What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Corona688]

16 hours ago, kraden said:

If you use KER, you can watch DV staged to know when to drop tanks.

What's left for me to do?

16 hours ago, kraden said:

At least that's what I do when I attempt... um, vertical asparagus...? I think someone called it banana staging once...?

Banana staging is when you throw away the core of your craft, usually a big droptank, and keep the "peel".  This is just staging. 

[ProtoJeb21]

My imagination is running wild.

In case you were wondering, the giant craft in the first picture is almost FIVE MILES tall. The later pictures were taken where I was flying - I kid you not - FOURTEEN starfighters simultaneously. I had to use "hack gravity" cheat to make sure everything meant to be off the ground STAYED off the ground. The three types of ships used were TIE Slicers, Aegis-class Interceptors, and modified versions of @Jett_Quasar's X-Wings.

[Julien Kerman]

I realized that a crewed Constellation Mars Mission will not be possible until the end of the 90's. 

Neither the "Bimodal NTR" engines nor the "RSRMV" boosters are available to me , and I also need the RS-68A & B configs and better habitat modules for the crew. It would take more than 8 years to research all this stuff.

Not sure what I will do now....but I am working on a launch vehicle based on SpaceX ITS rocket. This might be a solution.

 

[Space Kadet]

50 minutes ago, Julien Kerman said:

I realized that a crewed Constellation Mars Mission will not be possible until the end of the 90's. 

Neither the "Bimodal NTR" engines nor the "RSRMV" boosters are available to me , and I also need the RS-68A & B configs and better habitat modules for the crew. It would take more than 8 years to research all this stuff.

Not sure what I will do now....but I am working on a launch vehicle based on SpaceX ITS rocket. This might be a solution.

 

Labs for more science, and the science relay mod.....

[kraden]

6 hours ago, qzgy said:

I've heard this termed as I think bamboo staging and a twisted candle. I feel its impractical though.

Ah yes, maybe I heard it referred to as bamboo and my mind thought, "plant that starts with "b", must be banana".

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

What's left for me to do?

Banana staging is when you throw away the core of your craft, usually a big droptank, and keep the "peel".  This is just staging. 

Not sure I follow your question.  Also not sure when banana staging would be useful.

[Corona688]

6 minutes ago, kraden said:

Ah yes, maybe I heard it referred to as bamboo and my mind thought, "plant that starts with "b", must be banana".

Not sure I follow your question.

Eh, the manual part hasn't become annoying to me yet.  This is far less manual work than necessary for the weirdest of my craft, where I fly around frantically transferring fuel and adjusting thrust limiters percent at a time to keep them balanced

Quote

  Also not sure when banana staging would be useful.

The term was invented in a topic about enormous ion probes.  Empty xenon tanks are a lot of dead weight so it makes sense to ditch them periodically, but how to do so when you only have one engine?

Edited December 3, 2017 by Corona688

[kraden]

1 minute ago, Corona688 said:

The term was invented in a topic about enormous ion probes.  Empty xenon tanks are a lot of dead weight so it makes sense to ditch them periodically, but how to do so when you only have one engine?

Was the craft designed "pendulum" style?  Why not just use asparagus staging, seems like the structure for banana staging would also be dead weight?

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Julien Kerman said:

It would take more than 8 years ...

....but I am working on a launch vehicle based on SpaceX ITS rocket. This might be a solution.

Funny how art imitates life sometimes...

[Corona688]

8 minutes ago, kraden said:

Was the craft designed "pendulum" style?  Why not just use asparagus staging, seems like the structure for banana staging would also be dead weight?

The craft was entirely hypothetical.  They were still working out the math for highest delta-v.

7 hours ago, qzgy said:

I've heard this termed as I think bamboo staging and a twisted candle. I feel its impractical though.

Those seem fitting.  Seems less ridiculous to me than plain asparagus, since it only pipes fuel for the little engines, not the big one.

[eddiew]

Moving on... off we go to Europa! (For the second time. Since KSP randomly screwed me over and a rover that worked on the runway suddenly didn't work after 2 hours of orbital mechanics to get it to where it was meant to be. On the up side, the new Rover has argon RCS, where the old version had none at all and would have been a PITA to dock.)

Starblaze III is certainly not the largest thing we've ever launched, but it certainly is the largest thing we've ever fired as far as Jupiter! We mean, sure, Tinlion recently got back from Saturn, but he weighs about 3 tons. Starblaze III is nearly a hundred times that...

