What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

May not be setting the best precedent with that name... 

Well those bees look just like me trying to land on the roof of the VAB, except they don't burst into flames...   

Thanks for the GIF!

[capi3101]

Have had another relatively slow past 24 hours. I spent a good amount of time fiddling with Pathfinder's Pipeline mass drivers. Just getting one built was interesting enough:

Ah, so that's what's at the end of Space Mountain...

I don't have a good screenie of the receiving end mass driver. I did launch one. Without a fairing. I can't imagine the drag on that launch as being anything other than utterly horrific...

Learned that I could really stand to RTFM on the things. Better yet, I need to find the FM first -  the power requirement I understand, the payload I understand, but how the crap I'm supposed to calculate the delta-V and "guidance" needed, I don't know...

 

Wasted enough time working with the mass drivers that not a lot else happened. An Auk I rescue spaceplane flight retrieved pilot Nancy Kerman from LKO and returned her to KSC 09 safely, an ore con was performed (after using KML to hack the contract - despite having mined the correct amount of Ore from the Mun as required four times over, the contract refused to budge), and this morning saw the takeoff of an Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane bound for space station Kerbinport:

And next on our list of rarely seen aircraft in poorly-shot screenies, the Auk VII...

Takeoff was a success; I had enough playing time to get out of the atmosphere before I had to shut the game off and begin my paying job. Tourists Jaslorf, Samory, Samcal, Jafrid, Ludbur, Richdous, Janzor, Shepwise, Lunand, Sutrey, Derman, Jonrod, Lemfurt and Doneny Kerman will disembark at Kerbinport, and then all of them except for Jaslorf are scheduled to head for Minmus for various contracts. Nine of these tourists are scheduled to make an extended visit to the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus's surface and it would definitely behoove me to get the facilities in place for them to be able to do, especially seeing as how they are all already in space...

[Cavscout74]

Last night, I caught a ~500t asteroid on a collision course for Kerbin.  I had noticed it a few months out & adjusted the orbit of my existing asteroid processor to catch it.  Interestingly, the asteroid I had previously captured was down to -3 tons mass.  I actually had to go in & delete it, because after dropping it on a suborbital trajectory, it would go down to ~50 km then start climbing & raise the Ap & Pe..    So after dealing with that, I set up the capture of the incoming asteroid.

Initial capture, about a day out from Kerbin.  Only took a fairly short 16 m/s maneuver to raise the Pe out of the atmosphere

Closing up the orbit at Pe

After numerous smaller burns to drop Ap & reduce inclination, plus a few days in between of converting asteroid to fuel, I finally got it in a nice, neat 300km equatorial orbit.  I may have to turn this into a proper asteroid station.  By pure chance, I got a contract to gather science from a class D asteroid, so I have a crew getting ready to go up with a load of science gear for later today.

Simultaneously, I had a training/tourist flight to Mun & Minmus coming back home.  Rather than my use typical Mun/Minmus lander, I dusted off my Pumera spaceplane & used it for something other than Laythe interface ops. 

Landed at Lancer-Minmus base for some fuel & snacks

Reentry was fine, but I did a nice, gentle entry that took 3 orbits to bleed off the excess velocity.  The third one, however, left me a little short of KSC, so a 20km, 1400 m/s cruise was in order to actually reach KSC

Slowing down on approach.  Didn't actually get a landing shot, but it went smooth.  The tourists were happy & my new kerbonauts are all up to level 2.

[Guest]

Hello everyone.

The erstwhile @Hotel26 lured me back to KSP for a bit. Long story short, I started out trying to scale up the VTOL Karmilla to carry more Kerbals, and then ended up thinking that it would be nice if they didn't have to walk when they arrived wherever they were going, so I ended up with Drakula + Renfield: a jet VTOL plane that carries an underslung rover.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to test the possibly final version because for some reason Drakula... slides, even on a perfectly level surface. Brakes, they do nothing. I don't have the fortitude to randomly tweak things to make it stop doing that, so it's left half-complete, and therefore unpublished on KerbalX. It would be really nice if they got these surface interactions working...

As a part of my research, I came up with something that others might find useful. It turns out a Juno has the same TWR as a Wheesley, and you can fit an array of 9 into a small Mk 2 cargo bay -- or 18 in a large one. That gives a lot of vertical thrust in a compact package, and makes possible all kinds of VTOL designs that would otherwise be unfeasible.

Here are some pictures:

I also noticed that now you can tweak suspension settings out of the VAB which is really neat, and also makes it much easier to do stuff like capture an underslung craft with a docking port -- you can lower the craft by lowering the spring tension to pick it up, or vice versa.

