What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Hotel26]

It's been a few months since I've been in space (hardly at all in 2018), but I have a launch window for Jool approaching in 12d 0h 36m so the launch schedule is now busy, busy, busy.

Given how long I've been playing KSP, I ought to be too embarrassed to admit this, but... what the heck.

I've pretty much retired MechJeb now in favor of KER as the information they provide is essential.  Nevertheless, I still occasionally use the MJ Rendezvous Planner panel to show "separation at nearest approach" to help in making rendez-vous adjustments.  (I guess you can get the same information from the target proximity markers in the Map View.)  Well, the last couple of launches, I didn't want to spend the time chasing targets to assemble fleet ships or refuel them in LKO, so I attempted the good old "tip of the Kerbara trick"...  these times, though, boosting the apoapsis on launch, instead of using my standard altitude for the particular craft, I just kept accelerating toward the 125km target altitude, watching the MJ "nearest approach" distance until it got as close as it could before starting to retreat again.  Instantly, cutting the engines there to begin the coast to apoapsis.  Surprisingly close rendez-vous with the error being largely due to inclination mismatch.  Most of any error gets absorbed by overshoot (going to a higher apoapsis) which you would then pay for in target speed difference to be compensated for at rendez-vous.

Probably many rocketeers here already know this rather basic piece of information so just call me a slow learner! 

I'll be investigating next if I can do this in the Map View, or perhaps with selection of some KER datum, so as not to be dependent upon MJ for it.

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

I'll be investigating next if I can do this in the Map View, or perhaps with selection of some KER datum, so as not to be dependent upon MJ for it.

Direct orbital rendezvous via the map? Perfectly possible. A lot of my business is done on the map -so much that I often forget how the planets look like up close :p

I wouldn't call you a slow learner -but you may have been relying on automated procedures a little bit too much :p

Edited June 28, 2018 by Atkara

[Hotel26]

55 minutes ago, Atkara said:

Direct orbital rendezvous via the map?

Very early on, I saw a video of someone flying directly from launchpad to immediate rendez-vous downrange in which the latter stage of the launch was cued directly by the navball alone.  My skills weren't up to that back then.  So, for a long time, I've just launched into LKO and then gone through the usual steps: circularize, align planes, expand the orbit if necessary, plot the transfer to r/v, match speeds, putt-putt to the green, dock with the pin... 

But in my post above, I'm talking about coasting directly from the launch burn to rendez-vous with the target overhead, without first circularizing the orbit.  (Of course, rendez-vous with a target already in a circular orbit implies your own circularization.)  The missing piece was the information which trajectory was going to pass as close as feasible to the target's (without non-prograde inputs).  Needless to say, I will be doing it this way every time from now on. 

Of course, from there, it is a short step to flying the final part of the launch burn (plus adjustments) on the navball. 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Hotel26

[Eriksonn]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I'll be investigating next if I can do this in the Map View, or perhaps with selection of some KER datum, so as not to be dependent upon MJ for it.

Since I use principia and principia allows for multiple reference frames, there is a special one for rendezvous. It clearly shows the orbital path relative to the target, Making it easy to get very Close.

This orbit is actually just a regular elliptical orbit with an encounter at apoapsis ~1.5 orbits ahead.

 

Sidenote: After 24 years of harmony mun kicked out nightmare from its orbit(the muns L4 point). I got very sad becauce i had placed it there when I started with this mod a month or so ago becauce i thought it would be stable. And now it turns out that it is not. And it messed up my relay sat in the process.

 

[Atkara]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

But in my post above, I'm talking about coasting directly from the launch burn to rendez-vous with the target overhead, without first circularizing the orbit.

Oh I understood what you was talking about. That's what I call direct orbital rendezsvous.

With my launch profile and as far as Kerbin is concerned, I wait on the map until the target is ~350km out, then switch back and launch. When most of my gravity turn is complete, I switch back on the map and observe. When I reach what seems to me the best closest approach I can get, I cut the engines and coast.

Once out of the atmosphere I lock to target retrograde and I initiate the matching burn at the distance dictated by my vehicle's TWR. Small corrections are also done along the way to bring the retrograde marker on the anti-target marker, thus bringing the  final separation to something that won't be too close or too far.

