What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Urses]

50 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Also, any ideas about what I should name this thing? For the life of me I can't come up with a good enough name...

 

A "Theoretical Big Bang" maybe?

7 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

 

Beautiful design.but wich cocpit is this one?

Edited November 14, 2017 by Urses
/snip

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Also, any ideas about what I should name this thing? For the life of me I can't come up with a good enough name...

Hercules.

[Zeiss Ikon]

On 11/12/2017 at 7:09 AM, Zeiss Ikon said:

Yesterday, the Program fulfilled its promise to Val, following her abort decision (due to low fuel) on her last flight, that she would still be the first Kerbal on the Mun.

Short version, with a newly designed spaceship (Explorer IV), she made the landing (with a ridiculous amount of excess descent stage fuel -- probably could have lifted from the Mun and made a transfer to and landing on Minmus with the available dV), tipped over the lander, planted her flag and did her science anyway, then staged the ascent stage and used the service bay doors to flip it upright long enough to launch from the Mun.  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.).

Full version, with pictures, coming soon.

Also, launched the Taxicab V (the conjoined twins Munar orbit tourist bus) on a four-tourist mission to the Mun, co-piloted by Jeb and Adeny's (now fully trained) clone (Jeb is Command Pilot, Adeny is in the cockpit of the "secondary" reentry spaceplane).  Vessel still in parking LKO, but confidence is high -- everything about it handles identically to the reliable Taxicab IIIm. 

Okay, as promised, here's the full report on Val's first-ever (in this career save) Mun landing.

She flew the newly designed Explorer IV.  The lander turned out to be grossly overengineered, which means the booster could have been reduced -- that'll be Explorer IVa, coming soon (Jeb is already pounding on the door at Planning, demanding to know when he'll get to land -- and swearing up and down he can do better than Val).

https://imgur.com/aPX6aOc

(and I see embedding from Imgur is broken again).

Launch was spectacular, with six Reliants, one Swivel, and four Thuds (last minute additions, after some smart guy figured out the vessel had just barely enough thrust to lift off the pad).  Staging (asparagus method) was uneventful, and Val flew the gravity turn masterfully, arriving in circular orbit with nearly full tanks in the booster core (this was intended, as that stage was now to serve double duty as the transfer tug).

https://imgur.com/NNJ6aUZ

The booster had about 1400 units of Lf/O remaining after circularization.  The resource display also includes the (truly excessive, even by Kerbal standards) 2000 units in the combined descent and ascent stages of the lander.

https://imgur.com/TvAuGMQ

And, as intended, the booster core retained enough fuel to accomplish Munar capture (though the lander engine had to be used to circularize and lower the Munar orbit -- a lighter lander would have made a huge difference here).

https://imgur.com/qVrXoFu

Not much work for the descent stage, really.  Circularize was a few tens of m/s, lowering the orbit another twenty or so, and then the combination of deorbit and landing runs around 800 m/s.

https://imgur.com/Hrzvn38

As on the previous attempt, the Munar phase was such that Val had to wait through a couple orbits until the sun rose over the chosen landing zone.  This time, in fact, the target was Twin Craters, about as far Mun-east as possible and still have line of sight to Kerbin for comms.  Once there was enough light to see the ground, it was time.

https://imgur.com/66MvJxU

With Kerbin rising over Twin Craters, Val was on course for landing.  Just a matter of waiting and watching the radar altimeter with its "time to impact", and "burn to zero" display in the inertial nav system.  Because the "time to impact" doesn't take into account the acceleration from the burn, doctrine is to let that time get down to around 80% of the "burn to zero" before starting the burn.

https://imgur.com/pDs1pq3

I didn't get any images during the landing burn or actual landing -- Better Burn Time came up with 102 sec to impact and a 102 sec burn, somehow skipping over the 120 seconds to impact it's supposed to start at.  From there on, it was a matter of trying not to crash before Val could stop.  That was, however, accomplished; the lander came to a virtual dead stop, Val cut the engine, and began to setting from a few hundred meters.  Another couple short burns later, and she cut the engine at a couple meters altitude, going up at just over 1 m/s.  The landing was gentle -- but sufficient for the landing legs to bounce the orbiter back off the (gently sloping) surface.

https://imgur.com/FxUwEqk

By the time I thought to capture any more images, Val had already been trying to upright the orbiter for a short time.  At this point, she had the landing legs retracted, but that didn't help.  All that fuel (more than 960 units remaining in the descent stage, plus 400 in the as-yet untouched ascent stage) was more than the reaction wheel and even the storage bay door motors could raise.

