What did you do in KSP1 today?

[AngryKitty]

11 hours ago, MR L A said:

Your aerobrakes appear to be upside-down? By their traditional use anyway...

Yep, they are! Haven't noticed a difference in performance, and I like the aesthetic better. For aircraft, I use them the "right" way, but in this case, it looks more like this, a real-life application:

[Aeroboi]

 

Finally made my early-mid career spaceplane SSTO that hauls up to 20.6 Ton into LKO very efficiently using only Panther engines, 2 swivels and 1 Thud with a remarkable payload fraction of 28.5%

 

 

[AntINFINAIt]

This is just an awesome piece of tech.

https://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

4 minutes ago, Aeroboi said:

 

Finally made my early-mid career spaceplane SSTO that hauls up to 20.6 Ton into LKO very efficiently using only Panther engines, 2 swivels and 1 Thud with a remarkable payload fraction of 28.5%

 

 

Good  

On 3/17/2018 at 9:00 PM, LordFerret said:

 

 

[AntINFINAIt]

I started making a model for my pack.

 How is that lookin' ? 

Progress on 1 hour  

[InterplanetJanet]

More computer rantings, because I'm kind of not allowed to play KSP until I get the terabyte back. (DH's WorldOfTanks is now working...)

Spoiler

On 3/20/2018 at 7:12 PM, Ace in Space said:

@InterplanetJanet do... do you need a hug?

Honestly, I can totally see where the "Linux is better" crowd is coming from. I still prefer Windows as my home environment, but I also fully admit that this is only because I was quite literally raised on it (been using computers since I was like... three?) and my attachment stems from pure familiarity. Like the person who still drives a beat-up old rustbucket car just because they've had it since 1978.

I could use a hug, a stiff drink or five, or some opiates or benzodiazepines.... or combinations thereof.

And that 'home environment' thing is why I use Linux... and Lynx, nano, ifconfig, dselect, rsync, and bash. I remember the speed contrast between my first awful obsolescent x86 (did not have color!) and the mandatory-GUI Macs at the time, and I won on speed. It really doesn't seem that far between Ye Auld DOS and modern bash/sh/whatever, either. I just wish 'bootable system' was as simple nowadays as "format d: /s /v" & "xcopy c:\ d:\ /e /s /v"

On 3/20/2018 at 8:04 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Heheh, let me introduce you to my old buddy MS-DOS, here. 

Want to add a new hard drive? Graphics card? Soundblaster™️? Get ready for a fun-filled day of setting jumpers, randomly guessing at IRQ’s, and spending hours on hold with Tech Support... 

Jeez, whiner.  There were only 15 IRQs, and most of them were already permanently assigned.

On 3/21/2018 at 4:12 AM, Zeiss Ikon said:

I seldom had those problems with DOS.  Maybe I was just lucky, but I don't recall ever having an IRQ conflict.  My Sound Blaster required a jumper to be moved, and of course there were the master/slave/cable jumpers on MFM and RLL hard disks, but I never had much problem with those.

I rarely had problems either, but then I was so far behind the tech curve... and if I wasn't, calling tech support (often not toll-free; anyone remember 'long distance charges'?) was an option that felt rather like stabbing myself repeatedly in the eye. Which feeling only got bigger after I worked phone tech support.  Then again, I got on the Internet early.

Hrm. Just had a thought: I was having problems getting the KEES Orbital Debris Experiment completed... like, wondering if the experiment was somehow cursed... and was on my fifth or so attempt... because correlation totally causes causation.

[AntINFINAIt]

I finished making the texture map for the engine

 

i need some inspiration for the texturing...

I will use some metal textures

and manual painting

Edited March 22, 2018 by AntINFINAIt

[AntINFINAIt]

DONE!(new map, the old one is dead)

What 's better? 

Smooth Shading

 

or Normal

 

One additional thingy  

 

It is your choice.

Signing out for today.

Edited March 22, 2018 by AntINFINAIt

[eddiew]

With the desert sun barely cresting over the dunes, Eagle Scout's second survey mission is about to begin.

First stop, the wholesome Midlands. There is some speculation that these samples will go well with some icing and cinnamon dusting, but we won't know for sure until they've been run through the lab.

Reviewing the video feed back home, the boffins raise questions about the possibility of bacteria or algae existing on Niven's parched plains. Possibly there could be an upwelling of water dampening these colourful areas of the soil and allowing mono-cellular life to flourish here...

(This mission has been an interesting change vs my typical land-and-rover-it approach, but having tapped out 7 biomes, the Eagle has now probably flown its last. The polar areas are probably inaccessible with just solar power, and, frankly, I'm bored of flying around Niven now   That said, 250m/s cruising speed and 4x timewarp really can get you around very effectively. Thor Tech's electric engines are certainly a viable alternative when you don't feel like landing on the same planet over and over to get all the biomes  )

Meanwhile, much nearer home the anemone has become an anomaly...

