What did you do in KSP1 today?

[LordFerret]

3 hours ago, Leopard said:

Cheers, as expected "requires Xbox Gold", so to coin a phrase, sod that, was hoping for a way to get them onto a pen drive or something.

 

meh.

I wouldn't give up the ship just yet. There was another article I breezed through that I'd found, mentioned something about saving the images to a local drive. Keep looking, Google is your friend.

[CatastrophicFailure]

5 hours ago, purpleivan said:

So basically it eats regular rockets as fuel.

It starts with rockets... then space stations... but pretty soon it’s eating planets...

Great Unholy Flarp, @Kronus_Aerospace is building Unicron! 

[eddiew]

Removed 3/4 of my mods to see if the game would please stop intermittently crashing when changing between scenes (and more rarely, while flying).

It did not   Can't remove any more mods without losing vessels, and don't really know whether KSP stock is actually stable... It's about this point where I seriously question whether I want a career to continue or just start over with 1.4 and the smallest most basic set of mods I can live with.

 

Also made a two-stage spaceplane with Panthers and a Swivel. This is actually what it looks like when it's working properly...

Landing... was surprisingly safe, although the drag of that little fishplane is surprisingly hard and it landed in the rough far west of GSC.

[Leopard]

5 hours ago, LordFerret said:

I wouldn't give up the ship just yet. There was another article I breezed through that I'd found, mentioned something about saving the images to a local drive. Keep looking, Google is your friend.

will keep looking...

 

Today!

start of the Duna exploration project, I've had Kerbals in Duna orbit, but "issues" with the old console ports stopped me bringing them home, so where are we today?

Well the interplanetary nuclear tug "F2", a development of the "F1" tug used previously is now in LKO - with its launch second stage still attached as a reserve fuel tank and a booster for Duna orbit injection. Lessons from F1 include putting the engines on outriggers nacelles to leave the aft free as a single "heavy" docking port for moving a single payload. Only two nuclear engines vice three to cut mass, four nacelles, the other two have aft docking ports for smaller cargos. Crew capability is five, with a probe for remote control, decent comms for relay duties, and critically plenty of control wheels plus an RCS rig so the tug can dock with cargos directly.

This is now in LKO having launched successfully first time on a somewhat overpowered launcher (hence the spare fuel remaining).

Second flight showed a lightly modified mun lander on the tugs nose docking port - basically added parachutes and an aft heat shield to protect the science payload - it should be able to land from low duna orbit and with the engines to control re-entry speed. parachutes then a burst from the engines should get it down safely - will be interesting to see if it can safely regain duna orbit - hopefully not needing a powered landing will retain enough dV for a return to orbit.

Tomorrow will see a crew module launch and dock to stick a crew of three onboard, then remain in LKO and hopefully the orbital transfer.

F2 should be able to get to Duna easily enough, will see what fuel is left when we get there to see if we risk the return flight or send a fuel tug (an Ike based refuel rig is planned for a later mission anyway). In effect this is a test of the tug as much as anything, but will hopefully grab some science - and with a pilot, engineer and scientist on the tug will try re-using the lander as well

[Abpilot]

Does anyone know of any visual mods that’ll work with 1.4?

[SwissSpace93]

I launched my Explorer-1 now, it travels to Plock/Karen on it's way it visits many other Planets and take some Images this is my first Probe to the outer Planets.

 

Imgur Album:

Album a/fDEBG will appear when post is submitted

Edited March 8, 2018 by SwissSpace93
Added Album

[invision]

1 hour ago, Abpilot said:

Does anyone know of any visual mods that’ll work with 1.4?

 

[eddiew]

Working on my design aesthetic for 1.4

I think it's gonna be pretty cool.

[XB-70A]

On 3/7/2018 at 3:56 PM, Kronus_Aerospace said:

FAN-FREAKING TASTIC, my favorite craft looks hideous now... thanks Take Two

You're a not alone in the suffering...

I installed a fresh 1.4 this morning to give it a look. 15 minutes later I came back to 1.3.1.

                                                                   Before                                                                                                                                                 After

 

I can't describe how awful it looks with the first color option.

Even the nice looking Soyuz-like texture got a problem:

The green-orange is only for a small portion of the fairing, the rest will be white.

Without counting these awful venting "rings" we can find every 5 meters.

i know only a few number of peoples in the whole community are fairing-fans, but if only we could do something to make them re-integrate the traditional fairing part in the next update, or (pleeease!) just remove these terrible looking rings!

Edited March 8, 2018 by XB-70A

[Kosmonaut]

oof rip 1.4

[Geonovast]

I can't do squat because I'm "moving over the surface."

Also I can't un-see Surtur in this.

Edited March 9, 2018 by Geonovast

[Astrofox]

I landed on the VAB with a paragliding kerbal from sixteen kilometers away.

That was pretty fun.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

1 hour ago, XB-70A said:

You're a not alone in the suffering...

I installed a fresh 1.4 this morning to give it a look. 15 minutes later I came back to 1.3.1.

                                                                   Before                                                                                                                                                 After

 

I can't describe how awful it looks with the first color option.

Even the nice looking Soyuz-like texture got a problem:

The green-orange is only for a small portion of the fairing, the rest will be white.

Without counting these awful venting "rings" we can find every 5 meters.

i know only a few number of peoples in the whole community are fairing-fans, but if only we could do something to make them re-integrate the traditional fairing part in the next update, or (pleeease!) just remove these terrible looking rings!

