What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Zosma Procyon]

I destroyed the last of my pre-1.4 asteroid stations, from back when they used to get stuck inside their asteroids. I hyperedited it to Kerbin orbit to rescue the crew, and then deorbited it. Here are a few snaps. The outcome was unexpected to say the least.

Here you can see the problem.

While I am extremely grateful that this glitch was eventually fixed, it was a massive pain is the hind quarters while it lasted.

Fast forward to just before impact, it was still moving at over 200 m/s at this point. Notice the spot lights shining through the asteroid itself.

IMPACT. Some of the station exploded, but the rock is still there.

It bounced. I expected it to explode. 

The station shattered into about a hundred pieces, but the asteroid didn't. It just rolled a while and eventually came to a stop. I had all of the cheats turned off, but somehow this E Class asteroid survived impact with the planet's surface.

And here it is in daylight. I'm just going to leave it there.

[FinalFan]

9 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

The station shattered into about a hundred pieces, but the asteroid didn't. It just rolled a while and eventually came to a stop. I had all of the cheats turned off, but somehow this E Class asteroid survived impact with the planet's surface.

And here it is in daylight. I'm just going to leave it there.

Like a glacial erratic, only better.  I love it. 

[Randox]

I think I've made an intuition mistake getting back into interplanetary travel. I've decided its high time I used Kerbal Alarm Clock in conjunction with sending multi ship missions. But I've launched the ships in the order I had intended for them to arrive, starting a couple weeks ahead of the ideal launch window, and I'm pretty sure that's backwards (the last ship launched is going to arrive first). The arrival times are a bit difficult to make out though, so I'll have to double check that.

In any event, it looks like my first interplanetary mission in at least a year will consist of 3 transfers for 4 ships, unless more get added. The interplanetary relay launched first, followed by some spare fuel. The spare fuel is a novel design for me, so I'm interested to see how it does. The fuel tank is also carrying the relay bundle for Duna's moon, and I think I have a moon intercept on the way in, which works out perfectly.

There is a manned mission bringing up the rear...or possibly the lead. Jumping right in with a manned landing doesn't feel quite right though, so I think an automated test landing is going to get added to the roster on a fourth launch.

 

I also noticed I'm a bit past the ideal Jool window, so I'm sending up another interplanetary relay set to try and take advantage of that. I don't think I've ever been to Jool before. I think the relays might been a bit of reworking to get a bit more dV into the relays themselves. I should probably send some of the ion powered minor relays too.

I should have a veritable fleet of ships by the end of the day at this rate.

[michal.don]

Engineering mode on.

Decided to take on this:

and it's so awesome you should try it too

Given the difficulty and size of the project, I decided to properly plan the thing for a change.

Such a long way to go....

Michal.don

 

P.S. for those interested, a it more detail about the mission and payloads here:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/176774-my-take-on-the-duna-outpost-mission-architecture-challenge/

 

[Hotel26]

My final revision of Escort sporting the landing "legs" that enable it to land in lo-grav and take on full fuel has arrived at the Mun and has made 2 and a half fuel trips to the surface.

And I've assembled a small collection of Escorts now at lunar station MX1.  I have another two out at Munar Park which is in munar orbit at an altitude of 2,000 kms.

Duna Beach Head Charlie is enroute for Munar Park now and will be my first Escort-assisted launch from the Mun (via an Oberth dive on Kerbin).

At this stage, I am starting to worry that the rendez-vous penalty (days waiting) for such a high-altitude, long orbital period base is going to be problematic for some operations.

[Well.  Just an excuse for some pics.]

Edited July 18, 2018 by Hotel26

[MisterKerman]

Working on my new Mun lander. If I can afford it to be a hopper, that's great. If I have to rendezvous each landing, I don't mind that either. It's similar to my other design but a little more compact. I wish I knew how to build even smaller. I'm so bad at everything that isn't brute force.

Edited July 18, 2018 by MisterKerman

[AngrybobH]

15 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I'm developing another fancy suspension-equipped vehicle. On the hunt for the elusive stable front suspension, I've landed on the… disappointingly simplistic "pogo stick" species

That pogo stick suspension would be awful in real life...no caster, flat camber curve, and no resistance to rearward drag, it would be all over the road and unpredictable. The swing arm looks good though. I would make the suggestion to copy FoMoCo's twin I-beam suspension for the front. It is basically two swing arms and a radius arm on each side. You probably don't need the radius arms in KSP.

[Servo]

Jeb, Bill, and Bob splashed down near the crater lake on the other side of Kerbin after a moon mission, and the normal rescue ship was out of order. So it was up to Val to rescue them.

