What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Hotel26]

It's surprising, but this actually works:

and seems to have lots of possibilities.  I experimented with this design with VTOL for Duna in mind, but it was going to be prohibitive.

In the end, it works out to be more expensive than my original Condor (pictured below), so I am going to abandon it.

This machine above, Condor, has been landed on Duna, tail-first and then rotated over onto its main gear, then launched up a slope and re-orbited.

In the long run, I'll prefer to head it in to the destination, 5km AGL, pop chutes to get the nose skyward and then land gently on the tail.

"Ladies and Kerbs: we have arrived on Duna.  We hope you enjoyed your trip!  Please keep your seat-belts fastened as we taxi  for 45 minutes to the terminal.  Please fly with us again!"

Edited November 15, 2018 by Hotel26

[Sharpy]

Over past week I began my 1.5 hardcore playthrough with Galileo. Got through the initial flights, orbiting Iota etc, finally got to land. Not a common lander too, but a neat Buffalo based rover with dockable propulsion module.

 

Then I got a contract for a station around Iota. A station means a dinghy. Another playthrough, so a new dinghy design!

So I designed a dinghy. Gotta send a pair to the station later. Also, going back to the roots with dockable dinghy modules, this time I made an airplane module!

(yeah, these are two Twin Boars, tweakscaled to 32cm diameter.)

And finally the station...

 

[KerbService]

I tried to build something that was better than I have built before that did not blow up. This excrements is fun.

[Castille7]

After building Station MK9 I now have a nice launcher for a Lander to go places. Did a test run to Duna..........Let's say....I just made it!

Edited November 15, 2018 by Castille7

[DeltaDizzy]

Space Station!

First was the first half of the core.

Spoiler

Then the launcher

Spoiler

The lifter is the Pozhar I. It consists of a stretched Inon(essentially centaur) from Bluedog Design Bureau(BDB) on top of a huge SRB also from BDB. The SRB isnt even tweakscaled like the the upper stage is!

Once in its 1000km orbit I realized it had almost no juice left so I quickly cobbled together a backup power module.

Spoiler

I ended up reverting the flight due to bad RCS placement. Tomorrow i'll get RCS Build Aid along with some clouds. I'll leave you with some of the better screenshots.

Kerbin looks so bare without clouds!

Edited November 15, 2018 by DeltaDizzy

[Zosma Procyon]

I just accepted a contract to rescue a Kerbal with a very unusual name from the orbit of Eeloo.

[Triop]

29 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I just accepted a contract to rescue a Kerbal with a very unusual name from the orbit of Eeloo.

SWEET !

[DerekL1963]

Designed and tested a skycrane, and fiddled a bit with video editing:
 

The experimented with MechJeb's rover autopilot/autonavigation system:

[putnamto]

well attempted my three for one again, actually got the bugger this time and crashed into the mun i think 10-20 times before actually landing their. did my sciencing,  and went to leave, only one problem though the kerbal was a scientist with no experience, and the probe core is in the lander, not the return module. 

im not a very good pilot with no assists so she ended up with an infinite ap going straight out of the solar system, i reload my quicksave and its all the way back to before the rendevous  ill get it tommorow.

5 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I just accepted a contract to rescue a Kerbal with a very unusual name from the orbit of Eeloo.

you should definately turn him into space spaghetti atleast once, for dany.

[Sharpy]

On 11/6/2018 at 6:21 AM, Athen said:

I built (and landed, although a few feet off the runway) my first shuttle today. I still need to work on creating more lift on the Shuttle though... Do I need the center of mass in the front or the back?

You let the center of mass be where it happens to be, preferably close to the middle. You make the center of lift slightly behind the center of mass (blue ball should not touch the middle of the yellow ball, but should be somewhere between contained within the rear half of the yellow ball and touching it. If its center is intersected by the yellow ball, you have it about right. Make sure it is so both with fuel full + payload and with everything empty/depleted.

[Fraston]

Nothing yesterday, but I did play some undertale. Definitely worth the $18 taken out of my steam wallet.

[Guest]

Introducing the BAK Shahrazad, BAK Dunyazad, and BAK Super Shahrazad. They are currently undergoing final tests. The three sisters are based on a brand-new "magic carpet" design. They are roll-on, roll-off flatbed cargo atmospheric craft. They represent a new approach to solving the same problem as the BAK Pelican and its successors, the BAK Pelican 2 and the BAK Cyclone. 

