What did you do in KSP1 today?

[The Aziz]

I tried.

 

[Hotel26]

For those that have downloaded my ion-drive lo-grav "flitter", Gossamer Albatross, I spent some time tonight enhancing its control system.

I think it is much more pleasant now, so please download and try the new version via this discussion page:   https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/170589-gossamer-albatross/

I also orbited it from the surface of the Mun!!  Next steps will be to make a video(?) and to attempt a landing originating from orbit.

If you try it, good luck!

 

[Hotel26]

6 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I've never managed to do anything interesting with ion engines. Things are just so slow.

Better to plan your dV and maneuvers etc with diligent care and then Just Get There.

But when things go wrong and you are going to be otherwise short on fuel or just going to be plain stranded, an inept pilot may become very, very grateful to have brought an Omega pack along. 

My Omega module has a core made of 3x large-size Xenon tanks and about 12x of the 4K batteries.  On 6 outriggers it has quad Dawns on each, making a total of 24 all up.  Omega can be ganged as well.

To supply the charge, I use 2x solar masts attached in a stowed position for vertical lift-off, aero-braking and heavy acceleration.  Out in space, the masts detach and use RCS to deploy and re-attach in the arms-extended position.  There are 16x Gigantor panels on each mast, so it's quite a sight when all deployed.  These will be the longest "burns" you've ever done but even for a heavy space train, I can see as much as 0.5-1.0 m/sec.  The total dV is enough to go to infinity and beyond if only you can keep getting plenty of sunshine.

(But in case anybody wants to know where the Kraken come from, I can tell you that it is the Gigantor solar panel that opens up the wormholes through which Kraken enter the Kerbal universe via X-ray transmission.  You have to furl the sails before switching focus away or else your sails, at least, will be toast when you come back and nothing will save them.)

Edited February 7, 2018 by Hotel26

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Trying to taxi my full scale Antonov AN-225 replica through the KSC, it's turning out to be more difficult than I was expecting.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

With no cheats on, this thing crashed into the VAB, the cockpit got destroyed, and it flipped around and kept flying....... I love this game

[LordFerret]

15 hours ago, roboslacker said:

I began work on a side friction roller coaster today.

The banked turn idea sounds good, but what I really want to see is a loop-the-loop! lol

 

 

8 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Got really really annoyed with Ion Engines!  (or rather by my sloppy design of Ion powered craft)

 

I launched 4 Ion powered ScanSat satellites for Eve, Gilly, Duna and Ike a while back and had them parked in orbit waiting for the window.  What I'd failed to take in to account though was that a large part of the burn would need to take place in Kerbins shadow, and they each only had enough battery for probably 100m/s burn.  I ended up pushing the Ap out near the limit of Kerbin SoI over 5 or 6 separate orbits before the final ejection burn of around 200-300 m/s, and still had to make adjustments once they cleared the shadow in order to get an intercept.  For 4 bloody satellites!  Won't be doing that again in a hurry.

RTGs. All of my SCANsat satellites are ion powered using RTGs. Only in the very beginning, before unlocking the needed parts of the Tech Tree, did I use batteries and solar.

 

6 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

The nukes are ugly[*].

Wha?!? No. No, they're not! They're great! Pretty mushroom clouds and all that.

Oh, wait, wrong nukes.

I rely on nukes (NERV) and ions for just about everything off Kerbin. I do however at times wish the NERV engines were 'shorter'.

 

4 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I'm a craft file now? 

Yea... and they're sharing the hell out of you too. Enjoy! lol

j/k

[Geonovast]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I tried.

(snip video)

 

Stuff like this makes me really wish for a single-SOI-no-time-warp LAN multiplayer option so 4 freaks like us could cram into some poor sap's basement and play mission control.

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, capi3101 said:

-snippety-

I love your ship names!!

Anyway, I'd better tell you what happened yesterday. After multiple failures of my 100% reusable, 100% stock shuttle, I decided to just make a replica of the real shuttle. But then I thought: The Kickback SRBs are too small in diameter to make a good looking shuttle. After a bit of thought, I decided to just strap five of them together to make some boosters. Then, when I tried to clip them together, the offset tool was being uncooperative.

Me: OK, I need to offset these SRBs kind of inside each other.

Offset tool: No! I'm going to offset your boosters in a completely different direction! Suck it!

