What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Triop]

1 minute ago, Cavscout74 said:

@Triop  Well that looks interesting, going to have to check this out.

I went back & launched my little folding-wing rocket plane from the runway just for fun and, well, Jeb says "Thank you!" for the cockpit ejection system, because this thing is pretty much uncontrollable taking off from the runway.  I know the fuel weight is a factor, but I tried again with it almost empty & it wasn't much better.  Now I'm really amazed it flew so nice to landing after vertical launch & reentry.

I couldn't wait so I've started a sandbox game and going Mary Poppins on this . . .

[Cavscout74]

1 minute ago, Triop said:

I couldn't wait so I've started a sandbox game and going Mary Poppins on this . . .

<SNIP>

 

I'm going to have to mess with planes more in my current career since I decided to impose launch time restrictions on myself.  One day wait between launches that can go from a level 1 pad, 10 days for level 2 & 20 days for level 3.  No restrictions on runways though.   Hmm, I wonder how an air-dropped sub would work....

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Triop said:

I think most ksp players can't even dock without mods, correct me if I'm wrong.

Not so! Docking seems much trickier than it actually is. Its much easier than landing a plane, let alone climbing a mountain

It opens up so many doors once you get it down, building space stations, reusable landers, orbital construction, its great! I use mods but none of them help me dock. 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Zosma Procyon]

I finally got 1.4.3 to work. Here is my first screenshot.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Apparently I've entered the void.

The Mun, Kerbol, Kerbin, and even the stars have seemingly disappeared.

Its pretty eerie honestly.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace

[Triop]

11 hours ago, Mikki said:

I made a nice Kertonov, with flaps and all the rage... works nice and flush

 

No way you landed that.

Edit: check out the kerbals faces.

Edit 2: Nice Mun shot.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Triop

[Mikki]

@Triop i did 

[Triop]

7 minutes ago, Mikki said:

@Triop i did 

Nice !

Kerbals still look worried though . . .

EDIT: Ok, Jeb looks happy, well done, sir.

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Triop

[Castille7]

30 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

Its pretty eerie honestly.

One of my first Mun landings was very late at night and it was very quite in the house. I was alone in space far away from home is what I felt in a KSP kinda way. I felt that eerie feeling wondering if anyone else had ever felt this while playing. Sometimes KSP can capture me like that, it kinda takes me away.

[Mikki]

2 minutes ago, Triop said:

Nice !

Kerbals still look worried though . . .

Yes, all my Kerbal staff is utterly in awe when they must testfly my contraptions, even badass kerbs. And they really should do so. 

[Mikki]

12 minutes ago, Triop said:

Nice !

Kerbals still look worried though . . .

EDIT: Ok, Jeb looks happy, well done, sir.

 

...and if i remember correctly this plane was fully fueled and had additional 17 tons paylod (1/2+1/4 2.5m fueltank) in the bay... just to say...

[Castille7]

5 hours ago, Triop said:

I think most ksp players can't even dock without mods, correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree, for the reason that many KSP videos I've seen through the years, docking is a rare find unless your actually searching for them. Easy? If it's a tiny craft, when they are large craft it's a very tedious  and challenging thing to do. I have some large craft that I could post as a challenge to dock them.

[SleepingFox]

I sent a mission to Minmus, putting in my very first station on another body:

https://imgur.com/NHSck0t

Unfortunately I didn't calculate the fuel right for the return trip, and Jeb stranded in a 4.500.000 km orbit around Kerbin:

https://imgur.com/Rd5Cf3s

So I had to send out a rescue ship, with a grabber, hook up on Jeb, and drag his ship (with quite an amount of science I didn't want to loose, hence no spacewalking) into an orbit where Jeb could return to Kerbin again:

https://imgur.com/o4dvR9z

So all in all, I've done 2 new things today.... Put a station on another body.... and docking a ship (well, grabbing actually) with another 

Edited May 8, 2018 by SleepingFox

[Spacetraindriver]

"Jeb is trying to buzz the tower with a battleship."

"Not agai...wait what?"

Spoiler

 

[Pthigrivi]

20 hours ago, Castille7 said:

I agree, for the reason that many KSP videos I've seen through the years, docking is a rare find unless your actually searching for them. Easy? If it's a tiny craft, when they are large craft it's a very tedious  and challenging thing to do. I have some large craft that I could post as a challenge to dock them.

Spoiler

 

All of this was built peice by peice with individual launches and hundreds of docking maneuvers, usually 40-200 tons each. Others dock things even larger.  It takes practice, first getting a rendezvous less than .3km apart, then tweezing that down to a few dozen meters with your retrograde to target burn. Eventually you can kill your velocity right next to your target port and dock with a few RCS taps. Its tricky at first but no trickier than flying a plane. 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Delay]

7 hours ago, Triop said:

I think most ksp players can't even dock without mods, correct me if I'm wrong.