Edited March 22, 2018 by eddiew

[Kek-tus]

Note to self: If you feel like an over-exaggerated amount of struts will not be able to hold something up, its going to blow up the entire god damn launch pad.

 

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, Kek-tus said:

Yup, nope. Your problem is likely with everything below the overly strutted parts.


Opened KSP and tried to make a flying wing SSTO (of sorts). Still doesn't SSTO without the cheats menu....

Might need just more oxidizer or something....

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Ummmm, it would seem as if Jeb has ascended.

https://imgur.com/a/lxSEx

 

 

 

.....I forgot how to do Gifs again.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace

[Geonovast]

I do like the MH stow-able wheels.  Sorta.  They have some issues.  Mainly that the make everything I attach them to bounce around like it's in a bouncy house, which is perfectly fine for low gravity moons.

Managed to completely botch the design on an Apollo style trip to the Mun to play with one of the jumping bean rovers.

Everything went fine, for the most part:

Launch:

Mun Intercept: The second lift stage, just ahead of the orbiter, is on a collision course with the Mun.

So far so good..... Annnnd it's stuck.  Can't get out, bouncing around like crazy, and completely my fault by design.  Sooo... not even bothering to get out of the lander..

Tried to check on the lander after separation, but something exploded, and it wouldn't let me switch to it... "About to crash"?

Home, dumping the trash, SM catches up to me and passes quite quickly... gotta love these new effects, right?  Apparently heat makes everything hollow and transparent.

Came down pretty close to the KSC, and I wasn't even trying.  I mean... I've landed much further away when I was trying.

That's the old KSC island for anyone who can't tell where I am.

[Fearless Son]

Started a new career game since Making History came out.  Made a nifty little low-tech science-gathering plane.  All aero parts are from the first node in the airplane branch of the tree.  Can be launched from a minimum level hanger and airfield to nab some readings for quick contract money and science.

6 hours ago, qzgy said:

Might need just more oxidizer or something....

From the look of it, I think lower drag might help.  Some of those structural wing parts that are there for looks might need to go, unfortunately.

[Ace in Space]

3 hours ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

Ummmm, it would seem as if Jeb has ascended.

I'm.... not sure what I'm looking at here.

4 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

Made a nifty little low-tech science-gathering plane

It looks like a flying anchor. I'm not sure if that makes it awesome or stupid. Awesomely stupid? Stupidly awesome?

 

I didn't do a whole lot today. The scouter probe has discovered an asteroid that is actually near-ish to Dres, so things are looking up on that front. Meanwhile, it was the moment of truth for Ruby - could it land on Duna and then return to Onyx Station?

Landing was a bit rough. I misjudged the distance to the ground, and ended up deploying the parachutes rather late. A strong retroburn rectified the situation and Ruby made a clumsy and rough landing but came out in one piece, so it's all good. Hey, Dudfal's not Jebediah, alright? After resetting the experiments and repacking the parachutes, it was time to leave. I have noted that Duna's atmosphere is too thin to help much coming in, but thick enough to be a mild annoyance going back out.

Still, it made it back to base. Barely, meaning that Ruby can't biome-hop and only gets to make one landing per trip, but as long as it keeps going back to Onyx Station to refuel, it can theoretically go back and forth as many times as I please. With those fuel margins, I don't think it'll be making any kind of polar landings, though.

[Zosma Procyon]

I had a pretty busy day.

First I dispatched three of a new class of sentinel probes to survey the space around Eeloo, Dres, and Eve.

This is the Eeloo sentinel launching. I love the new Soviet style booster toppers.

Then I dispatched 5 identical rockets, each carrying two scanner and relay satellites to one of Jool's moons. The rockets have WAY more Delta-V than they need. Overkill is good.

And then I docked two formerly ground bases in orbit around Pol. These were on Pol's surface, but one of the bugs in 1.3 cause them to slam into Pol's surface and bounce off into space every time I logged into them, and I go sick of relanding them every time I had to transmit science. So I just put them in orbit. It just occured to me that if they were docked the resulting station would get through the data back log quicker, if only because it would have more power available with two solar arrays. I'm actually going to abandon these bases when the data processing is finished.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Zosma Procyon

[Cydonian Monk]

This evening I spent some time updating an old favorite of mine to KSP v1.3.1: The Titanium Shuttle. (Yes, I'm still on v1.3.1....) Titanium is something of an odd duck, in that it's a shuttle with its disposable external tank mounted to its nose. Once the tank is empty and jettisoned, the rest of the craft, including its expensive and reusable heavy-lift shuttle engine, heads off into orbit to do its business. It then returns to land on the runway at KSC (or wherever it can find a flat spot).

