What did you do in KSP1 today?

[tg626]

Stood in a field of short green ladders, apparently...

Hooray for v1.4!

[FezCool]

Ranted about my (negative)feelings about 1.4 and quickly realized that I am safe in knowing that console is never updated.

I also built an F-22 so that's pretty cool 

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 hours ago, XB-70A said:

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

That rocket looks like it should be descending from a prison window on a bedsheet rope. 

 

 

Sigh... What a page to be out of likes, SMH...  Y’all want cookies? I’ve got cookies...

Anyways...

 

7 hours ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

This pretty much sums up my feelings for 1.4

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

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

Giphy tends to be a little... weird with links. You’ll want the one ending in “giphy.gif,” but if you’re on iOS mobile, don’t even bother, it won’t copy right. Imgur is marginally less frustrating to deal with on gifs. 

Edited March 9, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[Emperoreddy]

I did my first Mun flyby. I took Valentina, a service bay full of science, and a science junior on a free return tracjtory. 

All went well except for rentry. Finding the right PE on my course correction was really tough. Most had my science jr. explode around 28K. Real shallow kept me in orbit. 

Eventually I found 31K got it done but it was hair raising. All my heat bars hit critical red and I efen gained some alltutde as the AP shifted to me, but in the end I was able to safely  deorbit. 

Is there a speed where it is impossible to deorbit safely on one pass?

[HansonKerman]

Me, I’m canceling the Minmus mission and focusing my sights on Duna Base. That’s right, I’m going to KPBS my way to success! 

 

#Doofenshmirtz

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Emperoreddy said:

Is there a speed where it is impossible to deorbit safely on one pass?

Yes.

What that speed is depends entirely on your craft though.

For a Munar return, 28-31k is low. I usually go with 35-55 depending on the design, and happily take two or three passes if necessary. 

[LordFerret]

10 hours ago, Triop said:

Wut the  ? ? ?

One ring to rule them all ? #Kraken

Is this in the new v1.4.0??? If it is, how disappointing they've still not fixed that! I'm still playing v1.2.2 and have to deal with that, and it's been around since before v1.2.2.

 

1 hour ago, Emperoreddy said:

I did my first Mun flyby. I took Valentina, a service bay full of science, and a science junior on a free return tracjtory. 

All went well except for rentry. Finding the right PE on my course correction was really tough. Most had my science jr. explode around 28K. Real shallow kept me in orbit. 

Eventually I found 31K got it done but it was hair raising. All my heat bars hit critical red and I efen gained some alltutde as the AP shifted to me, but in the end I was able to safely  deorbit. 

Is there a speed where it is impossible to deorbit safely on one pass?

Are you using a heat shield?

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I've landed my Long-Term Habitation crew on Laythe.

After posing for an arrival photo, mission commander Jebediah, engineer Shelely and scientists Hailo and Sidgas immediately took up their posts within LaythePort base.

Their mission wasn't over, though. After taking a day to settle in, Jeb and Hailo boarded the base's Moth-class science plane and departed westward across the DeGrasse Sea.

They landed on a large island south of the equator, nearly on the opposite side of the moon from LaythePort, on the near-side of the moon relative to Jool.

After taking science readings, they took off westward again and completed their circumnavigation of Laythe before arriving back at base, thereby proving that the Moth has the capacity to reach any point on Laythe's surface and return safely.

I also sent a new shipment to Jool.

This one consists of a new auxillary tank that should allow for round-trips to my Tylo surface outpost and back, as well as a telescope satellite to protect Jool from asteroids. I'll probably have abandoned this career before it reaches its destination, but it's good to have regardless.

Edited March 9, 2018 by Whisky Tango Foxtrot

[invision]

mission control we got our first flag planting of 1.4

[qzgy]

20 hours ago, XB-70A said:

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!

It's funny, we complained about the old ones and now... It seems worse!

Today, I just went ahead and removed the yellow lines. Cause that looks quite ok actually like that.

sweet white smoothness....

[Cheif Operations Director]

Made my Kerba;s become airborne rangers... AKA dropped 20 out of the sky with parachutes.

[qzgy]

3 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Made my Kerba;s become airborne rangers... AKA dropped 20 out of the sky with parachutes.

[CatastrophicFailure]

57 minutes ago, qzgy said:

But... that rhymes with turtle paratroopers!

