What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Castille7]

The other day I lost my Pen, today I don't know where I placed my Cup Of Joe.....

Edited December 8, 2018 by Castille7

[RealKerbal3x]

28 minutes ago, Xurkitree said:

mods that say that they're unsupportted but work fine.

Just AVC. Try the mod 'Zero Mini AVC' to get rid of those annoying notifications.

[Servo]

I finalized and released my Panavia Tornado: https://kerbalx.com/servo/Panavia-Tornado

For some reason, this is the first stock one on KerbalX...

I don't know why. It's only an European swing-wing fighter...

 

[DocMike]

Kinda finished manned kerbed Moho mission. And my "I don't design ships, I build them" strategy backfired more than once.

So what I learned the hard way:

1) A 9-ton lander kinda saps the delta-v

2) One can always launch a number of tankers to resupply on the way, as long as consumables aren't included in game time is not a problem.

3) RCS placement on a tanker might save a lot of swearing - or otherwise.

4) A lander with 0.27 TWR ain't very good for landing on atmosphereless planet with 0.27g gravity. It did land in one piece, but with 10% fuel left.

5) I still need to bring them home

[Azimech]

Because my car has active suspension to cancel body roll (it beats the 2017 McLaren 675LT in the Swedish Moose test) I was interested if I could make something like this with stock KSP.

Here I present to you my 77 Industries Anti-Roll Experiment, built into my Lowell XT.

Testing was done at 60m/s and 2G lateral force. The anti-roll system works but because of the way KSP handles wheels, the increase in cornering speed was minimal (2.1 vs 1.9 G's).

So I won't be building this into my cars.

 

[AeroGav]

22 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

23 hours ago, AeroGav said:

 

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. 

The SPH delta V readout only takes account engine ISP and what % of your mass is fuel, put a Wheesly on the first stage if you really want to see some crazy numbers :-)

I'd deffo get rid of the rads,  i can only think drag losses are what's killing you.    If you want lower temps on ascent and re-entry,  add wing area,  the extra lift means for any given airspeed,  you will be at higher altitude so heat will be less.    Drag from fuselage parts (which is the major source of drag in stock aero) will be lower for the same reason,  so it is easier to fly on a lower TWR.   Oh  and you have wet wings?   More fuel available too.  

Always chose wet wings over cylindrical tanks where you can (weight and balance, trim issues force your hand sometimes).    Dry mass is not such a big deal with 6 tons of NERVs to lug around, a few extra wing parts gets lost in that.    It's all about how much fuel you can bring without drag overwhelming your little nerv motors.

[Fraktal]

Tried out my new heavy booster for a crewed munar landing. I staged it so that the SRBs and the Reliant fire together, the Swivels fire when I drop the SRBs. It leaves the ground very laboriously (1.3 TWR) because the SRBs and the Reliant simply can't lift any more but once it's in the air, it burns for about two minutes straight at full throttle, imparting a nice 3100+ m/s to the lander and the transfer stage.

I'm still struggling with the ascent profile because most of my takeoffs with it resulted in me flying practically horizontally at 35k altitude, about 20-25° off prograde, getting a excrementston of drag to the point that overheat bars started showing up on the antennas at the top of the lander. But if I turn any slower, I overshoot my target altitude.

Anyway, Jeb tested the prototype personally to visually survey the monolith anomaly that was found several weeks beforehand by a lucky probe and it was quite the comedy of errors:

• The lander's engine was throttled back far too much (13.5%) and he had to manually bump it up quite a lot (60%) to be able to kill his horizontal velocity before hitting the ground.
• He only noticed in the middle of the pre-takeoff checklist on the munar surface that the engineers who assembled the lander forgot to put any ablator on the heatshield. For this reason, he used a quite shallow (45 km periapse) reentry that was slow, but safe enough that the heatshield never went beyond 71% capacity.
• He was literally seconds away from reentering Kerbin's atmosphere when he realized the engineers also forgot to set the flight computer to auto-hibernate and the command pod's batteries to reserve mode, causing the lander to deplete all power by the time it reached Kerbin due to the solar panels being mounted on the top of the command pod to shield them from reentry but the pod facing away from Kerbol during its entire journey back to Kerbin after finishing its return burn at the Mun.
  • I actually had to cheat for this one, as the lander was already inside Kerbin's atmosphere by the time I noticed the problem, so I didn't have time to get out and push to turn the solar panels towards the sun.