So, I gave up for the night. The next day, surfing the web (read:surfing the KSP mod development subforum) I found a mod that would be perfect for building a shuttle: Cormorant Aeronology! (shout out to the creator, @Pak). It's basically an addon to the stock Mk3 parts, making them a bit more Shuttle-y. There are even 2.5m SRBs! My life was now complete, so I got to work.

I however had trouble attaching the ET to the Orbiter, so I downloaded a .craft file of an example shuttle. Just about to load up KSP to see if it works as intended!! 

[Fearless Son]

4 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I would add another thing: CoL shift when changing pitch. This happens especially easily if you have lifting surfaces near the nose... in particular, canards or Mk2 spaceplane parts. Even if the CoM and CoL look perfectly fine in the hangar and your plane behaves perfectly decently when handled gently, it might suddenly flip to unstable when you pull a harder manoeuvre.

True.  This is a part of why I consider it a "best practice" to build a little redundancy into the CoM/CoL balancing.  Being "perfect" in the hanger often means being imperfect in actual flight.

[Guest]

Quiet day at the KSC today.

Work has begun planning the grand Eve mission. The second Orpheus class vessel has been named Osiris and it has entered initial testing. With the data returned from Orpheus, we have been able to make several important optimisations, notably to the return module. The Dart engine has been replaced with a Terrier, which is more efficient and weighs 500 kg less. Consequently, we were able to upgrade the rather... Spartan... accommodations originally planned to a Mk 1 Lander Can, securely housed inside a 2.5 metre service bay. The kerbonaut will be able to exit, perform an EVA, plant a flag, and return to the comfort of his pod. The new return module weighs 800 kg less than its predecessor, and has only 300 m/s less dV; Osiris' total dV will in fact be slightly higher than Orpheus', due to the slightly lower return module mass. These differences are too small to likely make a difference in practice.

The Osiris under assembly and component testing.

Other refinements include a lighter but sufficiently effective radiator set for the ISRU, and numerous convenience features, notably collecting the vessel's main systems switches into a handy switchboard -- now the pilot can toggle engine gimbal, the fuel cell array, the solar panels, and numerous other devices at the touch of a single button.  

A close-up of the new payload and return module. Instead of a conical fuel tank and nose cone, we house additional fuel tanks and other components under an aerodynamic fairing, which should provide higher temperature resistance. Note also the miniature docking port at the nose: this will be used to recover the vessel for return to Kerbin.

More dramatic revisions of the Orpheus design were briefly considered and sketched out -- in theory, it would be possible to perform the mission with a much lighter craft -- but these were ultimately rejected as too risky: the Orpheus is a proven design, so we decided to make only minor adjustments.

A mission plan is also starting to take shape. Being a plane with the capability to refuel itself, the Osiris will be able to explore the Hell Planet in more than one location. Partially fuelled and carrying the ISRU it will only have a little over 1000 m/s dV under the Evian atmosphere, but this will be sufficient to perform short hops between locations of interest. To retain safety margins for the return, we intend to fly the vessel to a highland or a peak prior to final departure.

Additionally, we plan to accompany the Osiris with a glider-delivered rover, an evolution of our first mission to Eve's surface. The EPR-3 will be delivered to one of Eve's continents, where it will be able to do its own exploration, transmitting results back to the KSC via relay. At the same time, we will improve the Evian relay network by sending in another high-power link, since the biggest difficulties with the Orpheus mission had to do with communications blackouts.

Finally, Osiris's pilot has been chosen. Valgas Kerman will be the first kerbal to set foot on Eve. After all the sacrifices he has made for the Space Program, we are unanimous in our belief that he deserves the honour even more than legends like Jebediah Kerman -- first kerbal in space -- or Valentina Kerman -- first kerbal on Duna.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Guest

[HalcyonSon]

My latest Mun Mining mission returned a Twin Boar and four Mainsails back to the water 50 km east of KSC.  The mining station is landed on Mun and halfway unstacked, waiting for more fuel to be mined to complete assembly.

 

 

 

Yet another close landing.  This Klaw retrieved a stranded Kerbal from orbit and landed within 2 km of KSC.  Returned value?  17,000 for the Cupola and Klaw, 14,000 for the booster.

[The Aziz]

6 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Stuff like this makes me really wish for a single-SOI-no-time-warp LAN multiplayer option so 4 freaks like us could cram into some poor sap's basement and play mission control.

