What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Delay]

12 hours ago, Krow said:

I finally did it! I have a working 2.5m rocket design now! Just achieved a stable orbit at 103km with 1200m/s delta-v left in the second stage, more than enough for a mun encounter and landing! I have no idea what I was doing wrong before, honestly.

I had roughly the same problem. I was frustrated because no design I tried worked. Then something clicked and now I have a working 2.5m rocket that doubles as an SSTO if the payload is light enough (a mun lander unfortunately isn't).

The Mainsail can push ~104t before TWR drops below 1.3. Basically if that's your rocket's weight, and a clear majority of that weight is the first stage, then you're good.

There are probably lots of more efficient ways  of building a 2.5m rocket, but this works well enough for me.

[Kerbalwerks]

 

Phat Cargo:

 

    I was pressed by unseen forces to create this......................

[LordFerret]

The Spruce Goose comes to mind.

 

Created a lander for Eve. First test is coming up. It's a controlled probe at this point, but if the test succeeds it will next be manned.

Crew cleanup and rotation on Duna.
Dres assault still in progress.
A second Eeloo encounter is about to happen.
A SCANsat probe will shortly map the last two remaining bodies of the Jool system... which will then have all bodies in Kerbol mapped.

[FeofileGrotter]

The replica of (not so) legendary Soviet science probe "Polyot"!

Start(the rocket is of course R7):

Boosters gone!

The released probe:

Compare with this:

Well, Polyot was created to DESTROY American satellites but the project's budget was cut and we saw only a science probe. 
But I'm preparing a millitary Polyots system... Later, I will be able to destroy crafts on servers... Muha-haaaaaa

[Atkara]

Where to start from...

What should've been a routine flight became an adventure, when a fuel imbalance and a certain mistake I did after the plasma phase, had a recovery spaceplane enter a flat spin. 5 Kerbals onboard and a pod from Gilly. I could've reverted, but this isn't my first rodeo. So, I turned off SAS, assumed direct control (haven't I heard that somewhere... ) and at an altitude of 5000m, the plane got out of the stall -way behind KSC's mountain range. Thankfully, the payload was just 1ton, leaving me with more than enough fuel for a powered approach. Landed at KSC, recovered the vessel and watched the money rolling.

Right after this, Gilly's "commercial lander" docked at the orbital lab, while the science lander touched down, for the kerbals to plant the customary flag. A couple of rescues also took place around Duna & Ike, since the rescue shuttle hasn't left the system yet -and had two vacant seats. Easy money.

20 ingame days later, an expected recovery craft from Moho, entered Kerbin's SOI. An absurd amount of dv to bring it's periapsis to low altitude. Direct transfer you see... This was leaving me with ~750m/s, not enough to circularize. Alright, let's aerobrake then. 2 passes later, I was in a pretty and round orbit.

Recovering the pod and the crew would've been of textbook performance, if I hadn't left behind, the one Kerbal I shouldn't have: the 860k worth rescuee (that's not counting the advance payment). And the quicksave was right after the spaceplane had done it's de-orbit burn. So I proceeded with the re-entry.

Once landed, I went looking for Jeb. Found him, gave him a two-seater and sent him to bring our money home -which he did.

With these out of the way, I was able to organize the upcoming flights.

Spoiler

This Kerbal year is going to be really busy, on what may be the tightest schedule so far...

Edited February 18, 2018 by Atkara

[Guest]

Did some very important engineering research on a craft obtained from another space program in a technology exchange. At the same time, I tested some COMPLETELY UNRELATED craft that have been developed ENTIRELY INDEPENDENTLY by the Brikoleur space program. So.

Wangari Maathai 02 on its way up with the supar-secrit payload.

Test driving the obtained craft, the Gossamer Albatross.

This is an incredibly fun little craft to fly. The Mun is perhaps a bit on the heavy side for it, as landing is a bit of a nailbiter due to the low TWR and fuel does drain pretty fast. Even on the Mun however it's really easy and really fun to fly with great precision: set throttle just a little bit below the point that it starts climbing, and use RCS to control altitude and vector, with SAS set to surface radial/out. For longer hops, just go into a ballistic trajectory -- or almost -- and for shorter one, fly it like a helicopter. It's brilliant!

Here are a few shots of the COMPLETELY UNRELATED and INDEPENDENTLY DEVELOPED craft that just happened to make their way onto the same launch.

...and a beauty shot of Wangari Maathai 02 on the way back home.

