What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Atkara]

The 3 ships that made a pit-stop at Eve, (a mobile miner, a lander and a recovery drone) entered orbit around Moho. Shortly after, Jool's transfer window opened up and the 5 flights for Vall departed.

Had some difficulties, getting Tylo to cooperate and give me the grav capture in the correction maneuvers. I just couldn't see the burn at the time. When I got back with a clean head, everything went nicely.

And just when I thought I was done, Val and her team showed up from Dres

Couldn't just leave them up there. The scheduled Mun-assisted burn, shaved ~500DV off the bill and as soon as they got down to LKO, I loaded both them and their lander on a spaceplane and brought them down to KSC. 

Spoiler

Not sure what I'll do with the rest of the craft. It'a an older design which I'm phasing out anyway. It has enough fuel for a glorious "meeting" with the Mun's surface. Or I could jettison the fuel and attempt a recovery. Either way, I can now detect Dresteroids

Edited July 3, 2018 by Atkara

[FinalFan]

A while ago I made a ship dedicated to the purpose of mining on the Mun and flying the ore up to a station in Mun orbit.  Today the miner is taking its first load up, and I found out that I had designed it very well indeed.  The thing takes about 93% of its fuel to make a low orbit (8-9km) and the rest is probably enough to rendezvous, but it has an onboard refinery anyway and has to wait for the orbit to match.  (It turned out that the slope it was on was too steep for the full vessel so an immediate takeoff was required upon visiting the ship.)

[edit:  TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr.  Original link for insanity posterity:  http://i65.tinypic.com/714o4h.jpg ]

Why the Thuds, you ask?  Well, it's so I can put a Clampy Sr. on that end of the rocket for easy refueling of certain vessels.  Those things give plenty of thrust and the ISP isn't too awful for the short trip to orbit and back.  But there is no Clampy Sr. on the bottom of the ship, you say?  I said that I designed it well, not that I built it well. 

Edited September 23, 2019 by FinalFan
TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Today on NoNameShips I almost crashed

Successfully landed a plane upsidedown?

And then actually crashed

 

Also I believe I am finished with my Apollo command module.

To do: LM shroud, CM boost cover + LES rework, S-IC + interstage, and last but definitely not least, add appropriate liquidfuel and oxidizer quantities for scale delta-v.

[Atkara]

Found some time this morning to land the two new additions on Moho's surface.

They were basically running on fumes when they arrived, but that's what the miner is there for, shown below, fueling up the recovery drone.

Heck, if it wasn't for that miner and it's crew, I wouldn't be talking about Moho -at least not what I had in mind for it.

PS: the recovered part was vacant. The money was good though.

[avengerki]

Did a test flight with my redesigned heavy lifter, just to verify it could get itself in orbit.

I like the way it looks here, although I think I will change the Mk3 cockpit to something else. I don't plan to have all of the Mk2 Crew Cabins installed on every launch, they are mostly for those tourists that just want to orbit Kerbin.

Definitely a lot less drag to it than my version with girders. I figure I can vary the number of boosters on it depending on payload, and if I need to I can still add another layer of SRB's or asparagus style more boosters. I had so much fun just watching it launch and messing around with camera angles that by the time I started to do a circularization orbit I was already at an AP of 200,000m and I was able to create an elliptical orbit with the PE at 120,000m and still have enough fuel for a safe return.

I had originally been doing my heavy lifts in the style where I am pulling the payload but had been trying to do shuttle style or top mounted payloads. Issue was being the payloads were often either so long that the craft looked like a giant pencil or so top heavy that trying to get out of the atmosphere was difficult let alone far from being a good ascent profile.

[CobaltShock]

Have been working on launch vehicles for my mission reports save that can carry specific amounts of cargo to orbit. While I may have created a 126 ton to orbit beast in the past, that was for a "milestone" mission, one which involved tons of contracts. The ones I've been working on are intended to be as cheap as they can be. The largest one so far is a 40-50 ton lifter, but the next one will likely attempt ~100 tons.

 

I also created an "ultra light" lift vehicle, which is capable of lifting a whopping 0.5-1 tons into LGO

Oh yeah, and the payload of this test flight (12,000) is more expensive than the launch vehicle (11,500)

 

Will update the mission report soon

 

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by Steeeeve

[Hotel26]

Nothing better than designing a ship for a purpose and finding its measure entirely satisfactory.  I intended NerfJet to be a Vet jet for navigating the orbit lanes, holding conferences, and ferrying execs to space station inspections or quick trips to the local moons.

