What did you do in KSP1 today?

[THEdragon]

Today I sent Valentina into orbit in the spacecraft 'Frustration' to bring back a new friend! My first rescue was very difficult and took many attempts (Frustration lives up to its name), but it was worth it to bring a stranded kerbal back home. Haygun Kerman was all smiles from the moment she entered the cabin to the moment she and Valentina splashed down on kerbin. On further inspection, it seems that Haygun has a very high level of courage. Welcome to the team, Haygun Kerman!

Edited October 13, 2018 by THEdragon
Added some more stuff.

[Cavscout74]

Today, I made mid-course corrections.  A LOT of mid-course corrections.  Other than that, there were a pair of LKO rescues and my Moho fuel & snack tanker arrived & docked with Moho station.  I have yet to send a crew in this career, but the basic infrastructure is now in place.

Finally, I installed SciFi Visual Enhancements in place of the base EVE clouds.  I thought Duna looked much better with fewer clouds & lots of dust storms.

Eve I'm not as sure of,

Before (basic EVE clouds)

After (SciFiVE)  

I really wanted to check out Laythe, but both my lander & Laythe Explorer drone were on the night side & I didn't have a lot of time to mess around with it today.  I also had no time time to really check out Kerbin or any of the airless bodies. Something to look forward to tomorrow.

[TheKorbinjer]

Built a King Air 350 ER, flew it to New Orleans, LA (RSS), and i am now flying back to the Kennedy Space Center, with a little under half of my fuel remaining.

 

I didn't think this thing had range to do it, but my hopes are high that I will make it back.

Made it back, slightly over 3000 km flew. Landed on fumes though.

Edited October 13, 2018 by TheKorbinjer

[Zosma Procyon]

Today I started a space station I'm calling "Spindle Station" which will simply be a long spine of rocket components I'm going to keep adding to until the game's physics cause it to fail. The core of the station is about 43 m long. As you can see, it is in Minmus orbit.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Zosma Procyon

[Lisias]

Valentina: __ Jeb, I'm worried. I'm not certain I can fly this monster to Mün! It's too mu...

Jebediah interrupts abruptly:
__ Val, I trust you. And I trust Bill. If he built her, she flies. And if she flies, you fly her home.

Tales From Kerbol / Kerbinautenlied / Das KSCgold / Tome 3
To be published soon.

Not too soon,…  

Spoiler

 

Edited October 13, 2018 by Lisias

[DBowman]

I made an entry to @Death Engineering's most excellent Das Dunaprojekt challenge - do Duna "von Braun style". The 1969 von Braun, not the 1948 von Braun - so nukes and powered landers. Here is my DasDunaBoot:

The two outer PPMs throw the rest at Duna, and then recapture and circularize themselves. After Duna capture; two surface sample return probes land, half the crew lands. For the return you can dump some cargo, and must pick up the probes and crew. You must do an Eve flyby to Kerbin, dropping two probes on Eve as you pass. All three PPMs must finish in LKO and the KEM (with crew!) be recoverable on Kerbin surface.

Edited October 14, 2018 by DBowman
change pic

[BadOaks]

I flew my A-25 Shellback around a bit. It's a fairly mature long range hypersonic design which I use for Kerbin survey contracts and joyrides. Seats two, with optional passenger drop pods for tourists.

[Athen]

I launched the first parts of my new space station today. It's probably my biggest yet.

https://imgur.com/a/ag4cryh

Edited October 13, 2018 by Athen

[Geonovast]

It's about that time.  I'm going to give career a shot again.

Gonna shake it up though.  No manned missions.  Ever.  No extra ground stations, require signal for probe control, and plasma blackout.

The mods I'm running give me probes right at the beginning, so it should be doable.

[NHunter]

And my brave little Gaelans have finally made their first landing on Iota.

The launch vehicle. Nothing fancy (aside from tweak-scaled SRBs and 'chutes) here, but it does it's job.

Adjusting inclination prior to the transfer burn. For some reason, the game decided to stop showing clouds,... 

Collecting some science while approaching Iota:

On Iota. Actual landing happened during an eclipse, so the ship ended up sitting on a slope at the bottom of a hill. Thankfully, despite its retro-rocketedness, the design is stable enough to ensure no flips even on 6 degree slopes.