But man, how hard can it be to just make a craft... stop? And stay stopped? Pretty hard, apparently...

Edit: craft are on KerbalX, the drifting is somewhat under control although not completely gone.

Drakula 

Renfield

Edited October 31, 2018 by Guest

[invision]

[razark]

Today, I actually started playing KSP again.

 

 

				Crew Member	PLT LT Jebediah	PLT COL Bill	PLT MAJ Bob	PLT LT Valentina
				Group	1	1	1	1
				Flights Tests Passenger	0 0 0	0 0 0	1 0 0	1 0 0
Missions
Flight	Mission	Status	Vessel	Class	Position
1	SO-1	Complete	Hopper	Sub-Orbital Science Craft 1			PLT
2	SO-2	Complete	Long Hopper	Sub-Orbital Science Craft 2				PLT
				Name	Jebediah	Bill	Bob	Valentina
				Flights Tests Passenger	0 0 0	0 0 0	1 0 0	1 0 0

[Josh IN SPACE]

I put my first space station in orbit of the sun. This research lab is going to turn out sooo much science. I'm delirious just looking at it. WHY HAVEN'T I BEEN FUNDING THIS MISSION YET?

[Hotel26]

16 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

back to KSP for a bit

Welcome back, Dr VTOL!!, (no matter how ephemerally!).

So glad to see your new creations!  (I now go start a KSP 1.5.1 download so I can fly them...)

Edited November 1, 2018 by Hotel26

[Guest]

Thanks @Hotel26! It's good to be back for a bit.

I really wish they'd sort out those wheel/surface issues as I'd kind of like to go for another career, which involves setting up a Duna base as the first major milestone -- and that's just not feasible if everything keeps sliding around like it's on a puddle of oil (even if that's preferable to them randomly jumping and blowing themselves up).

By the way, I think designing VTOLs is really educational for any would-be Kerbal aerospace engineer. The reason is that you have to pay extremely close attention to the centre of mass, and that it stays invariant as fuel is drained. This makes for easier-to-fly, more efficient, and generally better-behaved HTOL aircraft as well.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Guest

[Xurkitree]

Today, I got my KSP install up and running on my new laptop - and now I have enough RAM to get myself a visual mod! I'm using Sci-Fi Visual Enhancements. Just to celebrate, I do a quick mission to Minmus and back - and wow this was faster than the time it takes for KSP to load  on my old computer.

Anyways, pretty pics -

Valentina on Minmus

Kerbin Return

Clouds!

Man, I really should have done this before . . . I want to live here for ever . . .

NEW LAPTOP HYPE!

[ARS]

I'm doing some experiment with KAS harpoon to make foundation for cliffhanger base, here is the prototype of outpost anchored on Mun Arch

Also, I'm making Mun SSTO

In-orbit

Jeb doing some EVA while en-route to the Mun

This pumpkin is from 2 days ago, but whatever

 

 

Edited November 2, 2018 by ARS

[Guest]

Today I revisited one of my first VTOL designs, the Tern. I've learned a lot about making them since I built it, and incorporated all that into this very small and superficially simple design. I'm not going for minimalism here -- the wing, for example, is built of rather many parts for aesthetic reasons -- but nevertheless when I finished, the part count had gone down from 51 to 39, and that includes some slightly unnecessary bling like a ladder, in case Jeb wants to get back in after going for a walk. The main innovation was swapping out the Juno air intakes, formerly mounted inside the fairings, for one big radial one on the belly: this allowed me to squeeze two Junos in each fairing, which further cut down the part count (and weight).

Getting rid of all this dry mass raised the hover TWR from 1.13 to 1.2, making it a good deal more eager to get up and go -- and giving it a higher VTOL service ceiling, important in case you want to go for a skiing trip up in the mountains with no airstrip.

Rather to my surprise, this design was one of the harder ones to get right. There aren't many moving parts to play with to adjust the CoM, and with only four Junos for hover power, I had to be moderately ruthless about removing things. But I eventually managed it and rather like how it turned out -- I also think it looks a lot better than the original.

I took the old Tern for a spin, and it really is rather fun to fly, warts and all. I don't think the new one is any worse though!

• Tern 2 - the new one
• Tern - the original

Here's Tern 2:

And here's the original for comparison:

[FinalFan]

Today I learned that ore only registers as collected when you load the vessel.  In other words, you can accept a contract for mining ore on Minmus, switch to a mining vessel that has been camped out on Minmus for who knows how long, and instantly complete the contract.  Three guesses how I came by this information.  

[THEdragon]

Last night I got this rather cute screenshot of Walt smiling while play-testing a mission I'm working on.

