What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Fearless Son]

Last night, I built a Duna science rover, and in honor of the Insight lander, I used a traditional heat shield + aeroshell + sky crane design.  I made the transfer vehicle for it deliberately oversized so I could fit a trio of communication relay satellites that could be placed in equidistant orbit to ensure continuous communication coverage.  I was close to my ideal transfer window but some days over it, so I added extra delta-v just in case.  I was a little worried about the launch because the rocket ended up really tall and narrow, and traditionally that doesn't do well during ascent, but it managed it fine.  In fact, I probably had a little too much delta-v, since the main booster had enough fuel left to do most of my transfer burn from Kerbin.  The secondary boosters fell back to Kerbin but the main one is in a pretty high elliptical Kerbin orbit, so I will probably have to later send a small grabber unit to nudge it into a decaying orbit.

Anyway, I got the whole thing on it's way to Duna, now I just need to wait, maybe do some other missions in the meantime.  Sorry I didn't take any pictures to share yet, maybe I will put some up later.

[toric5]

docked a part that had no rcs thrusters of its own, only one docking port (the one I wanted to attach to the station) and couldnt use the grabbing arm. Had to dock it to a tug, put it on a course so it would dock, and then undock the tug and get it out of the way before a collision. I basicly docked something by throwing it at the docking port.

[Cavscout74]

9 hours ago, Eriksonn said:

Why did it loose dv by upgrading ksp, did some engine stats change? I have not heard that anywhere.

 

7 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

There were some aero bugs in the new update, the most prominent one being the direction of the Lifting Body Lift being the same as the Drag vector, leading to more drag on Mk2/Mk3 Spaceplanes. That was fixed in the 1.5.1 Hotfix, but apprently there are some more bugs somewhere leading to loss in performances.

I knew about the drag issue - one of the reasons I waited to upgrade.  I haven't heard anything about lost performance in 1.5.1.  I've had a feeling that I was getting lower dV out of my rocket designs in 1.5.1 vs 1.4.5, but it wasn't enough to make me do a comparison.  But my Falcon design is my lowest tech spaceplane design and I was excited about it being available for tourist & crew training missions in my newest career.  So flying it and after failing to reach even orbit, I went back to my 1.4.5 install & flew the same flight - and made an 85km orbit with plenty to spare.  But I also noticed my dV readout when I kicked in the NERV's was just over 3000.  When I re-flew it with 1.5.1, at NERV engagement, it was only about 2000 m/s.  Even that should still have been enough to make orbit, so I think there are multiple issues going on.  When I get time, I'm going to rebuild the Falcon as pure stock & try it in a stock game in both versions. 

[NISSKEPCSIM]

I successfully made an overly complicated rocket with no practical use whatsoever.

 

[Castille7]

Did anyone see where I left my Pen?

Edited December 6, 2018 by Castille7

[DunnoAnyThing]

Planning to get back to KSP shortly, so just decided to fly a simple lander to Mun...
...and dropped on Jool(sorry, no photos this time  )

[magnemoe]

Going to Eeloo. 


Finding that one of the kerbals has this fun poster in his cabin.

Guess he get disappointed then he find nobody has packed skis. 


Pretty crowded, note the fleet underway to Jool, set up so each ship will brake at Tylo at one Tylo orbit intervals. 

[capi3101]

Once again I've let time get away from me; been about a week since the last time I reported on this thread. In fairness, RL hasn't been particularly cooperative for gameplay the last 2-3 days, so there's a little less to report for a weekly glob than normal.

My log dates back to last Friday, when I had finished upgrading all the structures at KSC and was beginning to focus in on clearing the tech tree. Having already made one trip out to Mun for science, I figured there would be no harm in sending Bob back out there to farm a little more, so he was shot that way aboard a Fireball 7 science lander:

Take off fairing, design still works. Who would've guessed?