Time to go home!

[Damon]

[TheKorbinjer]

Built a Cirrus Vision jet (SR50), parachute attached. I deployed the chute and threw a kerbal out the hatch to see if i could catch the plane at a lower altitude, kerbal hit the plane at 30 m/s, parachute went *poof* and disappeared, then kerbal plummeted to his death.

 

I cut the chute to the SR50, and flew to a location where I could pick up my next victim.

 

Then I flew the SR50 into the VAB, with the kerbal on the outside of the hatch, i tried to save him, but he wound up like the rest of the plane.

 

 

 

F

[Francois424]

Today I worked on the first module for my Science GrandTour Mothership.   I had started work on it in late 2016, but then was burnt-out on KSP and decided to start this playthru by designing the big things.
Apparently "Procedural Parts" mod is messed-up, as it only gave me a fraction of the Xenon I was supposed to have on it...  I don't know how I'm going to remedy this except by creating a new very small, weightless part which will contain the missing Xenon.
Annoying bug aside, here is my "Drive Module".

Roughly 135 parts, 2 Origami Antennae (350g rating, and combinable and can relay to landers and other crafts), a remote drone core, Science Lab, a refinery, and a nuclear reactor.
Room to dock in the front where the lander will be, and at the back for the mining ship and other module (considering a module with 4x 10m heatshields (Breaking around atmospheric bodies and discard after to save weight), and maybe a module for a large balka solar panel (for the inner solar system, I'll abandon it later))
It also have 4 of those 4 kerbal plane module, I consider those large room for very long trips... as this is an OPM every planet science grandtour, it fits) and a lot of lights.
It was designed to have 50k delta-V (those are BIG ion engines, and I was SUPPOSED to have lots of Xenon, heh).

I am very satisfied, tho rings are hard to make look good (imho)... Still this time I didn't simply discard it like I did it's 6 predecessors.
Next on the plate is the Lander... more on that later when I get some more time  
 

[Damon]

 

[Hotel26]

17 hours ago, NHunter said:

 

Scarecrow says, "Go back to where you came from, Kerbalkind!".  Oh wait.  That's your ship...  Pretty scary. 

 

Meanwhile, I am testing Viking T4.

I think it may easily be the ugliest vessel I have ever crafted in KSP...?!  "only a mother's love could love this..." 

It's a 'locomotive' for a "SpaceTrain".  [I will likely gang two: one at the center of the train and one at the rear, to distribute thrust over the load.]

It's also a fuel tender to boost fuel up from a moon to a station in orbit.  And its 'shield' device can be used as a coupler to sling mining equipment under it for easy deposit on the surface of a moon.

 

Second screenshot shows a Krux space station (center); Titan fuel tanker/reservoir (18x 14,400 kal., right rear); the Viking T4 (top center) and a Gimlet mining rover (left), packaged in a standard gauge (2.5m) component, being brought to dock...

I'll be running dress rehearsal missions to the Mun to determine what components a complete, self-sufficient initial expedition should contain.

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Hotel26

[Space Kadet]

 

[GDJ]

On 10/13/2018 at 3:56 AM, BadOaks said:

I flew my A-25 Shellback around a bit. It's a fairly mature long range hypersonic design which I use for Kerbin survey contracts and joyrides. Seats two, with optional passenger drop pods for tourists.

Nice plane!

I built something that will do a bit of everything, land just about anywhere, and do it cheaply (at least on fuel. The parts are frickin expensive).

[TK-313]

Today I tried to build a plane from the Sky Crawlers anime - a Shinden lookalike called Sanka Mk.B - with as little modding as possible (using just SM Stryker, Procedural wings and Tweakscale). The first try did not go as well as planned - apart from not using the B9 air intakes to match the original anime look (because installing a big mod for just one part... isn't it too much?), the plane had to use a jet engine, because the perfect-looking Centurion engine had no reverse thrust mode and thus could not be used in pusher configuration. The Shinden-alike airframe, however, proved to be pretty viable, especially if you pretend the nosecone never had a fuel tank in it. All in all, this Sanka Mk.C (as I'm calling it) is quite pleasant to fly, but I'm still hoping to build a more exact copy of that flying epicness)

Edited October 14, 2018 by TK-313

[SwissSpace93]

Today Ike-1 nearly crashed Landed on Ike, SAS was on Retrograde (when Touchdown with 25m/s) => Suicide Burn: CHECK

 

In the VAB stand a Box texted with "RCS-Thrusters" no one knows for who they are, Jeb now knows where the RCS-Thrusters need to be

He goes EVA to the other ship and control it to dock with the Ike-1T (Transfer).

