What did you do in KSP1 today?

[kurgut]

20 minutes ago, AngrybobH said:

Scan sat adds some contracts and 3 or 4 parts. The parts give you scans of bodies that build maps of altitude, biomes, resources, and anomalies. Scans are done over time (like real life!) and are based on current orbit and the scans continue even the vessel is not active. The maps are quite cool and useful for picking out good landing spots or guiding ground based vehicles to new biomes. To me, scansat is essential as is its companion Orbital science.

Agreeee!

[KerikBalm]

Career mode, 3x SMA's and body radius, 1.25x atmosphere heights (some custom), 1.5x terrain heights, some custom planets and changes (mun to where minmus was, minmus to an orbit similar to dres')

My interplanetary vessel (with a working stock centrifuge) arrive at Mun for refueling: here it is during the capture burn

My duna spaceplane had also captured, and the Mun surface base's tanker went up to fuel it up, the docking looked awkward, but it worked:

A greenhouse and water drill module (and a submarine, but that's not for the mun surface base) also arrived at Mun

The mun surface base with the tanker gone and no greenhouse module:

Spoiler

So the mun dropship went up into orbit again:

It commenced loading the module, and taking it down to the surface:

Spoiler

The tug that brought the module is visible nearby during the deorbit burn

the assembled surface base:

and then linked to the dropship to refuel the dropship:

The fuel tanker still needs to come back, and I still havent picked up the science rovers (actually meant to significant distances, not just to link up to form bases) from the old base location... its in the dark now, it may be halfa Munth before I get them. There's also a 1 kerbal science lander 600 meters away

[Cavscout74]

1 hour ago, AngrybobH said:

The parts give you scans of bodies that build maps of altitude, biomes, resources, and anomalies. Scans are done over time (like real life!) and are based on current orbit and the scans continue even the vessel is not active. The maps are quite cool and useful for picking out good landing spots or guiding ground based vehicles to new biomes. To me, scansat is essential as is its companion Orbital science

Darn it, i have too many mods already - and I already have Orbital Science & Probes Plus (which adds Scansat parts too) - but you just make me want to add another. 

[CobaltShock]

Was testing/playing around with a space shuttle prototype (in Sandbox, not in my career).

 

Had an issue at 90,000 meters up (atmosphere starts at 98,000 in 3.2x), and the only thing I could do was an emergency landing in the ocean

I was actually pretty impressed of the plane's maneuverability. I got it to ~30 m/s over the water before it couldn't stay up any longer

But.. it the plane stayed in tact!

 

Onto Mk II (and yes, I am hoping this will have implications in the career save.)

[KerikBalm]

2 minutes ago, Steeeeve said:

But.. it the plane stayed in tact!

Mostly you mean... it looks like your engines fell off

[Atkara]

Space rocks, anyone?

Captured this big boy as it entered Kerbin's SOI, about half an hour ago. Still haven't fixed it's orbit (it came in retrograde on a 30 degrees inclination). Once done, I'll send it on a high orbit around the Mun to complete the contract that called for it. After that, I'll propably bring it down to Kerbin orbit -no reason keeping 850 tons of ore unused.

[CobaltShock]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Mostly you mean... it looks like your engines fell off

Oh yeah, mostly in tact. Wasn't a fan of those engines anyways, so they don't count 

 

In fact, the MK II used just Swivel engines for the plane, and a few other tweaks. It proved very successful! With 200 m/s to spare + the monopropellant while in orbit. I'd assume this could handle at least a 5 ton payload with no hassle.

I did bring a dummy payload. Pretty sure it weighs in at like 0.4 tons, but it doesn't have an antenna of any sorts. Good thing this is just sandbox

 

Second half of the flight

 

The probe was released during this same orbit, and I realized how cute it is

The little camera took a few photos, just to show that it could

After this, remaining fuel was used to get the ship as high up as it could (250,000 meters) before re-entry

 

Re-entry

Spoiler

Once at ~90,000 meters, the ship is put in a direction at which it can bleed off energy, while only partially exposing the cabin to the air stream.

At about 75,000 meters up, horizontal speed starts to lessen quite a bit.

Once entering the thicker part of the atmosphere, the plane wanted to flip retrograde. I think that this was due to just a little bit of fuel in the tanks, and so once flipped the engines were fired. Nothing broke luckily

Control was re-gained at around 30,000 meters after just a few high g experiences (topping out very temporarily at 8 g's). 

The rest of the descent was dedicated towards finding a relatively flat landing spot

Once found, I decided a nice target landing speed would be ~50 m/s.

Landing was at 55 m/s, and involved a ton of skips and hops off the surface.

After the final landing at ~20 m/s basically on its tail, and after a couple wings and an engine broke off..

The plane had landed.