Bob's Fireball was modified to carry an accelerometer and seismometer, and it had a couple of science containers to help really clean the biomes out. Bob arrived at Mun safely, and after hitting the Highlands, Midlands, Polar Crater and Poles,  he returned to Kerbin with 1,906 science. The science was used to unlock the gravioli detector, RAPIER engines, and not much else. The gravioli detector gave me the full instrument suite though, so after making some tweaks to the extant Fireball 7a design to make sure every available science instrument was aboard and working, I shot Bob to LKO and began the wait for the clearance to put a craft into Minmus's orbit.

Sunday began with the rescue of scientist Tefrod Kerman from LKO and the safe return of the Bloop-Bloop 7 probe from its Minmus flyby. The probe's return unlocked an exploration contract to dock two craft in orbit of Mun; having anticipated this contract, I'd left Jeb and Val in Munar orbit a few days earlier aboard a pair of Minnow 7 touring craft, each Kerbal with five tourists also aboard at the time (they'd paid for flybys but I went ahead and comped them all up to extended orbits). Jeb conducted the rendezvous maneuver with Val a short time later.

 

Rendezvous and docking was a success. The next exploration contract involved a crew exchange. With both craft full up, it was necessary for Val to go on EVA to make room.

Jeb, on the other hand, could've just transferred between pods using the docking port. Personally, I think he was just trying to look at Val's butt, which is hard to do in a space suit. Perv.

With the crew transfer successfully completed, the next exploration contract was to put a craft into Minmus's orbit...and then return it from orbit. With their jobs finished, the two Minnows burned for Kerbin.

Jeb wanted to get out of there before Val realized he'd been looking at her butt again...luckily the return transfer window occurred right as the craft undocked from one another.

Bob was then sent on to Minmus. Because of the need to return the orbiting craft, I went ahead and launched another Bloop-Bloop 7 probe. The transfer of this probe wound up such that it got a gravity boost off of Mun, and so it wound up arriving at Minmus in a mere three days; Bob wouldn't arrive for 5.5 days.

The Minnows returned safely to Kerbin on Monday, clearing five tourist contracts in the process. An LMO rescue contract saw Jeb loaded aboard a new Minnow 7 with tourists Harbas, Negar, Johndred and Gustop; the craft successfully picked up Wilrey Kerman from over Mun and then returned safely, clearing four contracts in the process. A Boop-Boop 7 probe was also launched to LKO for contract. The Bloop-Bloop probe then arrived at Minmus, where it was put into a specific orbit to clear a Minmus probe contract; this wound up using most of the probe's fuel, but it had just enough left after clearing the contract to make a return burn to Kerbin - none was left for it to slow down at re-entry, though, and most of the transfer stage disintegrated. Fortunately, I had put the core, chutes and batteries behind a heat shield and they all survived all the way to splashdown. Meanwhile, Bob arrived over Minmus and began taking orbital science readings.

Fireball 7a over the Great Flats of Minmus. The little bottleneck there that the craft is centered over has played host to the Deepwater Horizon refinery for the last couple of versions; I kinda think of the place as home and hope to go back there again soon.

With the probe's return to Kerbin, Bob was given the go to begin landings. He completed gathering the orbital science and then hit all nine of the moon's biomes before returning to Kerbin safely after 25 days in space.

It's pretty awesome when you can get the whole thing all at once...

The amount of scientific data gathered, while impressive, was still not enough to unlock my entire tech tree - I'm still 2,650 science short - but it was enough to unlock most of it. At this point, I have access to my entire catalog of craft except for the Auk VII and the Auk XIV (respectively my 16-passenger and 32-passenger spaceplanes), and I'll probably send Bob back to Mun to go get the rest of it at some point in the near future.