Despite the technical challenges, the engineering team actually manages to make it work, and Starblaze III settles into jovian orbit with about 7.5km/s left in the tank. And then burns another 1.5 of that getting down to Europa's orbit. The return trip will be kinda tight, but it should be viable. Worst case we think that (most of) the Starblaze would survive a high altitude aerobraking manoeuvre.

With the shadow of Jupiter barely missing the icy moon below, the crew set out on the descent.

The crew looks down in trepidation as Rover's paw-thrusters are about to contact the forbidden ice of Europa...

Also, geebus hell, do those images have horrific artefacts for anyone else? They look shocking on my screen  

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Just needed a coolant flush. 

Hope they at least included a complimentary tire rotation & pine tree air freshener...

Bacon air freshener. What sort of twisted s.o.b. does that to someone else's car?

[StupidAndy]

this:

 

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

17 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Also, geebus hell, do those images have horrific artefacts for anyone else? They look shocking on my screen  

Well, given that you've been warned to attempt no landing there, I'd say artifacts are your biggest concern right now.  

Maybe some of that bacon could appease them...

[Corona688]

Two passengers of the Eyelander squint and try to see the flag they watched the pilot plant half-an-hour ago.  The other four passengers really wish they'd bought better tickets.

This is the first mun-touring system I didn't have to get out and push for.  The lander's 180 fuel is just enough to drop from a 15K obit, land, and get back.  The tug's 720 is just enough to get to the mun, circularize, leave the mun, recircularize around Kerbin, and rendezvous with the fuel platform with just 50m/s to spare.

[edit] The "rendezvous" occurred at 100m/s.  Everyone survived but I'm adding another 360 fuel to the tug.

Edited December 4, 2017 by Corona688

[anti_con2]

5 hours ago, Julien Kerman said:

 

 

the 2090's?

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

Doing more testing of my Laythe stuff. I discovered that if I don't separate my mine's wheels then they cause its back-end to tip up far enough to give my drills clearance to work without shaking the base constantly. I'm still planning on sending a replacement mine, but it's good to know that things aren't as dire as I thought they were. I also tested my passenger SSTO on Laythe.

I'd initially launched it under the assumption that if it worked on Kerbin it would probably work on Laythe, but I'd never actually tested it there. It landed successfully and was able to dock with the mining base to refuel.

The part I was worried about came next: The takeoff. The ground was inclined slightly away from the mine which allowed the plane to roll backwards after being released from its docking klaw. Hopefully I'll have similar terrain when I do the "real" setup of this base, but if I don't then I might be able to use the plane's RCS thrusters to give it enough distance to turn around.

Next step: Taking off without a runway. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, made worse by the fact that I'd forgotten to turn on SAS, but I was able to get it off the ground.

The rest of the flight went pretty smoothly and I was able to rendevous and dock with Laythe Station with fuel to spare. So now I know that I have a way to get Kerbals down to the surface of Laythe and back again, which is a big relief. I still haven't tested the cargo SSTO, but that's not as critical as making sure my crews can make a round trip to the surface. All that's left now is to test the new redesigned mine and then reload my old save and do all this for real.

[qzgy]

Finished the bulk of work on the Bugatti 100P replica. Needs tweaking of the props (still unstable - am willing to listen to advice on this.) and addition of details, but progress is being made.

More images below.

Spoiler

And to those hardcore turboheads - Sorry, I couldn't make an effective proper turboprop. There are two cheat wheesleys.

Also pinging @GDJ cause you were interested.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Getting to the point in my latest (1.3.1) campaign where it starts to get interesting...  prepping asteroid rendezvous missions, circum-Munar flybys, and the first interplanetary probes are arriving at their destinations.

Interestingly, Kerbin captured a C-class asteroid without my having to do anything, so it appears that we have a new moonlet.  Trying to come up with an appropriately Kerbal name for it (Miniminmus has been rejected by the Kerbal Astronomical Union).  Definitely will make the asteroid rendezvous a bit easier.

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Interestingly, Kerbin captured a C-class asteroid without my having to do anything, so it appears that we have a new moonlet.  Trying to come up with an appropriately Kerbal name for it (Miniminmus has been rejected by the Kerbal Astronomical Union).  Definitely will make the asteroid rendezvous a bit easier.

I love it when that happens   Might want to be quick though, it must have been captured via a gravity assist from Mun, so it'll be crossing orbits at some point and may get flung away again in the future if not parked properly.