KSC's second best engineers (the best ones were busy working on a small submarine for some reason) cobbled together this majestic craft - the Loon 3 - after a couple unsuccessful experiments with seaplanes. Not one to wait, Val took off before they could properly test the loading method and how they were going to get the crew back into the plane.

The Loon 3 was remarkably stable, even at 4x time warp with SAS off (with a little bit of trim), and I gave myself the added challenge of making the flight in IVA mode. 

I overshot the landing site by about 2km, but the Loon met up with the capsule exactly two hours into the mission. Bill, Bob, and Jeb were quickly hauled aboard, and their capsule was stowed in the cargo bay for a return home. Luckily (or unluckily) for Val, she'll have people to talk to on the return flight.

Meanwhile, there have been reports of what local radar operators described as "a strange, basketball-sized object" flying around KSC.

[Zaphod12]

Made a Dream Chaser-style spaceplane, piloted by none other than Jeb himself, that I launched into a polar orbit on a Tantares Proton rocket.

Everything went well, until it began to rapidly spin during re-entry. Despite this, the plane survived re-entry and safely landed on the northern polar ice cap.

[0111narwhalz]

1 hour ago, AngrybobH said:

That pogo stick suspension would be awful in real life...no caster, flat camber curve, and no resistance to rearward drag, it would be all over the road and unpredictable. The swing arm looks good though. I would make the suggestion to copy FoMoCo's twin I-beam suspension for the front. It is basically two swing arms and a radius arm on each side. You probably don't need the radius arms in KSP.

Yeah, it has issues. But leading arms don't work well at all (and have weird tracking artifacts if you put them on both front and back), solid axle has most of the same problems as leading arm, MacPherson is decent but has poor travel (at least in my implementation), and I haven't been able to figure out the geometry for stable A-arm since an early (and huge) prototype a few months ago.

I'll take a look at FoMoCo, though.

[MisterKerman]

8 hours ago, michal.don said:

 

Such a long way to go....

Maaaaaaan. You make cool stuff. 3:

[Castille7]

I put a Lighthouse on an Island today!

Edited July 19, 2018 by Castille7

[JadeOfMaar]

(Mostly WBI) interplanetary station design again. Codename "Triton." This one has regards for life support (Snacks! is installed) and is entirely meant to pull a lander at least 3.75m wide. I'm usually concerned with anything with crew space being in the way of an engine's exhaust but I don't think that applies to OPT Dark Drive (judging by its plume, anyway)

Solar panels and centrifuges deployed...

 

Codename "Triton Inverse" due to the engine placement change. They could do with more "spread." This design is meant to be a puller and a pusher but now, it gets hairy having something big behind the engines.

Solar panels deployed. Additionally, I tested a different sort of engines on it. They're much better but much more costly to use. It's actually dangerous to have things behind the ones blowing red smoke.

 

 

 

[Zosma Procyon]

I built a new design for an asteroid station, but I don't think it has enough ore capacity. What do you think?

[JadeOfMaar]

18 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I built a new design for an asteroid station, but I don't think it has enough ore capacity. What do you think?

This is very nice but I wonder if there's enough asteroid to fill those tanks with.  

[Lilithvia]

Testing and modding a new part for Azerite Systems.

[Lisias]

Well… I made a Blimp for a MEDEVAC mission. And it happens that the thing was good, so I tried it into Research missions.

But I forgot to add long range antennas, and so I could not transmit the Science (I'm using Remote Tech). Bleh.

Ok, let's launch another customized blimp with long range antennas, so it can relay the data, all I have to do is to be near enough the research blimp so that puny antennas can work. Obviously, I choose to made this Relay Blimp a drone - I don't have Kerbals to spare on such things.

However… I forgot to setup the long range antennas - so the Drone Blimp became stranded in the middle of the Ocean. #facepalm At least I could splash her in order to exchange vessels and figure out what to do. Sounds like a exploit to me, but hell - the game allowed.

Sending yet another blimp to rescue the rescue ship  was considered, but at ~150K  each blimp, I would have almost half million  committed on a single mission, and besides KSP don't simulating interests on the Funds, I handle it as it does. The less worst approach would be to recall the research team rescuing the Drone in the way home - it is the cheaper option, as I would also rework the Research Blimp and forget that Blimp Relay stunt. The Science will still be there.

But the Research Blimp already had spent most of her fuel, and the electrical engines are dependent of Sun light to work, so in order to minimize the loss due the opportunity costs of having expensive hardware stranded and in role deviation, I need to travel by night using the remaining fuel until dawn, when then electrical engines could assume the thrust. I calculated that by traveling at 40m/s constantly I would have enough fuel to travel the whole night and still have intact that 10% emergency reserve I stipulated for my vessels.