Though it is a little unfitting for the situation he's in. In the paragraph afterwards he mentions that it would be "Bad for the KSC's reputation" if he starved to death on Duna. On a related note, I find it odd that Making History's dialogue box refer to Walt as 'PR Kerman'.

[Cavscout74]

I was reading through the forums today, and found @AeroGav's  nice guides to spaceplane design that I'd never noticed before.  I have a very few working spaceplanes - mostly reverse engineered from other peoples working designs, but I'm far from an expert.  After reading through those, I decided to build a semi-mk 2 spaceplane to replace my Pumera design as a Laythe interface craft.  I was looking for something smaller & lighter but still capable of moving at least 4 crew to & from the surface of Laythe.  By some miracle, the first design flew fairly stable, made orbit & had over 1500 m/s dV remaining on the NERV in an 85km circular orbit.  With full fuel & no oxidizer, it has over 4400m/s on the NERV.  It also has full RCS & docking capability, unlike my Pumera. 

First take off attempt - I actually got on the runway & realized "oops, I forgot the canards" & recovered it back to the hangar for a quick fix.

Circularization burn.  Not as pretty as the Pumera but much cheaper & no more EVA crew transfers.

I still have some tweaking & testing to do, but this may completely replace my Pumera spaceplane, and this one is  my own design. (Pumera was reverse engineered from @XLjedi's excellent Star Ranger)

[Chel]

I created this, a long range exploration/science aircraft

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vmsnEUNr4eJ1uiXp8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/REdoBNwAtHL8Hfxx9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GyPcMUA7nYZXhMKg8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bUkv8SeRpPQxeiXS9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wvQMJdTgWtwTrfAZA

[coyotesfrontier]

Sent a second mission to Minmus in KillAshley's Uncharted Lands. In UL, Minmus is a shepherd moon of Kerbin's rings, and a good destination for early-game science.

I don't have any screenshots of the mission, but I have plenty of my first one:

https://imgur.com/a/3LQWcOr

[Hotel26]

5 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I still have some tweaking & testing to do

Nice going!  2x RAPIERS(?) and a NERV, I presume?  What is the all-up take-off weight?  And what have you named it?

[ARS]

Just testing some design...

[NHunter]

36 minutes ago, ARS said:

This jet looks a bit like an upsized FFR-41 Mave. Get rid of tail fins, install an AI and emo pilot, and you're all set.

Edited November 2, 2018 by NHunter

[ARS]

26 minutes ago, NHunter said:

This jet looks a bit like an upsized FFR-41 Mave. Get rid of tail fins, install an AI and emo pilot, and you're all set.

It's actually my attempt to build an aircraft based from X-02 Wyvern

[Xurkitree]

OH GODS FINALLY -

For the past one week, I have been testing the new iterations of the Staraptor lander - a Single Stage Reuasable Lander, which can land on Tylo and Laythe.

The problem is that the Tylo landing doesn't leave enough fuel for the ascent. This was bugging me af - I have like 5-6 different versions of the Staraptor Mk4 and Mk5 combined. 

But today, since I had my new laptop, I thought that I could probably pull it off with better responses. The craft I made is rather unstable, especially at low fuel and high speeds. But then while testing I realised something -

What if I could use Better Time Warp to boost my reaction times Ingame?

So I started practising landing and take off with Matrix Time (My Slow-Mo warp), and after a bunch of attempts, I was finally  successful in getting the Staraptor Mk5 to land on Tylo, take off and ascend to orbit again.

FINALLY THANK GOD

ofcourse,when I go to quick save, for the first time I hit altf4 rather than alt f5 what fml ah well

also, just for fun, I warp myself from day 1 to year 340000+ within seconds

Edited November 2, 2018 by Xurkitree

[Stewcumber]

Today I tried to play Kerbal Space Program on my tablet laptop thing during my lunchbreak at work. This didn't really work though.

I mean, it works, I just get about 15fps :( Back to Unreal Gold then.

 

[THEdragon]

15fps? That'd be tolerable for me. I sometimes get much, much worse performance on my machine, haha!

[magnemoe]

Finished this burn

Ship without booster who was dropped at end of burn.

Tricks was to send the booster to LEO attached to the LV-N tug, it dropped SRB only then take it to Minmus to fuel up and dock with base. Enter an high orbit around kerbin and drop tow to low orbit to do the Duna burn.
Will move the science lander between the base and LV-N tug to give more leverage for the two rear heat shields. Had to reconfigure some aerobrakes to increase stability during Duna capture. 

Sometimes LEO is not halfway. 

Low solar orbit rescue mission, Done with the 2.8Km/s burn, just missing the 6km/s braking burn and the 6Km/s return one, 6+1 asparagus, drop tank on upper stage.