What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Lisias]

Well… I wrote a short-history about a Shuttle that had to go to Mun and then back.

It sounded marvelous on the paper, but now I have to make the thing really go there in order to add some pictures to the text.

Guess what? Easier to write than to do the stunt.  As usual.

Right now, I'm happy when this thing reaches a stable orbit.

(considering rewriting the short-history and flagrantly republish it as nothing had happened…  )

Edited September 24, 2018 by Lisias
tyops. lots of tyops. =D

[NHunter]

Today I've visited a certain mini-moon.

And landed on it (something that required a bit of tinkering with engines as they are normally a bit too powerful for a low-gravity world like Gilly)

And then I took a look at remaining dV and decided to visit the other two biomes as well, landing near a green obelisk along the way just for the heck of it.

That said, I'll probably need to tinker with my save file to unlearn a few nodes: I'm not only 15k science away from transcending into "sandbox with limited money and unleveled kerbals" game mode. Or I can just set science modifier to 10% and see what happens...

[Triop]

Testing my new buggy for my upcoming KSC2TEMPLE adventure.

[kurgut]

I just made a flying wing RO airplane! Well inspired by the beautiful Horten ho 229 (known as "Gotha Go"), WWII german prototype fighter.

So basically, the hell thing about this, is that there's no one single vertical stuff to control yaw... Then, yaw control is achieved by having the main wings a bit rotated up, so they provide more slideway control.

Here it is (after some hours crashing/testing it), and was first succesful, nominal testflight:

Take off at 60 m/s

Gear retracted, flaps neutral, now fly!!

It can now even handles some "fighter alike" brutal maneuvers

We don't have weapons stuff, so, well, let's land!

Almost sweetly landed:

This is maybe the 1457th testflight pilot on this project, and the first to come from it alive, sure he can be happy!!

 

Edited September 24, 2018 by kurgut

[RoboRay]

Now that I've set down a couple of lander probes on the lunar maria, I'm going to send a few into rougher terrain and reserve the safer flat-lands science for the manned missions I hope to be doing in a few years.

I added a second TD-339 engine to double my (previously abysmal) TWR, and a little extra propellant to compensate for the added mass.  And an extra avionics module to control it.  And some more propellant for that mass.

Man, realistic spacecraft design really is all about mass.

The higher thrust let me fly a much more aggressive descent.  It's still a constant-height approach, but limiting my sink rate required a lot less pitch with the extra engine pushing.

Kicking up some dust...

I landed with 400 m/sec of Δv remaining, where previously I was on vapors at touchdown.  Not having to thrust so far off-axis to hold altitude really improved the burn efficiency.

This was the last mission for this iteration of the launch vehicle.  A lengthened first stage with the S1B variant of the H-1 engines will carry my future planned missions.

Other improvements include a lengthened second stage with the LR91-AJ-9, and an AJ10-118E installed on the optional third stage for kicking probes to the moon or satellites up to GSO.

There's also some new paint.  If you'd like to try out the textures I've been putting together for Procedural Parts, you can download the pack at SpaceDock.  There's no original artwork there... I'm just recoloring and mixing elements of the default Procedural Parts textures as well as some from other texture packs that have permissive licenses.  Here's what I've got so far...

 

[Lisias]

Well, I decided to bite the bullet, and gived the Shuttle a try:

 

She was terrible unstable on the ascent, but I realized that the problem was, in fact, on the lack of control surfaces! Only the Shuttle's tail ruder was not enough, I added two Rudder Fins on the other side of the "main boosters" and things gone sensibly better:

 

I decided to "hide" the following pictures to avoid cluttering the page! 

Spoiler

Here, another view, after the secondary boosters' separation. I added an extra Vector as a counter-part in order to allow the Shuttle to thrust more or less straight ahead. I need to further trim the auxiliary Vector, however - I'm wasting some monopropellant trying to keep the bearing while thrusting:

 

After the "main boosters" separation. I switched off two Vectors from the Shuttle to keep thrusting balanced. Still some work to do, but it's already manageable:

 

View from below. (I need to remember to balance the fuel tanks too…)

And… SUCCESS. An (almost) nice orbit around Kerbin, with a decent amount of fuel on the external tanks!  

 

Now, MechJeb to the rescue: I want to go to the Mun:

Spoiler

 

 

And SUCCESS. Thanks, MechJeb, I would not be able to do that without your help!  

