What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Crocket]

With every series of great achievements, there must come a tragedy. The great ship Artemis 2 was no exception. It was not the fault of the brave pilot, Lisley Kerman, nor was it the fault of the rovers her ship was carrying -- okay, it actually was the fault of the rovers. The stupid friggin' rovers.

Spoiler

Behold the Artemis 2, the largest ship the engineers at the KSC have ever built. And the stupidest-looking. Spaceship critics named the only success of the Artemis 2 as being looking vaguely like an arrow.

Because of the design of the rocket, Lisley could only begin her gravity turn at 9000 meters, otherwise the falling tanks would take her with them.

I mean, it does look kind of cool like this.

The cargo is revealed! Those two little tumors are the Psekas (yes, Psekas) Mun rovers, and they have the only solar panels on the ship.

A nice shot of the rovers doing the only thing they're good at.

Ditto, but Mun.

The good thing about this rocket is that it's so deliciously-overspecced. Lisley actually used the booster to land it.

Another good thing is that the anti-geeforce systems have been improved since the Artemis 1. This is at about 600 m/s.

Aaaand here come the stupid rovers.

You see, due to where each rover has stopped, we can determine the slope of the hill on two sides of the rocket, which doesn't help at all when we take off.

This is the Psekas 1 shortly after I had to manually tweak a bunch of options to get it to move and turn the right direction. It didn't even do that.

The Psekas 1 rolled and destroyed the majority of its useful parts when I tapped D going at 10 m/s. It destroyed itself shortly after.

The Psekas 2 wasn't much better. It had already rolled.

I figured out that the rovers handled better backwards than forwards, but that didn't stop them from blowing up.

Blissfully unaware of the fate of the Psekas rovers, Lisley lifted off from the surface. Sidenote: whatever engine that is, it's so awesome.

Lisley quickly realized that, even with her limited scientific ability, EVA reports were worth a lot of science.

When Lisley got a little cocky and tried to do an EVA report at 300 m/s, she got flung off the craft.

Fortunately, she remembered her chute.

Oh yeah, did I mention I did science?

Lisley was also carrying some science. All in all, not a total failure.

Okay, but seriously, I have never liked making rovers. They either never work right or get screwed up when I import them to the VAB. I'm really thinking about removing the rovers and fairing from the Artemis 2 and doing some good-old-fashioned biome hopping. I need to finish the 160s and get a couple 300s (namely Nuclear Propulsion and Field Science) before I even think about Duna.

[Triop]

Today, I did some slalom skiing.

Spoiler

 

Edited September 7, 2018 by Triop

[Cavscout74]

Due to the loss of the Laythe spaceplane & crew, the next crew waiting in orbit was stuck without a way down.  Therefore, I had them return to the DSEV-01 Arcterra & head home.  This crew had already landed on Vall twice, set up a small ground base & explored an anomaly so the mission wasn't a total loss.  Once Arcterra leaves Jool's SoI, it will be the first time the system is unmanned since the first crew arrived several years ago. 

Also due to the lost crew, the PCC-02 Brigand was no longer needed - it was one of the original model crew cyclers with power & life support shortcomings that were planned for scrapping as their missions ended.  Rather than send the empty ship back to Kerbin, the RTG's and a few other high cost items were stripped for use on Laythe Station, most of its liquid fuel & MP was transferred back to the station and it was sent to crash into Jool for disposal.

Back at Kerbin, the Pumera-Laythe 2 & 3 spaceplanes have departed Kerbin for the trip to Jool along with the next load of kerbals and a contract satellite for Laythe.  I also caught an asteroid that was passing close to Kerbin (about 32,000 km Pe with a near-polar inclination).  I've got it down to about a 5,000 km orbit, but ran out of fuel in my capture vehicle, so I'm waiting to process more ore before making further changes.

[Zosma Procyon]

On 9/4/2018 at 10:21 PM, Triop said:

Good night.

I could watch that for minutes.

[Triop]

4 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I could watch that for minutes.

You're welcome.

 

Edited September 7, 2018 by Triop

[Zosma Procyon]

3 minutes ago, Triop said:

You're welcome.

 

[Triop]

[Ajiko]

Test my new SSTO for roofs landing capabilities. Accidentally did it on Baikerbonur too, after descent from low orbit.