It would be a no brainer except… That Atmospheric Autopilot and MechJeb don't handle blimps correctly. 

AA handles throttle beautifully, but just don't cope with attitude - it simply don't roll, pitch or yaw the blimp. MechJeb handles the attitude beautifully, but can't manage the throttle. And you can't have both active at the same time, as they stomps on each other's feet. DAMN.

The Relay Blimp had kOS processors, but she was stranded. The Research Blimp don't have such things (why would? She's kerballed…). So kRPC came to the rescue: I spend a good amount of time coding an AutoThrottle in Python and it worked. Well, sort of. It's a heck of an AutoThrottle, but it manages to keep the vessel near the target speed. It's good enough for the job.

I'm near the stranded blimp now. I suspect that Bob will curse a lot when he realizes that HE is going to EVA from one blimp to another in order to setup the Relay antennas.  

[Klapaucius]

I finished this monstrosity and uploaded it to KerbalX, proving you can make anything fly with enough determination.

[Zaphod12]

I made a Delta 1000 ripoff using Bluedog Design Bureau and Tantares today, discovering it is perfect for keostationary communication satellites.

[Zosma Procyon]

10 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

This is very nice but I wonder if there's enough asteroid to fill those tanks with.  

I have a few E class rocks lined up.

[JadeOfMaar]

The stations I built from DSEV parts weren't all that I built. When I decided I wanted one that doesn't move (except for being launched from a foreign planet or its moon) I looked for dome parts that could serve as (or near) the root part and this happened.

Inspired by Kryptonian weapons of mass destruction colonization systems. It contains just OPT, Pathfinder and CryoTanks... (Well, and some ZZZ spheres).

But I can't launch this with Pathfinder's Hogan attached. I've discovered a bug or more in it, serious enough that the only answer is to remove the Hogan.

Those 6 reaction wheels down there are powerless. It would be dumb to have them enabled.

Edited July 19, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[Cavscout74]

I've spent the last few days restarting a hard career after my last one was aborted due to glitches.  Finally getting some good stuff unlocked & starting to make some progress.

Jeb makes a "good" landing in the mountains to investigate an anomaly:

Spoiler

Jeb & Kelrik make the first manned Mun landing and quite appropriately for this week find a monument (blurred) in the distance:

Heading back home on four pillars of fire.  I jettisoned the 4 engines & gear once I was close to circularized & came the rest of the way home on the central Terrier.

 

[MisterKerman]

Officially deciding I'm buying that making history pack after noticing just how cool the parts are... I thought I bought KSP early enough for a free download but that happened not to be true so I put it off until now.

Edited July 20, 2018 by MisterKerman

[Randox]

Almost a year to the day my space program started (3 days late), my first two interplanetary launches of the save arrived in Duna SOI only an hour apart (despite being launched 4 days apart). First to arrive was the only crewed interplanetary vessel I currently have running, with the spare fuel only a few hundred km behind. Both ships have beaten the interplanetary relay that I had hopped would be in place before anyone else arrived, but Kerbin is close enough for both ships to make direct contact, and the relay has been boosting the signal a lot anyway.

The fuel tank was carrying a set of local relays for Ike, and their carrier was supposed to be the first vehicle to make an interplanetary landing, but I accidentally wasted all the fuel making my orbit fancy.

I completed what I think is my first ever interplanetary docking, in any save. The Duna landing wont happen until tomorrow, but I got the ship fuelled up before getting off. I went way too high for an aerobrake, causing the orbital engine to run out of fuel before I could dock, so I've lost the heat shield I was supposed to have during my descent so I could use the landing engine.

I'm sure the Space Program big wigs back on Kerbin are doing their best to assure investors (or whoever pays for my rockets) that these are only minor setbacks, and as long as the manned landing goes off without a hit, I'm sure these snafus will be forgotten. No pressure.

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Today I decided to mess around some.

First I decided to make a Sukhoi style fighter craft. It ended up having excellent low speed performance and good aesthetics, all in under 100 parts. I'm probably gonna post it at some point.

Secondly, I started working on what is perhaps the weirdest craft concept I have yet concieved. I plan for it to be a surface payload delivery system for Laythe. It would launch like a shuttle, make it's way to the surface, deliver the payload, and then ascend back into orbit (To rendezvous with a tank or something that it brought along with it in order to get home). 

Rather than being an SSTO the shuttle has whiplash boosters which accelerate it to over 1200 m/s, then detach

The craft is easily capable of reaching LKO, and would probably have decent payload capabilities if used in that fashion.

I'm unsure how practical this whole system will be, but I love it nonetheless.

Edited July 20, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace