What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Angelo Kerman]

Fixed some texturing issues tonight and worked on the config files. Then did a test flight:

I've got a lot of texturing and model work to do, this is just an analog to the finished craft.

Also, got the mesh work done on the unkermanned variant of the Estonian, known as the ED-3 Cargo Drone:

[CatastrophicFailure]

@Angel-125 how’s deta-V spec looking for the WIP? Are you planning on integrated landing legs? 

[harrisjosh2711]

89.4 ton payload preparing for a mun landing.

 

Edited October 28, 2017 by harrisjosh2711

[NotJebediah]

6 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

Excellent... I'll be really looking forward to this as I love the idea of assists but have no idea how to plan 'em.  I do get the odd one occasionally, but it's always by pure chance, so I'll be eagerly awaiting to read more about your assist around the Mun to Minmus.

I was lucky this time too, didn't really plan beforehand. I always quicksave before a burn and when I saw I won't have enough fuel I reloaded, changed my inclination, and just pulled the prograde a bit further then fiddled with radial. The Mun was just happened to be in the way, but it would kicked me higher than Minmus. A small burn again pointed radial in at Mun PE was enough to correct this and I could gather some more data during the flyby.

It was blind luck that the Mun was there and I improvised en route, but most of my missions turn out this way Next time I try to add some pics

[Jett_Quasar]

Hot off the presses... my latest video is here

I haven't had a chance to download the craft files but stay tuned they will be there soon

 - Jett

Edit: The Jedi Starfighter and Sith Interceptor have uploaded to Kerbal-X

Edited October 28, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[The Flying Kerbal]

Been in the "computer simulator" (ie a sandbox game) experimenting with aerobraking at Eve.  It's proving to be a frustrating exercise.  Dropping the Pe to 68K resulted in the Gilly/Relay section, indeed everything other than the Eve lander, experience "a rapid, unplanned explosive disassembly" in KSA speak...

And 75K didn't improve things very much as again everything except the Eve lander again exploded because of overheating.  I'm planning on using my new toy, the NERV engine as an adhoc heat shield for the aerobraking, is it as resilient as other engines when skipping through an atmosphere like this?

So now I'm trying 85K.  This altitude doesn't come close to getting my vessel captured in Eve's orbit, but it doesn't cause the thing to explode either.  So far I've done about twenty laps of the planet as the Ap slowly drops towards something resembling a sensible orbit.  Clearly though this aerobraking at Eve isn't as easy as you guys can make it appear.  When I went to Duna and Ike, remember how I boasted about how clever I was that I didn't have to hit F9 at any time from launch to completion?  I think it's safe to say I won't be saying that when I right up the debriefing report for this mission! 

[Haruspex]

Any crash a Kerbal can walk away from...

...Can still be turned into a mission success!

[DAL59]

15 hours ago, NotJebediah said:

Today I went to Eve in a ship designed to go to Duna

I've done that too.  It didn't work.  Especially since the heatshield blocked the descent engines.   And I only had oxidizer at 50%.  And the landing legs couldn't support the weight.  And I forgot a ladder.  

[roboslacker]

I did a rendezvous in my career save, and forgot the parachutes on both ships. Now I'll need to hire a new pilot for the rescue mission

[The Raging Sandwich]

I'm hoping to get my RCS problem fixed. Whenever I turn the RCS on at any time, it always starts firing forwards. I'm planning on unloading and reloading every mod to see if that's the problem. (Or maybe I need to update the entire game?)

[KerbalTween]

Here is the landed pic of another mission i did to add the antenna The Thing lost battery while taking it out of the cargo bay with the robotic arm so I Had to use the robotic arm to put it on the station docking part  Pic here 

And If You wanted To Know why it says 54 mins into flight its because when docked something and then undocking it resets the Time that has passed really 17 days if am correct passed To dock with the station

Edited October 28, 2017 by KerbalTween

[Tyko]

On 10/26/2017 at 10:52 AM, Slam_Jones said:

Continued with my RSS Career (Funds: 250%, all other settings standard... though I wish I had put Science rewards higher)

Congrats on RSS....you can adjust the science rate from the in-save settings menu. ESC / Settings / Difficulty Options

[Delay]

Valentina got back from Eve, I sent Jeb, Bob and a tourist to Duna. I plan on reaching Orbit around Duna this time.