Nothing better unless it's discovering a bonus mission capability: NerfJet carries a super-abundance of fuel that enables it to easily act as a fuel rescue ship in an emergency.

NerfJet is standard 2.5m gauge for launching and docking but also bears an inline dock for dexterity.  It can be landed vertically at a moon base as well.

NerfJet is not an SSTO.  Once in space, it's meant to stay there, although it actually is a lot of fun to bring back down: keep it high, steep and hot!

It can be launched vertically atop a booster, if preferred, but it comes with a rev-eng'ed version of @Brikoleur's Forward-Accelerating Rear-mounted Thruster (F.A.R.T. propulsion) for a conventional, if somewhat tricky, take-off.

 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Hotel26

[Atkara]

Jeb, Bill & Bob got a glimpse of Jool in the distance, on their way to Eeloo.

Jeb insisted he had to get out and see for himself.

Since he won't be visiting the system soon, I had to at least give him this

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Wishing a Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans out there.

 

[kurgut]

Canadarm, canadarm, I love you and I hate you. I managed designed a very maniable canadarm 2 for my KSS to assemble the trusses. But, it is HELL: kraken bugs, docking bugs, etc, etc, and it is so looong to move.

I launched 4 times the S0 truss mission due to bugs every times, and with the last one, we managed grabbing it from Herkul cargo bay, and docking it with the station... it was not oriented correctly. All kerbals watching this live in teletransmission from their home in Kerbin were laughing of our space program's ridiculousness.

And All those things costed us a lot of money. 

SO: our engineers decided to not use Canadarm anymore (we will let one attached at the station, just because it's so good looking), but instead, we'll use integrated RCS maneuvring system to assemble our station, they will be jetison later. More simple, less expensive, more Kerbal way.

Two or three pics with my attempts:

The last one that was succesful, but docking port oriented incorretly

[idamoofus]

Finished the foundation of my main space station. Thank the Kraken for NavyFish's alignment indicator or I never would have gotten the second module aligned properly.

[Cavscout74]

Once again I wasn't very on the ball with taking screenshots, but my Interim Mun Lander successfully made it to Mun & back carrying Jeb & Kelrik (Bob's replacement) as the first Kerbonauts to set foot on another body in this career.  I haven't used the new pods too much, but I like the integrated decoupler & heat shield.  Saved me two parts on the design, which made a direct launch & return possible.

IML about to reenter the atmosphere after its Mun landing

Descending for landing.  The science return enabled docking port jr's, so I can now do the rendezvous & dock in Mun orbit exploration contract

[RealKerbal3x]

I had fun with flying and landing SpaceX rockets with @damonvv's great Tundra Exploration mod. A few screenshots below:

Here a Block 4 launches a Dragon capsule.

A better daylight shot. I didn't get any screenshots of landing the first stage, but the purpose-built parts in this mod make it much easier to get fuel levels right.

And the Dragon capsule returns safely, if 'sliding down a mountain and destroying the heatshield before coming to a stop' counts as a safe return

[AngrybobH]

I made a plane that I really don't need. I already have planes that go farther, fly higher and faster, and are cheaper. Some of them do all of that better at the same time. But, this one is probably the most balanced plane I have ever made.

It is only capable of mach 0.8 without the afterburner and mach 3.04 with and it only flies stably up to about 18km. 

 

[KerikBalm]

I had a crack at trying to make an eve lander + ascent vehicle in my custom 3x gameplay (with 1.25x atmosphere heights, and 1.5x terrain heights).

My Eve was further modded to have a surface gravity of 1.25 Gs instead of 1.7 (1.7x was too much for stock parts) and... the atmospheric pressure was doubled... 10 atm at the surface... basically only aerospikes work... coming in at 170 Isp (mammoths and vectors got something in the 50's, the rest was 0)

I lost some landing legs coming down:

The drag on that heat shield peaked at over 12 mega Newtons!!!

My first attempt before a redesign of the connection, the heat shield broke off, and actually my engines were lost symmetrically, and I landed at a high enough altitude that I was able to make it back to orbit... this is not that story.