Once the irresponsible engineers were smacked about a bit and the problems corrected, Bob took the next flight to the Mun and, thanks to crafty use of available storage space for experiment data (one copy transmitted, second copy stored in the pod, third copy stored in the experiment storage module and a fourth copy left in the instrument, where applicable) returned with about 30 science (which, since I'm running a 10% science game, is actually equivalent to 300 in a stock game) which, due to Jeb's earlier trip, yielded just enough data to develop fairings for launching the planned munar satellite relay network so that missions can be expanded to the far side of the Mun as well.


...and when I brought up the satellite subassembly to slap on a second HG-5 so that it can reach the munar surface from a decent range, I tossed the fairing aside to gain access, tried to move one of three symmetry-mounted solar panels... not only the game didn't remove the other two, I couldn't drop the one I was holding either, nor could I exit the VAB, while the game was rapid-firing nullpointer errors in the console.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at ModuleProceduralFairing.onInterstageDetach () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper delegate-invoke) Callback:invoke_void__this__ ()
  at (wrapper delegate-invoke) Callback:invoke_void__this__ ()
  at Part.onDetach (Boolean first) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at EditorLogic.detachPart (.Part part) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at EditorLogic.deleteSymmetryParts () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at EditorLogic.<SetupFSM>m__D () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper delegate-invoke) Callback:invoke_void__this__ ()
  at (wrapper delegate-invoke) Callback:invoke_void__this__ ()
  at (wrapper delegate-invoke) Callback:invoke_void__this__ ()
  at KerbalFSM.UpdateFSM () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at EditorLogic.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

So much for putting that sucker inside a fairing. I had to Alt-Tab out and kill the executable manually.

[GDJ]

Meh. Not too much.

[TrooperCooper]

 

Pegasus pushed the Eeloo Exploration Rover and its skycrane into a Kerbin - Sarnus transfer orbit

 

Several years later: arrival at Sarnus

 

the vessel moved on to Eeeloo...

 

 

Deployment of the skycrane / Rover setup in a low orbit above the moon

 

 

The skycrane began its descend by burning off all its horizontal speed right above a potential resource hotspot identified by an orbital scanner several years ago.

 

 

Vertical descend...

 

 

Coming down at the edge of a crater...

 

 

Touching down gently.

 

 

Shortly afterwards the Rover was released and rolled out of the skycrane. It then went into hybernation mode, waiting for its crew.

 

 

In the meantime, in anticipation of the upcoming crewed missions, the Eeeloo Lander moved over to the orbital station and docked up there.

 

 

Pegasus interplanetary tug headed back home after another successful delivery...

 

 

When it arrived back at Kerbin, it was refueled with unmanned tankers and Bill went on board for a short visit to do some maintenance work on the reactor core...

 

 

Then the Prometheus interplanetary travel module moved up on the Pegasus and docked on its main connector port.

 

 

Prometheus and Pegasus combined turned into a fully fledged interplanetary cruiser.

 

 

When the next transfer window came up, Jeb, Bill and Bob went up into space, using a standardized MOC3 crew lifter.

 

 

Since its a fun craft to fly, the ascend was done manually.

 

 

The A-Team met up with the Pegasus/Prometheus and went on board.

 

 

A couple days later they began their longest journey thus far...

 

 

Six years later: arrival at Eeloo

 

 

After a low equatorial orbit was achieved, the crew moved into the PTV (Prometheus Transfer Vehicle) at the top end of the travel setup.

