What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Slam_Jones]

5 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

-snip-

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

Actually, it was driving too quickly. Since it was a flimsy 3x2 non-retractable stock panel, it didn't have a lot of air resistance and snapped off at about 10m/s or so. Something I should have accounted perhaps... 

On my next career game I plan to turn on pressure limits and all those fun options and see how well I fare 

@LordFerret oh, that's a good idea, I'll have to give that a try!

Edited November 26, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[Julien Kerman]

Today I performed my very first Uranus flyby  in RP0

Titania, Umbriel, Oberon etc.....:

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by Julien Kerman

[Zeiss Ikon]

8 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

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?

The ballast in the cargo bay is indended to represent payload, to be unloaded in LKO.  I think the demonstrator is about how small a Shuttle-like craft can be and still make orbit.

[Mister_Casual97]

4 hours ago, Julien Kerman said:

Today I performed my very first Uranus flyby  in RP0

Titania, Umbriel, Oberon etc.....:

 

Beautiful my friend.

[Delay]

I've decided to do this again... twice:

[KSK]

No pictures because my incompetent ISP is currently blocking access to Imgur because clearly a free image hosting site will bring down the ruination of British society and probably corrupt at least half a dozen young minds in the process.

</rant>

Anyhow - back on topic. I brought Jeb and Bob home from Minmus after their epic drive from the Greater Flats to the Lesser Flats in their Mk 1 Science Rover. The Rescue 2 recovery vehicle piloted by Valentina Kerman performed a pinpoint approach and landing maneuver, setting down no more than 300 metres from the, now-abandoned rover. The Rescue 2 design was judged to a nicety - Mission Control estimate that Val had enough fuel in the tank for a whole 80m/s of velocity change after executing her trans-Kerbin injection burn.

Built from a pair of Mk1 inline cockpits and a spare Mk1 crew cabin, the triumph of willpower over design that was the Mk1 Science Rover lurched across Minmus on eight RoveMax S2 wheels. Whilst RoveMax vigorously deny that their entry level wheels are scavenged from old shopping trolleys, rumour has it that Jeb is going to have a quiet word with their management.

Scientists and engineers across Kerbin have since been inspired to create all kinds of snazzy new technologies although further research is required in order to build a rocket large enough to launch the Mk2 Science Rover currently in the prototyping and test phase. Test drives in the mountains west of KSC indicate that the Mk2 is extremely stable, resilient to damage on the rare occasions that it does turn turtle and apparently capable of maintaining a respectable speed up 60-70 degree slopes. This extraordinary capability is attributed to 'the Sidewinder maneuver', which was discovered when Jeb decided to wiggle the steering wheel back and forth for no readily discernable reason. Apparently RoveMax wheels exhibit superior traction and torque when turning than they do in straight line travel, so by gently swerving a rover from side to side, it can be coaxed into quite impressive feats of speed and hill-climbing.

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by KSK

[cubinator]

I've finished assembly of a modular interplanetary transport. Now all that's left to do is wait for the right planetary alignment, top off the fuel tanks and send the crew, and then fly it to Duna! I think I'll build another one to send to Eve and Gilly.

[Superfluous J]

I had a bit of a surprise today as I zoomed out in map mode in LKO, controlling "Minmus Flyby 1". Minmus wasn't there. Oops. Forgot I installed a planet package that moved it away

I guess I'll be landing on Mun for more science after all.

[eddiew]

Made the mistake of asking the engineering team to be more "organic" in their designs.

To be fair to them, this thing weighs only a little over 3 tons, is balanced within 0.1kNm, and packs 9300m/s vacuum delta-v... admittedly at a rather measly 0.21 twr. Still, should be good enough for touring the smaller moons of Saturn  

[SwissSpace93]

Today i get my 3 MapSat's into Moho-Orbit, and replaced i lost Kerbin MapSat (MapSat-1). The Research-kerbals discovered a deep hole at Moho's North pole, we need to get a Mission to this hole. A Probe thats discover the ground of the hole, for this i want to use a Geostationary Relay-Satellite above the hole.

Imgur Album

What the Heck is a album-code from Imgur albums where i can find it?

 

Album a/wHS4a will appear when post is submitted

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by SwissSpace93
Imgur Album integration failed

[AngrybobH]

I finally got a spaceplane/lander combo working that can fly AND land.

The lander is low on TWR but it works well enough. Landing is a bit more exiting than I would like and most of the time it still has wings when coming to a stop.

 

 

[cubinator]

26 minutes ago, SwissSpace93 said:

What the Heck is a album-code from Imgur albums where i can find it?

The album code is the set of characters at the end of the album URL.

[eddiew]

Ambler II takes a tour of the jovian moons, all of which turn out to be too chunky for this little probe's engines to allow a landing. Which, in the case of Europa, is probably a good thing.

Analysis of the data stream from Ambler II provides some significant technological advances, and within a few months of the mission's conclusion, a new, much fancier probe is dispatched to Saturn.