Rest of the week's been pretty cut and dry. Pilot Suly Kerman and scientist Lenbal Kerman were launched aboard the DOH-2 station to conduct an orbiting space habitation study for contract; that's still ongoing as of this morning. Launch of scanning satellites commenced with ScanSat Kerbin to a low polar orbit; similar launches to Mun and Minmus are scheduled. Four launches of Pink Noise 7 communication satellite carriers took place yesterday, beginning the process of establishing a commnet constellation in Kerbin's SOI - one of these went to high equatorial Kerbin orbit, one has been sent towards Mun, one towards Minmus, and one to high polar Kerbin orbit. A fair number of the Kerbincomm satellites are in their final positions as of this morning, with Kerbincomm Charlie slightly out of position owing to bad planning on my part and Kerbincomm Foxtrot still heading towards its final position. The final Pink Noise probe was launched this morning, which will set up the three satellites just within Kerbin's SOI (i.e. carry out the long-haul mission). Last thing I've been trying to do is to establish a TBD base in the vicinity of KSC. Scientist Frovan Kerman and Engineer Beamon Kerman were put aboard a TBD rover and sent out to establish the South Base 3.5 kilometers to the south of KSC, far enough south that it's out of physics range of craft launching/landing at the space center but not so far away as to be inconvenient to get to. The goal of the base is to establish a Pathfinder Pipeline mass driver in order to keep orbital space stations supplied. So far I've been having to deal with The Kraken a lot; Kraken ate the base and Frovan along with it on the first try and it was only via KML necromancy that I got Frovan back. The second attempt saw the base half-buried at shaking itself pretty wildly; I recovered it before The Kraken could really do a number on it. The third attempt is now underway, with pilot Alder Kerman joining the other two and the attempt being made with a more advanced TBD 7a rover. I remembered to set the airpark on the Saddle this time, so I'm hopeful that this base will actually work out. If have to do it again, the fourth iteration is going to have to be called Swamp Castle...

[RealKerbal3x]

I built a really cheap (<15000) rescue rocket in my career save (which I rarely ever go in--I normally play sandbox), and used it to save Geoffrod Kerman from LKO (sorry, no screenshots). It had an upper stage for orbital rendezvous, but it turns out that if you launch at the right time, you can perform all of the necessary manoeuvres with only the ascent stage. I can optimise it even more by removing that redundant stage.

[Cataclism]

....

Hello!
There is a KSP video on Youtube from Shadow Zone, in which he made a pretty cool jet-elevator to lift his kerbals from the launch pad floor all the way up to the cockpit.
But I needed something a lot easier and lighter to adapt on the bases I´m sending to atmospheric planets/moons in 'The World Beyond -> Traverse'. So, I followed some good ideas from that video and made "this".
The videos of the first failures attempts are bellow and, for those interested in some related explanations, they´re hidden at the end of this post.

Spoiler

 

Yeah, I know of many cool lifters and cranes and stuff within the mods around - I have some installed - but, again, I wanted something more direct and easy-to-use. I´ve also made one pretty fancy stuff with the Akita rover core, but things get a little hard to balance once they´re hanged just by a wire.
For those whom haven´t used the magnetic stuff yet (It´s my first time), remember that the thing may disconnect/disengage when you realod your game or your scene. So, it´s better to plug and link it (to make it part of "the same vessel") with some gadgets like KAS/KIS, or even the portable EVA strutt from DMagic. Again: you HAVE to make it a "part of the same vessel" to be able to secure the connection with struts. That´s why I pluged them with the rounds connectors first.
Or just lie the elevator coupola on the floor, if it´s flat enough to dont turn over and roll away in case the magnet fails. 
Also, nor the magnet nor the hook will attach to the stuff while it´s part of the same vessel, so you have to somehow decouple the elevator before trying to grab it. I used the same action button for ejecting the magnet and decoupling the holders, but as I wasn´t quick enough to click "instant stretch" to avoid the falling, it´s seems to me it´s better to create a provisory floor for the first time.
Yeah, I could "disassemble" the parts instead of ejecting, so to scavenge them as material kits, but in this case the objective was just to show the stuff working.
I appologize for the poor quality but it would take forever if I try to send three videos of more than 250MB each.