I dock without mods, Infact my (main) game is vanilla. I have two others as well - one for LunaMP and one for testing out Principia (very nice mod, but it doesn't run well enough on my machine to consider it "working").

Heck, I even dock without RCS most of the time. Not because I want to, but because I forget to add RCS in the first place. Rest assured that I'm always like this, forgetting crucial parts for the mission. Reminder: I once forgot a docking port on a mission whose sole purpose was to dock to a station.

Here's what you can do to dock: If you are in sandbox (or Jeb an experienced Kerbal)and have RCS, you can always point towards the docking port (well, the target, which more often than not will be the port), then correct with RCS. That usually works well for me.

[Ace in Space]

2 hours ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

The Mun, Kerbol, Kerbin, and even the stars have seemingly disappeared.

Its pretty eerie honestly.

You've gone beyond the Shadow Realm. You have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss looked back into you.

6 hours ago, Triop said:

I understand, didn't I post the coordinates ?

Anyway, best reference to the location I had was this picture

No, see, you don't understand. I'm really bad at navigation.

1 minute ago, Delay said:

I dock without mods, Infact my (main) game is vanilla.

Heck, I even dock without RCS most of the time. Not because I want to, but because I forget to add RCS in the first place.

This, although in my case it's not that I forgot RCS, but rather that I didn't pack enough monoprop and ran out. Granted, it took my first 4 weeks of KSP to learn how to rendezvous and dock but now it's fairly routine. On the other hand, I was learning to rendezvous and dock in my first four weeks, when I was still figuring out orbiting...

 

 

As for what I did today...

In space...

... no one can hear you derp.

I decided to try a sorta-Apollo-style lander - larger orbiting travel craft, with a smaller lander that docks to it. The idea was that the increased fuel efficiency of the tiny lander and the ability to refuel it from the larger craft would make it possible to hit multiple biomes. That was the plan anyway.

Part of making the lander lightweight was that it didn't have a cabin - just a chair for a kerbal to ride it to the surface. So it was actually more Dr. Strangelove than Apollo Program.

Although for all the misfortune it went through it could well have been Apollo 13... For starters, I'm not used to building crafts that don't have cabins. And therefore, don't have built-in reaction wheels. So once I got into orbit around the Mun I discovered that the lander couldn't actually maneuver without using its RCS, which was not really feasible because that system had been designed purely for docking. So I packed up and went back to Kerbin empty-handed.

Having corrected the error, I set out again, and found that the weight of a kerbal sitting on the side unbalanced the craft and made it veer. I figured out that I could correct this by setting the two engines opposite the pilot to 80% thrust and leaving the one directly behind her at 100%. So then it was down to the surface for the first landing, which turned out to also be the last. I've got to admit that I don't regret doing this - it was worth doing once, even if it didn't pan out, just because... well, look at it!

I touched down in the Twin Craters, exactly as planned. So far, so good, right?

Spoiler

The craft seemed stable enough. I was glad I'd chosen the leg configuration I did, with the two legs on the kerbal side, which helped the lopsided weight. Until the pilot got out. And the craft, being vindictive, drew out the suspense by doing that circular wobbling thing that coins do, before finally falling over.

Okay, fine, let's see if we can salvage this operation. Those RCS thrusters ended up being useful for more than just docking, as they were able to roll the lander over so the seat was on top.

Spoiler

And from there, with manipulation of both the RCS and reaction wheel, I was able to tip the nose up enough to get back up off the surface.

Okay, Brooke, you can keep your job. Gene's still not happy with you, though.

The lander was never meant to return to Kerbin, so upon rendezvousing with the main craft, the science was transferred over along with Brooke, and the lander was ditched in Munar orbit. The fuel efficiency, at least, worked like a charm - I did indeed have more than enough fuel to perform several landings like this. But the tipping over wasn't the only reason I decided to go straight back home.

Because, you see, upon collecting my science, I had remembered the other reason I always used command modules: external seats can't collect Crew Reports. So I have to come back here anyway. Derp.

[steve_v]

7 hours ago, Triop said:

I think most ksp players can't even dock without mods, correct me if I'm wrong.

I do, until the tedium of the 111th docking gets too much, then I just ship more monoprop so I can let MechJeb do it. Dang wasteful docking autopilot.

Docking manually isn't difficult, just time consuming - especially if the craft involved mass ~>100t... or it's dark. Docking Port Alignment Indicator FTW if it's dark.

[crasher925]

14 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

Both Part 1 and Part 2 have been posted:

 

Download the craft files here:

https://kerbalx.com/Jett_Quasar/craft

 - Jett

what mods did you use for the effects? they dont exactly look stock

[Kebab Kerman]

On 4/26/2018 at 4:55 PM, Kernel Kraken said:

Ok, this is my most liked post. This post exposes my woeful incompetence.