Waiting for recovery

 

Edited July 6, 2018 by Steeeeve
2nd Half of flight

[kurgut]

Testing my flying gemini around, pretty stable in fact, just the landing is hard to manage. And then, the command part will go underwater to try docking with floating target.

Just need a launch vehicle now!

[Cavscout74]

I set up a 600 km satellite network so my unmanned launches finally stay in control in hard career.  Only 2.5M antennas but I was able to fit 3 commsats on a single Titan launcher & set up the network. 

And started adding to my roster with fresh victim...er...kerbonauts.   Sent up my chief (and only) engineer to clear up the abandoned debris after rendezvous with the first rescuee.  He got to enjoy a nice view while he worked

And everyone's favorite view at the end of the mission - 'chutes deploying.    @Angel-125 did a nice job on the IVA.

[RocketScientist]

4 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

And everyone's favorite view at the end of the mission - 'chutes deploying.    @Angel-125 did a nice job on the IVA.

 

It's even better if you have RPM and ASET Props & Avionics installed

[KomradeGaschenko]

I made a satellite using NSS Octosat.

Twas a good satellite.

R.I.P OrbComm 1 2018-2018

o7  You will be missed.

[Zeiss Ikon]

I spent most of my play time today trying to design an orbital launcher (in my current, third, RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career) with pre-1956 flight hardware.  So pre-1956, in fact, that the best engine I've got for the purpose appears to be the A-9, a (fictional) Hydyne variant of the 1936 design engine that powered the A-4 (aka V-2) missile.  Hydyne gives it more power compared to Ethanol 75, and upgrades to the engine itself permit a longer nominal burn time.

Unfortunately, if you need to loft a Sputnik, you need more than an A-9 and maximum burn time.  In fact, it seems you need ten or more of them in the first stage.

And if you have (as my Orbiter A does) nine A-9 engines (cluster of 5 in the core, plus four  strap-on boosters), the chances of getting through a 1:55 burn without a failure appear to be near zero -- in three simulations, I've had three failures, two of which affected directional control (in engines with 2 degrees of thrust vector) enough to kill the vehicle.  Even if everything works perfectly, this vehicle appears to be at least 1 km/s short of orbital velocity ( closer to 2 km/s after paying gravity and air drag taxes with cosine penalty added).  Worse, even after a 150,000 second launch pad upgrade, to 150 T capacity, the 170+ T vessel has to be rolled out with partially filled tanks and topped up on the pad (launch stabilizers in RO include fuel and electric supply to support a rocket that may have to stand on the pad waiting for a window).  The time that takes makes the simulation more expensive; so far, I've spent almost as much on launch simulations as the cost of the vehicle itself.

Bottom line, it's September 1958, I'm down to about 137,000, I have two pilots who'll retire in 1962 (and my scientist and engineer are long gone), and it'll be the end of 1964 before all the tech nodes I've already selected and paid the science points for are available to buy access to the parts in them.  It'll be the end of 1959 (or early 1960) before I can "for real" roll out my Orbiter A, which still won't actually orbit even a Sputnik (the Explorer I and Vanguard 1, which are lighter, are both in still-locked tech nodes, as are the Baby Sergeant kick motors).  The Go Fast aircraft I showed in my last post will be ready near mid-1959, along with one tech node that's about half done.  If I don't get more contracts I  can fly with that airplane and variants of High Jumper, I'll be done for this career -- there'll be nothing left but to wave goodbye to Jeb and Val and hope there's a little money left in the pot when all those tech nodes finish up.  One of them is three years all by itself, and they'll only get worse as the individual science cost goes up in higher tiers.

Seems to me the tech nodes, at least, ought to proceed in parallel: you don't have the same team working serially on Material, then on Rocket motors, then on Solid Rocket Motors; instead, you have a bunch of divisions, each working simultaneously on one of those things.  The people who figured out all the liquid fuel combinations we've used in the past sixty years weren't working on supersonic and then hypersonic aerodynamics, and the aerodynamics people weren't designing electronic guidance systems.

[kurgut]

15 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

I spent most of my play time today trying to design an orbital launcher (in my current, third, RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career) with pre-1956 flight hardware.

Aaaah the loong sounding rocket era, when restarting a career it's little bit annoying to redo all the stuff You have a pic of your rocket?

In my Rp-1 career, I'm used to make a low orbit launcher with what I can: first stage depending, then AJ-10, and aerobee at final stage. Then as soon as I can I switch to Titan launcher, because he can last until the apollo era, and it's very polyvalent,  and you can still use it after, that's a great rocket. I use it first with aj-10 upper stage (3rd), then with centaur  (2 RL-10)

Here a Titan II gvl (Aj-7 configuration, burning aerozine/NTO if I remember) launching the gemini 8.

2nd stage, LR 91 firing.

I remember in this save the rendez-vous was tricky. I launched with the right phase angle and inclination (because launched from Canaveral), so then my transfer to the target was only 5 m/s !