I thought things were going better than before, only lost landing legs on one side, heat shield separated when I wanted it too, not to overloading a joint...

...but it didn't get far enough away, and my craft landed on top of it, and collapsed

Back on 3x kerbin, I tried my 2 stage reusable launch vehicle, reducing the size of its margins to get more payload to orbit, I was able to get a 3.8% payload fraction and 97.9% recovery... which isn't too bad, but gettin the 2nd stage deorbit right was a challenge... also in the test I ignored that I lost 3 of 6 airbrakes

Spoiler

Recovery screen of the first stage:

Recovery results:

Spoiler

Its actually got more payload capacity than my mk3 cargobay based rapier only SSTOs (not my twin boom payload fairing rapier and LV-N based heavy SSTO), and the overall payload fraction is starting to look similar - given that 1 ton of LFO fuel costs less than just LF, the fuel costs could end up being equal... the problem is  that 2.1% loss on the craft compared to 100% recovery of the winged horizontal landing SSTOs. I wonder if I shouldn't try a 2 stage winged VTHL design.

Back in career mode... not much, my Mun base relocated, and sent up the fuel tanker again, which started refueling the craft that are arriving there as a staging area before departing for the Rald-Duna-Ike system

 

[Damon]

2 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I had fun with flying and landing SpaceX rockets with @damonvv's great Tundra Exploration mod. A few screenshots below:

Oooh! Those are the best

[kurgut]

Finally! I managed adding the S0 truss the tothe KSS, by using integrated rcs systems, and to rotate it correctly, I added a rotatron just above the docking port to allow me rotate the whole truss. That's a great dicovery I've done, i'll use this trick with every docking port that needs a precise rotation adjustment.

The truss we added have a robotic rail on it, to allow the canadarm to moove things arround the station.

I also cleaned the station a bit, removed unused maneuvring modules, etc.

Next: We'll get this truss bigger! We'll add the S1 & 2 truss that have extra radiators, and finally the big huge awesome solar arrays at both trusses's ends.

Here just done

Then after "cleaning" a bit the station

We've got 6 permanent crew on it, with good life support: 4 scientists, 1 engineer, and 1 pilot. It generates lot of science that our exploration probes send directly to the station.

_________

I also landed my Messenger probe at Moho and let the "bus" stage in orbit for communication, to fulfill contract, get money, science, all those nice things!

Nuclear powered Bus stage  entering orbit.

The lander, well, landed.

The landing gear didn't get down due to have badly managed the signal delay (remote tech) which is quite important when around Moho, but it worked hopefully!

 

 

Edited July 5, 2018 by kurgut

[Zeiss Ikon]

I launched a Redstone based sounding rocket in my current RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career.  It's now 1957 in game, and we still haven't got a rocket that's capable of putting payload into orbit; we've also pretty nearly exhausted the science we can obtain with suborbital launches from Canaveral -- this is going to come to a head soon, I think, when the non-orbital contracts peter out; I'll either have to assemble some kind of monstrosity to put something the mass of a bowling ball into orbit, or I'll run out of money and have to close down the Program.

Meantime, however, there are still contracts, and there is still a little science data accessible with the technology we have.  A new addition to the stable is the Redstone:

Derived (in the background) from the A-4 rockets brought home at the end of the War, the alcohol/LOX Redstone is a robust and pretty reliable booster, albeit with limited payload and delta-V.  At present, it's being used to launch payloads that are too heavy or bulky to fly on an Aerobee derivative and need more push than the few remaining A-4 engines can provide.  This sounding rocket variant has second and third stages consisting of AJ10-27 hypergolic; another version had an actively guided fourth stage with hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thrusters as well as RCS -- which was an underwhelming performer (no kilonewton class monopropellant engines available yet), but at least was capable of stabilizing a payload.

The upper stages are spin stabilized, since the AJ10-27 lacks any sort of thrust vectoring and adding RCS would increase stage mass enough to seriously reduce dV.  I had hoped that this rocket might be able to push this or a similar payload far enough to get over the western USA, into the grasslands, desert, mountains, and taiga biomes that are so easy to reach from White Sands (which hasn't been developed in this save), but that's clearly not going to happen; the A-9 upgrade to the A-4 engine also trades off fuel capacity for payload (if you launch with full fuel, it can't push much payload off the pad).  Still working on it.

