What did you do in KSP1 today?

[nascarlaser1]

Today I continued with my Minimus base. I delivered a fuel transport rover, workshop and smelter for EL, and a Launchpad. Jeb also too a trip in the packrat rover and planted a flag about 15m away for the new crew transport rocket to land at. Now when I tell mechjeb to land at the base, it'll land at the flag and not on top of my base   (that was a very panic inducing moment watching my rocket crush half the base ).

https://imgur.com/a/NuraP

[NotJebediah]

It's been a few days since I got to play KSP, and I didn't really felt like driving a rover over the flat lands of Minmus... The funny thing is, even when you don't play KSP, you play KSP. So I came up with an idea of a space-station/mothership (basicly a station with an engine block). I've already had a smaller space station in LKO, so I just had to augment it.

First and foremost: The engine block. I had a Docking Port SR. at the "bottom" of the station for additional habitat or lab modules, so that's where I started. After some fiddling with the engine setup I decided to stick with the Nervs as main propulsion. The block itself can be further augmented thanks to the docking port at the back. After a rather interesting launch; where I managed to do a sommersault, recover it, and continue flying (sadly I don't have any evidence about it  ); the engine docked with the station.

The docking was easy, but then the cooling radiators near the solar arrays started to overheat. My guess is the cooling wasn't sufficient for the Nervs., so I needed more.

Before long the clooling block was in the air (or rather space) on it's way to the station. I wanted it to be in-line between th core and the engine block. I also had to clean up some debris around so I brought a smaller probe with the cooling block to grab on and deorbit the junk.

So, after a quick reassembly and junk deorbiting, I sat back to enjoy today's work in LKO.

[Ultimate Steve]

Alright, I know I've been in a phase of starting things and never finishing them...

But I finally got over a hump on another project I've been working on and off for a few months on...

I'm actually going to (try to) do this.

Spoiler

750 parts just for the landers - and I haven't even added the struts yet. Or all of the reaction wheels that will be necessary to keep this thing straight.

Obviously It won't be a true SRB grand tour, but it will still be probably closer than has ever been done. I'll have to use vernor engines to dock, but I promise it will only be for docking. I'm going to need to use the EVA packs to board the landers. But, I promise, I won't use anything other than SRB's for the actual landers. Even the Gilly lander is separatron powered.

Separatron docking is possible. However, it would probably add 100 parts per segment. I don't have the patience or the computer to do that.

The current plan is to have the mothership mass 300-400t in orbit and then dock a series of booster modules to it. I won't be able to dock them all at once (part count and rocket equation) so I will launch "refueling" missions, which will basically be me sending stacks of boosters to Jool or something.

Each booster module can give the mothership (without the 200t eve lander) about 2.5km/s of Delta-V. With the Eve lander attached, only 1.3 ish. However, as the Eve lander is 1/2-2/3 of my mothership mass, I'll go to Eve first and use the first number for everything else. If I have two SRB modules docked end to end with a 100t mothership, it will give me 3.7km/s, so besides Moho or something, the most I should need at once will be two.

However, to get those 500t booster modules to other planets, I'll need about four docked end to end... this will be so fun! /s

And the lifter I have designed can get 600t into LKO, all solid fueled. Originally the booster segments were going to be 1100t and way more effective, however I couldn't make a solid fueled lifter that could lift that much. 600t seems to work.

This will require dozens of launches, but I'm actually going to try this. The only thing I haven't designed yet is the course correction module (hammers and thumpers and fleas to change course a little).

 

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I landed a new base on the Mun.

My old Mun base was my oldest mining installation still in service, and it had a lot of problems. For one thing, it was on the far side of the Mun, making loss of probe-control a constant threat. It was also dropped a fair distance from the equator (making landings more complicated,) didn't have any ladders reaching surface level (meaning that it would be impossible for an astronaut with empty EVA propellant tanks to enter the base) and it was entirely solar-powered and unable to operate through the Munar night. However, the biggest problem didn't make itself apparent until recently, when the upgrade to 1.3.1 rendered the base's previously-adequate cooling systems incapable of keeping its mining and ISRU equipment running at high efficiency. I'd already put together a "standard" base design that I'm currently using variants of on Minmus, Ike, Duna and Pol, but while that design works great once it's landed on the surface its extremely wide profile makes launching it from Kerbin a very dicey affair. Therefore, I decided to go back to the drawing board and create a new installation type that had the capabilities I needed but in a more compact form.

