What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

3 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Not easy to shed 22km/s of excess velocity using only gravity assists against Kerbin, repeated through warping from the system edge back to Kerbin atmosphere, over and over.

You should try shedding the excess velocity over Kerbol. Start fairly close to Kerbol (within one gigameter, or closer if your particular FTL mod will allow it) on a trajectory as close to directly away from Kerbol as possible. It'll still take a while to slow down, but it's definitely less of a hassle. Saves you whatever fuel you're using too.

Out of curiosity, which Alcubierre Drive system are you using? I go with RoverDude's myself. 

[Sharpy]

Just now, capi3101 said:

You should try shedding the excess velocity over Kerbol. Start fairly close to Kerbol (within one gigameter, or closer if your particular FTL mod will allow it) on a trajectory as close to directly away from Kerbol as possible. It'll still take a while to slow down, but it's definitely less of a hassle. Saves you whatever fuel you're using too.

Out of curiosity, which Alcubierre Drive system are you using? I go with RoverDude's myself. 

I'll try that next time.

The drive is from  KSPIE (Interstellar Extended).

[Mr. Peabody]

4 hours ago, Kebab Kerman said:

What if, and now just hear me out, what if we take Kerbin's heightmap, change it so that there's a ravine in the ocean that's at least 15km deep, and then try to get all the way to the bottom and build a base there?

We'll get back to you on that...

Spoiler

 

 

[NHunter]

Thanks to Laythe's lucky alignment, KSS Discovery was able to save dv and go the the blue moon almost directly. The course took the ship through Jool's rings, and, I gotta say, you can get quite some views there.

Meanwhile my Moho station arrived to its destination.

I've been a bit aggressive with this particular transfer, so I had to perform a deceleration burn just shy of 4.5 km/s to put the station into roughly-circular 250km orbit around Kerbol's first planet. And, for once, I haven't over-engineered the transfer stage. After one massive burn, there was only 160 m/s dv worth of fuel left in the tanks.

Once the station was put into the intended orbit, the transfer stage detached itself and (now having 600 m/s dv) was sent to crash into Moho's surface.

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, Sharpy said:

I'll try that next time.

The drive is from  KSPIE (Interstellar Extended).

I'll have to read up on the specifics of KSPIE's drive system; might be able to offer more specific advice then.

[BRAAAP_STUTUTU]

Anyone order a nuclear SSTO for delivery on eve? No?

[Kroslev Kerman]

Made a Military Program called Korolev Military Program and its about Military(no BDArmory Sadly because nobody is Maintaning it)

[Francois424]

Today the "Explorer III" started it's journey on my new Science grand tour (only did Kerbin/Minmus/Mün to clear the science tree, everything else is untouched).

Our first destination is Moho.  After an uneventful flight (who am I kidding, the Mothership keeps exploding and doing unplanned disassembly... But I think I got her figured out now) the ship decelerate to get into a 100x250km orbit.
Oh yeah that's true, I had brought the Mothership in orbit of Kerbin, so had to pitstop at Minmus to refuel... hence the Miner ship being attached at the back.  The whole thing is more stable this way too, so I left it there.

 

 

Then I took the Lander down with 3 of my 6 crew for the Moho science expedition.  I was greeted by the sun and it's searing heat.

 

Once the Lander was put in sleep mode, the crew's gaze turned on the MER (Moho Expedition Rover).

It took the better part of my afternoon, and since I could not get the "Karibou rover cockpit" to work with 1.4.5, I went for the Apollo capsule instead. It shields the crew from the intense sunlight anyways and Kerbals seemed to enjoy it.
The «Moho Expedition Rover» specifications :
 - 1x M.E.M (housing Jebediah and Bill) +  1x Mk1 Inline cockpit retrofitted for vacuum duties (housing Joukie, one of my 2 scientists)
 - 2x ore tanks (300 storage)
 - 4x FTmN18 (2 front/2back) to provide horizontal motion, and 4x RV-1 "Cubs" for just about 120sec of continuous VTOL capability at full power.
 - The usual science package, A few solar panels and 1x6 panels, SASes, Radiators, a small ore converter and 2 small drills.
 - Also 3x batteries, 2x Large Fuel Cell arrays, and a Probodobodyne Okto2 aimed forwards to facilitate navigation... all on the undercarriage.
 - Went for the small landing gears as after testing they offered the best stability.  The rover can do 50m/s on land, but the safe speed is more between 20-35m/s depending on terrain.
 - Lots of Lights(tm) !