And here docked.

Edited July 7, 2018 by kurgut

[Zeiss Ikon]

@kurgut I'd love to have the option to fly a Titan of any generation.  I have the Redstone engine, but the A-9 (Hydyne upgrade of the A-4 engine that propelled the V-2 missile) has better performance (and doesn't come with the permanently attached fin can).  The only AJ10 I have is the AJ10-27,  a single ignition, non-steerable direct upgrade from the 1944 WAC Corporal engine (up to 20-something kN from the original 6.7 kN thrust, about double the burn time, and slightly higher Isp due to a change in fuel mix).  I'm using this for the third stage, because I have nothing between that and the A-4.  I'm using a single one, because ever kilo I add up top turns in to a tonne or more of engines, structure, and fuel at the bottom.

This is an early form of Orbiter A.  At present, the boosters have been moved a little lower, shortened (so they burn out before the core), and increased in count from two to four.  My dV with full tanks is just over 7000 -- but I need around 9500 to reliably make orbit.  The pad upgrade has gone through since this, but I'm still limited to 150 T, and the four-booster version is 170+ T wet (Juno I was just over 30 T with Explorer 1 and fifteen Baby Sergeants on top, but that was the Hydyne version of the Redstone engine, the A-7, and I only have the A-6 at present).

I think my main problems are low-tech tanks, and low-Isp engine/fuels combinations.  All I have is Tank I, which limits my mass ratio.  I don't even see Tank II or Tank III in the tech nodes before 1964 (which I won't be able to unlock before 1970, if I can even keep this going that long); the Default and Service Module type upgrades are coming up in the next node due to unlock, but they won't help the weight problem.  The best Isp I have is from Hydyne/LOX, the same mix that launched Juno I.

Robert A. Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo had leftover German military on the Moon, having gotten there with Lox/Ethanol rockets (similar, in handwaving principle, to the A-4 engine).  This was vaguely believable when I was ten and first read the book.  Now I know better, and I'm fairly sure Heinlein did, too (his protagonists got there, single stage for the round trip, in a nuclear thermal rocket using molten zinc as reaction mass).  The engine, fuel, and tank technology of the 1940s just wasn't up to even orbit, never mind the Moon.

[kurgut]

@Zeiss IkonYeah, Early games in RP-1 are tricky, I restarted many times before being satisfied. I concluded that the tech tree, at the beginning you have to focuss ONLY on the node you wan't so basically Engines and fuel tanks, and yes fuel tanks upgrades give you a great bonus of efficiency.

I also noticed that the tech tree is very, very well balanced comparison to real history. That means if you wan't to launch gemini spacecraft without the engines upgraded (other tech at the same era), it will laks you 200 m/s. So have to be patient, Or trying to find unhistorically solutions which is pretty funny also, but many times, you just can't, because you have to take an other engine, but then testflight will make your day a ruin!

Don't you have RD-100? it's a start unlock I think.

Edited July 7, 2018 by kurgut

[sumrex]

Well mounted a rescue mission as you can see in the first image it did not start well.  As for the rest of the day a rover just started morphing into a dragster with predictable results.

[Zeiss Ikon]

@kurgutI have the RD-100 (and RD-101, RD-102, and RD-103, though not the RD-103M yet); the first of those is, as the label says, just a "monkey copy" of the A-4 engine.  I looked at them when designing this, but it looked to me as if the A-9 upgraded engine, burning Hydyne, was better than any RD-100 derivative I have, which all burn ethanol and have similar burn times.  Okay, just looked again -- same Isp and much higher thrust with the RD-103 compared to the A-9.  I'll revisit Orbiter A tomorrow and see if the RD-103 will do better.

Edited July 7, 2018 by Zeiss Ikon

[qzgy]

On 7/5/2018 at 5:20 PM, Azimech said:

but can you cope with the philosophical implications? It would probably violate one of the rules of this forum :-P

Heh? I dont get it.......

 

[Remass]

I spent the day creating a set of four generic, relatively small launch vehicles for various specifications of 6.4 scale kerbin LKO (which takes ~7km/s to meet), to simplify construction when building light probes and the like.

Album a/K4zOiyW will appear when post is submitted

Edited July 7, 2018 by Remass
Attempting to rectify poorly understood imgur album link error.

[Azimech]

2 hours ago, qzgy said:

Heh? I dont get it.......

 

This might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

[FinalFan]

On 7/4/2018 at 8:24 AM, Hotel26 said:

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.

Not an SSTO?  Nonsense!  Single stage to orbit, but two stages to land.  It looks just dandy, too. 

[Hotel26]

22 minutes ago, FinalFan said:

Not an SSTO? ...  It looks just dandy, too. 

Thank you!  Well, you raise a technical question -- and I'm sure we'll get an answer in this forum!!  (Possibly, many answers!)