The new base doesn't have the crew capacity of my full-sized design (having only space for two Kerbals rather than the six that the larger base can hold,) its ore storage is minimal (just one radial tank) and its fuel capacity is lower across all types, but it still has more than enough to fill up a docked transport craft and the whole thing fits nicely inside a 3.75m fairing. It's also got four fuel cell arrays capable of keeping the base running even without sunlight, and five Illuminator Mk.2s ensuring visibility at night. In addition, its two horizontally-facing docking ports will allow the base to be upgraded with additional modules if its current capabilities prove to be inadequate in the future.

Given that every planet and moon that I'm planning on mining already has a base either on the surface or en route I'm not sure if I'll ever use this design again, but it's nice to have around just in case I decide to put a base on Bop or Vall.

[Delay]

Capturing the first asteroid in my 1.3 career. Spot it!

How about now?

More pictures:

Spoiler

Capturing another asteroid. This time, a class D:

And some not at all bright desert, where the mission ended:

Aside from that, I took the opportunity to make a screenshot of my CommNet mess:

[Ultimate Steve]

The first test of the SRB grand tour ship has been completed.

First off, before you call this a failure, I must say it was actually very successful.

 

Spoiler

You see, this test was supposed to be the test to see if it would hold together on the launch pad. If I was lucky, I would get to test engine ignition and liftoff (and probably fail five seconds later).

But it stayed together all the way through liftoff and the first part of the gravity turn.

Also, note the landing legs of the Eve lander sticking out from the fairing. I can't make it any smaller easily, but that was the biggest fairing I could make. Bigger fairings, please, SQUAD/TT?

It made it all the way through the first stage burn, very surprising. I thought for sure it would either explode or flip (aerodynamic instability) but it did neither.

Unfortunately, I could not continue beyond this point because the staging was not set up properly. When you have 14 landers with weird staging, you have to go through all (large number) boosters and separate them out by stage. Since I thought it was going to blow up, I didn't bother doing more than the first stage.

So, then, travelling supersonic at 15km, I decided to deploy the fairing.

Most of those explosions are just from the fairing hitting the SRB's, which should* only be because we're not in a vacuum. Then I decided to stage everything just for fun.

Fortunately, the astronauts survived.

 

 

 

 

[qzgy]

2 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Fortunately, the astronauts survived.

How is this a fortunately? I've heard all the other astronauts hate those guys

[Goddess Bhavani]

Flight testing continues

[Urus28]

Today I had some serious problem on Minmus....

No, it's not due to a bad landing.

[septemberWaves]

26 minutes ago, carmenara said:

I have to say, I love how this looks. Though isn't the parachute on the nosecone a little impractical?

[ProtoJeb21]

Boredom + @Jett_Quasar's Star Wars ship replicas + my Star Wars ship replicas + BD Armory + Vessel Mover =

This is why boredom for a KSP player is quite dangerous for his/her poor Kerbals.

I also COMPLETELY changed the Jool and Dres systems for Interstellar Adventure Revived. Jool has rings, Pol, Vall, and Tylo have been completely overhauled, and Dres is now a Kerbin-like planet with a few moons and rings.

[Goddess Bhavani]

49 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

I have to say, I love how this looks. Though isn't the parachute on the nosecone a little impractical?

Its acting as a nosecone as I haven't unlocked small nosecones in ETT. Shocking right!

[PT]

I tried to resume my old career. Bugs, explosions, krakens everywhere. So I started again.

imgur gallery

Edited November 13, 2017 by PT

[Laie]

@PT  what's that cargo bay? It looks as if it might be procedural....