Edited October 14, 2018 by SwissSpace93
what is a Brun?? Ah i know a Burn

[Delay]

I worked on my Principia career again. Did a contract involving temperature surveys of the Mun...
...on the ground.

Leaving Kerbin behind:

Actually getting pretty close to the ground while still at >500m/s.

 

[Cavscout74]

Finally got around to checking out Laythe with SiFiVE installed.

Laythe Explorer in a rain storm

Landed, with a view of Jool through the clouds

I also made an R-7 style launcher for a Moho unmanned rover.

Booster separation high over Kerbin

[Ganymede20]

Just a beginning with new computer, definitely will be better.

[Zosma Procyon]

I recovered two shipwrecks in Dres orbit. 

[djr5899]

Haven't had as much time for KSP lately, and when I have, been in one of those stuck modes where anything I try and build or any mission just doesn't work out quite right.  Today, though, I loaded up an older career save where I have the most progress to date, and I successfully got the first piece of my Minmus mining operation in place.  I built a fuel truck rover, which will be used to take fuel from a future ore mining rig, and transfer it to a launch tanker.  The launch tanker will be responsible for making sure that my future Minmus refueling station stays stocked with all fuel types.

Here's the launch rocket ready for takeoff.  Notice how the rocket is way off the center of the launch pad, and really looks like it should be falling over. I'm guessing this is because the fuel tanker rover has some length to it, but was built in the Hanger horizontally instead of vertically.  When tipping it vertical for launch, I think this was the side effect.  Launched just fine though....

 

Here is the rover with the fairing removed, but the back "orbital maneuver and landing engine" still attached.  Wasn't quite sure how  well this was going to come down on Minmus or  Mun without using chutes, so I added some RV-1 engines in case I needed extra help slowing it down on decent

 

Made it to the surface, ditched the landing engine, and ready to drive the last 1.2km to a drill site I had flagged in a mission yesterday

 

Final destination reached.  Now Jeb just needs to wait around for the drilling rig and orbital refuel tanker to show up, so he can hitch a ride home.

 

Next up, build the orbital refuel tanker.  Building that first, as I still need about 300 science in a separate mission to unlock the large ore holding tanks.  I also was smart enough (this time) to do some test measurements of where my rover tanker docking port will line up with future craft, so I know where to put landing struts and docking ports for fuel transfers.

[Cavscout74]

Had a little extra time this evening, and decided to test out a design variant of my Pumera spaceplane.  To help cover the cost, I took along a VIP tourist, and put a pair of freshly rescued rookies at the controls.  What could possibly go wrong?

Instead of 4 Rapiers & a NERV, I changed it to 3 Rapiers & a pair of NERVs.  Takeoff & low altitude climb was pretty sluggish compared to normal - no surprise there.  Once I got some altitude & speed built up, though, the performance increased to nearly matching the original design.  Kicking in the NERV's above 15 km helped too. 

Circularizing the orbit and orbital maneuvers went much quicker though.  The prime reason for this experiment is for interplanetary transfers - cutting 20 minute burns to 10 minutes or so.  I'm not sure the drop in atmospheric performance was worth it though.

On approach, down to the last few units of LF in the tanks.  I overshot KSP badly & had to fly back.  Also, this version seems less stable during reentry, so I kept having to drop the nose to keep it flying straight-ish.  Every time I got the nose up to slow down, it wanted to yaw badly.

Against all odds, the VIP tourist returned home in one piece and the rookie pilots became level 1 pilots.  I saved the design, but I don't think it's only advantage (shorter transfer burns) outweigh it's disadvantages - slow takeoff & climb, less yaw stability during reentry, slightly lower fuel capacity, and I believe overall more fuel burn due to the extra mass