 

 

HALF-LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!

[Cupcake...]

After possibly discovering alien life on Val Nieble's Kerman gets some re-enforcements. BTW Here's part 1 for anyone that's late to the party.

Enjoy!

 

Cupcake...
 

 

[eddiew]

In an attempt to resolve my intermittent crashes, I downloaded a fresh KSP 1.3.1, gave it GPP+GEP, and various QoL mods like KER, MJ, Transfer Window Planner, Alarm Clock, and Editor Extensions Redux.

To kill time while waiting to see if this barebones setup crashed, I made this crazy thing, which required many trips in and out of the SPH (the transition being where the crashes usually occur).

...it works embarassingly well.

Ascent isn't even slow, it cracks mach 1 by 5km, 2 by 10km, and roars on up to 1400m/s on air with good piloting. Switching to rockets provides 2000m/s of vacuum range, while towing the industry-standard orange tank fuel can, allowing for orbital deployments possibly up to around 150-200km.

Thrust torque is definitely a thing, but it's balanced around 8 rapiers in closed cycle with full fuel and cargo, such that the switch from air to rocket happens with only 10kNm of kick. It gets worse after that, but the SAS is tough enough to hold the Bonestick straight until the desired AP is reached. Once the payload is deployed, turning off the outer engines brings most of the thrust back inline with the main mass of the plane, and it's easy to fire a gentle retroburn and return to ground.

Descent is... almost boring. It just holds 10 degrees above the horizon on its own. Brakes need to be watched for overheating, but having lost so much mass, there's now a huge amount of lift and control available and the Bonestick can pull off a boneheaded 45-degree dive towards the runway, flare and land softly using just half the tarmac.

In the meantime, the game has annoyingly not crashed. I don't know whether the instability is one of the many parts mods that I haven't yet put in or total memory use. Or just random and by pure chance it hasn't hit this install yet.

[eddiew]

Ever have a day where every dang fool thing you try just works on first launch?

[Kerbalwerks]

[Kek-tus]

Just did my first Minmuns orbit and went back to kerbin taking at least 1k of science with me

Didnt take any pictures though, wish I did.

[XB-70A]

Today was a busy day, but a great one as Trinity, the lonesome rover, has finally arrived at its destination!

Everything started 3 years and 90 days ago, by a clear and sunny day:

I reworked a bit my old Dawn-3SLB launcher, with some aesthetics change such as the more realist interstage configuration between the first and second, and a better configuration of the third stage.

 

Climbing under the thrust of 8 Reliant and 4 Swivel, the mysterious rover aimed for an immediate departure to the Joolian system. The window being only 20 minutes long for the cheapest burn.

 

 

 

The second stage was separated after a two minutes long burn, some fuel was still remaining on-board but I decided to eject it.

 

Finally, the transfer burn was accomplished without any surprises. The third being able to complete nearly all the acceleration needed, the fourth having to burn for about 4 seconds only to complete the maneuver.

 

The flight actually was a first to me for different reason. It was the first of a rover to Laythe for me, as the sole and only object, to reach the surface of satellite was the Huygens-like lander made about a month ago. Also, it was the first time I decided to launch a payload without an enormous amount of fuel and to rely on multiple maneuvers and airbraking assistance. More stressing for sure, but who doesn't like new challenges?

 

Then...

After 3 years and 29 days hibernating, the rover woke-up to realize its final correction maneuver. Due to a wrong burning time after having left the Kerbin's SOI the entry trajectory ended 5 km over the Laythian atmosphere. This 89 m/s burn corrected it and also offered to the craft a better entering angle.

 

 

Approaching our final goal! I could not describe the level of stress at this time. The probability of failure was high and I bet with myself than the rover will end in the ocean. My latest Eve's rover having ended this way due to a stupid trajectory mistake...

 

 

(Damn... such a view!) The capsule trajectory was hard to maintain despite the four Vernier controlling the 3 axis...

 

 

 

Hopefully, everything went well and the shell was separated correctly at only 3 km over the surface...

 

 

Quickly followed by the then useless heat shield and reacting wheel.

 

 

TOUCHDOWN WHOOOOOHOOOOO! The time to say goodbye to our then useless descending stage, and we started the exploration of the large natural satellite.