 

So after the crew finished reading the rover's manual, Joukie went out to collect the science from the "Western Lowlands" (the crater we landed into) and planted a flag before departure.
Good thing the rover was fully fuelled up as there was no ore in that spot either

 

The crew decided to head North-west, crossing a couple biomes on the way to the north pole, and with many patches of precious ore on the way. 
They got to test the VTOL when confronted to a steep, uninteresting crater along the way. Jebediah firing the 4x Cubs engines


Then crossing the obstacle pushing 110m/s of forward motion with maintaining +5m/s or so of upward motion.  Glad it's working as intended.

 

Once the other side was reached, the rover settled down (a bit heavily, but Jeb is still getting comfortable with the throttle controls.
There was another biome on the other side as well, so our scientist worked some more, then we hit the brakes activated the ore drill and converter (0.037% ore too, better than before)
And everyone went to sleep for a few hours while the tanks refilled.  The sun is *still* just coming up but with the planet's slow rotation the crew can't afford to wait night.
Final shot of the day, somewhere NW of my starting point, in the Highlands :


It's a very long road to get all the biomes on Moho, so I guess I'm going to have fun driving and hopping for the next few days...  I love roving around so I'm happy !  
Enjoy !

 

 

@NHunter  What is that cockpit you are using on that Mothership of yours?  I think I want it. 
                      And looks like we crossed each other by Moho as well !   

Edited October 26, 2018 by Francois424

[Triop]

I'm sorry guys, found a new toy, maybe I'll get back to you green goblins some day . . .

 

[Cyrious]

I completed construction of my base.

 

Let me show you its features! 

In the middle, obviously we have the command and living quarters. An Astrogation module serves as the command, while a "Shelter" Hab module serves as living quarters. To the foreground-left, the U-shaped structure is the primary landing zone for cargo ships. Directly opposite of that, illuminated by the spotlight is the crew landing zone, currently empty. To the right, we have in clockwise order:

1. The rather disgustingly overbuilt cooling module (we're talking 16MW of core heat rejection, I could cool everything down here and my previously shown fuel station with that kind of cooling power and not saturate the radiators. Needless to say, as it stands its spectacularly overkill)
2. The refinery module (4 ISRUs and a Whirlijig, plus a slightly bigger fuel tank for extra on-site storage)
3. The Reactor module, providing the bulk power generation needed for when the base is active (MX-3S FLAT Reactor, throttled to 27% so I'm not generating too much excess power). The reactor module is also equipped with additional nuclear fuel and waste storage, and emergency radiator panels just in case.
4. And of course, the humble Karbonite power stack to provide idle and overnight power.

In the near background-left, we again have the KAS/KIS storage warehouse. Behind that, we have the massive block of drills, 48 of them in total. To the background-right, we have the primary Ore/Fuel storage module, 25,600 units of Ore, 5040/6160 LF/OX. With a LV2 engineer running the show, I can fill that Ore crate in less than 90 minutes game time. I can literally land the ore transport, fill it to bursting, take off, dock with the station, offload, undock, and by the time I've landed 1-2 orbits later, that crate is full again. Base cost about 2 million to get up here and assembled. Once I get on-orbit uranium processing going, I'll make that back in very short order.

In the far background, we have the now-obsolete V2 ore Harvester. Once its finally full, a kerbal will install some standby solar panels on it, after which it will launch to the fuel station, drop off its ore and nuclear fuel, then boost into a graveyard orbit or land on the mun for the final time.

Couple interesting things that occurred while getting this thing fully and stably assembled. For one, I had to fight a weird form of Z-fighting before I finally figured out the rather time-consuming trick (reload the game) to ensuring everything didn't pop apart. Was rather frustrating to come land with another module only to find several parts of the base had disconnected.

Another thing I ran into is that the base-legs when not on the core module are Kraken-bait. I had them on the previous model of radiator and reactor modules, and every time I would add something to the base, the reactor and radiator modules would jump about 10-20 meters into the air. Note, thats about 600k in hardware trying to escape or otherwise smash itself to bits on the ground, with the bulk of that being the reactor and its fuel. I had to launch another reactor with different legs and additional fuel storage, land it, disconnect the old reactor, link it to the new reactor, transfer the fuel and waste over, disconnect the old reactor again, fling it downrange to make a nice quarter million  crater (since I couldn't use it for anything else), then reload the game so I could stably link the new reactor to the base. Was rather upset at having to waste that kind of money.

