What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

Didn't do a whole lot today - crashed my obsolescent Duna Transfer Vehicle into Mun to satisfy a contract (fly-by Duna, Ike & Minmus, then crash into Mun - contract reward offset the cost of the vehicle in the first place once I removed the RTG's & recovered them on Kerbin).  I also launched my second crew cycler to await an crewed mission to Jool in a few months - since I limit the frequency of launches based on launch mass I wanted to get one this up & ready while I don't have any pressing transfer windows coming up.

My main accomplishment was setting up a probe & relay for Bop - orbital mechanics smiled on me with this one & I got a Bop encounter near my Jool Pe with only a small (<50 m/s) course correction just after entering Jool's SoI.   Did a short burn to establish orbit (pictured) then staged off the lander & set it down on a some high ground before the relay got over the horizon.

I also had to adjust my Vall relay's orbit for a DMagic orbital science contract & got a nice shot of Jool with 3 moons just after switching to it:

 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

"A turkey, huh? OK, try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this "six foot turkey" as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex - he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two raptors you didn't even know were there." -Dr. Alan Grant

This thing really looks a lot cuter than it should...  

Anyways, because of the positive response, as you can see, I made yet another dinosaur. This one is Deinonychus, also known as Velociraptor antirrhopus. Not the same as Velociraptor mongoliensus, but indeed a relative. Get your raptor today!

 

In other news I tried landing at the island runway with some friends, but dmp said no and spawned a craft to shear my wings off.

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139
mongoliensus, not mongloiensus

[FezCool]

13 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I made a TSTO spaceplane inspired by a new startup aerospace company somewhere with an epic new approach to commercial flight and the domination of LKO. The small orbiter (manned or just a cargo dropper) is exclusively a rocket plane and is launched as horizontal as can be. It does not ride on the back of the lifter or in the middle of a souped up stratolauncher.

They separate near orbital velocity. The lifter safely lands somewhere. I don't need a stage recovery mod. The orbiter has enough TWR to secure a high Ap and fast before either craft leaves the physics bubble.

I did not go gentle/quiet into the night... But I could and did on the next try and landed intact.

  Reveal hidden contents

Changing the jet engine layout and adding some more Oxidizer granted the performance I was missing the first time, in which I struggled to gather speed and had to do an annoying nearly flat run the whole way, and used all the Oxidizer getting to Mach 5, and then fighting off asymmetric flameout in the J-92s in Shcramjet mode.

Both planes have great handling without needing forward fins.

Landed this, easy.

 

 

What's the company called?

[Triop]

Designed this:

now I need to get this to Woomerang somehow...

Edited August 9, 2018 by Triop

[JadeOfMaar]

2 hours ago, FezCool said:

What's the company called?

Exodus Aerospace.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Last night and this evening, in my 1.3.1 RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career, "Take Five":

I designed this career's first orbital launcher and its payload.

Determined not to make the mistake from the last couple careers, of trying to jump the gun and launch to orbit with alcohol-burning engines (which have relatively poor Isp, requiring very large rockets to provide the 9200+ m/s required to orbit Earth, after accounting for gravity and steering losses during launch), I stubbornly held out for kerolox.  Over the weekend, I unlocked the LR-79 kerolox engine, as well as the next step in hypergolic burners, the AJ10-37.  Both of these engines have gimbals, but a single engine booster requires something more for roll if it doesn't vector thrust with jet vanes like the A-4 and RD-100 series.  In this case, that the LR-101 vernier.  In the most common form, these have single-axis gimbal over 60-something degrees, allowing a small continuous-burning engine to provide roll control for a booster.

This stubby little thing (which masses just over 54 T on the pad) is Orbiter One.  One LR-79 and two LR-101s, three Tiny Tim boosters to give a thrust spike when the clamps open.  Second stage is a pair of AJ10-37, and has a nitrous oxide RCS system for ullage and after-burnout attitude control.  The third stage (inside the fairing) lacks roll control, with only one AJ10-37 (roll really isn't needed by that point).  Gravity losses are pretty high in the first minute of flight, but according to simulation, by the time enough fuel has burned off to give a 1.4 TWR, there's still 9200+ m/s, which is enough for a rocket with that TWR to launch from Canaveral to a polar orbit.

Construction and simulation testing was funded by accepting both "first artificial satellite" and "first solar powered satellite" contracts -- the Sputnik PS-1 core inside has four first-gen solar panels, which should produce just about enough power to keep the Sputnik operating indefinitely, possibly even recover slowly after science transmission depletes the battery.  In addition, there is a Geiger-Muller counter, an early TV camera, orbital perturbation experiment, and of course the telemetry analysis native to the Sputnik.