Left to right: BAK Shahrazad (20-ton HTOL SSTO lifter/Kerbin), BAK Dunyazad (40-ton STOL/VTOL SSTO lifter and liaison craft/Duna), BAK Super Shahrazad (45-ton HTOL SSTO lifter/Kerbin)

The BAK Shahrazad at left is an airbreathing light SSTO lifter, intended for use on Kerbin and Laythe. It is rated for a 20-ton payload on Kerbin. It will reach 1550 m/s surface velocity on its three RAPIER engines with the maximum rated payload, and will reach LKO with plenty of dV to spare for the return trip.

The BAK Dunyazad is based on the same cargo platform but is intended for a completely different mission. It is to be the primary liaison craft for the planned Kosmodrome Aelita on Duna. Primary propulsion is a single RE-J60 "Wolfhound" engine, which boasts an unbeatable TWR and vacuum efficiency. VTOL/STOL capability is provided by five RV-1 "Cub" Vernier engines housed inside Mk 1 utility bays. It is expected to be capable of lofting a 40-ton payload to orbit from the Dunyan surface, with enough fuel left for a return trip. It has an invariant CoM when empty; with heavier payloads, some tuning of the "Cubs" may be necessary.

The BAK Super Shahrazad is an uprated version of the BAK Shahrazad. It carries a total of five RAPIER engines, and has a rated payload capacity of 45 tons to low Kerbin orbit. It is worth noting that this is the same or slightly higher payload capacity as the older Pelican 2, which needed eight RAPIERs reach orbit with maximum payload. Such are the benefits of improved aerodynamic efficiency!

The older Pelican 2, in orbit of Laythe.

We expect to take the Shahrazad and Super Shahrazad into use as light/medium lifters on Kerbin as soon as the experimental RAPIER engines are cleared for operational use, and should the plan for another Laythe Kosmodrome be approved, intend to deploy one or both there as well. The first to be taken into operation is the Dunyazad, which is a key component of the planned Kosmodrome Aelita on Duna. 

[capi3101]

(1.4.5) Going to have one of those posts today where the number of screenies should be illegal and probably is in six states. For that, y'all have my apologies in advance.

With a need to send up some enriched uranium to science station Freshcod in LMO, and having found the necessary ore by the Michael Collins Convention Center at the Armstrong Memorial on the surface, I had made the decision on Tuesday that a new Pathfinder base needed to be set up in the area to connect to the existing outpost. I had been experimenting over the last several days to come up with a design for a minimal seed outpost rover - the Gigalo 7 rover that started up the Deepwater Horizon South Annex outpost on Minmus was one such attempt that got the job done but couldn't drive worth a damn - and yesterday I came up with the design of the TBD 7:

Gotta love them Beefalo rovers, you know. This one proved better than most. I scanned through the entire Buffalo mod thread for ideas on how to build a skycrane for the design - ultimately, I chose to integrate it into the rover itself.

Bob and 0-star engineer Hudbree Kerman conducted a successful field test of the design 7.5 kilometers to the west of KSC 09. The geology report there showed ore content comparable to that at the Piper Alpha refinery on Mun, which was surprising; I'll have to check the area again in 1.5.x to see if it's still the case or not...

Later in the day, I added a transfer stage and booster to the design. Bob and Hudbree were loaded aboard and the craft was launched to Mun.





Don't be fooled. The damn thing landed upside down - I'm lucky the SAS controls on the Buffalo cab are as powerful as they are, or I probably would've rage quit...

Bob and Hudbree landed safely about five klicks off the target. The thrusters were pretty significantly imbalanced and it took some tweaking to get it to hold the proper attitude, and combined with the fact that the Armstrong Memorial is not exactly along the equator, I did about as well as I expected. The two kerbals roved their way to the outpost, where Hudbree unpacked everything and the two got to work.

Yeah for bouncy houses!!

Before I quit the game yesterday, I went back to the MCCC and found the whole thing buried in the regolith up to the big RCS tank on the original outpost tower. Which was annoying...

In other news, a Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander took off from the Deepwater Horizon outpost with four tourists aboard, having dropped four colonists off there. The craft returned safely to space station Minmusport where the passengers transferred over to Next Objective docked at the station. Next Objective then undocked and burned for Kerbin; it should arrive there in five days.

The Freshcod station was also manned for the time yesterday. Bill boarded the Spamcan 7a lander docked at space station Munport and transferred over to Freshcod. The Spamcan returned safely to Munport after delivering Bill safely.

14.3 km off is the MCCC. For a bouncy house, Bill found the thing to be remarkably stable. Not sure how why cactus isn't floating around the cabin, though; probably a good thing it isn't... 