[Julien Kerman]

11 hours ago, anti_con2 said:

the 2090's?

No, I was talking about the 1990's.

70's: Moon

80's: Venus

90's: Mars

[MaxwellsDemon]

36 minutes ago, eddiew said:

I love it when that happens   Might want to be quick though, it must have been captured via a gravity assist from Mun, so it'll be crossing orbits at some point and may get flung away again in the future if not parked properly.

Oh yeah, that'll be the goal of the rendezvous mission  

[Delay]

38 minutes ago, eddiew said:

flung away again in the future if not parked properly.

Can confirm that this happens a lot.

[Sorabh]

Landed the first module of my Kerbalism Mun base. It was a pain with the skycrane, but i did it!

In summary, I dropped the base

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Sorabh

[capi3101]

It was a pretty busy weekend for me, game-wise. I started off last Friday continuing my efforts to put Asteroid PDM-700 into orbit around Mün for contract. Having sucked the rock dry of ore and still badly needing fuel to get the probe out of a 53-degree LKO, I detached the Vampire 7 drilling probe and deorbited it, then designed the Exxon Valdez 7a very heavy refueling probe - a flying gas can if ever there was one - and launched it to the asteroid. 

Exxon Valdez 7a on final approach to dock with the Leech 7 probe, already attached to Asteroid PDM-700. Probably the only piece of this mission to actually go as planned.

Docking went surprising well considering the mass, and after the fuel delivery was complete I detached the Leech 7 converter probe, to which the Exxon Valdez was docked, from the rock. Both probes were then de-orbited and recovered successfully, while the Tater Catcher 7 asteroid grabber affected the burn for Mün and finally got the rock into orbit.

Finally! Now to go collect my pay...apparently I have to go talk to some guy named "Badger" or something like that...

One slight snag - as @Corona688 feared earlier, by removing the ore, I had changed its class to A, and so it no longer fulfilled the requirements of the contract. I did have the thought to go ahead and send the Tater Catcher on to the Munport space station, since it still had plenty of available fuel at that point, but I discovered then that the grabber was so thoroughly imbedded into the asteroid that I couldn't get to its controls. And since I had dumped the Leech with the Exxon Valdez, it no longer had a docking port. A line from an old video game (props to anybody else who remembers it) ran through my head at that point - "Maybe you should've played a better game...". In that vein, the rock was testily dubbed "McCree", and while fighting the urge to rage quit, I began the search for a new target...

Luckily, there was another B-type rock available, and using a variation of @Claw's design from his rendezvous tutorial, the Tater Catcher 7 Light was launched (after three tries - the first restart because I thought I went the wrong way, the second because it turned out I was going the right way the first time) and got to a 15-klick close pass after 30 days. The rest of Friday was spent with mundane jobs - tourist Juldred Kerman was sent up to the Kerbinport space station aboard an Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane, refueled there and went to Minmus; she refueled at the Minmusport space station and ultimately returned safely to KSC 09 despite running out of fuel during the final re-entry burn. Friday also saw the beginning of correction burns for the Duna mission. 

Saturday was also pretty mundane. Tourists Corny and Roy were sent up in an Auk Ia 2-passenger spaceplane for a Münar flyby, stopping at Kerbinport for gas - the total time of their mission was 19 hours. Tourists Siecal and Donbart wanted to go to Minmus but at that point Kerbinport was out of reserve fuel, and the thought occurred to me that I had developed a technology to deliver a lot of fuel to orbit quickly - namely the Exxon Valdez 7a. One of these was launched to orbit, and then Siecal and Donbart made their way up to the flying gas can in an Auk Ia. The two arrived safely at Minmusport, and after Donbart affected a safe landing at the Deepwater Horizon refinery and returned, the plane was refueled and ultimately made its way safely back to KSC 09. A Wheesley engine was picked up from orbit (how it got there, I couldn't say) and four more Duna correction burns were affected. The day ended with the Tater Catcher 7 Light meeting up with and grabbing its target, Asteroid PSA-354, which turned out to be more massive than PDM-700; I might have to drill ore out of it just to lighten its mass a bit (everybody say it with me - 9.5 tonnes...9.5 tonnes...9.5 tonnes......).

