What did you do in KSP1 today?

[AngrybobH]

46 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I landed the creatively named "Duna Science Rover" (I know, i'm a creative genius)

All of my ships and stations share that same level of creativeness. Like 'Mun Station', 'Minmus rover 1', or 'High Altitude Plane 3'. A couple of posts back I posted my first helicopter. I bet you can't guess what its' name was.

[Zosma Procyon]

49 minutes ago, AngrybobH said:

All of my ships and stations share that same level of creativeness. Like 'Mun Station', 'Minmus rover 1', or 'High Altitude Plane 3'. A couple of posts back I posted my first helicopter. I bet you can't guess what its' name was.

Helicopter 1?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I like to take inspiration from (or just steal) names of ships in the Culture series of books. Here's a sampling:

"No More Mr Nice Guy"

"It's Character Forming"

"Ultimate Ship The Second"

"Sanctioned Parts List"

"Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory"

It's OK because SpaceX does it too. 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[KerikBalm]

4 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I'm going to bed.

Question: how much part autostrutting was used on that craft? So far that's the only thing I've found that correlates with that behavior.

4 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I landed the creatively named "Duna Science Rover" (I know, i'm a creative genius) near my "Arrakis Base" on Duna, to go get more science for the depleted labs. Science is a finite resource and it is getting harder to find.

That seems to have plenty of fuel capacity, why did you decouple the engines? You could save yourself a lot of roving by flying most of the way to new biomes and most of the way back.

I play on 3x, so I make sure that all my science gathering rovers are air mobile (though I tend to use a mk3 cargobay to move them rather than a skycrane, they still fly most of the way, then start roving)

[Sharpy]

6 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I'm going to bed.

 

Ah, our old friend Shaken Kraken. The reason I abandoned KSP some year or more ago. So I see it still happens....

[Adelaar]

So, yesterday I wrote how I got back into KSP after a two years hiatus, and had to pretty much start from scratch. Now that the relays are in orbit the position finetuned over time (I didn't exactly get the spacing right the first time...), I had time to rebuild a few rockets. With all the new parts, I spent my time building a new lander, which shouldn't be very costly (and mostly recoverable). The Bravo A lifting body is used, which is designed to lift up to 18.000 kg into orbit. The payload is 14.000kg, and with sufficient built in power, it should be able to do single runs to the Mun and Minmus until I have an orbital station up and running (which can be docked to this lander, too).

Here she is sitting on the platform, costing 116k, with a recoverable first stage and of course the lander itself (the capsule can detach itself from the lander, but to save costs I'd rather not). Half of the launch costs can be recovered, in theory.

The test flight went smoothly, so smoothly in fact that I decided not to waste resources and head for the Mun. Once there, I figured I'd do a few measurement contracts, which consisted out of temp readings above 9600m. I had to burn a good bit of fuel to readjust course three times, and after the third measurement I thought I could still pull off a landing and do three more measurements on the surface.

An hours flight passed by, and I landed right at the designated sight, took my measurements, and then noticed I ran into trouble... I'm nearly out of fuel.

Cr*p. However did I think I could make it back with 900dV in store, I think to myself?

So, I did the clever thing, spent an hour outfitting an Alfa D rocket with a refueling payload, equip it with KIS parts (JS-1 connectors, explosives) to be able to refuel, head to the mun, land next to the lander, use Bill to connect the ports and easy peasy.

But things are just not that easy, are they? Apparently, KIS changed the way fuel lines work, so the JS-1 can't just be used to attach fuel lines, you need the dispenser for that, and I didn't have that unlocked let alone equiped... So that plan failed, and 50k in resources spent in vain... So there's one option left: Use a tourist transport to land, retrieve Bill, Bob and Valentina, take two tourists with the transport to cover launch costs (114k minus recoverable parts), and bring two legacy parts to be able to pump fuel if necessary.

So there I went.

The rendevous went well, except for the part where I burnt through so much fuel that upon getting the rendevous and landing right, I had only 900dV of fuel left......

Cr*p.