And Eve has a stationary satellite now. That was really close: I wanted to do a capture and bring my apoapsis down to 10,000 km immediately. Then do a plane change there and circularize. If I would have done that, I would have been left with 2 m/s in the tank.

I decided to do a bi-elliptic transfer instead. Which paid off: I now have around 256 m/s left. Enough to do very fine corrections and get very close (down to 4 m) to a "true" stationary orbit.

[Angelo Kerman]

10 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@Angel-125 how’s deta-V spec looking for the WIP? Are you planning on integrated landing legs? 

Delta-v depends upon configuratuion of the fuel tanks. With upper and lower tanks configured as propellant you get about 3k m/s with the stock aerospike (the engine its designed for). With the Pathfinder bootstrap configuration, it’s around 1400-1600 after you unload the base.

It’s hard to tell from that image, but you have the Estonian command pod (gray cone), EDL tank (white extension) and EDL landing frame (back part with black stripe). Both EDL parts have storage tanks.

The Estonian is 3.75m while the landing frame is 5m for size reference. The landing frame will have landing legs like you would find on the iconic Mars Excursion Module.

[XB-70A]

The decision was taken to work on another small and fast exploration aircraft able to reach a pole and came back. Codename: Sarcina!

Knew for her courage, Willey was selected for the test flights! And she seemed to enjoy and be proud of this honor!

 

Take-off! Willey is, once again, demonstrating her bravery and confidence while flying this beautiful monster!

 

Impressive reactivity from the craft, mixed with high speeds possibilities at very low level, AND an awesome maneuvera...

 

... OK.

 

Anyway, it probably was the fault of Willey. The craft was too complexe and performant even for her!

Let's go back with a reviewed model!

 

In live report from Lt. Kerman are indicating her extreme confidence in this version!

 

YEEEEEHAAAAAAAWWWWW!!! THIS IS INCREDIBLE, THIS IS AWESOME, THIS IS PERF', OH SHI....

 

OK, for the 2nd time... I will work on it later. Thank you Willey.

 

Edited October 28, 2017 by XB-70A

[KerbalTween]

And Here is Part One of Me Trying to get a sat Out of the cargo bay(First time getting a sat out of a cargo bay Via Robotic arm I Have docked a module to my station though) 

And Here Is Pt 2 

 

Edited October 28, 2017 by KerbalTween

[CatastrophicFailure]

@Angel-125 Awesome.  I’m watching this one with great interest. Any chance for 1.2.2 compatibility? 

[Slam_Jones]

2 hours ago, Tyko said:

Congrats on RSS....you can adjust the science rate from the in-save settings menu. ESC / Settings / Difficulty Options

No kidding, thanks for the tip!  Time to adjust a few things

 

Got distracted playing Overwatch and didn't accomplish too much last night.  I put a little work into my Martian Lander, but it still isn't quite packing enough dV.  Problem area currently is the upper stage of the launcher (trying to find the right engine for it is proving difficult).  I can find ones that almost has a high enough ISP, but the thrust is too low.  Or those with high enough thrust have terrible ISP.  So far, the Martian Lander has a grand total of 20.3km/s vacuum... which is still 3-5km/s short, depending on how well I can perform an aerocapture at Mars.

The newest launch I've been putting together for it weighs over 4,000tons and needs some serious adjustments to keep the costs reasonable.  Would have kept working on it and squeezing more dv out of it drop by drop, but it was 3:00am and I had work in a few hours

Edit: Just remembered that I can put a few modules together in LEO using a few separate launches... this may have just gotten a lot easier

Edited October 28, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[Angelo Kerman]

Just now, CatastrophicFailure said:

@Angel-125 Awesome.  I’m watching this one with great interest. Any chance for 1.2.2 compatibility? 

You should be able to copy the Estonian files to your 1.2.2 save if you use a previous version of DSEV.

[Delay]

I'd like to disable quicksave and reverting, but honestly, I'm afraid of failing without it. I've crashed into the Mun so many times because I underestimated my speed and I would have lost multiple probes just because of Eve. Then I often forget solar panels, antennas, batteries and so on, lose connection because of signal clipping,...

[capi3101]

(1.3.0) TL, DR version - I did a lotta boring crap. Stuff happened. No screenies.