Edited October 26, 2018 by Cyrious

[NHunter]

2 hours ago, Francois424 said:

@NHunter  What is that cockpit you are using on that Mothership of yours?  I think I want it.
                      And looks like we crossed each other by Moho as well !    

That's 'Vista' Astrogation Module from Stockalike Station Parts Redux

[Kebab Kerman]

17 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Do you want manta-Ray aliens and giant water tentacles? Because that is literally how you get manta-Ray aliens and giant water tentacles. 

With giant squid! AND WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALES^TM!

Also, we need cliffbases that we couldn't do before. You gotta admit, that'd be cool.

[duesenmilan]

11 hours ago, Triop said:

I'm sorry guys, found a new toy, maybe I'll get back to you green goblins some day . . .

 

 

With the Races mod, some clutter from Kerbal Konstructs and visual effects from EVE and SVE, this should be possible to replicate in KSP. Perhaps even the driving physics may be better... 

 

As what I did today:

I tried the KS3P to create some new wallpapers for my PC. I am even considering getting a print of them for my real walls.

That's my Duna cruiser. It is a tad bit overengineered and assembled in orbit. The next version could use a little mass reduction, 'cause burns take some time.

[Tyko]

Restarting (again) this time in GPP 3.2x scale with 20% science. the 2.5x scaling isn't working right with GPP anymore so decided to up my challenge to 3.2x 

First satellite launch. Small and light as possible. It uses a pair of small solid propellant motors to circularize and has a second pair to eventually deorbit. I'm just getting used to using solid prop kicker motors and was able to achieve a 151 x 162 orbit, so not too shabby.

Power was at a premium and so I could only transmit a couple times an orbit and had to complete a number of orbits to get radiation and telemetry measurements over all biomes. All that effort netted about 30 Science...this is gonna be interesting.

[Noname117]

I've been playing aviation pioneer in KSP for these past couple days. It's fun!

[capi3101]

Hadn't had too much time to play the game in the past couple of days owing to things happening in RL. Been spending a lot of time today trying to figure out why I can't reconfigure the storage on Pathfinder Buckboards; the rest of Pathfinder seems to be working just fine...

Wednesday began with the successful docking of the Spamcan 7a 4-passenger lander at space station Munport, which had visited the Piper Alpha refinery the day before with a full tour group. After the successful docking of the lander, the passengers transferred to Next Objective docked at the station, which then refueled and departed for Kerbin. Meanwhile, the rover Lunkhead III was launched and burned for Mun on a mission to replace the original rover Lunkhead, which had flipped over on a steep grade forty klicks west of Piper Alpha. Wednesday also included the launch of a pair of Bill Clinton 7b grabber probes to Mun for junk retrieval missions and a high-speed, high-altitude test of a 0.625-meter heat shield.

Yesterday began with a mission to pick up engineer Marrick Kerman from a very low Minmus orbit. The Spamcan 7 2-passenger monoprop lander was dispatched from space station Minmusport to go and pick her up. The rendezvous was a bit nerve-wracking; her debris was skirting over some of the higher points along Minmus's equator, and when she finally jumped out of the craft, she gave it enough of a kick to send it on a collision trajectory with the surface. Marrick herself though was safely retrieved and the lander returned to Minmusport, where she'll await the next ferry ship heading back to Kerbin. 

Lunkhead III arrived at Mun, and then safely landed near Piper Alpha:

Landed at night, of course. I swear - any time I want to land somewhere specific on Mun, it's always night...

Both of the Bill Clinton probes also reached Mun. One of them was put into orbit, where it will await the pick up of a hunk of garbage from the surface; I seem to have gotten rid of the Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout 7 surface garbage retrieval craft from a few versions back, so I'll need to figure out how I'm going to get the target off the surface. The other Clinton rendezvoused with a successfully grabbed module P-2VJ, which turned out to be an empty Mk3 Cockpit. The BC is now it's way back to Kerbin. Next Objective arrived safely at space station Kerbinport; after docking, her passengers were transferred to a waiting Auk II 8-passenger spaceplane, which then departed the station and made its way safely to KSC 09. I say safely; at fifteen klicks out I was still in a 40-degree dive travelling above Mach 2...was lucky to pull that one off. 

My Auk XII 6-passenger plane also finally returned safely from Minmus yesterday -

 
The key to successfully aerobraking a plane coming back from a moon is to not send a plane to the moons. Ever.