I think I have enough fuel to do some orbital manoeuvres (she needs to find and dock into a Station before going home, it's a rescue mission, right?) and burn back home. But this is a story for another day!  

Edited September 24, 2018 by Lisias
tyops. what else? :D

[kurgut]

RO drone military plane!! Testflight!

After had taken off at 67 m/s, now climbing a bit, retracting gear/flaps.

Maneuver to put us in the direction of the target...

which is....

...the VAB

Let's scrap this space program !

Missiles armed? check. FIRE!!!!!

(baby sergeant solid boosters+fins+nose cone, it's unguided)

The 3 seconds journey of the missiles from the drone to their target:

Spoiler

Accelerating in 2 seconds, from 150 m/s to 900... !! (time warp x0.1 to manage to take some screenshots )

Almost, and...

Boom.

 

 

Mission complete: time to land:

Nicely coming down above the runway ( funny that's maybe the most stable/maneuvrable plane I ever designed in RO, which such a weird design haha)

And finally, landed waiting for others stuff to scrap for next missions!

 

[capi3101]

A fair chunk of my weekend was spent getting a satellite constellation set up in Kerbin's SOI. Rather than a general purpose all-in-one probe design (the White Noise 7) like I've used in the past, this time around I decided to go with a specialized relay satellite/carrier design, which I dubbed the Pink Noise 7:

Pink Noise 7 over Kerbin en route to the release point.

I designed the craft to haul three comm sats into orbit at once; the central probe would fly the other two up to a reference orbit and then release the other two. One of those would go into a lower orbit for a single pass and the other would go into a higher one, setting up a simple triangle configuration after one orbit. Each individual probe had two set of solar panels; while en route, the side probes would have their outboard panels deployed while the others remained stowed. Only after separation would all three probes fully deploy their panels. The side probes use Ant engines and have more than enough fuel to get them into their final positions.

The designed worked beautifully - at this point, I have constellations up in polar orbits over Mun and Minmus, polar and equatorial sets at Kerbin, and another set still en route into a very high equatorial orbit (past Minmus) over Kerbin; it should arrive in another 9 days or so.

Other things that happened last Friday included the successful return of Jeb and his Auk I spaceplane to KSC after a mission to rescue engineer Philmal Kerman from LKO, the launch of a Boop Boop 7 probe to Minmus for a contract, and another flight of a Fireball 7e science lander to Mun with scientist Antrey Kerman at the helm. Antrey hit the Canyons and Farside Crater before returning to Kerbin, bringing back 868 science for her efforts. It wasn't a great chunk of sci, but it did unlock gravioli detectors for me - which I added to the Fireball 7e design, and then launched Bob back out to Minmus to finish cleaning the place out of available sci. He'll arrive in seven days.

After taking a break from the game on Saturday, I did an Auk XIII flight to LKO to rescue scientist Seeford Kerman; I forgot that the Auk XIII isn't really set up for rescue missions. It can do the job; it just doesn't have a lot of its cockpit ladder exposed for easy grasping. Seeford was rescued successfully. With over half of my current contracts tied up in Munbound and Minmusbound tourist contracts, and in need of cash, I decided to go ahead and launch my first Superfortress 7 8-passenger ferry craft of this career save with Jeb at the helm. Tourists Dunile, Patner Herwise, Geneny, Tanrey, Sidsted, Daphrim and Sipont Kerman were loaded aboard the craft with Jeb and sent on a tour into Munar orbit. Jeb returned the craft safely to Kerbin's orbit and an Exxon Valdez 7 tanker craft was to try and refuel the Superfortress, a job it did reasonably well although it failed to completely top off Jeb's tanks. After the Valdez undocked and deorbited, an Auk II 8-passenger spaceplane was sent up to retrieve Jeb's passengers, bringing them safely back to KSC 09. As per my tradition, upon the return of the passengers, Jeb's craft was dubbed Strange Cargo - I think this is the third time I've given a Superfortress craft that name now...

Earlier this morning I flew an Auk III tanker spaceplane to orbit and had Strange Cargo rendezvous with it to finish refueling efforts, and an Auk XII 6-passenger craft was readied to bring up the next Munbound tour group. Strange Cargo has topped off and is moving off from the plane at the moment, and the Auk XII flight will likely commence later this morning.

[Cavscout74]

My first round of interplanetary probes arrived at Moho & Duna in my current career.

