What did you do in KSP1 today?

[MaxwellsDemon]

23 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

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!

He made it, planted the flag, and it didn't fall over.  Mission accomplished.  

[KerBlammo]

I threw together a toy SSTO (mk1 fuselage and a couple of RAPIERS) and to my surprise it actually worked the first time!  It even survived re-entry completely intact but drastically over-shot KSC and ended up in the ocean.  It is, however, completely useless with no payload capacity at all.  I might be able to convert it into something that could transport 1 (one) Kerbal to a LKO space station.  

 

[capi3101]

Yesterday saw the departure of the First Duna Expedition in my career save. The day began with the departure of an Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane to the Kerbinport space station, where the remaining crewmembers assigned to the expedition boarded Strange Cargo in preparation for their journey:

Naturally, Strange Cargo had to depart the station at night. Night gives such great screenies, you know...

After Strange Cargo's departure, it was time for me to go to work planning a grand total of seventeen trans-Dunar burns, and I spent the bulk of my day performing those burns - and in this order: A Nostromo 7 ore hauler, a Hellhound 7 rover, the Ikeport space station, Strange Cargo, a Spamcan 7b lander, two Heartbreak Hotel 7 outpost modules, the refinery Scan Queen, the Dunaport space station, a second Nostromo, the refinery Enchova Central, an Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler, another Hellhound, a second Old Bessie, a third Hellhound, a second Spamcan, and finally the science lander Yokohama.

The craft of the First Duna Expedition all en route, with Kerbinport also visible.

Dunaport's transfer burn was the longest at just under eight minutes, and it was also the most interesting one because TAC Fuel Balancer didn't behave the way I expected it to:

Dunaport commencing its burn for Duna, with two Faux News modules attached.

I thought I had it set to drain the two transfer stages of the Faux News modules first. Trouble came up when they didn't drain evenly; I had to do some finagling during the burn to get the fuel loads to balance with one another. I did get the fuel situation straightened out, and once they were drained the two Faux News transfer stages were cast off; by then the craft was already on a Kerbin escape trajectory. I've already verified that each of the craft will approach close enough to Duna to get an encounter, though I'm a little concerned about the fuel status of the Ikeport space station. I think the craft will make Duna orbit, though I might have to aerobrake a bit more than I would like...

Once all the burns were completed, it was time to satisfy a stupid contract. For that, I turned to engineer Magster Kerman, who was hitching a ride at Dunaport:

Magster on EVA.

Using KAS/KIS, Magster attached a shopping cart wheel to the station's exterior. The wheel was tested on a Kerbin escape trajectory for contract, and then Magster proceeded to detach and stow the wheel. First money back from the mission...a mere √25k. Yay.

Finished up my day with a situation report of the bases in Kerbin's sphere of influence. The Minmusport space station needed a fuel run; serendipitously, the station was over the release point for an Old Bessie landing at the Deepwater Horizon refinery and it was daylight at the refinery (for once), so I just did a quick fuel run there. No problems. The Munport space station was in reasonable shape, so nothing was done there. Kerbinport needs fuel; the station's reserve tank is empty as is the fuel tank of Laggin' Dragon docked at the station, though Next Objective and Necessary Evil are fully fueled and ready to go. I'll be sending up an Auk VIII flight in the near future to address the fuel problem. I still need to return the Auk VII from the space station first - the VII and VIII are both part-heavy designs, and together they really kill the frame rate...

Finished my day with a simple parts test at KSC. Was going to do that with a KERBalloon, but apparently I failed to install KERBalloons when I upgraded from 1.3.0 to 1.3.1. I'll have to try to rectify that today...

[Shadowmage]

Played around with solar panel shaders, trying to get the back-lit effect refined a bit.

The effect is accomplished through a traditional 'sub-surface-scattering' shader setup, commonly used for representing opaque but translucent objects (wax, milk, cloudy crystals).  It has been applied to both the large solar panels (yellow glow), as well as the smaller solar panels (white'ish glow, with visible shadows being cast on the front side).