Have someone ever been on Baikerbonur VAB roof?

[Hotel26]

My new reconnaissance plane:Meteor...

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

270 m/s @ 7km (0.19 kal/sec) or 813 m/s @ 16km (0.42 kal/sec) with 1600 kal fuel on board. 

 

Edited September 7, 2018 by Hotel26

[capi3101]

Been continuing my early career shenanigans. Yesterday I fiddled around with Munshot 7, a low-tech craft designed to pull a flyby of Mun and do little else. I couldn't launch it due to the parts limitations of the Level 1 VAB. Since I had a contract to do an aerial temperature survey in the vicinity of KSC and I didn't have anything better landing gear wise than those crappy bush-plane gear parts, I decided Bob needed to roll around KSC to get some sweet sweet sci.

How I always manage doing this crap at night, I don't know...

Bob did get me a fair amount of science in the Scimobile - more than enough to get me the parts I needed - but for good measure I also went ahead and upgraded the Runway to Level 2. Jeb conducted a successful survey next aboard a Bad Idea 1a survey plane.

Next up was the launch of the Crapnik 7 Mun probe.

♫ Fly me to the Mun / and let me play among the stars... / tell me what the weather's like on / Jool and Duna... ♫. Naw, that doesn't rhyme...

Crapnik 7 completed the initial Mun exploration contracts, returning safely to Kerbin a used Materials Bay from high space over Mun. Funds from the mission were used to upgrade the VAB and SPH both to Level 2. I also did a couple of parts tests yesterday.

This morning, I started with the test of a small heat shield at the Launchpad, after which I had an Explore Kerbin contract to conduct a rendezvous. Jeb was launched to LKO aboard a Gurney 7 one-man orbital rescue craft, where he conducted a crew survey to fulfill a Kerbin orbital science contract. Val joined him shortly thereafter in an identical craft, and affected the rendezvous for contract.


Ghost Rider, this is Strike - we have unknown contact inbound, Mustang. Your vector zero-niner-zero for bogey.

With that contract fulfilled, the next exploration contract was to transfer crew from one craft to another. So I had Jeb and Val swap ships.

Val really doesn't want to know what Jeb did in the seat of his craft earlier...

At this point, I've got an Explore Mun contract to put a ship into Munar orbit and return to Kerbin, and both of the Gurneys should have enough delta-V to make it, so I'll probably be sending one of these two to Mun later on today.

[RoboRay]

I haven't progressed quite as quickly as I had hoped in my RSS/RP1 campaign, but I'm not quite falling behind yet on the historical schedule to reach manned orbital flights.  Right now, I'm still launching comm sats and weather sats for cash to upgrade KSC facilities and develop spacecraft hardware.

I'm using the satellite launches to flight-test my third generation orbital launch vehicle.  Yes, the first stage-and-a-half design does look a lot like Atlas.    I'm using LR79 booster engines, though, since I've gotten their reliability up pretty high on the previous flights, along with the LR105 sustainer in the middle.

I've done three manned suborbitals in an X-15 cockpit atop the first stage of my older single-engine launcher, and hope to have the reliability on this one maxed out when I've got a capsule that can handle reentry from orbital velocities built and crews trained.

Edited September 7, 2018 by RoboRay

[Zeiss Ikon]

Wow.  Everyone else gets close to the historical dates (despite 6-7 years later start than the 1944-1946 dates for WAC Corporal and captured A-4 launches), gets their facilities upgraded -- and I just go broke.  Again and again.

The last couple days, I launched three expensive failures before successfully completing my first weather sat contract.  The Bumper E1 -- RD-103 plus 4x Castor 1 at launch, most recently set in pairs at 70% and 40% thrust to keep TWR in better condition, reducing gravity losses, second RD-103 with shortened tank, then three stages with various numbers of AJ10-27 -- for the first attempt fully tumbled the second stage, resulting in a breakup in flight.  Then, on opening the game the first time next day, I mistook an old Bumper C2 in the build list for a current craft, and launch 680 units of sounding payload without a matching contract and on an orbital trajectory (with roundly 2000 m/s too little dV to make orbit).  A second Bumper E1 tumbled the second stage but recovered with just about enough dV still to make orbit, then one engine on the final AJ10-27 stage failed to ignite, spinning the stage like a multi-hundred-fund pinwheel.  Due to second stage instability and no easy fix (adding fins would require bigger base fins, cost a lot of launch weight, and eat enough dV to likely prevent orbit), I made the decision to hot stage, and the third Bumper E1, with the second stage ignited about 1.8 seconds before first stage MECO, stayed in line well enough to establish the required orbit (300 km minimum perigee, 0.005 maximum eccentricity, with 38 units of Weather Sat payload) -- but I was down to about 10,000  when it launched; too little to build and roll out another one (meaning an engine failure would likely have doomed the program).