Thanks.

Only 250+ hours? I beat it.

 

It took me two full years to figure it out.

[Kernel Kraken]

16 minutes ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Only 250+ hours? I beat it.

 

It took me two full years to figure it out.

250 hours since 2015 (I think) I can check my steam later. 3 years, m8.

Three. Years.

[Kebab Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

250 hours since 2015 (I think) I can check my steam later. 3 years, m8.

Three. Years.

Wow. And I thought I was crazy... Although, once you get Editor Extensions Redux, all that time becomes meaningless because of THE MAGIC OF AUTOSTRUT(insert echo here)

[Mark Kerbin]

22 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

250 hours since 2015 (I think) I can check my steam later. 3 years, m8.

Three. Years.

Is it bad that I have like 280 hrs in game an I just got the steam version a few months ago?

I had a copy from the website since like 2016 so yeah...

[Delay]

I have 566 hours in KSP.

Add to that the I don't know how many hours I spent in the KSP .18.3 demo.

And the few minutes I had with 0.13.3.

[KerikBalm]

Not today, but past several days:

Started trying dropship designs for my latest 3x resize career, targets are Rald and a modded Duna (gravity increased to 0.376 G, some water added, atmospheric molar mass decreased a bit to be only about 90% as dense as it was before... so thinner air and higher gravity!).

The requirement was the ability to land a 40 ton payload on the surface, and take it back to orbit

Initial tests with a mk3 cockpit, and skippers (which disappoint, as per usual). Aerospikes stuck to the underside for VTOL landing capability. 2 LV-Ns gave it enough dV in theory, but TWR was insufficient, and it failed ot make orbit

Spoiler

A new KR-2L and large delta wing design was in order:

But alas, landing it using vertical lift rockets consumed too much fuel. It also needed vertical rocket thrust to takeoff, otherwise it tended to RUD when accelerating along the surface of Duna.

I compromised, I wanted it to be capable of operating fully automated without kerbals, but I wasn't willing to use the OPd engine that would make it practical (the wolfhound), and gave in and game it parachutes:

My previous designs didn't use stock engines, just for reference:

Spoiler

I thought this one would have worked with aerospikes in place, but I lost it months ago when I lost all my files, and that was before I thinned the atmosphere anyway)

The wolfhound performs really well on duna, this thing had over a 30 minute cruise duration:

I got it down and back up to orbit, but the dV margin was really slim.

I gave it nukes and used the wing fuel storage and tweaked the lift rocket + wing positioning a bit, it landed and got back to orbit with hundreds of m/s to spare.

Spoiler

I also rolled it to the water's edge:

I also tried my hand at new Rald drop ship designs... I figured I'd try one that lands with just wings, no lift jets/rockets:

It was very difficult to land, tending to RUD when going over bumps in the terrain, and as I was planning on tweaking the noise function to give rald more noise, I decided that I wanted a STOVL design.

sidenote: experimenting with noise functions:

Spoiler

way... too much:

a more appropriate amount, heightmap features aren't lost in the noise, nor does the ground appear pixelated:

I decided to to my dropship tests on the Karsis plateau, its the heighest flat place on Rald (I'm not going to try for landings on the volcano summits... although the Olympus mons one is big enough and flat enough that it seems like an interesting challenge). The thin air results in more dV needing to be spent on landing, and also on takeoff... approach speeds were fast to say the least:

I initially had planned on using chutes to help slow it down, and to use lift rockets to touch down at around ~100 m/s and roll it out to a stop, but this did not go well, and I ultimately decided to ditch parachutes, and do propulsive deceleration and touchdown 

Spoiler

Without changing the design, this worked, but with low dV margins (similar to what I got on Duna:

but it had issues, Rald's thin atmosphere and relatively high gravity meant that it did not accelerate well at all under airbreathing power during takeoff. I needed to use the rhino to get it up to speed (and the lift-rockets to lift it off the ground so it didn't RUD when bounding over the terrain). I had to accelerate past mach 1 until the rapiers and whiplashes could maintain level flight... it was a bit dicey for a while, going 370-450 m/s less than 200m above the terrain:

Spoiler

So, to help reduce fuel use on takeoff/acceleration, and to get ot a higher airbreathing speed, I removed the drogue chutes, and in their place put a pair of rapiers (I also changed a pair of engine precoolers for a pair of supersonice diverterless intakes for greater LF storage, since it didn't have so much LF to spare).

The designs now seem to be ready for use in my main gameplay... the question is how to get them to orbit on 3x kerbin... I'll figure out a way, Rald-Duna will be colonized