Now to get them to actually emit light from the back-side glow   (only half kidding... I'm going to try it, but not sure if it will be possible in KSP)

[Inverurie Jones]

Mun Run 5.

Here we can see Munbus 01 carrying members of a relief crew for Munbase Alpha who recently arrived on the KSS Achilles, making the fifth regular passenger flight or 'Mun Run'.

KSS Achilles is the first of the K-22s, representing an upgrade in payload capacity over the older K-20s (KSS Stargazer and Trailblazer) allowing tourist trips to be combined with crew change flights. In the background we can see Munbase Alpha's laboratory complex, storage unit and Tug 01, a small cargo lander.

 

Here's the bus leaving Munbase Alpha's command and habitation tower with the homeward bound crew:

 

 

 

[A Soviet Tank]

Today I sent four Kerbals up to my Mun base. I need to add more solar panels, though. There isn't enough power generation to sustain the science lab.

(The Mun base is on the left, and the thing on the right is a Mun shuttle.)

[Cavscout74]

Went back to my first career & as the Jool return window is getting close, it was time to send home the crew of my Sagan floating base after several years researching Laythe:

The Sagan base with pontoon boat:

One of the engineers inspected the floats one last time before leaving:

Low pass over their home away from home using the Star Ranger from KerbalX by XLJedi:

Heading for rendezvous with the Laythe transfer vehicle to swap crews:

[L0ck0n]

Working (almost) F-35B VTOL

[PT]

While deorbiting first science pod I noticed small issue with design which resulted in harsh lithobraking. So Bill got KIS/KAS scooter and proceeded to quickly add some chutes to second pod.

[Supercheese]

2 minutes ago, PT said:

While deorbiting first science pod I noticed small issue with design which resulted in harsh lithobraking. So Bill got KIS/KAS scooter and proceeded to quickly add some chutes to second pod.

 

Ahh, a KIS/KAS runabout is a brilliant idea! I'll have to include one of those in my next station module.

[Goddess Bhavani]

On 11/16/2017 at 1:33 AM, Fearless Son said:

Are we to assume that the lithobreaking was a *ahem* secondary landing option after the loss of a primary chute?  

I had a blonde moment and launched the S.S. Oscar Mayer to the north pole without a proper preflight inspection, only discovering there was no chute after fairing separation.

There was no heatshield either and parts were nearly cooking off and I decided to use the landing rockets to slow the vehicle down. Lithobraking went "as planned"; I decided not to bother adding the chute after seeing how perfect the stayputnik worked as a crumple zone...

Edited November 16, 2017 by carmenara

[PT]

6 minutes ago, Supercheese said:

 

Ahh, a KIS/KAS runabout is a brilliant idea! I'll have to include one of those in my next station module.

There is one more trick in that box, if you carry around junior docking port you can just slap it where you need and dock runabout right there, right now. No need for big, problematic, claw. i took screenshot when I was using spare junior to refill monoprop.

[Slam_Jones]

1 minute ago, PT said:

There is one more trick in that box, if you carry around junior docking port you can just slap it where you need and dock runabout right there, right now. No need for big, problematic, claw. i took screenshot when I was using spare junior to refill monoprop.

I usually keep two KAS pipe connectors handy for that purpose.  A bit lighter than jr. docking ports, and they don't need to line up perfectly either

[PT]

Just now, Slam_Jones said:

I usually keep two KAS pipe connectors handy for that purpose.  A bit lighter than jr. docking ports, and they don't need to line up perfectly either

There was a time when I heavily abused pipes in place of proper docking, I am trying to correct that behavior. And I had bad case of MIRV Kraken targeting my pipe-heavy installations in the past... ';..;'

[eddiew]

It's been a long hiatus (and a dinosaur-filled one) but the Martian expedition continues at last! The second landing site is necessarily in an already visited biome around the equator, but thanks to the majesty of the Bon Voyage mod and a small patch integrating it into the command chairs, the kilometres flashed by  

(If the text size changes between these screenshots, I apologise. So did my monitor and resolution.)