Val stuck to duty -- it'd be embarrassing to do what she was pretty sure she'd have to, and not have all the science done beforehand, because if it worked, there'd be no going back.

https://imgur.com/oAKDZES

Once the science was all taken care of, Val hit the staging switch, and popped the ascent stage free of the descent stage.  After it stopped rolling, she repeatedly flipped the service bay doors open, closed, open again, while toggling the SAS gyros in and out.  After several tries, she managed to get the vessel near enough to upright, long enough, to fire the ascent engine.  Once clear of the surface on a trajectory that had some time to apoapsis, it was easy enough to set up a maneuver to put herself into Munar orbit, and from Munar orbit it's easy to get to Kerbin.

https://imgur.com/eG8SjlC

The Munar orbit acheived was pretty bad -- inclination above 45 degrees -- but it was an orbit, and the nodes were close to the line of the Mun's orbit.  Val burned for home from the point nearest Kerbin, where the orbit was nearly parallel to the equator, and the burn wouldn't kick her even further out of the plane.

https://imgur.com/KqSTPXh

Val had fuel left after her Kerbin transfer burn, so she burned it at her first apoapsis pass, lowering her orbit enough to avoid having to make half a dozen passes to keep from overheating the Science Jr.  She kept the engine attached, as it did a better job than the heat shield of protecting that fragile experiment.

https://imgur.com/tAJVQHR

After two more aerobrake passes, her periapsis had fallen enough to be worrisome.  She staged away the engine and tank at apoapsis, using the staging impulse to raise her periapsis a few kilometers, then set up for reentry in earnest.   Unfortunately, there are no images of the reentry; i was too busy rolling the vessel, trying to keep the Science Jr. from melting.  This was ultimately successful, and Val opened the parachutes with all experiments intact.  Unfortunately, even with two drogues in addition to the main Mk. 16, the descent rate was too high, and I didn't see until after jettisoning the heat shield (which might have served one last moment as a crush zone) that the descent was over land -- the previous periapsis pass had been over the wide open Southern Ocean.

On landing, the Science Jr. collapsed and was destroyed.  The other experiments were saved, however, including reports from the Munar surface and the first ever samples from a celestial body other than Kerbin.

After overcoming failure, Val had returned, safe, from the surface of the Mun.

[Superfluous J]

After hearing it has Axial Tilt, I tried Principia.

Then I stopped trying it. For how much I love Precise Node, I seem oddly incapable of enjoying any time in KSP without the maneuver node widget.

Other than the UX, though, Principia is pretty cool and I hope to play it some day for reals.

[Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut]

Today, i uprgaded the SPH in my carrer save to level 3. With that, my SPH now have 3 new buildings/KSC biomes. With this in mind, i launched a rover to pick all the science of these buildings. With the science, i unlocked my first 1000 science node in the tech tree.

In the VAB, i build a rocket for my unmanned scientific Laythe mission (i will post a image when i launch the rocket). 

And to help me in this mission, i downloaded the Trajectories mod, that will be very useful in the part  of landing.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut

[Ultimate Steve]

I tried to go to Eve with the grand tour ship but it didn't work out well the first time...

After 45 seconds in game the Kraken tears the ship apart. This is probably because the ship is so long and flimsy. There will be a MK2 booster module for the refuelers that will be shorter and hopefully avoid this problem.

However, with 3 modules and not 4, the ship flies well. I'm thinking what I'll do is detach one, use one up to get into an elliptical orbit, and then do an elliptical orbit rendezvous, using up about a third of the fuel in the refueler I left behind. Fingers crossed here.

[JadeOfMaar]

2 hours ago, Urses said:

Beautiful design.but wich cocpit is this one?

OPT Legacy Mk2 Cockpit (1 of 2).

[KerBlammo]

Continues construction of my space station:

 

 

[Geonovast]

FINALLY made an SSTO plane!  No payload, but given that I have 761 m/s still in the tanks, I imagine I could modify it to have cargo (even if it's just to ferry Kerbals to and from a space station).  I have been struggling with this for so long.  Jury's still out on whether or not in can survive re-entry.  It's not even ugly! And it's stock!

Edit: Jury's back.  It cannot.  Everything would be fine if the Mk1 Cockpit wasn't so... explody.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Geonovast

[qzgy]

57 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Edit: Jury's back.  It cannot.  Everything would be fine if the Mk1 Cockpit wasn't so... explody.

Try going backwards - pump all your fuel back and then quickly before landing, pump it forward to fly normally.