My main concern with this launcher is the reliability of the engines -- LR-79 and AJ10-27  are new to the program, and in simulation I had multiple failures (including an LR-79 that exploded at ignition).  R&D is working on the engines, and hopefully they'll be better by the time my 104 day construction period has elapsed.

[FezCool]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Exodus Aerospace.

Thanks!

[Cavscout74]

I got in an evening session today & started getting my second manned Duna mission into orbit of the red planet.

First in was a Lynx rover successfully landed in an ore-rich canyon.  My intent is to use it to scout a level landing area for the mining base that is following in a few days.

Next I got the PCC-01 Avalon (upper left) docked with the rest station in orbit.  Once the tanker arrives to refuel the lander, the crew will head down to the rover and mining base once it arrives.

Edited August 10, 2018 by Cavscout74

[qzgy]

3 hours ago, Triop said:

now I need to get this to Woomerang somehow...

Has a nice spot on top for a parachute it seems. Or some glider wings. Maybe airdrop?

[DunnoAnyThing]

On 8/8/2018 at 9:57 PM, XLjedi said:

At a bit of a loss here...  So what exactly does that entail?  

Did you do something to make certain upgrades work (different launch pads) in the old save?

Yup, plus the DLC.
I usually keep game versions up-to-date, but I had kept this (I don;t remember why. Somehow I forgot about it, and found out while sorting files on my PC.)

[SaturnianBlue]

Made progress on my space warship based partially off @MatterBeam's Martian Interceptor concept for the next chapter of Imagining a Kerbal Future.

The main problem I had at the beginning of the day was the serious tendency for the ship to shake itself apart, likely because of length of around 160 meters.

Here's the ship without fuel tanks or armor.

By the end of the day, I was able to put together a version of the interceptor that generally didn't shake itself apart, though it still does when reloading the ship without temporarily enabling cheats—however, it is now good enough for combat testing.

[Triop]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

Has a nice spot on top for a parachute it seems. Or some glider wings. Maybe airdrop?

Airdrop seems the the easiest way, I need to be on top of this mountain:

My new "tank" (not in this picture) won't fit a cargo bay so I need to design some kind a plane that can hold it on top/bottom or something like that.

Why do I allways have Minmus in my pictures ?

...And a radar dish, can you spot it ? ...

Edited August 10, 2018 by Triop

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

Making more progress in my new career save.

Went to Minmus.

The Minmus trip was the first time the mods I installed for this play-through really came into play, since that Mk1 Command Module doesn't have enough snacks on-board to keep Valentina fed for the whole trip to Minmus and back, so I had to put an extra container inside a service bay to keep her supplied.

The mission went smoothly otherwise, though, and netted me enough science to build my first space station, which I sent to the Mun.

My unfamiliarity with my newly-installed mods really reared its ugly head here, though, as I'd assumed that I'd be using the science lab to generate the necessary Snacks to keep my crew supplied, upon arrival I discovered that I'd need ore for that. I don't even have any ore containers unlocked yet, and mining is still a long way off, so that wouldn't be a possibility. Fortunately, the utility module I'd included had soil-recycling capabilities, but I didn't have any soil storage on the station. Good thing I design these things to be expandable.

Up went the first expansion part for Mun Station, including a Hitchhiker container (mainly for its soil storage) and a centrifuge module (for bone health, and also because it has its own soil recyclers that I can use to boost output.) I also made sure to pack a lot of extra fuel for this trip, since I had to deplete the fuel intended for my lander when I sent the initial station up.

With the new module attached, snack-production can commence. I'm not sure if it'll be enough to make the station completely self-sufficient but it should extend its lifespan between resupply missions considerably, and it taught me a lot of useful lessons that I can apply to my upcoming Minmus station.

I was also able to use the extra fuel to land on the Mun and collect enough data to almost completely fill my science lab.

Next stop, Minmus! After I've unlocked a HECS probe core, at least. I'd forgotten what an enormous pain it is to try to launch without prograde hold.

[CatastrophicFailure]

5 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

This stubby little thing (which masses just over 54 T on the pad) is Orbiter One.

Reminds me of the Black Arrow. 

Soooooo...

Speaking of weird game glitches, today I got this: 

Um... 

"C'mon, 'cmon!"

"She'll fly apart!"

"Fly her apart, then!"

"...Why am I yelling at myself?"

 

Oddly enough, she did not, in fact, fly apart, and managed to make it all the way from the Dessert Airfield to KSC, running on fumes. Tho it was markedly worse by then...

Managed to land safely... at about 5 FPS.  Parked next to some other planes and exited the game, curious if it'll just explode when I load it up again.

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Reminds me of the Black Arrow. 