The picture depicts the NerfJet at the fore and the F.A.R.T. in the rear.  The NerfJet (which I love!, but it is so easy to underestimate), only has 4 NERV engines, so there is no way it can get to orbit by itself.  The F.A.R.T. can easily get to orbit alone but has no role there; it's purpose (thank you, @Brikoleur) is only to assist with the ascent to orbit.

Now, to complicate the picture, the combination of the two are capable of reaching a low, circular orbit together without shedding a stage.  So, in this view, you are technically correct, that the combination is an SSTO.  Interestingly, note that the F.A.R.T., in this case, cannot do the job alone as it needs to borrow oxidizer from the NerfJet to complete its duties.  Even then, there is not enough fuel to circularize, so at some stage the NerfJet's engines also kick in and wind up completing the orbital insertion solely on its own power, dragging the F.A.R.T. with it.

It is then a mandatory checklist item to have saved a small amount of oxidizer somewhere to pump back into the F.A.R.T. to enable it to de-orbit after separation.

Altogether a very complex and fun scenario!  The NerfJet is designed to operate in space in the local sphere of influence.  (I have not yet consulted KER about d/v for Duna, say.)  But in a pinch, it can be used to bring Kerbonauts home.  (Typically, I use my Peregrine SSTO for taking crew up and down to orbit.)

Add that NerfJet is not exactly "reusable" after returning home.

I would make the argument that since the NerfJet cannot make orbit alone, it's not an SSTO.  Clearly, the NerfJet/FART combination is.  But I think you have reason on your side, too.  I conclude I could have used better terminology(??).

In any case, with 4 NERV engines only, it's too easy to underestimate this package.  Yet I must love my own child, of course. 

Edited July 7, 2018 by Hotel26

[FinalFan]

4 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

Thank you!  Well, you raise a technical question -- and I'm sure we'll get an answer in this forum!!  (Possibly, many answers!)

The picture depicts the NerfJet at the fore and the F.A.R.T. in the rear.  The NerfJet (which I love!, but it is so easy to underestimate), only has 4 NERV engines, so there is no way it can get to orbit by itself.  The F.A.R.T. can easily get to orbit alone but has no role there; it's purpose (thank you, @Brikoleur) is only to assist with the ascent to orbit.

Now, to complicate the picture, the combination of the two are capable of reaching a low, circular orbit together without shedding a stage.  So, in this view, you are technically correct, that it is an SSTO.  Interestingly, note that the F.A.R.T., in this case, cannot do the job alone as it needs to borrow oxidizer from the NerfJet to complete its duties.  Even then, there is not enough fuel to circularize, so at some stage the NerfJet's engines also kick in and wind up completing the orbital insertion solely on its own power, dragging the F.A.R.T. with it.

It is then a mandatory checklist item to have saved a small amount of oxidizer somewhere to pump back into the F.A.R.T. to enable it to de-orbit after separation.

Altogether a very complex and fun scenario!  The NerfJet is designed to operate in space in the local sphere of influence.  (I have not yet consulted KER about d/v for Duna, say.)

Add that NerfJet is not exactly "reusable" after returning home.

I would make the argument that since the NerfJet cannot make orbit alone, it's not an SSTO.  Clearly, the NerfJet/FART combination is.  But I think you have reason on your side, too.  I conclude I could have used better terminology(??).

In any case, with 4 NERV engines only, it's too easy to underestimate this package.  Yet I must love my own child, of course. 

I see what you mean.  In my mind I was considering the "NerfJet" to be inclusive of the lifter stage (FART).  I'm usually more of a rocket guy and I don't often consider the launchpad stage a different vessel!  But I can definitely see the line of thought that considers the NerfJet to refer exclusively to the thing that is meant to stay in space. 

I don't think you necessarily have to change your phrasing to account for this, but if you choose to, I think that simply "NerfJet is not in and of itself an SSTO" or something like that would be more than clear enough. 

[Hotel26]

8 minutes ago, FinalFan said:

I'm usually more of a rocket guy and I don't often consider the launchpad stage a different vessel!

Yep!!

Well, note that I also have a NerfJet/Aquila combination for vertical launch.  Aquila is my standard lifter.  If I recall, Aquila can do the whole job to orbit and NerfJet is just passive payload in that scenario.  A rocket guy might decidedly prefer to launch standing up -- which then relieves you of the fun of bringing the ... you-know-what ... back to KSC.

Incidentally, I think that forward-assisting rear-mounted thruster likes to keep at least 150 m/s over the threshold, landing, so it's generally an exciting return and Bill has spilled his popcorn a couple of times already...

Edited July 7, 2018 by Hotel26

[CobaltShock]

Development for a larger shuttle is not going the best! Still would count this as successful (it landed with the help of emergency parachutes).