Moho Pioneer shortly after establishing orbit - it actually has about 150 m/s dV worth of monoprop remaining if I ever need to change the orbit

Moho was followed a short time later by the Duna Pioneer in a near polar orbit, with a nice view of one of the never suspected Duna polar hurricanes

Pioneer was followed by a Verona probe with Formalhauf lander, pictured here before jettisoning the heatshield shell.

Last up was a cobbled together lander for atmospheric & surface science - I crammed every piece of science gear I had that could fit on board, along with a pile of batteries.

Just above the atmosphere

Mostly successful landing - the chutes opened a touch too late, and the landing "pad" underneath turned into a crumple zone.  The probe is a little wobbly without it, but it works for now

 

 

[Tyko]

6 hours ago, capi3101 said:

A fair chunk of my weekend was spent getting a satellite constellation set up in Kerbin's SOI. Rather than a general purpose all-in-one probe design (the White Noise 7) like I've used in the past, this time around I decided to go with a specialized relay satellite/carrier design, which I dubbed the Pink Noise 7:

Pink Noise 7 over Kerbin en route to the release point.

I designed the craft to haul three comm sats into orbit at once; the central probe would fly the other two up to a reference orbit and then release the other two. One of those would go into a lower orbit for a single pass and the other would go into a higher one, setting up a simple triangle configuration after one orbit. Each individual probe had two set of solar panels; while en route, the side probes would have their outboard panels deployed while the others remained stowed. Only after separation would all three probes fully deploy their panels. The side probes use Ant engines and have more than enough fuel to get them into their final positions.

 

Nice design! I've done something similar using the nodes inside a fairing. I used a lower elliptical orbit and several passes, but basically the same idea as yours. It works great. Here's my ship with the stacked comm sats.

[capi3101]

Pink Noise 7 fit inside a 2.5 meter fairing easily; I should take a screenie of the craft on the pad for y'all. Overall I was very happy with how it turned out. Could've stood to put a better booster on the thing - five launches and each time the payload had to finish boosting itself to orbit. It's what I get for not paying attention to the "High Supersonic Drag" warning in the VAB...

[qromodynmc]

i've been updating my old crafts lately, first the f-104 and now the f-5. f-104 works flawlessly but there are some works to do on f5, mainly on it's flight characteristics.

[Lisias]

39 minutes ago, qromodynmc said:

i've been updating my old crafts lately, first the f-104 and now the f-5. [CUT]

Magnificent!  Kudos!!!

[Triop]

Today, I've started driving a buggy to the Temple.

 

[Triop]

Reached 6000 rep.

Almost, need 1 more . . .

@Castille7 Thanks dude.

[Zosma Procyon]

I arrived at a design for a sea plane base and I am currently affixing it to a rocket for a deployment to Laythe. Here is a film of a test flight.

UPDATE: I posted too soon. This design works great in Kerbin's atmosphere, but will not in fact lift off from the waters of Laythe. It either needs more thrust or more lift. 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Zosma Procyon

[Triop]

I'm coming for you @GDJ

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Triop

[capi3101]

With Strange Cargo successfully refueled Sunday via an Auk III tanker plane flight, I started my day yesterday with the flight of an Auk XII 6-passenger spaceplane. Tourists Madsted, Irdred, Isadon, Munsby, Marburry and Bobsy Kerman were loaded aboard and sent to rendezvous with Strange Cargo in LKO.

Eh - who needs space stations, anyway? Apparently I do - I've got a contract to put one up over Kerbin; really oughta get to that at some point in the near future...

Strange Cargo then departed for Mun, arriving in Mun orbit earlier this morning after a seven hour flight. Strange Cargo will be rendezvousing with Julfry's Hulk while it's still in Munar orbit. Most of the passengers are heading for the surface, so I will need to get some landing infrastructure in place there pretty soon...

Meanwhile, the launch of the second Superfortress 7 ferry craft, Next Objective, took place. Val had the helm with tourists Lembas, Lanfrod, Phoebe, Geofdrin and Sanrim Kerman aboard en route to Minmus. The launch was successful; Next Objective arrives at Minmus in seven days. 

VIP Tourist Tanler Kerman launched to LKO aboard an Auk XIII single-passenger plane, returning safely to KSC 09

The view from the Auk XIII's cockpit; Kerbin at sunrise just before orbital insertion. Times like this I wish my box had enough firepower to run EVE without melting...

Last thing that happened yesterday was the successful arrival of a Booger Flinger 7 dedicated orbital scanning probe (I couldn't think of a better name at the time) in polar Munar orbit. Designated Mun Charlie, the probe successfully located equatorial ore deposits in the vicinity of the Farside Crater; I'll likely be setting up shop there when the time comes.