Or point radial out. And spin.

[Geonovast]

2 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Try going backwards - pump all your fuel back and then quickly before landing, pump it forward to fly normally.

Or point radial out. And spin.

Testing V2 at the moment

[qzgy]

@GeonovastNOOO AIRBRAKES HAVE TERRIBLE HEAT RESISTANCE

Sorry. They'll explode quickly, trust me.

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, qzgy said:

@GeonovastNOOO AIRBRAKES HAVE TERRIBLE HEAT RESISTANCE

Sorry. They'll explode quickly, trust me.

That's why I put them away when they get too hot!

Also, those exploding isn't fatal to the pilot...

@qzgy Val knows what she's doin'

Edited November 15, 2017 by Geonovast

[Fearless Son]

I wanted to make sure the Fission Star was topped off before I bring in crew or attach mission modules, so I developed a drone tanker SSTO spaceplane to bring fuel up to it:

I call the tanker "Seal" and will post more pictures after I deorbit and return it to KSC.  

Almost ran out of oxidizer, but fortunately I had enough to make the rendezvous and I still had plenty of liquid fuel left over, so a powered flight back to the airfield should be easy.  Come to think of it, by swapping some of the tanks the Seal would make a good tanker for other missions too.

[NSEP]

[Azimech]

Bob couldn't pass his exo-driving test. They gave him a modified bumper car from an amusement ride instead.

 

 

This might be the most crash resistant rover ever! It's driving in the background, to check if it hasn't rolled over or has drifted from its course. It does well over 30m/s on flat terrain but it's able to smash into the ground or objects at speeds over 40m/s without damage!

 

 

 

And it all started with this:

 

 

And a short gif:

 

Edited November 15, 2017 by Azimech

[NotJebediah]

12 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I tried to go to Eve with the grand tour ship but it didn't work out well the first time...

After 45 seconds in game the Kraken tears the ship apart. This is probably because the ship is so long and flimsy. There will be a MK2 booster module for the refuelers that will be shorter and hopefully avoid this problem.

However, with 3 modules and not 4, the ship flies well. I'm thinking what I'll do is detach one, use one up to get into an elliptical orbit, and then do an elliptical orbit rendezvous, using up about a third of the fuel in the refueler I left behind. Fingers crossed here.

Good luck for that 

[MaxwellsDemon]

In my 1.3.1 campaign, I have resolved to do all the things and go all the places I never bothered to before...  so, for the very first time, I've visited the Island Airfield and planted a flag on top of the control tower (well, it fell down after planting, but at least it's there), Baikerbanur/Inland KSC (and the flag I planted next to the VAB fell over-- what is it with these places?  ), and although Jeb landed a bit farther downrange of the pyramids of Tut-Un-Jeb-Ahn than intended, he's hoofing it there to plant a flag... we'll see later today if that one falls over!

[Goddess Bhavani]

Atmospheric lithobraking probe over the north pole

[RX2000]

Got a contract to build a 50 Kerbal capacity space hotel at 350k orbit above Kerbin, so I started working on that. I launched the first module which has space for 17 Kerbals. I plan to finish it over about 4 total launches. I dont have much experience with rendenvous & docking so far away from Kerbin, so it should be fun. I'm wondering though if I shouldnt have assembled it all in LKO & then pushed the whole thing out to 350k. Probably would have been easier.

[capi3101]

1 minute ago, RX2000 said:

Got a contract to build a 50 Kerbal capacity space hotel at 350k orbit above Kerbin, so I started working on that. I launched the first module which has space for 17 Kerbals. I plan to finish it over about 4 total launches. I dont have much experience with rendenvous & docking so far away from Kerbin, so it should be fun. I'm wondering though if I shouldnt have assembled it all in LKO & then pushed the whole thing out to 350k. Probably would have been easier.

Rendezvous and docking at 350k is about the same as it is at 80k, except both craft aren't going quite so fast. Timing the rendezvous is easier, in my experience. I've recently done a couple at 600k my own self (which was the old hard limit of the Alcubierre Drive mod if you wanted the drive to work at all; had to figure out if I could service a warp ship with my existing tech).

 

For me, yesterday was mostly finishing up the launches for the upcoming Duna expedition. It began with the launch of a second Spamcan 7b crew lander and Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler. I decided to save some money and headaches by only sending a single reusable science lander out to the Duna/Ike system. I had such a design back in v. 1.1.3, so I pulled it from my own archives and after tweaking it a little bit, the Fireball 7c science lander Yokohama was launched to LKO. Engineer Eriemy Kerman flew a second Faux News 7 satellite delivery module to the nascent Dunaport space station in LKO and successfully docked to balance out the first Faux News module, which engineer Magster Kerman flew up the day before. Two Heartbreak Hotel 7 outposts were brought up next, finishing out the total Duna/Ike launch set. Total cost of the mission so far is just over √6.5M, and I haven't left Kerbin yet...

