so it still took some attempts.

I "landed" first try, some parts exploded and I wasn't happy with it. The second try was a complete failure, because the vessel decided to flip around. Third try: started the burn a bit too late. The fourth one was "successful": I forgot to stop SAS turning the rocket retrograde, so I was hitting the ground with 2 legs, got back in the air, (accidentally) did a backflip and then landed on all 4 landing legs. I decided to let this one count.

Oh, and I also built a geostationary satellite.

*Please note that this was not inspired by a real company in any way, shape or form. Also, note that I don't have backup chutes on the pods, so I have to do powered landings.

[JadeOfMaar]

Finally got through with my sandbox Laythe Expedition. It went by surprisingly quickly.

Jebediah and Bob launched straight out from LKO, needing no mid-course correction to secure their Jool encounter but needing one near the entry of Jool's SOI to flatten their orbital plane and enable use of Tylo and Laythe gravity braking. The time between these encounters was amusingly short and there was the risk of being flung over Jool into an absurdly inclined escape path. And it took about 27 days from the SOI edge to reach Tylo. The green commnet line leads to a ship carrying a JX2 antenna and orbiting Ike. The rd line leads to Kerbin's DSN.

A few light aerobrake passes at Laythe + a braking burn to capture. The periapsis was only about 45km. It wasn't much but the risk of deorbiting in the first pass was strongly avoided.

The deorbit burn and aerobrake to land on Laythe was swift, easy, and without an expected heavy gee load on the craft or crew (in spite of literally doing a pancake/belly flop move to slow down), as if Laythe's atmosphere had open arms to receive the plane rather than, say, a typical steep reentry at Kerbin or having one's Pe anywhere under 80km at Eve.

The kerbals' stay didn't even last an hour as KAC revealed the Kerbin transfer window was 17 days away. Bob planted the flag and the two sailed back into orbit, meeting with the transfer ship. Things got interesting when the plan's batteries emptied and squeezing EC from the solar panels became vital to prevent wasting the meager supply of 70 MonoPropellant to orient itself to recharge, and to efficiently dock with the transfer ship. Even then, it had to move and use some of its Mono as it carried much more... but it didn't have balanced RCS and wasn't meant to do precise maneuvering for itself.

4 years and 2 mid-course nodes later, these two return to Kerbin and even snatch an encounter with the puny Minmus. The story ends (so far) with a braking burn while passing through Minmus as I was too sleepy to concentrate anymore. For all I know, they're currently bound to crash into Minmus.

 

   

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

3 hours ago, PaperAviator said:

So... My KSP just disowned Val and Bill...

It looks like Val and Bill are in one of the Mk1 Crew Cabins. You need to transfer one of them (preferably Val) to the cockpit for the plane to be controllable. Just having a pilot somewhere on the vessel isn't enough; they have to be in the command pod.

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

Well, i make the Sun dissaperar. (Really). But the problem is already solved.

(Sorry for my bad English.)