Earlier this morning, I sent Nedbus off to do what turned out to be a quick ground temperature anomaly survey in the vicinity of KSC aboard the Scimobile III:

I don't know why you're so worried, Nedbus. Are you worried the flux capacitor is going to shoot you back to 1955 or something?

Bob also arrived at Minmus earlier this morning aboard his Fireball 7e lander. The plan is for him to gather the sci he missed on his first visit to the minty moon and return to Kerbin. I'll be picking up his mission later today; hoping to unlock the rest of the parts I want for my space stations...

 

 

 

 

[Ho Lam Kerman]

On 9/22/2018 at 7:49 PM, Ho Lam Kerman said:

No worries, Resident Orbital Mechanic Ho Lam Kerman will fix this.

Ahem.

Cassini's gone. 

I am as clueless as you are.

I have no idea, but I think I have a good estimate of what happened.

I think it had something to do with the launch of yet another legacy probe, TESS.

I time warped through 26 days to make sure the orbit was stable.

I think while I was time warping, I either hit a Sarnian moon, or I got an assist which put me on an impact trajectory with Sarnus.

The Cassini team will not be proud.

[Tonka Crash]

Last week I ran into the need for more fuel storage at my Mun mine and refinery. Last night I shipped up a storage tank. It's a based on 5m domes tweakscaled up a size to 7.5m to form a big spherical tank. For launch the domes were mostly empty, with one at 5% LFO. I wasn't sure how much drag would cost me launching unfaired, so I had a little more booster than needed. During the coast to apoasis I transferred all remaining fuel from the booster to the domes and cut the booster loose. Just doing that gained a couple hundred dV versus letting the booster circularize the orbit.

I needed 4 wolfhounds on top of 6 KPBS meerkats to get a decent TWR for landing. I probably didn't need the meerkats, but one of my self-imposed design constraints is to use them as the only attachment point for landing gear on the KPBS form factor parts. I found the little KPBS extendable wheels didn't provide enough oomph to maneuver the tank around on the Mun. It's the first time I've had a problem with those. The slope is only 0.6 (deg) for most of the base, but around this corner of the base it rises to 2.5 (deg). I ended up using the MechJeb Translatron function to hover taxi around to the final resting place. Getting it square with everything else proved to be a problem with the enormous inertia on the tank.

An EVA was done to connect the tank with KPBS flexible corridors to the rest of the base. I also stripped the motors and solar panels needed for the trip to the Mun., threw it all into a pile and blew it up with KIS explosive. The EVA turned into a Kraken battle for good portion of the night, it seemed like I'd cut off a part or attach a corridor and get random explosions. There was a lot of quicksave/reloads/cursing happening.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Tonka Crash
grammar

[mounia2]

I never expected that thread would become so popular. I was one of the first replies to it.

[Hotel26]

You might have thought that pumping fuel at a space station is the most tedious job you can have in KSP?

I spent the WHOLE evening adjusting docks in/on the following craft in order to be able to get two of my new Invader/Intruder rovers into the Ursa supersonic transport.

The third vehicle pictured (in the middle) is Chrysalis (nee "Worm") and I'm quite pleased with the results of adding retractable gear to it to make it Klaw-adjustable also for Mk3 aircraft.

(I'll be doing some heavy testing in the next week and then updating KerbalX.)

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Hotel26

[Delay]

Okay, so I do actually have a new PC now. Feels fantastic to finally be able to play games with a solid and high framerate. Including KSP.

The game runs very well with this new machine, so I tried out a mod that I wanted to test for a long time: Scatterer.
And well, what can I say? The game looks awesome with Scatterer!

Though performance is a slight, very slight issue. x4 physical warp gives me red numbers. Turning off water refractions helped a bit (now constantly flashing between green and yellow).
Any more things I can do to make the game run better without ruining the beautiful graphics too much? (Example: Without sky reflections the water looks terrible in my opinion)

 

Oh, and I also made a launch vehicle only powered by Rapiers. Thought that would actually be more efficient due to the high Isp, but how wrong I was.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Delay

[CatastrophicFailure]

4 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

tank.

What’s the big red bullseye from?

[capi3101]

12 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

What’s the big red bullseye from?

It's included in the latest version of KER. Kinda handy, actually. You can toggle it on and off too, which is a nice touch.