:::::::

It took me more than four hours just to make it right for this footage - man, these kerbals move SO BAD! I don´t mean they should act like some kind of assassin´s creed´s stuff but, MAN that sucks!
Anyway... first, the first model that actually worked out properly (after kraken-knows how many attempts). Then, the elevator on its offial use on the vertical base and, finally, a few "teletransportation-upgrades", so one doesn´t have to fill everything with ladders (which they won´t be able to grab) and structures (which they won´t be able to stand on).
The idea from the elevon as a security measure I took also from another Shadow Zone video, in which he used´em as a cool visual animation just like they were the coupling grabers while docking two vessels.

 

 

 

https://youtu.be/1UiJsZFhrfg

https://youtu.be/tjoLM80U3v8

 

https://youtu.be/ZLyOLDqYe9U

 

:::::::

Now, I´ll try to make it inside a vertical small tube, fixed to the entire height of the ship, so to avoid the kind of stupid accidents you´ll see in the videos.
Probably something like the way Matt Lowne used small landing wheels to enable some spinning inside his space station.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

After all those numbers, an engineer decided to take an Akita rover (by Umbra) an go for some R&R, camping near the ocean.
 

 

 

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

 

 

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Pretty crowded, note the fleet underway to Jool, set up so each ship will brake at Tylo at one Tylo orbit intervals. 

 

Edited December 6, 2018 by Cataclism

[Tyko]

31 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I built a really cheap (<15000) rescue rocket in my career save (which I rarely ever go in--I normally play sandbox), and used it to save Geoffrod Kerman from LKO (sorry, no screenshots). It had an upper stage for orbital rendezvous, but it turns out that if you launch at the right time, you can perform all of the necessary manoeuvres with only the ascent stage. I can optimise it even more by removing that redundant stage.

This is great "This is the KSC. Don't worry, we are sending a rescue ship your way immediately. It was purchased from the lowest bidder and we spared every expense to make the cheapest rocket possible. You'll be totally safe. Trust us"

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, Tyko said:

This is great "This is the KSC. Don't worry, we are sending a rescue ship your way immediately. It was purchased from the lowest bidder and we spared every expense to make the cheapest rocket possible. You'll be totally safe. Trust us"

Ha, yeah! That was the point

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, Cataclism said:

....

Hello!
There is a KSP video on Youtube from Shadow Zone, in which he made a pretty cool jet-elevator to lift his kerbals from the launch pad floor all the way up to the cockpit.
But I needed something a lot easier and lighter to adapt on the bases I´m sending to atmospheric planets/moons in 'The World Beyond -> Traverse'. So, I followed some good ideas from that video and made "this".
The videos of the first failures attempts are bellow and, for those interested in some related explanations, they´re hidden at the end of this post.

Now, I´ll try to make it inside a vertical small tube, fixed to the entire height of the ship, so to avoid the kind of stupid accidents you´ll see in the videos.
Probably something like the way Matt Lowne used small landing wheels to enable some spinning inside his space station.

That a busy place! 

I have lifted kerbals by just having the grab the winch and haul them up but this was new. 
And you gave me an genial idea about using sit in seat to have kerbal get out of situations. Like from hanging in an KAS wire to sitting in an seat on an platform. Then leaving seats they are standing on platform. 

Launching towards all planets except Eve and Dress who don't have launch window yet. Dress one is in Minmus orbit waiting. 
Some are junk as in dropped stages who I added probe core on as I would take them into target orbit for possible reuse if dV cost of braking allowed it. Its pretty hard to get good estimates for braking cost before committing to burn. 
I also has rescue missions for 3 kerbals between Moho and the sun, 
The Moho tug 1 will be reused as an high dV interceptor for low sun orbit rescue intercepts. 
The one who as Pe at duna and Ap outside is the heatshield for the Duna base. Probe core as I had to move around parts a bit and posible reuse but low on dV so dropped before adjustment burn for Duna orbit and Ike intercept. 