The plane circularized after two aerobraking passes, then de-orbited for a safe return to KSC 09 with a little over one second of rocket fuel remaining after the deorbit burn. Definitely will think twice about sending an Auk XII on any more moon missions - the thing had fuel problems coming and going. Not that I regularly send planes to the moons...wings and control surfaces are dead weight out in space (even with procedural wings and the ability to store gas in them, once they're empty, you still can't stage them off). 

At this point, I don't have a lot of contracts in progress, so it's time to get some more things going. I have contracts to put a new outpost out on Mun and I'd like to set up a small Pathfinder base; at this point I'll probably go with Mules for my main equipment containers since I still can't get the Buckboards to behave. Shame about that; it'd be nice to be able to re-purpose the Black and Decker 7 delivery probe system for the job. I'm also pretty sure I need to set up a Hogan out at the Deepwater Horizon refinery at Minmus for one of the contracts, which has me hauling nine kerbals out there and keeping them there for forty days. That one would pay for an Alcubierre warp ship by itself, so it's definitely high on my to-do list.

[Cavscout74]

I went back to my "Sarnus V" in sandbox for some tinkering & a full mission test.  Launch went smoothly, and the second stage put me in a 165km orbit before the Mun transfer.  It can still use a few tweaks - a stack separator got stuck on the CSM engine bell after I offset the CSM down further into the hollow space of the petal adapter for starters.  I may redesign the whole MM (Mun Module) & petal adapter setup.  On the other hand, it's pointless in stock scale, so I may not bother.  It was fun running a semi-replica Apollo mission though.

Docking the CSM & MM

CSM-MM entering Mun orbit

MM landing at dawn

MM upper stage burning to rendezvous with the CSM

CM falling through the clouds with drogues deployed

 

[Klapaucius]

I completed another video for my K.R.A.S.S.H Industries Planet Pack Tour and Airshow. It features the newest plane, Pythagoras, touring around Kersex, from the Kronkus Planet Pack.  The full thread is here: 

 

[ARS]

Nothing much to do today

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Well I've gotten the landing burn working again.  I believe something changed that made the game slightly more laggy than it was before, and that was at random delaying kOS registering triggers during the landing sequence.  I made some tweaks and slightly increased the Factor of Safety on the burn timing, and now the boosters do not slam into the ground.

It is however a bit disconcerting to see a booster balance like this

for a good 5 seconds before finally coming back down onto the legs

Also sometimes this happens:

which is no good if I'm going to get this landing on a barge again.

Just want to fix these minor issues, and then both this thing and the side booster landing scripts should be good for release.  Still don't have anything going on for the center core.  That's a going bit more complicated because by the time it stages it's going fast enough that an entry burn is required to prevent parts of the leg hinges from burning up on reentry.  Unfortunately at this point it looks like the math required for the entry burn will be subtly different from the math used for the boostback burn, resulting in it needing a new section of code.

Then the real fun will come with getting an RO install up and running, and then trying to apply this stuff where everything is faster, hotter, laggier, and engines don't work down to 0% throttle.  

 

Edited October 26, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[GDJ]

43 minutes ago, ARS said:

Nothing much to do today

That's kinda neat! How she fly?

[DeltaDizzy]

Coming Soon to an Add-on Development sub-forum near you...

Edited October 27, 2018 by DeltaDizzy

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

So I left the booster landing program running in the background while I watched a youtube video.  I heard explosions and feared my landing script was back to the old problems.

Sort of, but not quite

Among other things, both of the landing pads glitched under the terrain and exploded in the ocean beneath.  

Still trying to figure out what else happened.  I'm pretty sure the script didn't land the booster in the second screenshot where it appears to be now.  

[Angelo Kerman]

After putting the finishing touches on my OSE Workshop refit (release for KSP 1.5 coming this weekend), I finished assembly of Skybase:

The space station is fully equipped to serve as a transportation hub for KSC's space missions. Team Kelbin has done a fine job of building the station, but it's time to send them home. The next station crew will be building DSEV-03 Nautilus. Team Kelbin will get a rest before their next mission.

[ARS]

1 hour ago, GDJ said:

That's kinda neat! How she fly?

Very stable in-flight, it can reach over 1200 m/s in level flight at 1000 m altitude, however perhaps it's too stable. It has difficulty in maneuvering once it goes supersonic. Throttling below 300 m/s allows for stable maneuvering around like normal aircraft, but above that, it's difficult (but not impossible, it's just the craft is seems won't budge an inch once it goes supersonic). So it's basically point at the flight direction at subsonic, then go full throttle from there