Printing of a sister Crater Maker 7 lander completed at the Boot Hill outpost on Mun, but complications arose when the craft got stuck in the Rangeland launch pad. When it finally wiggled itself loose, it blew a lander leg. This wound up not being too much of a cause for concern; the lander was able to use its RCS thrusters to right itself long enough to launch and rendezvous at Freshcod with scientist Ludson Kerman aboard, docking safely. Some Materials Kits were shot up to Freshcod from Boot Hill via mass driver, and the two kerbals fabricated both a fuel storage warehouse module for the station and a new lander leg for the Crater Maker. Bill went out on EVA to affect both repairs, which were completed successfully.

Yeah, you can definitely tell those Pathfinder modules are made for ground operations. They work just fine in space though - and it's a good thing too - so I ain't knocking it.

With the warehouse in place, enough liquid fuel was shot up from Boot Hill to complete a new station in Munar orbit contract. Ludson then got to work on a cryogenic study survey I had a contract for; he's still in the lab working.

This morning, I printed up a McFeely 7 speedy science delivery module at Deepwater Horizon, and used it to send a temperature survey I'd conducted at the outpost back to Kerbin.

A speedy delivery to you.

I also finished an ore con job at Piper Alpha and made plans to put up an orbital dock at Freshcod.

Today is November 15^th and as I've been saying most of this past week, today's the day I'm beginning my switchover to KSP 1.5. I've decided that, as usual, I will be starting afresh with a career save, and have already begun my mod go/no-go checklist for launch. Right now I have just ten mods in no-go status, a couple of which are ones I consider critical, so whether or not I begin a new career save today is still up in the air. I have decided not to keep all of my craft from this past save - eighteen craft from the SPH are being retired including seven members of the Auk spaceplane series (the ones that are barely if ever used), six of the crappier Bad Idea aircraft series, three experimental Buffalo craft, two boat designs and a couple of extraneous runway marker probes. VAB cuts are a little more extensive and include all variants of the Bates Hotel, Heartbreak Hotel, Old Bessie, Piper Alpha and Tater Catcher designs among others. I'll keep the names, just not the craft - well past time I updated some of them...

See y'all again in 1.5.

[NHunter]

I'm not sure why anyone would pay (and quite handsomely) to visit an industrial base that is still under construction, but, hey!..

Anyway, three tourists decided that they wanted to visit my Ceti EL base and since I need money to buy the initial lump of nuclear fuel for the (yet-to-be-built) reactor, I've accepted the contract. Also used it to bring a few more kerbals gaelans to serve on the base, as well as to ship a few extra KIS/KAS items.

Sorry for the somewhat-dark image, but the base is currently on the dark side of Ceti.

Original segment "base" was an EL workshop (the middle module among the three sitting around the central tower - the one with an antenna) with a docking port in place where a satellite dish currently is. You can also see the skycrane that landed the aforementioned workshop on the right. It will serve as a source of power until I get the reactor up and running. The central tower and the two other "horizontal" modules of the base had been built by the workshop using rocket parts shipped from Gael (currently awaiting the next supply-ship): I still need a sun-independent power source and mining/ISRU module before this base is capable of manufacturing it's own rocket parts.

I also need to install lights on the tower...

[DerekL1963]

17 minutes ago, NHunter said:

Sorry for the somewhat-dark image, but the base is currently on the dark side of Ceti.

To fix this, you can open your settings and turn up the ambient light boost.

[NHunter]

Just now, DerekL1963 said:

To fix this, you can open your settings and turn up the ambient light boost.

It's already boosted as much as I dare to (otherwise, you'd be seeing only yellow spots on otherwise black pic).

[DerekL1963]

7 minutes ago, NHunter said:

It's already boosted as much as I dare to (otherwise, you'd be seeing only yellow spots on otherwise black pic).

Why do you only "dare" to barely turn it up at all?  (Seriously, that statement makes no sense.  Turning it up has no significant effect unless you have a potato computer.)

[Zosma Procyon]

10 hours ago, putnamto said:

you should definately turn him into space spaghetti atleast once, for dany.

Well the next Eeloo launch window is not for another in game year and a half, so the earliest they'll (I didn't even both to check the gender before accepting the contract) be back to kerbin is about an in game decade. And although the contract only called for rescue the Kerbal, I'm going to bring their derelict back too. That's a few hundred more kredits from the salvage, and I hate leaving derelicts behind. Also I have a few good designs for multiple bay wreck salvage craft I want to continue to refine.