Full version for those of you who have some aptitude in and appreciation of the value of literacy follows: 

 

The past few days have been spent largely finishing up tourist contracts at Mun and doing fuel runs. Wednesday began with my attempt at a fueling run with the Old Bessie 7 lander at the Piper Alpha refinery on Mun. As y'all will recall, the original intent was to hook up the lander to the refinery with KAS winches, using the rover Indecision as a bridge between the two craft, but somewhere along the line the winch that was attached to the rover went missing. I decided to do things the hard way then, moving Indecision close enough to where I could connect it to Old Bessie with KAS pipes directly. That part went alright. I then had to pump the fuel into the lander the old-fashioned way because TAC decided not to behave (its button on the Toolbar was shaded out and non-operative), and after that was all said and done, the damn pipe didn't want to unlink. All in all, refinery engineer Leedorf Kerman earned her pay that day. Ultimately I did get the two craft unlinked, Piper Alpha's fuel stores were recharged and Old Bessie returned to the Munport space station.  The amount of fuel delivered was not quite enough to recharge the station's stores and the lander had departed the refinery at sunset, so an alarm was set for sunrise (three days later) for another run. In the meantime, Necessary Evil departed Mun's SOI bound for Minmus, while the new ferry craft Laggin' Dragon returned safely to Kerbin and docked with the Kerbinport space station. 

Thursday began with the arrival of the Moneybux 7 module at Minmus; it was placed into orbit and fulfilled a new Minmus space station contract, then went on to dock with the existing Minmusport space station. Old Bessie's second fuel run was completed, and then the ferry ships Strange Cargo and Next Objective both arrived in Mun's SOI inbound from Minmus. Strange Cargo docked at Munport, but as none of her nine tourists aboard needed to visit the surface, she stayed just long enough to gas up before heading back to Kerbin. Next Objective had five Kerbals that needed to visit the surface - scientists Bobkin and Paley Kerman, pilot Phildan Kerman, and tourists Melwell and Cerger Kerman. The five Kerbals went down to the surface in two trips using the station's Spamcan 7b passenger lander, with the KSC staffmembers planting ceremonial flags and punching their tickets at the space station's lab once they returned to Munport. Upon their return, Next Objective was refueled and burned for Kerbin. I have yet to refuel Munport's fuel stores...again......

Yesterday began with a contract to adjust the orbit of the Minmus Alpha probe for some fast money. Strange Cargo then returned to Kerbinport safely, her onboard tourists transferring to the passenger compartment of a waiting Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane; Jeb resumed operational command of the craft by transferring back to its main command pod at that point. Strange Cargo was refueled from the payload stores of an Auk VIII heavy tanker docked at the station. The Auk VIII's remaining payload fuel load was delivered to the station's reserve tanks and what little remained was transferred into one of the fuel tanks of the Auk VII. The Auk VIII then undocked and returned successfully to KSC 27 shortly before Next Objective reached periapsis at Kerbin. Next Objective also returned safely to Kerbinport and was refueled from the Auk VII and the station's reserve stores, her onboard tourists transferring to the Auk VII. Next Objective's return fulfilled a long-standing contract to expand Kerbinport, which was replaced with an HKO rescue contract. I decided to do a low-tech mission here, upgrading the tech on the old Gurney 7 rescue craft. Gurney 7d was launched on a mission to pick up engineer Dezor Kerman and successfully rendezvoused with his craft. After transferring, the craft burned to return to Kerbin; I have yet to complete that mission. Hoping it all goes well - I definitely could use more engineers....

[septemberWaves]

5 minutes ago, Delay said:

I'd like to disable quicksave and reverting, but honestly, I'm afraid of failing without it. I've crashed into the Mun so many times because I underestimated my speed and I would have lost multiple probes just because of Eve. Then I often forget solar panels, antennas, batteries and so on, lose connection because of signal clipping,...

What I do is keep quicksave/revert on, but only for bugs in the game. I'm experienced enough with the game that I usually don't forget anything too important, and on occasions when I do forget it, I'll just stick with the mistake I made. Pretty much, if the flight fails and it's because of an issue with the game that shouldn't really happen, I'll revert, but if it's something due to my own incompetence I'll just have to work around whatever happens and figure out a solution.

As for how I always remember to put all the important parts on the spacecraft, I have a very simple personal checklist. In most cases, a spacecraft will function if it has power, propulsion, and communication back to Kerbin. Fuel and engines are pretty hard to forget, so I mostly just need to check that there's a power system and an antenna on the spacecraft. If I know it'll need to dock with something, I know I shouldn't launch without making sure I added the docking port. If I know it needs science equipment, I'll add all the science equipment at once to make sure it's all there (before the propulsion system so I don't reduce delta-v). After that, the only thing which might be forgotten is the reaction control system, but once you launch enough spacecraft you start to notice the lack of RCS engines, it makes a vehicle look kind of strange if there aren't any.