Credit @Hotel26 for the Gossamer Albatross. Here's the craft file for that: https://kerbalx.com/Hotel26/Gossamer-Albatross

Edited February 18, 2018 by Guest

[InterplanetJanet]

On 2/17/2018 at 6:03 AM, Hotel26 said:

I think you're on the money.  That guy, Sullenberger, gave everyone a demo in an A320 on the Hudson.

Also I think he had KJR installed. That helps a lot!

[InterplanetJanet]

22 hours ago, McFarnsworth said:

There's a launch window to Moho coming up soon, so in order to get the hang of this game again I built ... uh ... I built this ... thing:

Now that's my kinda craft!

22 hours ago, McFarnsworth said:

Should work, right?

*snorts*  Ooooh yeah, of course it'll work the first time! *hides the forehead scab from banging head into walls* Just like you thought it would! Don't they always?!

Oooh, and don't step in the sarcasm there; I think I left a puddle. 

[Castille7]

Today I was making an attempt to build the Concorde. It's gonna need some cleaning up, looking a little funky right now 

Spoiler

 

[Starman4308]

Voyagers 2, 3, and 4 are all away and off to Jupiter! Arrivals are fairly staggered: Voyager I arrives in 2 years 43 days, with Voyager 4 arriving in 2 years 216 days.

A small improvement to my usual execute-node script has them completing nodes on RCS thrusters, instead of the main thrusters. This helps ensure very precise maneuver execution, and with reaction wheels onboard all four Voyager probes, they can even be executed without a drop of propellant used to steer the craft.

One possibly mildly-cheaty thing: I reverted to launch on Voyager 2. Late in the trans-Jovian injection burn, I suffered an RL-10 engine out, and the other three engines can't gimbal enough. Initially, I thought to myself "oh well; at least I can circularize on the probe at apogee and keep the RTGs from splashing into the ocean".

About thirty seconds later, I realized I could've just shut down the engine opposite the one that had failed and still completed the mission. It was only at that point when I hit revert-to-launch.

 

I also discovered where Jeb, Val, Bill, and Bob went.

 

I also sent out two lunar landers with the intent of an LOR landing mission. A booster engine-out on the first attempt produced very narrow margins, and mis-configuration of the landing script ensured the lander crashed. Specifically, I'd set minThrottle to 0, without taking into account that A, it could throttle, and B, it needed ullage. It never recovered from the first shutdown.

The second one suffered an RL-10 engine-out while still circularizing. While I tried to salvage it via shutting down the opposing RL-10, that meant the two remaining RL-10s had to burn far longer than what they were rated for. Unsurprisingly, I had a second flameout, and this time there would be no compensating for the steering.

 

Funny enough, when revisiting the design, I've shaved down an LOR mission launching on my heaviest Gimel-6 booster (33k funds, nearly 800 tons) to a direct-ascent mission launching on the Aleph-Centaur 442, a quick redesign of the Aleph-Centaur 402 that uses a quartet of Minuteman SRBs and a stretched first-stage tank. This booster costs just 18k funds, massing 460 tons on the pad*. I hope this time it works: if these two lunar landers fail, I'm down a 1-year-deadline contract.

*Heavier and less capable, but still cheaper than the Gimel-2 with those expensive hydrolox sustainers.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Starman4308

[Hotel26]

After delivering a supar-secrit payload to LKO...  the Wangari has landed.

Figuring out how to bring it back was fun. 

[Hint: ablator 50/50]

Edited February 19, 2018 by Hotel26

[McFarnsworth]

1 hour ago, InterplanetJanet said:

Now that's my kinda craft!

*snorts*  Ooooh yeah, of course it'll work the first time! *hides the forehead scab from banging head into walls* Just like you thought it would! Don't they always?!

Oooh, and don't step in the sarcasm there; I think I left a puddle. 

Well, she's in orbit. So halfway to anywhere? Didn't feel like being fancy with the transfer stage, so giant stick of boom it is. Stuck a claw on the side, rearranged the parachutes, and slapped a satellite on the front, but otherwise we're going ahead as planned.

 

In other news, I got a contract to put a camera in space. No waiting for launch windows needed. Small payload, so SSTO it is.

Since I just shot my last 3 Kerbals into space, and finding good recruits on such short notice is expensive, I had my first go at making a drone SSTO. Here she is on the runway for her first testflight.

 

This is going entirely too well... I have to be forgetting something.

 

Airbrakes, I forgot airbrakes.

 

Overshot the runway by a quarter of a planet, but we made it home.