Leaving the transfer stage as a permanent comms relay within the SoI, Tinlion sets a course for his first target; the little moon of Rhea. The orbital survey reveals that it has a north pole, a south pole, a Saturn side, and an other side. So that's exciting. Picking a spot along the border of two biomes, mission control uploads a landing program and sends Tinlion down to become the first unmanned probe to make a landing beyond the orbit of Mars.

Descent takes quite a while, and even Tinlion's argon-powered paw-rockets have to be throttled to almost nothing in order to avoid simply returning to orbit again. Upon landing, it soon becomes clear that the surface rocks are having as much trouble staying down as Tinlion is. He spends a while investigating the site and taking photos for the newspapers back home.

[Zeiss Ikon]

(Career save)

With Jeb "out of town" -- piloting a VIP tourist for a Munar landing excursion in a newly designed, never-before-flown lander, on a similarly brand new booster/transfer vehicle -- Val was tapped to do some test flying of an under-development spaceplane prototype.  Early simulator testing wasn't promising -- roundly fifteen different versions turned out to be impossible to even get off the ground intact.  Eventually, though, the guys with the hammers and wrenches in the Space Plane Hangar put together something that could at least take off and flight straight.

Earlier versions had two Wheesley mounted above the wing, then below the wing, then one on top of the fuselage (like a Heinkel 111).  That last one actually flew, but it would pitch up uncontrollably when the rocket booster was ignited, probably due to the unbalanced drag (the craft was already near the jet-powered service ceiling, so the Wheesley wasn't making much thrust).

This technology is brand new -- the Wheesley engines and the nacelles they're mated with were in the most recent batch of "new stuff" from R&D, made possible by Jeb and Adeny remembering to do their crew reports and surface samples even on tourist flights and "haul" tests.  An earlier testbed was a dismal failure; the Juno engines lack thrust (it'd take an even dozen of them to equal these two Wheesley fanjets), and there was no good way to attach them to existing aircraft parts.

Put the engines in the wing roots and you get a pitch-neutral setup.  This craft flies pretty well, now -- but the following pictures were from the first successful test of the previous iteration, which was a bit, um, crankier.

I didn't notice until after I'd finish building and even done the test flight, the slight similarity of this layout to the Vought F7-U1 Cutlass, a Naval jet fighter from the late 1950s.

Spoiler

Unlike the earlier versions, which suffered from unrecoverable yaw oscillation on the runway, Val was able to get this one off without difficulty (thanks to SAS).

Target heading, 090.  No one expected this vessel to make orbit, but may as well follow procedure for future space planes that will have the capability.  Do it right from the beginning, and you don't have to learn it all over later on.  Looks like the internal fuel in each nacelle will run a Wheesly at near full throttle for most of an hour.

Don't let the climb angle fool you.  Just after this image was shot, the aircraft started falling off into a bank, and every time it got more than a hundred meters or so above 11,000, it would do it again -- and recovering always lowered the nose, causing loss of altitude.  After the third such excursion, Val decided she was high enough for the next phase of the test.

After retracting the deployed elevons (deployment no longer necessary for level flight in the final version), Val pulled the nose up and punched the ignition button.  Seconds later, she was above the maximum velocity obtainable with the air-breathing engines, despite a 30 degree climb.

The Wheesleys flamed out due to lack of air at about 21 km, and the Reliant ran out of Lf/O not longer after -- but by then, Val was in a 45 degree climb at 680 m/s.  With the thin air above 20 km, she was able to coast to a new horizontal takeoff record of 29,215 m above sea level before gravity won and she began to drop back toward Kerbin.

Once she was low enough, she was able to restart the engines, turn around, and start the long flight back to the Space Center. 

Runway in sight!  Gear already down; Val's been letting down since she was able to identify that she was headed close to the Space Center (having not drifted far during her journey).  Landing gear down early, for the braking.  She can also deploy the fins outward, but doing so raises the nose (fixed in the final iteration of this craft).  For last ditch, there's reverse thrust available from the engines.

Looks like she's a little high, but that's what a long base leg is for, right?

Yep, since that altitude display is in meters, definitely a little high.  Oh well, with a new prototype, nobody will fault you if you miss the runway, as long as you don't run into anything solid or go into the ocean.  Right?

Just so we're clear, if I had an R/C transmitter, I could totally have landed this thing on the runway.  Flying with buttons, on or off, is the pits...

 

[AngrybobH]

51 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

  Hide contents

 

 

I like it. It's a sweet ride. I can't seem to make designs with wide wings and short length work out. They are always too unstable when pitching. In my current career game I tried something similar but scrapped the idea in favor of something longer. When I got the Wheesley engine, I upgraded my basic design to this ~40 part science plane.

Perhaps I'll go back and see if I can make my earlier design fly.

[LordFerret]

4 hours ago, eddiew said:

Tinlion sets a course for his first target

Get that mutt off my lawn... and clean up that mess.

 

[Helmetman]

18 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

From which mod are those wing surface solar panels, or wings themselves for that matter? 

[Inverurie Jones]

Launched my first true 'spaceship', the K-50 Class K-501 KSS Ajax.

 

It went up surprisingly easily with only 6 boosters and a jettisonable Skipper engine.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Inverurie Jones

[kraden]

I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!