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Two Kerbals on Tylo - two man ascent vehicle.

Lands refueler with one Kerbal on board. Three Kerbals on Tylo. One Kerbal stranded on Tylo. The refueler doesn't even work.

Lands lander on Tylo with one Kerbal and an empty seat.

Precision lands within 300 meters (anyone who's tried to precision land on Tylo knows the struggle).

Side boosters run out about 20 meters above the surface.

Four Kerbals on Tylo. Two Kerbals stranded on Tylo.

 

Good thing I brought six landers.

*MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!*

[klond]

 Tried to replicate Curiosity's suspension.  Here's the results.

 

[Ace in Space]

I retired the old KSS space station in orbit of Kerbin in favor of the newly-constructed Kerbin Space Station II (yes, I spelled it out this time. Looks better on the map), with its fancy new fuel tanks. I have decided that all orbital fuel tanks should be orange - at least partly because it makes it easier to see the docking ports in darkness, since I seem to have an aversion to putting lights on my crafts for some reason.

That said, KSS was actually a manned station - Charlie lived up there. So before pulling the plug on KSS, Val took the Pendragon (now equipped with a drone core for biome detection but otherwise unchanged since last you saw it) out on its first real mission. The spaceplane docked with the old station, drained all of its stored fuel, which wasn't a whole lot, since it was never really intended as a proper fuel station but more "in case of emergency, dock here." And, of course, picked up Charlie.

"Get in, loser; we're going to the new space station!"

They went straight from there to the new station in a slightly lower orbit, where Val dropped off Charlie.

Then it was back down to Kerbin, because it was easier to just take off from KSC again with a full tank than to try to switch into polar orbit from equatorial orbit. The reason I needed to go into polar orbit being to collect some "in space" science from the polar biomes (tundra, ice caps, etc) and the badlands.

In other news, Pendragon still looks kickS in re-entry.

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

The Kraken destroyed my rovers!

My first interplanetary mission (no-revert, no-quickload career): the rovers Courage and Stupidity to Duna. I warped to the capture burn node at Pe, polar orbit. Just as I got there, the craft just... disintegrated. Large parts of it were outright gone, with my two unfortunate rovers, minus their parachutes and deorbit engines, cursed and lost forever floating in the void. They still appear to be treated as a single craft although slowly dispersing. No explosions or anything.

So that was annoying. I'm getting a little less enthused about this way of playing actually; I've no doubt gotten more careful and am making fewer stupid mistakes, but I'm also playing much more conservatively which is less fun. It might even be time to give KSP a rest again.

[Hotel26]

33 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

It might even be time to give KSP a rest again.

I'd be really sorry to hear that happening.  I can empathize with the frustration.

I would be tempted to say that the "Kraken" -- which is, contrary to popular belief,  not actually some mythical monster, but a failure in the physics engine to "scale up" -- should have been eliminated once and for all long ago: except that I've used Unity (at work) and we encountered many aggravating difficulties with its physics.  (Which incidentally was at that time based on the NVidia 3 physics engine.)  My surmise is that this ridiculous situation is and has always been well outside the control of Squad and, short of writing its own, specialized physics engine (ain't gonna happen), there is nothing to be done about it.  In general, to avoid the not-scaling-up problem my ignorant guess would be that docking parts should just become one body for physics and I could understand Unity may not support that model, nor want to, even for Squad.

(Lots of speculation on my part so consider it with liberal use of a salt shaker.)

To return to your situation and attempt to be constructive, I think I would play by my own set of Iron Man rules which allow me to configure the "game" with reloads but I only use them to retreat from situations such as this one to find a work-around.  One's own errors stay in force.  The game setting is not strictly needed to enforce this.

Edited March 10, 2018 by Hotel26

[Guest]

I think technically this wasn't the Kraken, the one with the amplified oscillations or such. It was a kraken, likely one related to a construction bug. Could even be reroot-related, as the craft was an assembly of three payload modules in a 2.5 m fairing, and putting that together involved a fair bit of rerooting. Annoying nevertheless.

(Also, just to make it clear -- I've been playing a lot of KSP over the past few months, and I'm kind of running out of new things I want to try, and covering familiar ground better just isn't all that much fun. Hiccups like these are just reminders that the whole thing is wearing a little thin.)