Doing this in KSP is one thing

Playing Artemis with few friends and working together on a battle spaceship bridge is another.

[Atkara]

After completing simulations on atmospheric interface, glide and touchdown on Eve for this craft,

and accepting the fact that I'll never have a reusable Eve spaceplane, the way I want it to, I came up with this:

It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. It does heat up pretty good during atmospheric interface, but not to the point of losing parts -that is, not anymore. Once out of the plasma phase, it has to nose down to 10-15 degrees below the horizon, otherwise there's a high risk to enter a flat-spin. Below 10000m, it's almost textbook gliding.

Once on the ground, it doesn't carry any means to fuel itself up. This will be handled by a mobile miner I'll also send down there.

The first lucky souls to ride it, will be the 3 Kerbals currently on Eve's surface. They just finished getting as much science as they could, from the planet's biomes. Both them and the craft's final stage, will be picked up by a recovery vessel. Once in LKO, they'll be loaded up in a cargo SSTO and down they come.

Beyond that? There are those "Land on Eve" tourist contracts I used to laugh at. And I've seen mining contracts popping up in older careers so, it's not that the mobile miner will be an one-use piece of hardware either way.

[VR_Dev]

Rigged my walking hexapod's neck up with IK so the head can remain stable. More vidoes and dev thread here - 

 

[GDJ]

Nothing with KSP,  but watched the Falcon Heavy launch.

Freaking awsome!

[TeslaPenguin1]

3 minutes ago, GDJ said:

Nothing with KSP,  but watched the Falcon Heavy launch.

Freaking awsome!

I agree. If only we could watch the Tesla Roaster crash into Duna Mars...

[roboslacker]

8 hours ago, LordFerret said:

The banked turn idea sounds good, but what I really want to see is a loop-the-loop! lol

Hmm. Let's see about that.

Presenting the Loopy 1, the space center's flagship coaster. Wasting government funding has never been this fun!

There were issues getting the kerbals into the car but I managed it. The view is nice here. But will it work?

Nope

Introducing the Loopy 2, now with a steeper drop.

Whee!

Well, this kind of counts as a success. The car fell off the loop a bit after the top, but the car kept rotating and landed mostly in the track. But it did make it over halfway through the loop. I think that with a smaller loop or a taller drop, the Loopy coaster will work.

PS, does anybody know how to do collapsibles?

Edited February 8, 2018 by roboslacker
Was testing Imgur albums

[GDJ]

38 minutes ago, TeslaPenguin1 said:

I agree. If only we could watch the Tesla Roaster crash into Duna Mars...

If we can get a pic of Mars from the Tesla I'd be happier than heck. Not sure if the camera's will work for that long.

[qzgy]

Tested out for release those stupidly big airliners from a little while ago. However, they seem more kraken prone now... Any idea why they might be?

[Castille7]

12 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Tested out for release those stupidly big airliners from a little while ago. However, they seem more kraken prone now... Any idea why they might be?

Did you maybe add more fuel, sometime adding more weight will cause structural stress that will make pretty unwanted explosions?

 

[qzgy]

1 minute ago, Castille7 said:

Did you maybe add more fuel, sometime adding more weight will cause structural stress that will make pretty unwanted explosions?

 

Nope. Remained pretty much untouched since the last time.

Its mostly on loading, if that makes a difference...

Edited February 8, 2018 by qzgy

[Geonovast]

3 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Nope. Remained pretty much untouched since the last time.

Its mostly on loading, if that makes a difference...

Do you have KJR?

[qzgy]

Just now, Geonovast said:

Do you have KJR?

Nope. Ideally, I wouldn't need it.

[Geonovast]

Just now, qzgy said:

Nope. Ideally, I wouldn't need it.

Well, ideally space stations don't explode when you switch to them, but KJR fixed that little problem.

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

Nope. Remained pretty much untouched since the last time.

Its mostly on loading, if that makes a difference...

Another plug for KJR, here. It’s what lets me put a 5m stack on top of a .625 node with no struts or flexing, and it’s absolutely transparent. 

2 hours ago, GDJ said:

If we can get a pic of Mars from the Tesla I'd be happier than heck. Not sure if the camera's will work for that long.

It’s only going within about 69 million miles of Mars, and the cameras are most likely dead already  (they estimated 12 hours).