FORTUNATELY

The fuel lines of the legacy parts worked! So Bill started pumping fuel from the refueling pod and the original lander (which I hoped to salvage)

After all things are done, the explosives are used to deconstruct the refueling pod, because to clean up your stuff, you have to break it into more stuff... Or whatever, I just like explosions.

With the cleanup done, everybody on board, experiments salvaged and 1200dV of fuel, Bill, Bob and Valentina are saved. Departure went smoothly, and an intercept with Kerbin was arranged. So there you have it folks, when you are doing a mission; make sure you bring enough fuel and know beforehand that your plans will work... This mishap just cost me 100k.

 

[kurgut]

(RSS/RO/Sandbox) Anomalies hunting #1: So, to explore those unknown Earth anomalies, finally kept the basic plane design (realism overhaul has noob VTOL engines).

Taked off, cap to North-East of Cape Canaveral:

This jet plane flyes very well, I'm happy with that Now travelling during 1h15m at mach 1.22:

Arrived, but nothing there... So decided to land at Wallops base, since it's closer to my location, and don't have enough fuel to come back to Cape Canaveral.

Buuut nothing there, didn't found the base, then I landed in somee landable grasslands:

Now, I'll send a submarine there, because obviously the thing seems to be underwater

Edited September 5, 2018 by kurgut

[RoboRay]

15 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

By NASA standards, the fact you were able to save that mission with RCS means your third stage and both second and third stage RCS were seriously over-provisioned.

Oh, they absolutely were.  I had been thinking about cutting the S2 and S3 RCS propellant by 80%, which should have still left a little extra in the tanks, but figured that I would wait for heavier payloads to force me to do it rather than screwing with a rocket design that worked.      The payload module is still mostly empty space at this point.

Edited September 5, 2018 by RoboRay

[Geonovast]

4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Question: how much part autostrutting was used on that craft? So far that's the only thing I've found that correlates with that behavior.

Nothing other than the ones you can't shut off (Landing Gear).

I do have KJR and World Stabilizer.  Although I have not seen anything even close to that happen since I got KJR, so I'm not sure what happened.

The real kicker is all my quicksaves from the previous hour were just gone, even the one I hit just before I started recording. 

 

[Hotel26]

I'm not much a rover guy but I finally decided my derivative of the stock Prospector was too slow and too damage-prone...

I'm pretty happy with the new model, dubbed Invader Surveyor. 

It features Oscar fuel tank, 4 fuel cells, PB-NUK, surface scanner, Okto/reaction wheel (of course), spotlight, dual docking (front/back), a Bon Voyage nav unit, twin chutes for air drop, plus jump seats for 8 troops Kerbals.  I can get two of these rovers into my Ursa military transport.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Hotel26

[kurgut]

4 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

I'm not much a rover guy but I finally decided my derivative of the stock Prospector was too slow and too damage-prone...

That's funny because I just built one too!  to explore Earth's easter eggs nuclear/solar powered, life support, 3 crew capacity (here 2 but I modified later):

With cargo deployable panel

Ready to go now!

Edited September 5, 2018 by kurgut

[Hotel26]

4 minutes ago, kurgut said:

Ready to go now!

Very nice job!  It's reminding me of an early Citroen some how...

[RoboRay]

15 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

I also need to get a better handle on MechJeb's ascent guidance and explore some of its other functions, since MechJeb is clearly pivotal to flying with minimal launch dV

I haven't even played around with PEG yet...  I'm still driving with pitch/yaw inputs into SmartASS SFC+.

I should try it out. 

[kurgut]

My first Realism Overhaul (and real solar system) Solar powered plane, Solarius-1 !!

Mass: 3.142 kg.      Nominal speed: 70 m/s.     Take off at 40m/s.   In cruise attitude with engines at 50%, battery charging should be ok!

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by kurgut

[kurgut]

(RSS/RO/Sandbox) Easter eggs hunting #2. Other attempt with an anomaly located North-West of Brazil. So I launched again my "Harriek" plane, from Kourou (Guyana) this time, since it was the closest launch site.

Take off!

Cap to target! I have 1h40 min to get there at warp x4 (was looong), at mach 1.24 to travel along 2.200 km !