 

The light PTV allows for independent crew operations arround the destination without the need to cope  with the enormous Pegasus/Prometheus at the same time.

 

 

After undocking from its mothership, the PTV perfomed a couple of brief burns...

 

 

Then it arrived at Eeeloo Station.

 

 

The crew went on board and started up all on-board systems of the station. Unfortunately they realized they would need additional materials to inflate the large habitation modules. It wouldnt cause a severe problem however, since they would travel down to the surface soon anyway...

 

 

After they had checked and undocked the Eeeloo Lander...

 

 

All three Kerbalnauts began their descend when the Rover landing site came into view...

 

 

Final approach...

 

 

And putting her down...

 

 

Jeb had the honour to place the first flag.

 

 

Then he inspected the pre-positioned Exploration Rover.

 

 

Shortly afterwards the three Kerbals went on board of the large vehicle and began their resource exploration journey while looking for a spot to build a mining base in the future...

 

[GDJ]

Contract flight. Checking out an anomaly in the Arctic. Rumoured to be a crash site.

[Angelo Kerman]

I finished texturing my new 12.5m part, the Castillo Observatory! This morning I integrated it into KSP and rigged up the tracking controller plugin so that the telescope tracks what you target. Even better, it now works with @JPLRepo's Tarsier:

... and it works with CactEye Optics too.

[Plane Crazy]

Sent a mission to explore Minmus.

[magnemoe]

Upgraded spaceport1

And yes i should be allowed to use the rotating habitats as reaction wheels. 
Also a bit annoying that the front hab rotate opposite of that it would do if this was an cogwheel setup 

[Petrovich]

Played with a replica X-20 Dyna-Soar and launched a satellite

https://imgur.com/a/uWUvs06

[Fraktal]

Today I finally put my shiny new fairing to use by deploying relay satellites to the Mun (and had to build a new launcher for them as well, since even the weakest one I had was overpowered for something as light as a satellite). I had to strap on a second fuel tank to give the sats enough dV to reach their target orbit without a transfer stage or leaving junk in orbit, but in the end, I was kinda-sorta successful. Two sats were properly deployed into semi-synchronous orbit, but the third required some tedium because it arrived to the Mun too close to the orbital position of the second sat, which would've left too big of a gap between the third and the first. So I put the third on a 1797 km x 300 km orbit to get into position down the line, then jumped back to the KSC to launch Bob's next landing mission in the Explorer-2, which also served as a range test for the new sats. I did some calculations which said that two HG-5 antennas had the combined range to reach a Communotron on the munar surface from semi-synchronous orbit, which I proved true. Well, sorta: at 40 km altitude, the Communotron had an 8% signal strength which, considering the relay was over 1800 km away at its current orbital position, was pretty nice. Of course, it's worth mentioning that the Explorer-2 has three Communotrons, the combined strength of which versus the combined strength of the relay's twin HG-5s resulted in a signal strength in the low fifties.

I targeted the northwest crater as a landing site this time and although I landed safely on the first try, I lost too much dV with a slow descent and ended up stuck in low munar orbit about 140 m/s short of getting back to Kerbin. I tried getting out and pushing with Bob, but I realized I simply didn't have the patience.

Then I remembered that I popped a quicksave before the deorbit burn, so I reloaded that and went with a different descent profile: above the target area, I killed my horizontal velocity completely, then turned downwards and descended with a series of T-5 second suicide burns, only switching to a continuous slow descent about 400 meters up. That did the trick and even with me only circularizing at 11 km altitude, I only got back to Kerbin with about 50-something m/s left, which is far too close for comfort. Also, the 43 km periapse reentry turned out to be too shallow, as I burned off all my ablator and bounced back out to an apoapse of 300 km before reentering for real. Luckily, the heatshield was up for the job even without ablator. That being said, reentry was still a bit unnerving because without the OKTO core being able to hold retrograde, Bob had to constantly keep fighting against the heatshield's drag wanting to flip the craft to maintain low AoA to keep the materials bay in the middle of the craft from overheating and tearing out not just the entire science payload, but the OKTO as well.