[Fraktal]

Used the Ant engine for the first time today for a munar lander probe (OKTO, Oscar-B tank, engine, three landing legs, three Communotrons, three solar panels and science gear). Definitely liking it so far, especially due to the fact that although my previous probe design used a Terrier set to 15% output, I still had to dial the thrust down almost completely all the time to not decelerate too fast. So something as anemic as the Ant is definitely more my speed here. In fact, I dumped a few hundred m/s from the transfer stage because the probe was so much lighter with the new engine that it would be halfway through the descent from munar orbit by the time the transfer stage ran out of fuel.

I do need to send a few relay sats up to the Mun, though, so that I can probe the far side. For that, I'm planning a quite unusual design for an OKTO-controlled hauler using Thuds instead of a Terrier so that I can mount the cargo to the bottom of the hauler. So the hauler is on top, the payload is in the middle and the booster is on the bottom. Launch profile is takeoff, use booster to go suborbital and get as close to orbital as possible, then use the hauler to get the payload to its intended orbit, decouple the payload, then turn around and go home. Thing is, Thuds are nowhere near efficient enough for that role, with the biggest tank I have only giving them 1k dV without the payload.

At the end of my session, I figured I have some time to experiment and decided what the hell, might as well screw around a bit with building a Space Shuttle-style glider radially attached to a booster comprised of a Reliant and two Swivels, all on the same stage, followed by the glider's own Terrier as second stage. It... didn't quite go well. Aside from the fact that the whole thing rolls onto its back on the launchpad (which only needs Launch Stabilizers fix), it's extremely hard to maintain pitch while going slow and once it's going fast - as in, Mach 3 fast -, attempting to pitch up caused it to spin at something like 100 RPM due to the excessive control surface authority needed to take off without nosediving into the ground after a few hundred meters. Not to mention that it has neither the reaction wheel torque nor the battery capacity to maintain a nose-up position during reentry so as to not burn the Mk1 Cockpit up. But hey, even with it spinning like a top at the time of stage separation, it still made suborbital!

[Tyko]

11 minutes ago, Fraktal said:

Used the Ant engine for the first time today for a munar lander probe (OKTO, Oscar-B tank, engine, three landing legs, three Communotrons, three solar panels and science gear). Definitely liking it so far, especially due to the fact that although my previous probe design used a Terrier set to 15% output, I still had to dial the thrust down almost completely all the time to not decelerate too fast. So something as anemic as the Ant is definitely more my speed here. In fact, I dumped a few hundred m/s from the transfer stage because the probe was so much lighter with the new engine that it would be halfway through the descent from munar orbit by the time the transfer stage ran out of fuel.

The Ant is awesome. there's also a compact version (without the 0.625m ring at the top) called the Fire Ant in Ven's Stock Revamp. I use clusters of 2, 3 or 4 Fire Ants for small probes all the time. 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Tyko

[Fraktal]

Funny thing is, when I unlocked the science node, I originally intended to use the Spark instead and keep the Ant for satellites only due to not liking its looks, but I changed my mind when I realized that the Spark is still overpowered for a probe lander.

[Gaarst]

С Днем рожденья Буран! (A bit late but whatever)

[NHunter]

By the time sun rose over the Ceti Plateaus again, the outpost has already been expanded a little.

Now it also features (currently-unfueled) nuclear reactor and a mining node (2x terratrove excavators + an ISRU unit). Still need to construct nuclear fuel processor and proper storage for fuels - currently can store only a tiny amount of LfOx.

[DeltaDizzy]

I don't even know anymore.

Twilight Station Assembly

Spoiler

I added the backup power module, launched using the Pozhar-1A.

I deorbited both upper stages.

I encountered a heat bug.

 

[Cavscout74]

Spent last night & part of today sending off a fresh fleet for Jool.  So far in this career, Laythe & Vall had been my focus, with just a lander & relay sent to Bop, Pol & Tylo (whose lander ran out of fuel at about 1 km altitude).  This fresh batch of ships including manned Bop & Pol landers, fuel tankers, an Bop ISRU base, a redesigned Tylo lander, survey satellites & a fresh crew.

After getting all that sent & timewarping for a month, the crew currently on Laythe was coming close to their return window.  I tried to get a nice screenshot of their Pumera spaceplane buzzing the floating base - it's location ~60 km due east of the ground base & landing zone.   Unfortunately, I ended up accelerating a little more than was useful and at nearly 1000 m/s at ~200m, the floating base appeared for a fraction of a second then was gone before I could grab the shot.  Climb was a little warm after that, but all parts made it to orbit safely & the crew transferred to the crew cycler for the ride home.