Now, I need to upgrade my second pad, to have adequate launch capability during construction after I manage to raise the funds to upgrade the main pad to handle the 120+ T of the upcoming Bumper F1, capable of launching probes to Lunar flyby, impact, and possibly orbit.  I will likely use the advance for the first Lunar flyby contract for that upgrade, but I also need to upgrade Mission Control (in order to have maneuver planning, which hasn't been needed just for circularizing and deorbit), and with only Val remaining from the original four (the others have all retired over the latter half of 1961 and early 1962 -- I may be able to keep Val for a while longer, now that I can spare build time to launch another crewed suborbital flight for her), I'll need to hire more pilots, scientists, and engineers before I can fill out a crewed orbit and Lunar program.

As I figure it, I'll need something like 8,000,000 funds over the next 2-3 years to keep the program operating, and I don't see those contracts -- that's hundreds of sounding rockets, many tens of weathersats or comsats (if there are that many such contracts), and much more than all the uncrewed Lunar missions I can get paid for.

[RoboRay]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Wow.  Everyone else gets close to the historical dates 

I did say I'm not behind yet.     It is December 1960 and I already know I'm not going to get a manned orbital done in 1961.  I'm hoping for 1962, if nothing goes wrong.

If.

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

 -- RD-103 plus 4x Castor 1 at launch, most recently set in pairs at 70% and 40% thrust to keep TWR in better condition, reducing gravity losses, second RD-103 with shortened tank, then three stages with various numbers of AJ10-27 

Test Flight treated me harshly when I tried doing multiple engines on upper stages.  This go 'round, I strove to keep things simpler.  My first couple of satellites actually launched atop an A-4!

Well, it was upgraded to the A-9 configuration, and I had three Castors kick it off the pad and up to speed.  Second stage was an AJ10-27.  Third and fourth stages were Baby Sergeants, a triple then a single, in a slow roll for spin stabilization.

Edited September 7, 2018 by RoboRay

[Zeiss Ikon]

34 minutes ago, RoboRay said:

I did say I'm not behind yet.    I already know I'm not going to get a manned orbital done in 1961.  I'm hoping for 1962, if nothing goes wrong.

If.

Test Flight treated me harshly when I tried doing multiple engines on upper stages.  This go 'round, I strove to keep things simpler.  My first couple of satellites actually launched atop an A-4!

Well, it was upgraded to the A-9 configuration, and I had three Castors kick it off the pad and up to speed.  Second stage was an AJ10-27.  Third and fourth stages were Baby Sergeants, a triple then a single, in a slow roll for spin stabilization.

Okay, like the little brother of the Juno I, then -- hydyne/lox, but not as big an engine or as long a burn as the A-7 Redstone config.

I use the engines I do because they're got lots and lots of flight time on them.  My RD-103 has been launched thirty times or more, went past 10,000 du some time ago, and the AJ10-27 more so.  Of the four launches I described above, I had just two engine failures (one performance loss on an RD-103, one failure to ignite an AJ10-27) out of a total of 41 liquid fuel engines in the four vehicles.  I've had very bad results clustering RD-103 when they were still new in the program, so this career I didn't do that.  Bumper F1 has four RD-103 in the booster, but by now those are very experienced engines.  For upper stages one must never forget ullage, and RCS ullage seems to work better than little solid separation motors (for one thing, RCS seems immune to Test Flight).