*it's the end of the world as we know it...*

[CatastrophicFailure]

52 minutes ago, kraden said:

I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!

*it's the end of the world as we know it...*

*cue Jeb running that way with his surfboard*

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, kraden said:

I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!

*it's the end of the world as we know it...*

... ♫ and I feel like crap fine. ♫


(It was either that or something like "Cue the Hawaii 5-0 music".)

[The Flying Kerbal]

Unusually for a Sunday night, I fired up the full KSP game as opposed to the demo.  For many months now I've been having trouble with torque in the majority of my rockets putting them into a roll as they ascended through the atmosphere.  Seldom did this reach levels were missions had to be scrubbed, but there have been times when this did happen, the rolling getting so severe that I hadn't the piloting skills to keep the rocket under control... most annoying!   I had posted messages on this forum preciously seeking help, and while you guys were as usual very helpful and full of advice, nothing really helped this situation.

So last night I decided I was going to sit down and tackle this problem once and for all.  I loaded a rocket which was notorious for this rolling action, pulled up KER and began my investigations.  According to KER the torque was in the three lower stages, registering between 0.2 and 0.25 in each of them.  A quick test flight confirmed the rolling action was still present, which came a no surprise.  I then fitted some AV-T1 Winglets to the bottom of the rocket, but if there was any improvement it was negligible, the roll still persisted.

So I changed these winglets for the more advanced Delta Deluxe Winglets which have movable control surfaces.  These made countering the roll easier, but they didn't resolve the issue of why it was there in the first place.  So the investigations continued.

The rocket had two side boosters and some time was spent checking and rechecking these were in perfect symmetry and not angled slightly off centre, forcing the rocket into a roll.  However the next test flight proved this wasn't the issue either.  I took the side boosters off entirely and tried a flight, but even then a very few seconds after lift off, that same slow roll reared its ugly head yet again.  What on Earth was going on here... the rocket was now perfectly symmetrical, there was simply no way something on its side could be in any way having an effect on it.  The CoM indicator was in perfect alignment with the axis going up the length of the rocket, I was really stuck.

I then dumped the entire lift vehicle leaving just the payload.  All the readouts on KER now said 0.0 torque, which didn't come as a great surprise, but I had to check anyway.  Instead of simply undoing the deleting of the lift vehicle or reloading it, I rebuilt the thing, just to be doubly - indeed triply - sure the thing wasn't in some was slightly askew.  It isn't a particularly complicated rocket, but I spent an inordinate amount of time checking and rechecking everything was in perfect alignment and symmetry.  And yet when I was finished, there was that torque back in the lower stages just waiting to start the rocket rolling again as soon as it left the launchpad.  At this stage I needed to give it a rest, and went and watched a movie...

It's funny how you can try and solve a problem and fail, only for a new idea to come into your head when you aren't thinking about it; I was watching "The Game" starring Michael Douglas, when a light bulb suddenly switched on in my head, I had a new idea!   I changed the root part from the probe core at the heart of the payload, switching it to the fairing on the rocket.  This give me the opportunity to remove and ditch the payload, leaving the empty rocket in the VAB.  To my surprise the torque readings on KER immediately plummeted to zero - so there WAS something wrong with the payload after all?  This time I reloaded the rocket and reexamined the whole vehicle, from top to bottom.  Everything LOOKED right, but I decided I would try offsetting the payload slightly and see if that made a difference.  The torque readings shot up, so I edged the payload slightly in the opposite direction.  The torque finally settled on 0.02, a huge difference; a quick test flight and the roll had either gone completely or it was so slight as to be irrelevant.  A quick revert to the VAB and another slight offset of the payload along a different axis and the torque now read 0.0 across the board!

So finally I seem to have resolved a problem which has been irking me for a considerable amount of time, but why had it been so illusive in the first place?  Well I'd thought of many different reasons which might have been adding this torque to my rockets, from misaligned boosters to some basic design fault I was unaware of.  However I never once thought if I had snap turned on, the game would not align anything other than in perfect alignment when I added parts to a vehicle.

Has anyone else had this problem caused by the game aligning things very slightly off centre?  Anyway all's good and hopefully my rolling problems are finally laid to rest.

[AngrybobH]

4 hours ago, Helmetman said:

From which mod are those wing surface solar panels, or wings themselves for that matter? 

B9 procedural wings. It says it's not compatible with 1.3.1 and CKAN won't install it but, I manually put it in and it works fine. I prefer procedural parts and wings to the stock stuff, mainly because I need to keep the parts count down. The main lifting wings are each 3 pieces with their own coloring and the vertical stabilizers are 2 pieces each. The white squares on the back of the wings are airbrakes from....hmmm...I think KSPI-E. I not really sure, I have 70+ mods installed.

Edited November 27, 2017 by AngrybobH

[Helmetman]

@AngrybobH Thanks  

[Rune]

Today I landed a 100mT rocket on top of the VAB, after dropping 50mT on orbit, and all I got was a lousy 98% of my money back.

 

Rune. @Raptor9 dared me to.