What did you do in KSP1 today?

[eddiew]

The annoying discovery that the Skywheel's crew were holding a subbuteo tournament in the canteen did little to improve tempers at mission control. The engineering team however were suddenly enthused to find the cheapest possible way of getting three kerbals up to low Earth orbit, and after several hours spent locked in a shed, they produced a new prototype.

Since the Cloudspear was evidently carrying excess fuel, a few hundred units are transferred to the station before the plane is brought back to ground under remote control. Turns out that three aerobrakes aren't really enough for a plane this pointy, and the Cloudspear ends up overshooting by several kilometres and having to loop back before landing, but there's a fair amount of wing for the weight and the final touchdown is surprisingly gentle.

And for some reason, various entities around the world have a sudden hankering for some lunar survey data, which gave the engineers a kick of glee and sent them scurrying back into their shed for 'round two'.

To be fair to them, they quickly produced a small, agile little spaceplane that was more than adequate for delivering an argon-fuelled probe to low orbit, with only 0.8 degrees deviation from the lunar plane. Returning to ground, it almost misses the runway because it turns out that it will happily stay in the air at anything above 50m/s.

The next project requires a bit more delta-v than is available in a format we can pack into Lil Lifter's cargo bay, which leaves the engineering crew shaking their heads and muttering things like 'brute force', 'uncivilised' and 'outdated on the launch pad'. Mission control suspects that it will henceforth be a battle to get them to design anything that doesn't have wings. 

Nonetheless, Lil Hottie proves to be a sturdy and competent probe, arriving and Mercury and completing her 12 minute insertion burn without complaint. Winding down to a low orbit on the second pass, she unfurls her radar and begins mapping the radiation-blasted surface below.

A copy of all data is sent to Skywheel Station, just in case the crew have forgotten their jobs.

[kraden]

18 hours ago, TheMadKraken2297 said:

I try my hardest to stay true to my username! I definitely have made the Kraken mad before.... *shudders*

So is the 2297 a tally or a goal 

[Kernel Kraken]

17 minutes ago, kraden said:

So is the 2297 a tally or a goal 

It's definitely a goal now! It came from a failed attempt to copy Boogie2988. I was going for 2989, but accidentally typed 2297. Its been that way on all of my usernames for something like 4 years now  

[Laie]

18 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I did a lot of work on DSEV's Trinity nuclear engine:

Would be nice if it can gimbal (it seems to, in the picture). Stock nukes don't but there's no reason why real nukes couldn't.

However... sorry if I'm being "that guy" once more, but... it doesn't look like a nuclear engine. It does look like a F-1 (picture). That Princess Leya hairdo-like wrapper around the nozzle would be the turbopump exhaust pipe, it seems out of place on a nuclear engine. Incidentally (may as well split some hairs while I'm at it), the engine bell downward of the exhaust pipe would be rather smooth; the corrugated look suggests reactive cooling which only happens above the inlet.

Actual NTRs have a (comparatively huge) reactor in place of the combustion chamber. The stock "NERV" isn't all that wrong in it's proportions (well, the nozzle is rather small, but by and large....)

Edited November 25, 2017 by Laie

[LordFerret]

Ding-blasted Imgur is blocking me from uploading images - again. No idea why... likely they feel the domain is the source of abuse - again.

So, use your imaginations.

I sent two Zebra-Shuttles up to my station (Ice Station Zebra). One was empty, a remote controlled flight. The other had crew, two pilots, four engineers and four scientists. I had both docked at the station. Docking went better this time... I found it easier and more intuitive to dock in 3rd-person view rather via the docking camera - the docking port on 'top' of the craft makes the translations wonky without more practice and familiarity. For the record though, I prefer the docking camera view. The reentry tests on both flights went excellent. I've got the mark / timing down for the retro-burn, and it puts me right in place for landing at KSC. The flight in was nearly entirely via glide... and touchdown was all glide.

The landing at KSC with crew all standing around a smoking still hot-from-reentry ship would be posted here for you to view right now IF IMGUR WASN'T BEING SUCH A DINK!

[septemberWaves]

I experimented with a few new crewed spacecraft. Details can be found here.

[KerikBalm]

I did some basic editing of some gameplay videos I took and uploaded it as a lets play video... but I think it sucks.... and it took >8 hours to upload on my bad connection.

Maybe the "next episode" (already have the video, just haven't uploaded) where I start construction of a fueling base on Minmus would be more interesting... but I think this video stuff may be a waste of time.

 

[Slam_Jones]

@eddiew - That skybox is wild!  Which one is it? Also, great looking crafts as always! 

-------------------------------------

Today, I launched and new, more stable (read: stuffed with overpowered reaction wheels) version of the Jebediah Space Telescope.  It's currently in a high orbit, waiting to go into a geostationary orbit once it's in the right position.