 

Way too overpowered, way too much fuel, and forgot airbrakes. Needs some refinement, but since the testflight already achieved all the goals, that might take a while before I can be bothered.

 

[Atkara]

20 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

Figuring out how to bring it back was fun.

Since you do a lot of flying, you may want to have a look at Kerbal Flight Indicators. Makes lining up for landing, a lot easier -and it can be toggled on/off.

[AngrybobH]

I built a 43 million fund test bed for some KSPI-E reactors and some Daedalus engines. It has no escape pods and almost no back up redundancies so I called it the Icarus. And because that is the kind of thing Jeb loves to fly, I sent Jeb, Bill, and a couple white suits to Dres. What could possibly go wrong, right? The 0.3 TWR is a bit awful but 11% of the speed of light worth of dV is really sweet.

 

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, McFarnsworth said:

forgot airbrakes.

Don't need em. Apparently landing gear are pretty good as airbrakes. Also you could try just doubling up your tail and deploying that as an airbrake.

Edited February 19, 2018 by qzgy

[Cadet_BNSF]

11 hours ago, Kerbalwerks said:

 

Phat Cargo:

 

    I was pressed by unseen forces to create this......................

But why? This brings out many urges in me, most of them me wanting to kill my computer by driving this into the ground at stupidly high speeds.

[GDJ]

Not much. Just flew a plane non-stop for just under 12,000 km.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Did a lot of work on my 1:4 scale F-22... I might have gone a bit overboard.

[Servo]

12 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

Did a lot of work on my 1:4 scale F-22... I might have gone a bit overboard.

Looks better than a number of full-scale F-22's I've seen!

Any inspiration from this cute little guy? 

[Kronus_Aerospace]

2 minutes ago, Servo said:

Looks better than a number of full-scale F-22's I've seen!

Any inspiration from this cute little guy? 

Actually no, but that thing is adorable. P.S. your replicas are unbeatable!

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

[Hint: ablator 50/50]

Retrograde burn?

I just set Pe to 50k, point to radial out, and transition to normal flight at 1400 m/s. 

(The heat shield on the nose is there more for humour than any useful purpose. Since it is an attachment node I can't put a nose cone as usual; could've left it truncated or used a Docking Port Jr to much the same effect.)

[JadeOfMaar]

Made a small spaceplane based on something by Cupcake Landers. It's a fail design as is. Added a 5th ion engine and its vacuum TWR was still < 1 at Minmus Iota...But it was still full on IntakeAtm at the time...Needless propellant mass there (These Mk1 LF tanks are actually new Deep Sky Pressure Tanks, they hold the same amount and weight of air as they did LiquidFuel.) This cockpit should have melted at this velocity but Shieldnir is working. 

Also back in GPP after taking a few painful minutes to grab mod updates, remove mods no longer wanted, and ponder what my new or revised sandbox playthrough strategy should be. GEP and OPM are in. I'm really tempted to throw in Extrasolar as it's looking really good too, as of late.

[Ace in Space]

I fiddled around some more with the trebuchets and got the double-arm to work, as well as finding a sturdier way to construct the "hinges" - it would be a lot easier if there was a real hinge part in the game (I know, there's probably a mod for that, but I don't really care). Even with the double arm, there's just no real substitute for a rope, so the projectile still doesn't go much farther than before.

Anyway, after playing with that for a while, I remembered what this game is actually about and went back to my career save, where I performed my first flyby of Duna (and, by chance, flew by Ike on the way in, too)! I've finally graduated from rocket science kindergarten! 

I've since been working on building a lander to take the orange suits to the surface and back. Technically I only need to bring three kerbals (one for each job), but I figure, heck, why not bring the fourth one too? It's not like the lander design can't accommodate a fourth seat.

Right now Duna's in an even worse place to launch to than before (due to the time taken for Jeb's solo flyby), so I decided to get some other stuff done before continuing. Had to re-sync my communications satellites around Minmus (as close as they were to having identical orbits, they were a touch off and drifted out of sync over the course of Jeb's flight), launched an improved version of an IR-camera satellite I had floating around, briefly toyed with the idea of catching an asteroid and dragging it back to orbit around Kerbin... I found an asteroid that did actually enter Kerbin's SOI, but it went directly below the planet instead of to the side, and I was having a few issues with the design of the tug craft, so I decided not to bother for now. Also, I added a completely superfluous and currently (and probably always) empty extra habitation wing to Jade Station, because some daft kerbal paid me to.

[Pipcard]

Did a fly-by of Urlum (Outer Planets Mod)

[algwat]

just a nice flying machine....