This newest update (Frame Y) has a number of "quality of life" improvements: speedbrakes, medium landing gear on the rear of the craft (which allows them to be spaced further apart to improve landing stability), RCS thrusters which are only enabled for the roles they support (yaw, roll, aft/fore, etc - ie: the greatest advanced tweakable), an integrated probe core (the Mk2 "drone" core), and four Juno jet engines (increased from 2 on the base model and the unflown v1.2.1 Frame X). Additionally, the mounting point for the nose tank was adjusted to bring it inline with the center of thrust. The two extra Juno jet engines are sufficient to allow the Titanium to maintain level flight at lower altitudes and at a reasonable sub-sonic velocity.

The following test flight of the final test-model Frame-Y Titanium began as an uncrewed launch. It then rendezvoused with a "Totally Not Secret" space station in low-Kerbin orbit where it retrieved Jeb, Vall, Bill and Bob. From there it undocked, deorbited, overshot the space center, turned 180, and landed safely at KSC. The fab four are once again free to conduct more "Totally Not Secret" missions, while the Titanium has returned the most expensive parts of itself to Kerbin for near-total reuse (only the relatively inexpensive nose tank was lost).

I should have this 1.3.1 version as well as an updated 1.4.1 version posted on KerbalX.com at some point in the next couple of days.

Cheers,

[qzgy]

8 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

From the look of it, I think lower drag might help.  Some of those structural wing parts that are there for looks might need to go, unfortunately.

Oh I'm well aware that its a horrible draggy design. I'm not giving it up though....
I might just need to ditch the idea of having it go interplanetary on nukes. Although I won't stop trying.....

[DerekL1963]

I've been spending far more time than I should playing with the Skydancer sample craft in Angel-125's Heisenberg Airships mod...  There's a lot of room for optimization, and I love almost nothing in KSP more than tweaking the behavior of a vehicle until that it's just so...

I sense a new Airship Adventure coming on...  (If you haven't read them, the link is in my sig...)

[Brotoro]

Today I posted three Soviet-style lunar mission reports in my Making History replica missions thread.

Here's a couple pictures from my N1-L3 lunar landing mission. It's certainly much easier to make a nice N1 from stock parts now than it was a few years ago!

The other two were a circumlunar Soyuz 7K-L1 flight on a Proton K/D booster, and a Lunakhod flight on a Proton booster (in preparation for the above N1-L3 landing mission).

 

[Azimech]

After my big pride in breaking the 100m/s barrier in stock aero, I've done lots of tinkering. The Alastor 3 now has a top speed of 152m/s in stock aero, 250 modified aero. It can climb at a 45 degree angle and climb to 8000m in five minutes. A few versions back I've tested it with 9000 units of ore, that's a 82t. payload. Right now it's cruising at 50% throttle and 3100m to measure its range. Going swell, the speed is 107m/s and after 300km it's used 1/3 of the fuel. Not bad for an STOL.

Based on the Alastor 3 I've also made the Alastor 2 and Alastor 1. The Alastor 2 has a top speed of 133m/s, the Alastor 1 goes 105m/s.

As always, stock parts only.

[LameLefty]

I spent tonight designing and flying a little mid-Career expedition lander to sortie down from an orbital laboratory station and retrieve that sweet, sweet Science! from wherever the urge strikes me. I decided to use the fun new stock tanks from the DLC along with the wonderful Pug engine from Porkjet's parts pack. No, this design isn't particularly optimized, and yes, it's a pain in the booty to refuel after a sortie, but it makes me happy anyway. 

[Fearless Son]

21 hours ago, Ace in Space said:

I'm.... not sure what I'm looking at here.

It looks like a flying anchor. I'm not sure if that makes it awesome or stupid. Awesomely stupid? Stupidly awesome?

I tried making a plane that looked more like a conventional tail-dragging light plane, but I just could not get it to balance its center of mass and center of lift well.  The problem was that the center of mass was too far ahead of the center of lift, which made getting the nose up difficult.  Would have worked well with more thrust.  I had to end up with this instead.

"Anchor" is a good name for it though, I think I will call it that.

[~>APOLLOSMUDGE123<~]

I failed to launch a cargo rocket because KSP wouldn't let me put cargo in the cargo bay; I feel that the kraken has awoken upon the VAB.

[~>APOLLOSMUDGE123<~]

Or, I have to manually put the cargo into the cargo bay; which I think means that the kraken has chosen to attack the VAB physics.

[Hotel26]

This is First Lieutenant Dunry Kerman.

He grew up on a small wheat farm outside Kermansville, Kermansas.

Now he's an Engineering Specialist.

When he enlisted in the Space Force, the recruiter told him he was in for the "ride of his life"...

...the recruiter mentioned nothing about working conditions.

Edited March 27, 2018 by Hotel26