With launches done, I focused my attention on a tourist/training expedition aboard Laggin' Dragon, which arrived at Minmus shortly after the launch of the last Heartbreak Hotel 7. The craft arrived safely at the Minmusport space station. Pilot Didkin Kerman along with engineers Leaemy and Megkin Kerman went down to the surface near the Deepwater Horizon refinery for flag-planting training, and after using the refinery to refuel the lander, they returned safely to Minmusport. Laggin' Dragon was refueled and burned for Kerbin, arriving ten days later - just ahead of the Duna launch window. Upon Laggin' Dragon's successful return to the Kerbinport space station, Didkin was given temporary operational command of Next Objective docked at the station, with capsule commander Val transferring over to Strange Cargo with Jeb at the helm. Leaemy and Megkin were also transferred over to Strange Cargo. Tourists Herdon and Antrey Kerman returned to KSC 09 aboard a waiting Auk II 8-passenger spaceplane docked at the station, and in the wake of their successful return, the Kerbin Eta probe was put into a new position for contract.

With a new tourist mission picked up and now eleven minutes before the Duna launch window opens, the first order of business today is going to be a flight of an Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane to Kerbinport. Bob, Bill and engineers Dilnard, Dezor and Halzer Kerman will be joining Jeb, Val, Leaemy and Megkin aboard Strange Cargo, which has been designated as the crew flight for the First Duna Expedition. The flight will also contain tourists Wilfry, Crisster, Jotrey, Sherdorf, Barmin and Orrle Kerman (who will be heading out to Kerbin's moons after the launch of the First Duna Expedition) along with five scientists (who are mainly there just to put butts in the seats). After arrival and crew transfer, Strange Cargo will be departing for Duna, along with sixteen other craft currently parked in LKO.

I'm guessing the next day or two is going to be largely transfer burns...

[NotJebediah]

1 hour ago, RX2000 said:

Got a contract to build a 50 Kerbal capacity space hotel at 350k orbit above Kerbin, so I started working on that. I launched the first module which has space for 17 Kerbals. I plan to finish it over about 4 total launches. I dont have much experience with rendenvous & docking so far away from Kerbin, so it should be fun. I'm wondering though if I shouldnt have assembled it all in LKO & then pushed the whole thing out to 350k. Probably would have been easier.

I prefer to do these kind of building in two seperate orbits. At 350k the station, and at about 90-100k the "parking orbit". I find it much faster to get an accure encounter with a simple Hohmann-transfer from parking to target, than to timewarp for ages to get both orbits perfectly on top of each other. Everyone has a favourite way tho...

[Julien Kerman]

[From yesterday] I did some testing with nuclear engines and transfer stages for upcoming crewed Mars Missions.

Static fire test on the launch pad:

Then I tested the TWR, the acceleration and the fuel boil-off in space:

The configuration you see here is 9m in diameter and could push a 72 ton payload to Mars.

I was inspired by NASA's "Mars Transfer Vehicle" and @winged's incredible video.

 

Edited November 15, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[RX2000]

26 minutes ago, NotJebediah said:

I prefer to do these kind of building in two seperate orbits. At 350k the station, and at about 90-100k the "parking orbit". I find it much faster to get an accure encounter with a simple Hohmann-transfer from parking to target, than to timewarp for ages to get both orbits perfectly on top of each other. Everyone has a favourite way tho...

Yep. I'm just not very experienced yet at being able to eyeball when a good time for the Hohmann is from 250k away. I guess I can fire up MechJeb tho & have it show me more or less when the time would be.

[NotJebediah]

5 minutes ago, RX2000 said:

Yep. I'm just not very experienced yet at being able to eyeball when a good time for the Hohmann is from 250k away. I guess I can fire up MechJeb tho & have it show me more or less when the time would be.

You don't need to eyeball it  Just play with the manouvering node until you find the sweet spot. Pull ithe prograde to match the altitude, then just drag the node itself around to see if you get an encounter. If you don't get anything wait a few orbits, rinse and repeat. If the inclanation is right, you can get an encounter as close as 0.1k.

Edit: Firing up MechJeb is also an option  

Edited November 15, 2017 by NotJebediah
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