 

[Cataclism]

33 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

I have lifted kerbals by just having the grab the winch and haul them up but this was new. 
And you gave me an genial idea about using sit in seat to have kerbal get out of situations. Like from hanging in an KAS wire to sitting in an seat on an platform. Then leaving seats they are standing on platform. 
 

...and that´s exactly how this idea for the elevator came to me! 
I forgot to test, but I think you can´t storage two of those seats in inventory or carry them in a backpack container; otherwise, you could climb almost every kind of part, just "warping" between them. In true, you can do this with a single one, just like you said above. One could call it a cheat, indeed but, who cares! Let´s take the feet out of the mud! 

[TrooperCooper]

 

Put a very aerodynamic payload on top of a lifter.

 

 

Eeloo Exploration Rover going into space...

 

 

Ascend was slightly suboptimal and thus some of the skycranes hydrogen fuel, which was actually ment to power the descend on Eeloo, had to be used to make the final orbital circularization and and catch up to the setups taxi...

 

 

Coming in to dock with the Pegasus interplanetary tug.

 

 

After docking up, a standard tanker was brought up to replenish the spent fuel...

 

 

It docked up at the Pegasus' secondary docking ports and transfered its cargo...

 

 

Pegasus with Eeloo Exploration Rover is now ready and waiting for the Sarnus transfer window opening up...

 

[DeltaDizzy]

I got a little carried away...

The core is 7.5m and the SRB's have over 7000 kilonewtons each, plus 25 SSMEs on the bottom.

[roboslacker]

Today I sent a mothership meant for Duna expeditions to the Mun

[IllicitMedic]

Dropped the first section of my south pole research station out the back of my C-4E GlobeEagle, although I forgot to take photos of the drop itself here is a photo after turning around ti fly back home.

You can see the aurora with the Mun in the background.

[Cavscout74]

I had another Jool crew arrive at Laythe station.  The crew currently on Laythe wrapped up operations & headed back up to Laythe station.  After meeting up in orbit, the outgoing crew performed a transfer to Bop for some surface exploration while the new crew headed down to continue surface research on Laythe.  The only snag in the process is the Bop lander is still 2 days away from entering Jool's SoI.   By the time the lander gets to Bop, there will only be a few weeks before the Jool-Kerbin window.

And I discovered I took exactly one screenshot, and that one was taken without hiding the UI.  Would've been a nice view of the Laythe-Lightning spaceplane maneuvering to dock with Laythe station in between the two crew cyclers with Jool in the background.  Too bad the navball was blocking most of the station. 

[Azimech]

Today I continued work on my 2-cylinder 4-stroke engine, which was on the shelf since July. Stock + DLC. Massive improvements in reliability and sturdiness. And I've finally got the valves working. It doesn't run on its own power yet, I need to tweak the timing a lot.

 

 

[Angelo Kerman]

I needed to reference some coloration on the KSC observatory for a new part, so I parked a very stable observational platform next to it:

Flying saucers for the win.

For reference on what I'm working on:

Edited December 7, 2018 by Angel-125

[AeroGav]

On 12/2/2018 at 11:55 PM, Cavscout74 said:

I was going to take up a mid-tech spaceplane in my 1.5.1 career for a rescue mission.  This particular spaceplane (based on @AeroGav 's tutorial for a panther-NERV design) has been used before (1.4.5 at least, possibly earlier).  But when I switched to NERV power, I had ~1000 m/s dV LESS than I did in 1.4.5.  I couldn't even make orbit.  Previously, I was able to go all the way out for a quick trip beyond Kerbin's SoI & back for pilot training without refueling.  Really disappointing - but it kinda confirms the feeling I already had that 1.5.1 had less dV available for the same designs as 1.4.5.  Since I've only been launching rockets so far in 1.5.1, it wasn't as noticeable, and I hadn't done a direct comparison until now.

Nice looking ship,  a mixture of some variable geometry fighter bomber and executive jet.

I haven't played in a couple of weeks but the 1.5 patch seriously messed with mk2 designs in particular and  i also encountered a major issue with how drag is calculated on mk2 cargo bays.