Spoiler

Fiiiinally, arriving, I can see something..

But.. BUT... THAT'S THE ISLAND AIRFIELD!! IN BRAZIL!!

Let's land there and plant some flag

But landing was almost a catastrophe, but Sergei is safe hopefully

Now I understand why I failed my landing with such a weird ground

First Earth easter egg, found! Preparing for next who's in the south Africa desert.

Edited September 5, 2018 by kurgut

[Raptor42]

Today I built small rocket-powered plane which I named Kerberos*. It flies fairly well, landing it is another thing. Thanks to the Kraken being hidden in the landing gear it either bumps of the ground, or destroys the wings. I shall try atmospheric variant of this plane later today. I still dont know how I managed to align COM and COL so that the plane won't crash on the first try. And maximum acceleration is only around pleasnt 9Gs. Overall it is pretty good plane, however I didn't test stability on reentry, yet.

There are some parameters:

Liftoff speed: around 60m/s

Wingspan: 10.6m

Mass (without payload): 12 tons

Payload: small mk2 cargo bay

 

* the name is subject to change 

[kurgut]

(RSS/RO/Sandbox) Easter eggs hunting #3 Testing next mission! An anomaly was located in far South-East Africa, whereas our nearest launch site is in far North-West.., well, the opposite... Obviously, I can't do that with a imple jet plane. SO! The plan is to use this: the Kerbalovitch Krapov (name of its creator), model Cargo . The biggest airplane I built so far in Realism Overhaul

This plane will do the longest part on the travel, and few kilometers before the spoted anomaly, will release the exploration rover, hidden in its cargobay. Just a testflight here:

Take off at 80 m/s, payload capacity seems to be huge since it doesn't care of my 5.000 kg rover

Climbing at raisonable altitude and opening cargo bay..

GO!!! good bye Kerbalovitch!

Chutes deploying to stabilize and slow down the stuff:

Crew remote selfie during descent for the Kerb'newspapers:

Spoiler

Slowing again to ~3 m/s, I puted the chutes relative to the center of mass in the way the rover can land with the forward wheels first, with a safe angle of attack relative to the ground.

Almoost:

YEAH! Now ditch the chutes, and ready to explore

 

[kurgut]

So I just started a new topic for that because it definitively excit me a lot (imagin what I'll find on Mars/Venus, etc!). Also doing it in Sandbox game is cool to relax from RP-1 career, and do some Kerbal crazy stuff

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by kurgut

[Triop]

Pole2Pole, day 5.

It's been 7 hours and 15 days

It's been 5 days and some...Madness  sinead o conner Poor Jeb.

What was he thinking . . .

I really hope the little man makes it, and I'm not talking about the Hobbit . . .

[Zosma Procyon]

15 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

That seems to have plenty of fuel capacity, why did you decouple the engines? You could save yourself a lot of roving by flying most of the way to new biomes and most of the way back.

Because I didn't think of that when I was designing it. I've sent a second generation science rover to Tylo that maintains VTOL capability.

After gathering 44 pieces of data, at least half of which I expect to be worth processing, I'm driving my Duna Science Rover back to my base (Arrakis Base) in the middle of the South Eastern Basin.

[kurgut]

10 hours ago, RoboRay said:

I haven't even played around with PEG yet...  I'm still driving with pitch/yaw inputs into SmartASS SFC+.

I should try it out. 

Definitely, you should. it's absolutely a great tool for us, "Realism overhaul/RP-oners". Quite a lot of testing at the beginning to understand how it works, but then just watching the PEG program putting perfecly your rocket the desired orbit (even not circular like pe 200km, Ap 35.000km, with any inclination, and more) is a glorious feeling.  

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Today I decided to do some tinkering. It's still a work in progress.

Bonus points to those who can guess what this is.

 

[MisterKerman]

16 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

Today I decided to do some tinkering. It's still a work in progress.

Bonus points to those who can guess what this is.

 

?

[Kronus_Aerospace]

1 hour ago, MisterKerman said:

?

Not quite, but you're on the right track!

[MisterKerman]

Trebuchet?