Edited November 16, 2017 by eddiew

[Azimech]

Circumnavigated Duna in less than 12 hours.

 

As part of the "street fair project" together with @Castille7 and @klond I came up with bumper cars. They worked so fantastically well I decided to build and test a fast & heavy duty rover for other worlds.

Disclaimer: I didn't build a launch vehicle for it, therefore this is not an entry for the Elcano challenge. I just put the thing in orbit and used the lander.

Only mod used: Mechjeb with the rover autopilot.

Fine tuned settings for each wheel gave it the ride I wanted: low springs and max dampers, low friction on all wheels but slightly higher at the rear. The bumpers are the opposite: max springs and no damping.

The bumpers work as expected: the vehicle is nearly indestructible. It just bounces off the terrain!

Power consumption is low, during the night drive it used a minimal amount of fuel (running on fuel cells and two RTG's). Part count is pretty low, only 54.

That's it, just under 12 hours. Not even a tiny bit of damage even though it had numerous high speed impacts.

 

[Angelo Kerman]

Finished DSEV's Estonian IVA:

[adsii1970]

24 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Finished DSEV's Estonian IVA:

[Edited by adsii1970]

Ooooh, a new toy!

Edited November 17, 2017 by adsii1970

[DoctorDavinci]

Figuring out a way to run Drag Races (calling @Azimech )

 

 

[Azimech]

2 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Figuring out a way to run Drag Races (calling @Azimech )

 

 

Nice, what is it that you activate using the abort key?

You should see my drag racing topic, there are other ways (and there's the right setting for the rover autopilot so the cars don't drive off the runway).

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

Had some fun with custom KK bases and the places they let you get to. There's something about flying and having nothing but hundreds of kilometers of sky in every direction.

[DoctorDavinci]

Just now, Azimech said:

Nice, what is it that you activate using the abort key?

I used the Smart Parts Continued radio transmitter to trigger the boost flaps on both cars at the same time

How I did it kinda works ... I'm going to go diggin in some code to iron out some of the quirks and hopefully be able to have boost flaps controlled by the rover going into turns and such ... It's possible now but speeds would be limited using Smart Parts

[Castille7]

45 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Finished DSEV's Estonian IVA:

lovin' that diamond plate! 

[KerBlammo]

I spent some time tweaking my toy SSTO & getting back up to speed on flying in KSP after some time away.  I can get it into a ~125x125k orbit with ~730m/s dv available.

Here it is at about 90k on its way down after the de-orbit burn.

I over flew KSC at around 23K and turned it around to line up with the runway, but I could never get the approach stabilized so I did a flyby of KSC almost out of fuel:

It was really hard to fly this thing low & slow just using the keyboard (I've never been any good at actually flying in KSP) but I did land it intact! I think I need to joystick for this.

Sorry all this happened in the dark; I hate night screenshots too!

Edited it add a better lit on orbit screen shot:

 

 

Edited November 17, 2017 by KerBlammo

[anti_con2]

8 minutes ago, KerBlammo said:

I spent some time tweaking my toy SSTO & getting back up to speed on flying in KSP after some time away.  I can get it into a ~125x125k orbit with ~730m/s dv available.

Here it is at about 90k on its way down after the de-orbit burn.

I over flew KSC at around 23K and turned it around to line up with the runway, but I could never get the approach stabilized so I did a flyby of KSC almost out of fuel:

It was really hard to fly this thing low & slow just using the keyboard (I've never been any good at actually flying in KSP) but I did land it intact! I think I need to joystick for this.

Sorry all this happened in the dark; I hate night screenshots too!

Edited it add a better lit on orbit screen shot:

 

 

that looks a lot like skylon