Oh! Don't worry you can just shell out 15 bucks to get the Soyuz parts in the Making History DLC. Ain't that just great.

[Barney]

Did a little mun mission in 2.5x ksp.

Here's a link to a album with more details. https://imgur.com/a/VKT2z

 

Edited March 9, 2018 by Barney

[Cavscout74]

Messed with 1.4 a very little - the new command pod looks pretty nice, and I had fun splatting Jeb against the side of the VAB trying out the parachutes.  The new decouplers are nice compared to what we had, but the black & white texture on the 2.5m parts doesn't look right at all. 

Then I went back to my 1.3.1 backup & launched a fleet of probes to Jool then got my Eve explorers started back home finally.

Edited March 9, 2018 by Cavscout74

[Kronus_Aerospace]

This pretty much sums up my feelings for 1.4

https://giphy.com/gifs/69kU2fwBzzSesCrX5A

I don't know how to show Gifs...

Edited March 9, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace

[InterplanetJanet]

7 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

It starts with rockets... then space stations... but pretty soon it’s eating planets...

Great Unholy Flarp, @Kronus_Aerospace is building Unicron! 

Or Galactus 

[Ajiko]

3 hours ago, XB-70A said:

The green-orange is only for a small portion of the fairing, the rest will be white.

Soyuz in fact painted in green-orange, it isn't a mistake. White color of them, that you can see on launches videos and photos - it's the ice on the oxydizer tanks with liquid oxygen. Ice freezes on them from atmosphere, when Soyuz sets up to launchpad and prepares to launch.

Edited March 9, 2018 by Ajiko

[Trann]

Said goodbye to my favourite Grand Tour ship so I can start fresh in 1.4.  I don't know why I feel the need to start over every version but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Triop]

Wut the  ? ? ?

One ring to rule them all ? #Kraken

[InterplanetJanet]

18 minutes ago, Triop said:

Wut the  ? ? ?

Your ship went hipster and got a nose ring?

I bet the next thing is it uses up your fundz and gets a big tattoo.

Edit: Actually, looking at it again, that's kind of more like a nipple ring 

Or maybe a... *runs for the brain bleach*

Edited March 9, 2018 by InterplanetJanet

[CatastrophicFailure]

20 minutes ago, InterplanetJanet said:

Or Galactus 

Unicron would totally kick his S.   

[XB-70A]

46 minutes ago, Ajiko said:

Soyuz in fact painted in green-orange, it isn't a mistake. White color of them, that you can see on launches videos and photos - it's the ice on the oxydizer tanks with liquid oxygen. Ice freezes on them from atmosphere, when Soyuz sets up to launchpad and prepares to launch.

This is exactly what I'm complaining about. Sorry if my writing confused you.

On a screenshot released not so long ago the Soyuz-like fairing was perfectly and totally colored. Therefore, I was expecting it to stay totally colored if we are expanding the fairing... how wrong I was.

Edited March 9, 2018 by XB-70A

[XB-70A]

57 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

I don't know how to show Gifs...

The easiest way is to select "Copy the image address", then to past it directly on your comment. The forum will convert it automatically. 

[Starman4308]

A few things over the past few days:

My first approach to Saturn. Yes, I know the rings are missing. Turns out I needed to manually upgrade to a version of Kopernicus not on CKAN for compatibility with RSSVE. It's since been sorted out.

Voyager III will be coming around for its next close pass in... about a couple years.

The lesson learned there (never brake to the absolute minimum for capture around a gas giant: your period will be absurd!) was applied to Voyager V, which is now orbiting Jupiter with a planned Io encounter soonish (still in several months).

 

I closed down Vandenburg for the most part: the commsats were getting tedious, and I was all too often getting low-inclination contracts that Vandenburg can't handle due to having no eastward azimuth. To both replace Vandenburg, and to add to my eastwards-launch capability, I opened up Tanegashima for business, with an inaugural launch of communication relays to Mars.

Only the main transfer bus has the Pioneer-class antenna capable of remaining in contact with Earth indefinitely, so in the event that the main transfer bus and the Arean lunar surveyor are both out of contact with Earth, the network may experience a shortish blackout.

 

I also launched an unmanned lander towards Mars out of KSC. While I can probably kOS the landing, it may not be able to return scientific data until the relays are in place.

I really like using the STAR 37FM SRM for this sort of work, though unfortunately it's mostly been used on the dark side of Earth (which will hopefully change once used to launch towards Venus or Mercury!)

 

I then spent most of this night designing both a Saturn V copy, and what I'm calling the Saturn IIIB. The IIIB is almost 1900 tons, using a trio of F-1A engines, then a trio of Russian NK-43 closed-cycle kerolox engines, then the good old S-IVB. While the NK-43s don't have the specific impulse of J-2 engines, it's hardly terrible (something like 340 sec IIRC), they're much cheaper, and provide more thrust for a pretty comparable mass. The Saturn IIIA would just have the S-IVB upper stage deleted, with RCS thrusters added to the second stage.

While it won't be enough for a single-rocket launch of a lunar landing mission, I'm fairly confident I can get it in two launches, and in previous careers, that's generally what I've done: prepositioned a lander near the destination, then rendezvous. I'll probably have to add solar panels to the lunar lander, though.

I also just yesterday realized that for months and months I've been getting the units of specific impulse wrong: I thought they were sec^-1, not sec, and I have no idea when I started making that mistake. I think it was a mental mistake of dividing m*sec by m*s^2, instead of m/sec by m/sec^2.