 

After that, I started preparing a new Lunar Station, which will support over a dozen kerbals and have facilities available for a wide variety of science experiments.

First up, the Laboratory Modules.

With the Lab module in orbit, we next sent up the Habitation Module.

Mostly complete.  Just need to lose the Hab Mods upper stage, then get a Tug up to it to drag it off the Lunar Orbit.

 

Lastly, I (somewhat unrealistically) landed a rover on Venus:

A very hot aerobraking maneuver

Below the thick, hazy clouds lies a barren surface.  The top half of the SkyCrane exploded due to a staging error, taking the parachutes and battery bank with it.  Strangely, the vessel continued to descend at a sluggish rate of 15m/s when the landing legs were deployed, possibly due to the incredibly thick atmosphere.  This also meant that the skycrane thrusters, intended to slow down the vessel just before landing, were essentially useless (KER was reporting negative TWR!    )

USR-III 'Aphrodite' managed to touch down more or less intact and began beaming data back to Earth, reporting Atmospheric Pressure in the 700-range.  After only a few minutes on the surface, the rover was basically fried and the mission terminated.  We did receive enough science to make it a worthwhile endeavor, but I doubt we'll be going back any time soon...

 

Edited November 25, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[Laie]

1 hour ago, Slam_Jones said:

Strangely, the vessel continued to descend at a sluggish rate of 15m/s when the landing legs were deployed, possibly due to the incredibly thick atmosphere.  This also meant that the skycrane thrusters, intended to slow down the vessel just before landing, were essentially useless (KER was reporting negative TWR!

Welcome to Venus!

If ambient pressure is higher than the injection pressure of your engine, atmosphere will force it's way into your piping as soon as you open the valve. If there's any real-life engines that could work at these pressures, it's certainly not small hypergolic things.

For a soft landing, I never had any luck with parachutes. I recommend airbrakes or (better still) control surfaces set up to act in a similar fashion. As you found out, even a little drag has a huge effect. The Venera-9 lander was draggy enough (and the landing gear sturdy enough) to survive a landing:

(The sphere is about 1m diameter, the whole things weighs 1.5 tons).

 

Edited November 25, 2017 by Laie

[Slam_Jones]

6 minutes ago, Laie said:

Welcome to Venus!

If ambient pressure is higher than the injection pressure of your engine, atmosphere will force it's way into your piping as soon as you open the valve. If there's many real-life engines that could work at these pressures, it's certainly not small hypergolic things.

For a soft landing, I never had any luck with parachutes. I recommend airbrakes or (better still) control surfaces set up to act in a similar fashion. As you found out, even a little drag has a huge effect. The Venera-9 lander was draggy enough (and the landing gear sturdy enough) to survive a landing:

-pic snip'd for brevity-

(The sphere is about 1m diameter, the whole things weighs 1.5 tons).

 

Oh, no kidding!  I had actually assumed that the weird effects mentioned were due to math errors from my current mix of mods, but I guess my descent was a lot closer to reality than I expected!  (Well, parts of it, at least )  Venus is apparently weirder than I ever imagined!

Now I'm gonna have to try to make a probe that looks like the one pictured for my next expedition

[fourfa]

13 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

Oh, no kidding!  I had actually assumed that the weird effects mentioned were due to math errors from my current mix of mods, but I guess my descent was a lot closer to reality than I expected!  (Well, parts of it, at least )  Venus is apparently weirder than I ever imagined!

Now I'm gonna have to try to make a probe that looks like the one pictured for my next expedition

Be warned: fascinating and filthy detail - 

http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

[Laie]

15 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

Now I'm gonna have to try to make a probe that looks like the one pictured for my next expedition

The Veneras were exciting things, wholly different from lightweight US designs. Sturdy metal spheres, double-walled with insulation between, and a block of ice¹⁾ to keep the innards cool for just long enough to snap a few pictures. Without looking it up, I don't think any probe survived for more than 2-3hours.

1) not literally water ice

EDIT: @fourfa's link is must-read.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Laie

[septemberWaves]

1 minute ago, Laie said:

Without looking it up, I don't think any probe survived for more than 2-3hours.

Venera 7 only lasted 23 minutes, Venera 8 lasted just over twice as long. The first landing probe to last more than an hour was Venera 10, and the longest-lasting was Venera 13 which lasted 127 minutes and was the only one to last up to 2 hours while still transmitting.

None of this is surprising of course, considering the 90atm pressure and dense sulfuric acid clouds and temperatures hot enough to melt lead.

[Slam_Jones]

10 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Be warned: fascinating and filthy detail - 

http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

Woah, quite an awesome resource there!  "[...] the lander fell for 55 minutes, slowed only by the aerobrake. In the thick atmosphere, terminal velocity was 7 meters/sec at touchdown, [...]"  Dang!

Bookmarked for later reading   Thanks!