[TimberWolffe]

Here's Valentina Kerman on the surface of Minmus with the craft that was only intended for a Munar visit

Spoiler

 

And here she is after pushing it back to Kerbin with her EVA pack because I was 35 m/s short of dV required to get an atmospheric entry

Spoiler

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Took this BEAUTIFUL screenshot of a Mun polar survey satellite at terminator.

[Fearless Son]

16 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Made four aerobraking orbits, and finally managed to get the Science Jr. through reentry intact, only to have it collapse on impact under a main parachute and two drogues (apparently, Science Jr., plus a Service Bay with two goo canisters and two batteries, plus the command pod, is too much weight to give a descent velocity compatible with the fragility of the Science Jr.).

I hope you had Val remove the data from the Science Jr. before she tried returning to Kerbin.  It renders the Science Jr. unusable without a qualified scientist to reset it, but it would at least save the valuable part in these cases.  

[GDJ]

Just fooled around in a jet plane.....at Mach 0.95.....8 metres above the ocean......one false move and I'm a splat.

[TimberWolffe]

2 hours ago, GDJ said:

Just fooled around in a jet plane.....at Mach 0.95.....8 metres above the ocean......one false move and I'm a splat.

I did the same thing but at Mach 0.19

[capi3101]

All told, I had a pretty slow weekend. After determining that Minmus was well out of phase with Mun for any kind of fast transfer, the decision was made to burn Laggin' Dragon back to Kerbin and make a standard transfer there, getting the ship to Minmus in a mere eight days instead of 35. Laggin' Dragon made a stop at the Kerbinport space station, staying just long enough to refuel before heading out of the barn once again. I also conducted a temperature survey six clicks to the north of the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus using the refinery's rover La Perla Negra, which was pretty easy to do as none of the waypoints were outside of the Great Flats. Pilot Phoming Kerman also conducted an aerial survey of a region 800 klicks to the east of KSC aboard a Bad Idea 3 surveyor plane and eventually returned safely to KSC 27. Finally, I did a quick ore "delivery" for √300k.

This morning after conducting an ore drilling job for √250k, I launched Dunaport station to LKO. With the Duna expedition's launch window coming up in a mere fourteen days, I figured it was high time to start bringing up the hardware. Scientist Kirmund Kerman rode up with the station, and she will be the station's capsule commander once it arrives on station. One down, several to go.

I also took some time to try out the recent changes to the Alcubierre Drive mod in my litterbox save, flying the Phoenix 4 warp probe from Duna out to Bop. Not much different from the way it was before, though I will say that putting all those batteries on the probe turned out to be a really good idea...

Another √4M and I can get me a warp ship in my career save. Looking forward to that.

 

 

[FeofileGrotter]

Remembering old:

 My copy of Saturn V:

 An interesting space station 'Mun Gamma':

 I built it in Career mode without cheats(it was difficult; also I played KSP only 2 weeks when I built it). Here is a habitation module with solar panels and a 'hand-made' Rockomax multipler; and a control module with 2 Cupola modules and some batteries, and the most important thing - SCIENCE !!!

Our Russian proverb says: 'All new is very forgotten old'. So good luck to you, KSPlayers! Now, to the Prograde!!!

[SpaceVoid]

We made a dogfight with my friends in 1.0.5 It was a lot of fun 

[PT]

16 hours ago, Laie said:

@PT  what's that cargo bay? It looks as if it might be procedural....

In short, its like cargo bay but its content is not loaded so you save on part count which is very good for FPS. Its not procedural, but some parts have some configurable dimensions/parameters and there are extensions modules to increase capacity. I intend to use it together with orbital (de)constitutions mod to save on part count, one stupid science drone can have more parts than whole spaceship with life support. Its quite irritating when game slow downs to a crawl while my beefy CPU is mostly idling >.<

[CatastrophicFailure]

47 minutes ago, FeofileGrotter said:

Our Russian proverb says: 'All new is very forgotten old'. So good luck to you,

Interesting... how do you say this in Russian?

[cratercracker]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Interesting... how do you say this in Russian?

Всё новое это хорошо забытое старое

''Vsyo novoye - eto horosho zabыtoye staroye.

 

Edited November 13, 2017 by cratercracker