Yesterday began with a contract to put a probe into orbit of Minmus for contract; an Auk IV probe delivery plane delivered the payload to LKO and then returned to KSC 09, while the probe - ultimately dubbed Minmus Foxtrot - burned for Minmus and ultimately arrived in the required position. I also drilled some ore on Mün and did some science at Munport for cash. Tourist Mitemone was sent to Minmus orbit in an Auk XIII, gassing up at the Exxon Valdez and at Minmusport during her trip. She ultimatey returned safely to KSC 09. Seven more correction burns for Duna were affected. Also a fairly mundane day.

Then, earlier this morning... 

The library where I work is currently open 24/7 for finals, and I took on an overnight shift for some overtime hours; shift started at 2 AM, and we were so not-busy that I was able to spend most of that time playing. Started off with another set of mundane jobs - pilot Phildan Kerman was sent up in an Auk I rescue spaceplane to pick up engineer Suus Kerman, returning to KSC 09 successfully. I did an ore mining job, a temperature survey on Minmus five klicks to the west of Deepwater Horizon, a pressure survey near KSC, three parts tests and a pair of up-and-downs for tourists Thomry, Rodock and Kenfal Kerman. When the game offered me yet another up-and-down, I decided that I'd go ahead and take advantage of that 5-year expiration time for once, and go do something I really wanted to do...

So I decided to finish up the correction burns for Duna. I did have one tragedy occur - I had forgotten to open up the solar panels on the science lander Yokohama and the craft was dead in space; there was nothing for it but terminate the flight. Luckily no one was on board, but the craft will have to be replaced if I want a reliable way to collect science from Duna and Ike (which I do want to do). The remaining correction burns were affected for all craft except the Enchova Central refinery, and one of my Spamcan 7b crew landers affected its correction burn a mere two-and-a-half hours before entering Duna's SOI:

♫ Hello Duna, my old friend ♫ / ♫ I've come to talk with you again ♫ / ♫ Because a vision softly creeping ♫ / ♫ Left its seeds while I was sleeping... ♫

The Spamcan successfully entered Duna's SOI and eventually made it into a 61x60 kilometer orbit, the first craft to do so in this career save (and I'm pretty sure the last time I was at Duna was with Constipation XIII as part of the Kadvent Kalendar challenge during v. 0.25 or v 0.90, almost exactly three years ago). Some time later one of the Boop-Boop probes arrived and was put into a synchronous orbit of Duna for contract. After cashing out that mission, the probe was moved into a polar orbit over Duna to begin resource scanning. Unfortunately, there are no relay antennas in range just yet to make that data available (operative word there is yet). A pair of Hellhound rovers arrived next, one coming in a mere ten minutes after the other. The first of these rovers (dubbed Apotestatem) made the initial lithobrake landing on the surface, landing 25 klicks away from a target zone for a pressure survey. 

Boy, I forgot just how much driving a rover on Duna sucks. Not the longest rove I've ever done on Duna, though...my personal record is 160 klicks, and I hope to never be in a position where I have to break it.

The rover covered the distance handily and completed its scans at all four waypoints, securing √800k in funding.

Between all the small jobs, the worlds first jobs for Duna, the contracts I've completed so far and the contracts I accepted to replace them, I finally had enough to launch a Heighliner 7 Alcubierre warp ship, dubbed MSV Fat Man. I could've sworn I took a screenie of her, but apparently I didn't, so I guess I'll have to get one up for y'all when I can. Fat Man has some business to attend to at Minmus and I have a pair of tourists whose contracts involve Kerbol, items that I'll be attending to at the next opportunity...

Edited December 7, 2017 by capi3101
I swear I've had to replace that radical sign something like three times now...

[Shadowmage]

On 12/2/2017 at 2:37 PM, tater said:

Put a small centrifuge habitat in orbit, then brought up a supply craft to inflate it and fit it out for habitation:

 

On 12/2/2017 at 3:37 PM, RoadRunnerAerospace said:

I thought that was cgi

 

SSTU + TexturesUnlimited -- Now blurring the lines between screenshots and CGI

(this stuff does look seriously cinematic when viewed in-game... can hardly believe it is real-time rendering)

[JadeOfMaar]

More development of an upcoming parts/gameplay mod. It's release ready, at last, except for re-texturing (which isn't vital), the nuclear reactors need to be tuned without NF Electric, and that I just decided I need to change the mod name and the prefix on all the part names.

The final thing I added functionally, is sci-fi looking inline windmill turbines (borrowed from the FTL Drive Continued mod). Where solar panels fail in atmosphere, these stand tall.