Another thing you can do to avoid big mistakes is test flights. Want to send a space probe to orbit Duna? Send a prototype of the probe into Kerbin orbit to test all of its necessary systems. Want to send a lander to Tylo? Land it on the Mun a few times in a row, with the throttle set to 1/10 maximum thrust so you can get a feel for the long burn times required. Testing everything in the Kerbin system helps a lot with making spacecraft that definitely work once they reach their interplanetary destination.

[NSEP]

I finally made lunar orbit, after a dozen failed and clunky attempts, i finally rediscovered the magical quicksave.

 

And i made a new launcher.

[ProtoJeb21]

Well, it's been quite a while since I posted here...

Over the last week I've had major developments with my Kerbin System mining and exploration network. After months of not playing my SCIENCE! mode save, I decided to continue setting up the Rhea Munar Mining Base and the Zemyna Refueling Station. I sent a new module to Zemyna, which was a giant docking and fuel "arm" made out of one Rockomax X200-32 tank and two X200-8 fuel tanks, with eight 1.25m docking ports attached to it. The module was connected to one of the 2.5m ore containers that I had docked onto the side of Zemyna some time ago. The module was transported on a large probe, before the transport landed on the Mun and went into hibernation. For some reason I try to safely land my unmanned module transport probes on either Kerbin or Mun.

Around the same time, something interesting was spotted by the Tracking Center: an E-class asteroid that was captured in an eccentric orbit around Kerbin. It was a perfect opportunity to capture an asteroid for fuel reserves, not only because of its large size, but due to its low-inclination orbit and rather close periapsis of ~1,200 km. As the fuel arm went out to Zemyna, the Maui I asteroid redirect craft (named after the Polynesian demigod who yanked entire islands out of the Pacific) went to intercept the incoming rock, with Jeb and Bill at the command seat. Maui I safely attached to the asteroid - which was subsequently named Maui - about a day before the Zemyna Fuel Arm arrived at its destination. My original plan was to haul Maui off to the Zemyna station, but there was one teensy little problem: 4,000 tons of rock in need of movement. Maui is so big that I had to use Infinite Fuel to even move it into a remotely stable orbit. 

My original plans for this asteroid, along with Zemyna and Rhea, were completely overturned. What began next was what I call the "Maui Reorganization". This ambitious project will take multiple pre-existing outposts and move them to new places for new purposes. This is my goal that I set up after the capture of Maui:

1. Send Zemyna Station to Minmus orbit and dock with the Minthe 3 station/base. The two of them will function as a huge science station and refueling outpost, not only to science the &^%$ out of Minmus, but to lend aid to outgoing and returning interplanetary craft.
2. Stabilize the orbit of Maui for future base construction.
3. Create a huge dropship - not like those made by @Cupcake..., but instead it will be close in design to a flying saucer. It will pick up the perfectly symmetrical Rhea Base and bring it to the Mun's pole, where it will now be a science and exploration base.
4. Send multiple new craft and equipment to Rhea base. These will include a self-sufficient manned rover (sort of similar to @Just Jim's Chariot), smaller rovers, and a "landing pad", if necessary.
5. Bring the Feroina Kerbin Station to Maui and transform it into an asteroid station/base.
6. Send more equipment to Zemyna-Minthe for continued Minmus operations

First, I removed the fuel and ore arm from Zemyna and sent it over to Minmus. It took nearly half and hour to attach it to Minthe 3 because of some issues with the latter's docking ports. Very annoying. I have since sent a probe to grab Zemyna's fuel arm (completed) and bring it to Minmus (waiting for the moons to get in the right position).

I tried to send other craft to Maui in an attempt to stabilize its orbit. However, after over an HOUR of gameplay resulting in continuous failures, I ended up resorting to the infamous cheat menu HyperEdit. To be fair, I had no other, choice, and I also made Maui's orbit somewhat inclined and eccentric to make this less easy for me.

Soon I will bring the Feronia station to Maui and attempt to transport Rhea Base to the Mun's north pole. I got a lot of work ahead of me.

[Geonovast]

Finally got around to installing 1.3.1, and did a quick stock Mun mission.  Actually liked the rocket so much I may keep it and use it in the future.