I haven't used Baby Sergeants in a while.  I got the Altair kick motor before I had anything to launch Baby Sergeants on, but after using it a few times I discovered that a 2xAJ10-27 stage has significantly more dV when pushing the same payload.  The Juno II Baby Sergeant setup (11, 3, 1) has some impressive dV (about 5200 m/s when it's just pushing an 8 kg Explorer), but individually, until you unlock the upgrades, the Baby Sergeant isn't that impressive (or reliable).

[RoboRay]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

until you unlock the upgrades, the Baby Sergeant isn't that impressive (or reliable).

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of unguided orbital insertions, either.  But it looked like the quickest way for me to get something into orbit.  I only used the Baby Sergeants for those two launches (First Satellite, then Polar Satellite and Solar-Powered Satellite in one mission), then had the cash to move on to bigger and better things. 

Edited September 7, 2018 by RoboRay

[CatastrophicFailure]

StratoLaunch Mission 1
An AbsurdlyLong™ Post
Part 1

 

So finally, after much faffing about, I finally ran my actual StratoLaunch mission! The one that was supposed to be a single afternoon's distraction. Weeks ago. That I'm still doing. And thanks to FMRS, I flew every single part of it. Sigh

Anyways...

Everything's loaded up, full power, Captain!

Then promptly slam on the brakes cuz I realized there's no crew in the StratoLaunch craft itself. 
 

Spoiler

 

Thanks for the look of confidence, there, Bartfrid.
She's been right before...

 

All right, Take Two! 

Pilots Suke and Virlo aboard!

 

9000 meters, hit the Vectors, and pitch up!

 

Separation and ignition!

(Never get tired of this part)

 

Climbing out glamour shot...

 

Booster sep! And incredibly they didn't crash into each other and explode this time.

 

Then jump back to the boosters with FMRS...

Which, for some reason, deployed the drogues right away. Which actually worked out in my favor, since I forgot to engage the airbrakes before detaching the boosters. The drogues kept them slow enough for mains to deploy down low.

 

Two boosters safely in the drink!

 

Now jump back to the plane...

Don't even ask how long it took to actually turn the dang thing around...

 

Transsonic cruise back to KSC... so fast, in fact, that I got distracted doing something else and actually overshot.

 

Sooooo... turn the thing around again...

 

It handles exactly like you'd think it does. Coming in a little high over the threshold, not much room here...

 

Touchdown, reverse thrust, and we're safe on the ground!

 

We now return you to our regularly irregular mission, still in progress...

 

Rocket made orbit easily on the core stage, of course. Core stage separates, and with tons of spare fuel on board fires for de-orbit a half a rev later...

 

Suborbital, detach payload adapter. It's the only part of the whole setup that's not recovered.

 

Re-entry going... oddly well. This part was actually interesting, the core is nearly 10 tonnes overweight, and with its odd fuel tank arrangement (the square-ish saddle tanks are only LiquidFuel, the Oxidizer is in the nose and tailcone), I'm able to pump Oxidizer back and forth between the nose and tail to keep it perfectly balanced during entry. 

Never been able to pull that off before. As you can see, it only needs a tiny control input to maintain AoA.

 

Stability actually maintained all the way down to the "real" air. Just below Mach 1.5 here, firing the main engine mostly to burn off fuel (and weight,) the four Junos would have been more than enough boost to make KSC from here.

 

Almost there....

Allll... moooost.... theeeere...

 

Getting a little twitchy. The core is so well balanced at this point, it actually turns too well...

 

That's ok, that's ok, just keep skidding, we can fix--

 

Crap.

That's still ok, that'll buff--

 

Crap.

 

Just impacted on the surface...

 

Um... somebody go get a broom or something.

 

There, see? The engine section is alright. That's the most expensive part, right?

I hope Hadrie and Bartfrid are having better luck...

 

 

[Cavscout74]

My expansion to Laythe Station (now renamed Hadke Kerman Station) arrived & was docked successfully.  It added a small fusion reactor for extra power and a centrifuge.  Too bad there is no crew on board to enjoy it.

I also landed a fuel rover on Laythe.  The white speck in the background is the lancer ground base I was aiming for.  ~2km away, not too shabby.  I also underestimated the number/size of main chutes I would need - touchdown was over 12 m/s.  I'm surprised nothing broke

I also rotated another Duna crew back towards home. 

 

[Triop]

Getting closer to the South pole.