 

8 minutes ago, Laie said:

The Veneras were exciting things, wholly different from lightweight US designs. Sturdy metal spheres, double-walled with insulation between, and a block of ice¹⁾ to keep the innards cool for just long enough to snap a few pictures. Without looking it up, I don't think any probe survived for more than 2-3hours.

1) not literally water ice

So far I'm very impressed with what I've read about them.  Having grown up in the USA school system, I never learned much about the Soviet space program (our textbooks spent most of that space on the Apollo missions IIRC) so it's kinda awesome to see these Soviet craft in all their glory

 

Edit: Since this is a new page, have a picture of my Venutian 'Aphrodite' rover not long before it was terminated (the main solar panels were destroyed by the atmosphere so it didn't have a lot of time left)

Edited November 25, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

@TheMadKraken2297 Wow. How many kerbals does that carry? It reminds me of my 1600(+4) kerbalYumbo Yet 6000.

 

Anyways, I launched probably the most ghetto Realism Overhaul suborbital craft ever.

The capsule consisted of a Bell X1 cockpit with four Aerobee sounding rocket parachute packages attached. Attitude control for the capsule was nitrogen thrusters. A Redstone stage provided the main propulsion to send the whole thing suborbital, and since I didn't have any heat shields, a quad set of Aerobee sustainer engines fired to slow the thing down to about 1500m/s before it reentered the atmosphere. Jeb almost blacked out during reentry, but there was a computer script to open the parachutes if had done so. Got some good science though! 

Probably won't launch something ridiculous like this for a while.

Edited November 25, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished the Explodium (a.k.a. nuclear saltwater) mode of DSEV's Trinity engine. Also, if used in the homeworld's atmosphere or near other crewed vessels, you'll receive a Reputation hit.

[eddiew]

3 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

@eddiew - That skybox is wild!  Which one is it? Also, great looking crafts as always! 

There you go  

[PT]

Today I forgot to take rover with me before igniting main engines, damaged nuclear reactor cores during warp, found out that living space can't be fully connected and docking ports I used have malfunctioning hatch and learned that both MJ and KER have no clue how to correctly calculate TwR for my beast thus screwing up burn times, forgot to bring additional scientists, forgot to refill up KIS container and found out that have I built in Kraken drive in my starship, as there is no way of controlling it I can't integrate engine modules with main fuselage (construction docking ports versus slightly clipped small octo grid...).

Not bad for prototype first voyage.

 

[Geonovast]

...Kraken #2!  Got this far in the re-fuel / rescue op.  Val hooked up a pipe, refueled the plane, then disconnected the pipe.  She was just walking back to the KIS container to get her command seat to weld inside the plane's cargo bay, when she tripped on the wheel strut, go catapulted under the service, spaghettied, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I never had these issues with 1.3.  I might go back.

[Hotel26]

On 2017/02/18 at 10:53 PM, Zeiss Ikon said:

All I did last night was let Jeb, Val, Bob and Bill take a test flight in the prebuilt Dynawing shuttle.  stock ballast (three FL-T800 tanks and a bunch of beams) in the cargo bay, though there isn't much dV left (and that only on the Puff engines) after a less than optimal ascent.

Upgraded to 1.3, so thought I'd give this stock plane a spin.  In orbit, only on Puffer power, as you mentioned.  I have more or less concluded that, though one has the main engines and though one has the fuel/oxi, there's no way to feed the fuel to the engines and Very Low Kerbin Orbit is about the best one can manage with this.  For want of a directly-connected tank and some fuel connectors...  That right?

[Plane Crazy]

I did a grand tour of the Duna system today with kopernicus, visiting Duna, Gilly, and Bop.  Found out that you can be rewarded tech for finding monoliths.

Bob broke off a solar panel.

 

https://db.tt/s0DRTUuGHU

https://db.tt/CorNwolqzl

https://db.tt/oynDAbzMiC

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, Laie said:

The Venera-9 lander was draggy enough (and the landing gear sturdy enough) to survive a landing:

You see, Ivan, when land in pea soup, make slow with dinner plate! (And make sure spoon not land in front of soil sampler).

@Slam_Jones you mention the atmosphere destroyed the solar panels. How is that simulated in your install? Temperature?

[LordFerret]

9 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

stuffed with overpowered reaction wheels

I've found that, once I put my 'Hubble' up, I turn off the reaction wheel (SAS) I'd added and used the ever so slight one incorporated into the telescope - with CapsLock enabled for very fine movements. Otherwise, zoomed all the way in on something, trying to track is nearly impossible.

[harrisjosh2711]

Finally got my landing legs functioning properly. I have started working on adding detail to all the textures on the fuel tanks.

 

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by harrisjosh2711

[anti_con2]

landed a probe called victory on eve, undershoot and landed in the ocean but luckily the bottom heat shield acted as ballast.

https://imgur.com/gallery/Gk74iQd

https://imgur.com/gallery/sofxUHf