I looked at the Gamma engines (the ones that propelled Black Arrow), but decided kerolox was a better choice.  I understand the decision behind using HTP as oxidizer for Black Knight and Black Arrow: installing a LOX production facility at Woomera would be a PITA (they ran on generators back in the 1970s, and liquid air distillation takes lots of power), but an oxidizer that's mostly water, even if it does decompose exothermically and (after catalyzation) ignite spontaneously with kerosene, does nothing good for your system Isp.  A little shot of TEATEB gives the LR-79 ignition characteristics like a hypergolic motor (SpaceX still uses TEATEB to ignite Falcon 9 engines -- a shortage of this ignition fluid was responsible for loss of the core booster from the first Falcon Heavy launch).

[Kronus_Aerospace]

On 8/9/2018 at 12:19 PM, purpleivan said:

Is the craft file available anywhere to take a look at? If not, is it possible to post some video at higher resolution than the GIF and preferably a bit longer too?

How about this. Just as @EvenFlow described the glitch seemingly resets upon reaching a certain altitude, in my case it is 200 meters. The change is so sudden as to rule out aerodynamic forces being the cause. The intensity of the glitching continously builds the longer one spends below the "reset" altitude for the glitch.

Also Lisa seems appropriately concerned for this situation. 

Edited August 10, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace

[purpleivan]

30 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

How about this. Just as @EvenFlow described the glitch seemingly resets upon reaching a certain altitude, in my case it is 200 meters. The change is so sudden as to rule out aerodynamic forces being the cause. The intensity of the glitching continously builds the longer one spends below the "reset" altitude for the glitch.

Also Lisa seems appropriately concerned for this situation. 

It's a wierd glitch and it does indeed cease very abruptly when the plane hits about 201m.

One thing I noticed is that the outline of the plane appears consistent during the glitching, so I'd be tempted to rule out movement of the parts being the cause. So if the parts aren't actually moving relative to each other, then that leaves sorting as the most likely culprit.

To me it still has the appearance of z-fighting, but for that to be the case, the z-buffer resolution would have to be very low (probably in the order of 50cm), to enable the fairing that makes up the fuselage, to appear in front of the Mk1 Crew cabins that form the windows. Which seems extremely low at this distance and certainly not what's normal in the game.

I'm curious about some of the visual artefacts that occur in the glitch. In the area ringed in red, are there any parts inside the fairing that have have dark rings around them, that could, if partially visible, create the short black lines?

One other thing I noticed is that when the glitch is not occuring, there does appear to be some less dramatic effects, which also has the appearance of z-fighting. This most pronounced as the dark/light shimering that occurs between the two rows of windows, from the front of the wing, back towards the tail.

 

[Kronus_Aerospace]

@purpleivan The artifact you're highlighting is the edge of a faring segment made visible by the glitch, it is dark simply because it is in shadow. fairings are segmented along their length as well, the brightly colored artifacts visible in the fairing are segment edges which are illuminated due to facing the sun. Said artifacts are also slightly yellow in color, which is the color of the inside surface of white fairings. for whatever reason the internals of the fairing are being drawn on top of the outside of the fairing, and only at the seams of the fairing segments.

As for the shimmering, I did not notice it while playing the game, but it is present in the gif. I'm not sure what is causing it, but again I did not notice it in the game itself. I can't say for certain if it has any connection to the other glitching observed.

[Mignear]

Finally got a build of the SV-262 from Macross Delta done, first attempt at it failed miserably and I set it aside to improve my building technique. Tackled it with the things I learned along the way, and of course the first use of autostrut for me.

[Cavscout74]

I manged to got the last two vessels coming to Duna this round into orbit.  First was the heavy fuel tanker, moving to dock with the crew rest station, lander & crew cycler:

Next came the ground base, which I haven't landed yet due to the target area being on the night side when I arrived & also not having scouted the area yet with my Lynx rover.  The landing could prove interesting because IIRC I didn't think to include any fixed antennas (just the 100G retractable dish in the picture) and the crew will be landing separately.

In the middle of the Duna arrivals, my Pol combo lander & relay arrived finally:

Lander nearing the surface:

Before logging off I had time for one final launch, lofting a Moho crew lander into orbit, using my Nexus reusable launcher for the first time in this career.   I need to make a few tweaks - first off the drogue chutes need some rework now that I have Realchute installed, and the separatrons in the nose of the radial boosters need some extra thrust & fuel (both were tweaked down).  On the plus  side, everything made it to orbit intact.  The Moho lander was modified from my Duna lander, and the new Universal Storage II made a big improvement to that, giving even more science experiments than the original carried.