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Triop

[Fireheart318]

Remember that giant rocket I talked about the other day? Here's the finished version!

Jeb standing on one of the THE BEHEMOTH!!!'s landing legs with the Hummingbyrd STOL aircraft in the foreground.

It just got back from dropping some of a Minmus-bound space station in LKO. I forgot one docking port on it but it'll work.

Full disclosure - I DID move the rocket to the KSC using VesselMover, but I only landed in the shallow hills a few kilometers away.

 

Hummingbyrds are the sharks of the sky, THE BEHEMOTH!!!s are the spears of space... or something. idk.

 

I promise I did this on my first try. Also, you can see the Hummingbyrd exploding in the distance just above/behind the runway.

https://imgur.com/a/tJJYXbD

Edited September 8, 2018 by Fireheart318

[The Moose In Your House]

Made a new HMMWV (aka Humvee) and decided to come back to the KSP forums. 

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/OTcTgpi

If this gets a like I might post it to KerbalX tomorrow.

Edited September 8, 2018 by The Moose In Your House
Fixing Imgur link.

[Hotel26]

6 hours ago, The Moose In Your House said:

Made a new HMMWV

Factoid: Hotel26 was the code name of a HUMV in Iraq that centered in a controversy around a helicopter video released by Bradley Manning to Wikileaks.

I just picked the name at random...  not worth any further discussion (at least not in What Did You Do In KSP Today).

 

Meanwhile:

I've sent a "Kessler" mission up into orbit comprised of 3 Sparrow garbage scows (with Klaws) to clean out some orbital debris.  300 days into this career and, mercifully, not too much junk.

I'm playing under rules under which terrestrial debris sites cannot be recovered unless a manned expedition is first sent to the site.  Surviving Kerbals must be transported, not recovered.  It creates some extra exploration and also required at least two craft designed specifically for rescuing personnel (amphibious and conventional).

Usually I de-orbit garbage to below 22km so that it gets wiped automatically by KSP, but anything persistently in orbit has to be hunted the hard way.  For sub-orbital debris, riding one piece of a spent craft down qualifies the rest for elimination in the Tracking Center.  "It's the thought that counts", after all.  )

 

Update:

"House cleaning" is more satisfying than I thought it would be... 

Yeah, I've more or less settled on the "rule" being that if you ride a sub-orbital detritus down to impact, you can take out the whole swarm in the Tracking Station;
similarly, if you hunt down one orbital blot, e.g. Titan November Debris, then you get a license to take out the rest [with same name] in the Tracking Station.  You feel you've "earned it".

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Hotel26

[Mignear]

Did some work on an uncomplete large heavy aircraft.

I had to do the heat test.

 

[Stunkfish]

Well, this was not exactly all today, but today Jeb and his friends finally landed back on Kerbin,

after their first successfull landing on another planet! Yes, we did Duna for the first time!



...save landing back home...



As the window was there, 3 rockets actually went there and were able to setup the first relay network for Duna, as well as bringing a surface scanner that did polar Duna survey followed up by Ike. All seems ready for colonization on the next transfer window



Ah yes, and now my science is DONE!



Bank account is full enough with over 20 million, so I consider this the start of my "20 million career-mode-sandbox" game
Happy days to all of you as well

[NHunter]

Today, I did some pretty screenshots

1. Launching a rocket at Dusk

2. Kerbin is just beautiful! (A bit dark, though )

3. A lander about to begin its descend towards Duna's surface

1 hour ago, Stunkfish said:

Ah yes, and now my science is DONE! 

Congratulations!
 I'm still about 60k science away from completing my tech tree - I'm using CTT though...

[kurgut]

Presenting the Geminus-1: basically a mercury module, but with custom made retrograde section and adapter section, as in the Gemini spacecraft. So are improved: life support ( now 16 days instead of a few hours), electric charge, maneuvring, etc. mass: 2.260 kg.

Will be launched in Earth orbit by early Titan LV:

Then I smulated, and all stagging worked (didn't sxpected that because of the use of inverted interstages, which are hell sometimes in the VAB)

Just separated from Titan (the thing on top is avionics, just used in the simulation to be able to crontrol the spacecraft) :

Adapter section separation:

Then retrograde section firing:

Then detached, and Geminus is now ready to reenter the atmosphere