The same thing applies on airless/lowish-gravity bodies like mun, duna, Ike etc. There and given that my ships typically don't have orbits that shave the mountaintops, I wait till the target is 45 degrees out on the navball, then launch. On bodies like Minmus, Gilly, etc I just launch straight up, when the target is directly on top of me. Unorthodox, but it saves time, which can be a precious commodity.

[Agustin]

Today I've launched my first RSS/RO\principia(love it) LEO with a satellite and an extrs of 4500 m/s deltav left. I have been fighting with the new fuel mechanics and types of engines but managed to design a not so bad looking thing.
Edit:
 I launched smartly in the same inclination plane as the Moon and made a burn (I had like 6 burns left) to get near it to complete my mission. I saved and when getting near the Moon my computer crashed. I know I am using outdated RSS/RO for my 1.4.3 install but well maybe I can recontrinue from my save now.
EDIT 3:
 When entering Moon's gravitational field, Game freezes completely and crashes.
:(

Edited June 28, 2018 by Agustin

[Zeiss Ikon]

5 hours ago, Agustin said:

 RSS/RO\principia(love it)

EDIT 3:
 When entering Moon's gravitational field, Game freezes completely and crashes.

Yep, unfortunately, something in RO is really, really not ready for 1.4.x yet.  It's possible to get it set up pretty readily with 1.3.1 -- no Kerbal parachutes, but if you add the dev branch of RP-0 (sometimes called RP-1, because it goes a lot further in revamping the tech tree) you won't even miss Making History -- you'll have all the engines that the MH ones try to emulate, plus all the fuel combinations the actual engines run on (what a relief it was to get off hypergolics for launch -- fuming nitric acid makes me itch just seeing it on the screen).

Sadly, I haven't done anything in KSP today.  Yet.  Play time is coming up as soon as I finish reading the forums... 

[Cavscout74]

Only accomplished a few things today, but I started a long-term habitation experiment to test using greenhouses to supply Snacks for long range missions.  The snack estimator in the VAB says my crew cycler only has enough snacks for like 300 days, but I don't think it counts recycling in crew modules or production in greenhouses, so I built a space station that mimics the design of my crew cycler habitation section & launch it & 4 'lucky" kerbals into high orbit to spend the next year or so to see what I've got.

I finally got a simple Duna probe to the surface in my newest career:

And I decided to deorbit my obsolescent MOLE Station.  Nobody will miss it as the only long-term crew it had died during reentry when they were rotated back to the surface - or more specifically during impact with mountains too fast for even the drogue chute to open.  I sorta misjudged the reentry in a new ship design.  If I remember correctly, their remains are scattered across one of the mountains in the background here

[The Destroyer]

Tested out kerbal parachutes. They're pretty  fun, but they don't seem to deploy over water which is interesting.

[kurgut]

Skylab 3, after the launch of skylab and skylab 2 that repared the broken components, now 3 kerbals will spend 55 days in orbit doing a bunch of experiment ( and a lot of science!) Here docking with apollo CSM.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Approaching..

 

Almost..

 

 

Done!

 

[MR L A]

9 hours ago, Eriksonn said:

Sidenote: After 24 years of harmony mun kicked out nightmare from its orbit(the muns L4 point). I got very sad becauce i had placed it there when I started with this mod a month or so ago becauce i thought it would be stable. And now it turns out that it is not.

I've always been tempted but daunted by this mod, though I guess it's simply more to learn - just like when I first played KSP and didn't know a damned thing about orbital mechanics.

Though I'm not surprised it eventually got kicked out, afaik no Lagrange point is indefinitely stable w/o "station keeping" - having said that, I'm not sure how long we could expect something to remain stable for: 24 years could be either comparatively long or comparatively short   

[Lisias]

I can finally try out this monster. Boy, she flies as a demon…  

[Hotaru]

22 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

What mod adds this?

Kerbalism. Very cool mod--not a huge difference for probes, but it makes kermanned exploration beyond Minmus a much more daunting (and therefore interesting) prospect.

[Lisias]

I will break a rule of myself and post here twice on a day - this one is too good to leave it behind without a record or something!

I took a Contract to land something on a helipad. "Nice", I can make a hovercraft with Junos. But then I realized that I didn't unlock tech enough for TCA or MJ2 to be of some use. So...

Flying the thing is relatively easy using two MK1 SAS Modules, but flying to where you want no that much. Landing on a specific spot? And using the keyboard?!!?!? DAMN!!! 

Well, I'm a bean-counting stand-up guy, but not a Kerbicide - so the hovercraft had parachutes to be used in the (very likely) situation of loosing control. And then...

And… SUCCESS! 

I'll get myself a minimally decent flying joystick this week.  

Edited June 29, 2018 by Lisias
bad grammars… ²

[JadeOfMaar]

I perfected the Podracer Stratolauncher and put it on KerbalX. There's not even Tweakscale in it anymore and its part count stays under 80.

 

Then (while declaring a swordfight with @blowfish over craft design and accepting a dare by @DeltaDizzy ) I built an SRB-powered plane. It managed to reach Mach 5 and splash down [this far] over the tip of the moderate land mass just beyond the terminator. Unfortunately its stall speed is very high.  

 

  

Edited June 29, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[jack gamer]

I tested an air battle, with the Romulan ship vs the ai plane

[The_rocket_fan]

1 minute ago, jack gamer said:

I tested an air battle, with the Romulan ship vs the ai plane

That’s cool, what mods are those?

[jack gamer]

still happening 

CMON BLOW UP! 

Finally 

And we landed 

[ARS]

Built a mini SSTO and do some trips, to Mun...

Minmus...

Duna...

Ike...

Dres...

Jool...

Laythe...

Vall...

Pol...

Bop...

Gilly...

And Eve...

I didn't visit Tylo since the vacuum engine isn't powerful enough on Tylo. The trip ends at Eve, now I need to send a rescue mission

As a bonus, I landed on Duna just to watch the Ikelipse

[JadeOfMaar]

@ARS What's the vacuum engine? And did you tweak that OPT engine to no longer need Oxygen?  

[ARS]

52 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@ARS What's the vacuum engine? And did you tweak that OPT engine to no longer need Oxygen?  

The vacuum engine is inside the cargobay, just behind the mk1 command pod. Solaris Hypernautic mod has Kannae Drives, which is an engine powered by virtual particles and electricity. It can be placed or clipped inside parts since it has no exhaust, so it doesn't damage the part (though it can be overdrived to provide much more thrust, at the cost of rapid overheating and dramatically increased fuel consumption). Kannae Drives has an advantage of being safe to place anywhere and has renewable fuel source (though it needs a lot of electricity), the disadvantage is being very low thrust (roughly on par with poodle, it's useless for atmospheric flight, unless the gravity is low enough like on duna) and needs a lot of power, both for running it and renewing it's fuel source. It's basically ion engine on steroid

Note: I didn't tweak the OPT engine

Edited June 29, 2018 by ARS

[eddiew]

On 6/28/2018 at 12:23 AM, Lisias said:

For the sake of curiosity, what are the specs of your rig?

Soon 8700k at at least 5ghz... Right now 1600X at stock.

[Hotel26]

16 hours ago, Atkara said:

When I reach what seems to me the best closest approach I can get

Yep, I can now confirm that the target intersection markers in the Map View will show closest approach (of course) and when that distance bottoms out, you can coast (or begin making course adjustments).  Thanks for your input.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

I'm looking at this:

That's 3.5million without the strategy modifiers I've set.

I'll do it.

[Eriksonn]

13 hours ago, MR L A said:

I've always been tempted but daunted by this mod, though I guess it's simply more to learn - just like when I first played KSP and didn't know a damned thing about orbital mechanics.

Though I'm not surprised it eventually got kicked out, afaik no Lagrange point is indefinitely stable w/o "station keeping" - having said that, I'm not sure how long we could expect something to remain stable for: 24 years could be either comparatively long or comparatively short   

24 years is a very long time since when i made the config setting the problems occured in less than 4 years. Also the L4 and L5 Points are infact perfectly stable if there only is 2 bodies doing gravity(kerbin and mun). But in my system there is kerbin, mun, olei, minmus and olemut, in order of most important i Think. I had to put minmus in a 5/2 resonance with the mun in order for olei to not mess up minmus, so i Think that i have used up all stable orbits to put nightmare in so i might put it in kerbins L4 point instead.

Sidenote, i launched some cubesats the other day on random orbits in the kerbin system and some "survived" in stable orbits, so i could perhaps use one of those orbits to Place nightmare in. Only problem  is that principia dont like when objects get too Close so they might not work since they were Close to kerbin, but i might launch more cubesats and try to find better orbits….

Also, if you want to use it with stock the only problem is jool, and on the mod page there is a fix for that so dont worry about having to deal with all the weirdness i am giving myself.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Eriksonn