On another front, staving off the retirement of Jeb and Val (Bill and Bob managed to sneak out when I wasn't looking):

Contracts are available for higher altitude crewed suborbital missions, but the Winged A-4 can only barely pass 160 km, even with four of the small solid boosters used to launch an Aerobee (you can see the attachment points from the decouplers).

Fortunately, the tech researchers have been busy.

An upgrade of the A-4's engine, known as the A-9 version, runs on Hydyne (UDMH and diethylenetriamine) and LOX instead of Ethanol 75%; this provides about 12% more performance without melting the engine, as long as the mixture is correct.  Additional developments made while building this domestic version of the engine allow longer burn time, which lets the A-9 powered High Jumper lift off with full tanks and a 1.4+ TWR.  Deletion of the useless wings, improved fin design, replacement of the nose fins with HTP RCS thrusters -- on the first all-up flight, with a contract for 180 km on the line, High Jumper actually flew 312 km above sea level.  Jeb took almost 8 G just before MECO.

Jeb reported some wobbling, likely due to excessive pitch/yaw authority from the all-moving fins that can be tuned out for future flights.

Here we see High Jumper roundly 120 km above the contract altitude and still climbing pretty fast.

Cockpit ejection, with the rocket well started on the long fall back to the clouds and ocean.  Jeb has 100 L of HTP (high test peroxide) to feed those attitude jets on the nose, which are mainly intended to keep the blunt end of the cockpit, with its heat resistant interstage fairing, facing the Mach 10+ wind as the cockpit falls into the stratosphere.

For perspective, the distance down to that cloud layer is about the same as the distance from New York City to Providence, Rhode Island, or from London, England to Rouen, France.

 

 

[Agustin]

No images but...
Tried to do a Rescue mission in RSS, so it was first rendevouz in RealismOverhaul. Which is so much difficult than in stock. And instead of saving the kerbal, I went with Jebediah in a two-crew pod but couldn't rendevouz and went out of fuel. So now I have to save two kerbals.

[djr5899]

• Rescued 4 Kerbals in Kerbin orbit in my accelerated 1.4.4 career save.  Still have another 4 to rescue in Kerbin orbit, 2 in Mun orbit, and 1 or 2 in Minmus orbit.  FREE KERBALNAUTS!!!!!
• First manned missions to Mun and Minmus in accelerated career save.
• First successful docking of two craft in Xbox Enhanced Edition Sandbox save.  Going to stop with this one for awhile.....RCS is a pain on console.

This weekend, hoping to:

• Finish rescuing more stranded Kerbals.
• Get a large crew of Kerbals to head out of Kerbin SOI to gain experience.
• Send remaining crews to Mun and Minmus landing and return, so I can have a good half dozen or more Kerbals at level 3.
• Get a Science Lab in orbit around Kerbin.
• Start on satellite network delivery around Kerbin, with Mun and Minmus satellites to follow.

 

[aagun123]

 

[Atkara]

Inbetween science experiments processing and flight management, I found some time to get a couple of stranded Kerbonauts from LKO:

The scary taxiing after touchdown reminded me to give it a wider undercarriage arrangement for future flights.

Upon visiting Mission Control, Gene showed me this:

I had him send Vac-Co our full survey report on Eve instead -free of charge

[JoeNapalm]

 

Started a new sandbox game, and did my usual pre-sandbox routine...

1. Install KER

2. Install SCANSat

3. LAUNCH ALL THE SURVEY SATS!!

Next is comm sats.

 

-Jn-

[kurgut]

I do a little break with my KSS station, so I started building a carrier. For aircrafts, science, fun,  and with a planned attachment point for a submarine. It has a weight of 300t currently, propelled by 2 rapiers engines, have 5h of burn time and managed to go at 30 m/s! This is just the basic/testing design for the moment.

To be added: Structural panels on the sides, decorations, orientation control system, more decorations, submarine docking point, and decorations, again.

All those fuel tanks are for balancing the mass (most of them are empty). And the empty place at the middle for a submarine docking point (don't know how at the moment! )

Edited July 5, 2018 by kurgut

[kurgut]

Testing my platform and safety things now, don't work apparently, Valentina get caught!