It looks like you are using only mk1 parts in this and haven't got any bicouplers on there. so should be good.

If you kept to more or less the same fuselage as the example design in the tutorial thread,   that ship  has about a 30% fuel mass fraction and never could get beyond mid orbit - it simply didn't have all that much fuel - given that Panther engines can only take you to 1/3 of orbital velocity,  much of that is used just reaching low orbit.   I didn't bother adding more tanks because the goal was to show a simple design that steered the middle ground between running out of fuel before reaching orbit (fuel fraction too low) or being sluggish and hard to fly (fuel fraction too high).

It has plenty of fuel to reach low orbit but just falls short - about 100m/s - of being able to do a Munar flyby.

So, unless  you added extra tanks, i don't see how you'd escape Kerbin SOI on that.   

I've just noticed there appear to be extra things stuck on the airplane though.   Is that an airbrake atop the main fuselage ?  Fair enough, it won't add much drag when stowed.

However, on top of the nerv nacelles there appear to be radiators?   They add a lot of drag,  but don't actually cool you down below 70km.    I suspect you've now got so much drag it fails to accelerate on the thrust of two nervs (120kn total).      What else is stuck on the sides?  Bear in mind solar panels add a lot of drag too,   the deployable ones are protected from damage by the atmosphere when stowed,  but they still make a lot of drag (more than the cockpit, if i recall) which is why i mount them radially on a small battery or reaction wheel in the service bay.

 

 

[Cavscout74]

4 hours ago, AeroGav said:

If you kept to more or less the same fuselage as the example design in the tutorial thread,   that ship  has about a 30% fuel mass fraction and never could get beyond mid orbit - it simply didn't have all that much fuel - given that Panther engines can only take you to 1/3 of orbital velocity,  much of that is used just reaching low orbit.   I didn't bother adding more tanks because the goal was to show a simple design that steered the middle ground between running out of fuel before reaching orbit (fuel fraction too low) or being sluggish and hard to fly (fuel fraction too high).

It has plenty of fuel to reach low orbit but just falls short - about 100m/s - of being able to do a Munar flyby.

So, unless  you added extra tanks, i don't see how you'd escape Kerbin SOI on that.   

I've just noticed there appear to be extra things stuck on the airplane though.   Is that an airbrake atop the main fuselage ?  Fair enough, it won't add much drag when stowed.

However, on top of the nerv nacelles there appear to be radiators?   They add a lot of drag,  but don't actually cool you down below 70km.    I suspect you've now got so much drag it fails to accelerate on the thrust of two nervs (120kn total).      What else is stuck on the sides?  Bear in mind solar panels add a lot of drag too,   the deployable ones are protected from damage by the atmosphere when stowed,  but they still make a lot of drag (more than the cockpit, if i recall) which is why i mount them radially on a small battery or reaction wheel in the service bay.

 

 

i didn't mention, but I have a MM patch to add fuel to the wings which gave me the extra range.  I also use mod FTMN-80 NERVs which are a little lighter & higher thrust.  I could probably drop the radiators, but 1.4.5 it didn't hurt too bad.  Nothing else is on the sides, the solar is mounted in the service bay just like you described.  I did get around to checking stock parts 1.5.1 vs 1.4.5, in the SPH the dV readout is about the same.  I haven't tried a stock test flight in either yet though. 

On a separate note, I did manage a nice precision landing on Laythe while bringing down a fresh crew.  I targeted the rover as my aim point & landing, and ended my landing roll 111m from it without having to touch any controls once I touched down & set the brakes.

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Cavscout74

[Plane Crazy]

Launched a dual rescue mission to save Shannon and Haddrin Kerman from orbit of the Mun.  Used a reusable booster stage.

[Xurkitree]

TODAY STOCK DV CAME OUT

So I went and updated my modded game to 1.5 and i'm still finding bugs and mods that say that they're unsupportted but work fine.