Returning the Nexus core to KSC.  I haven't flown this one in a while and managed to burn off 3 of the speed brakes & overshot KSC by, well, a lot. Closer to the next peninsula to the east than KSC.  Still netted me a ~100k funds for recovery.   I may swap out the stock speed brakes for the titanium grid fins from Kerbal Reusability Expansion.

[AngrybobH]

1 hour ago, purpleivan said:

It's a wierd glitch and it does indeed cease very abruptly when the plane hits about 201m.

I have encountered either a similar glitch or the same glitch before with small vessels(not quite the same magnitude). The thing I have noticed about it is, once it happens I can 100% reproduce it by launching any vessel from the dessert airfield until I reboot my computer. Yeah, it seems to persist between playtimes if I do not reboot. I have also had it occur when landing near another vessel on Minmus(once physics range is reached and getting worse the closer to the ground I get). Quicksave and reload fixes the glitch when landed on Minmus but not all the time when near the dessert airfield. @Kronus_Aerospace I'd be interested in seeing if a quicksave/load affects the glitch below 200m with your plane.

[Triop]

Working on a water plane for this challenge:

It's going to be impossible, but I'll give it a try.

[Triop]

I'm done for today.

Cause: Panic attack.

EDIT: Some background info:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/174928-mountain-lake-landing-challenge/

Edited August 11, 2018 by Triop

[anoldtincan]

Eventful day today.

After more than 100 days in space, my first satellite in this save returned to Kerbin, after flybys of the Mun and Minmus. It actually survived reentry but plunged into the ocean because the antenna burned off, and without control I couldn't deploy the parachute. Oh well, that would have been a bonus.

I modified my Mongoose aircraft to fly much farther while staying under 30 parts, so I managed a long-haul survey contract, plus another ground survey along the way. This is the vista on the way out: just Kerbin's ocean, horizon to horizon, all the way around. Jeb ran out of fuel halfway back (with almost two hours of flight time) and had to land and wait for the recovery team.

I finished my comm network of 6 HEO sats in 8500x90 km orbits, two polar and four equatorial. No significant issues, except for the probe I had out at Minmus.

I sent up a SCANSat bird, with 2500 extra dV I hope to take to Minmus and the Mun. The Minmus scan is under contract so I'll probably head there first.

Development and testing continued for the first Kerbal to orbit, with a capsule I'm calling Porpoise,  with a new Hornbill rocket with SRBs and a Swivel engine swapped in for the first stage Reliant. Two simulations worked out the kinks and should launch in a month or so.

Finally, tragedy struck. Shortly after takeoff (pictured) I switched to map mode to try and activate navigation for the survey contract. I accidentally clicked warp to Ap since it was right on top of the waypoint, and Valentina's attitude turned and dove. I managed to cut the warp but by then Val was at a 30 degree dive at 150 m/s, only 200m off the deck. I cut the engines and tried to shallow it out but the fully loaded plane wasn't responsive enough. The first crash took the nose and wings, the cockpit bounced but exploded shortly after.

It was her third flight. She was posthumously awarded the Collision Ribbon and Inter Sidera. Since I'm playing hard mode, she's not coming back.

What have we learned? Set navigation aids before takeoff, or at least once we're at safe altitude.

[JadeOfMaar]

Craft designs and mission speculation today. I decided I wanted something that could go interplanetary, with life support, and grab and process asteroids. With OPT (excluding Legacy) and some TweakScale (no parts from other mods) I managed this. It was hard to legitimately bring to orbit (due to so much lift surface) but it was doable-- sadly that meant launch straight up until lift no longer mattered. Then let the Dark Drive handle the rest.

I decided that possibly it could take a crew to Thalia and back, but before that can happen I decided to build yet another perfectly symmetrical cross-shaped station and try to fit the dV in it to take itself to Thalia. It's got solar panels for daaaaaays. Not every station I design, I care to launch or assemble legally. To the Cheats menu for this one.

And lastly, some spaceplane and rescue craft fun. The design challenge for this was to make something that used forward-facing Quiztech Razor engines, and few Thor Tech jet engines, and could deliver a lot of LiquidFuel to the target. This, the original iteration had just one 2.5m reactor and could not break Mach 1, but could have gotten the job done. It was utterly abused by the drag cube system, as every part in the main fuselage was a different size at either end, and cargo shielding not working.

Ultimately it ended up with many engines and could break Mach 5 in spite of the drag, but I wasn't very happy anymore by then (mild frustration).

Well there's this amusing tendency to snap right here, every time, if it touched down too hard. The cargo bay is the root part. And it was a relief that while I couldn't use the claw to dock this plane to the one it was rescuing (claw is too high and the other plane has low elevation), WBI logistics performed flawlessly and wirelessly transferred fuel to it.