Still, I got about 40 science out of this trip and seeing as I'm at 49 right now, the next trip should unlock me another science node. I think I'll probably take the lander can next so that Jeb can help out with reentry stabilization. At this rate, I'll unlock the entirety of tech tier 5 on the Mun which, coupled with the science I'll get from Minmus, will open up options for me to start planning a probe launch to Duna. Note to self: add more ablator to the Explorer-2. 60 isn't enough, 80 should do the trick, possibly 100 if we factor in a Minmus mission in the future.

[XLjedi]

5 minutes ago, Petrovich said:

Played with a replica X-20 Dyna-Soar and launched a satellite

https://imgur.com/a/uWUvs06

That was really cool!

[Plane Crazy]

Today I accepted a couple contracts to land on Minmus and rescue a kerbal in Minmus orbit.

Turns out, I had to send a fuel tanker to make it home.

[Cavscout74]

On 12/8/2018 at 9:36 PM, AeroGav said:

The SPH delta V readout only takes account engine ISP and what % of your mass is fuel, put a Wheesly on the first stage if you really want to see some crazy numbers :-)

I'd deffo get rid of the rads,  i can only think drag losses are what's killing you.    If you want lower temps on ascent and re-entry,  add wing area,  the extra lift means for any given airspeed,  you will be at higher altitude so heat will be less.    Drag from fuselage parts (which is the major source of drag in stock aero) will be lower for the same reason,  so it is easier to fly on a lower TWR.   Oh  and you have wet wings?   More fuel available too.  

Always chose wet wings over cylindrical tanks where you can (weight and balance, trim issues force your hand sometimes).    Dry mass is not such a big deal with 6 tons of NERVs to lug around, a few extra wing parts gets lost in that.    It's all about how much fuel you can bring without drag overwhelming your little nerv motors.

So I finally flew the stock-ish (Mechjeb added for dV readout) version in 1.5.1.  I was able to reach a 98km circular with 288 m/s remaining.  Now I'm really confused, since the original version has lighter NERV's & more fuel.  Maybe I just botched the ascent without realizing it.  I did remove the radiators, but they were always there previously - 1.4.5 where I had no problems & 1.5.1.  Anyway, I'll have to try again with the mod version in 1.5.1 now.

Update:  Mod version made orbit finally, but with only 420 m/s dV remaining in a 98km circular orbit.  I only did 98 km b/c the first test went up that high because I was looking somewhere else & overshot my 80km target altitude.  So at least it made orbit, but not much extra fuel than the dry wings stock version with an extra ton of engine mass.

Update 2:  And I just found my problems - for some reason the mod NERV's had their ISP get changed to 570 instead of 800.  I never thought to look at the engine stats, since I expected them to be the same in either version of KSP.  Need to go edit that now.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Cavscout74

[AeroGav]

2 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

So I finally flew the stock-ish (Mechjeb added for dV readout) version in 1.5.1.  I was able to reach a 98km circular with 288 m/s remaining.  Now I'm really confused, since the original version has lighter NERV's & more fuel.  Maybe I just botched the ascent without realizing it.  I did remove the radiators, but they were always there previously - 1.4.5 where I had no problems & 1.5.1.  Anyway, I'll have to try again with the mod version in 1.5.1 now.

Update:  Mod version made orbit finally, but with only 420 m/s dV remaining in a 98km circular orbit.  I only did 98 km b/c the first test went up that high because I was looking somewhere else & overshot my 80km target altitude.  So at least it made orbit, but not much extra fuel than the dry wings stock version with an extra ton of engine mass.

Update 2:  And I just found my problems - for some reason the mod NERV's had their ISP get changed to 570 instead of 800.  I never thought to look at the engine stats, since I expected them to be the same in either version of KSP.  Need to go edit that now.

One thing that really drives me potty about this game is minor updates breaking your craft,  mods that add parts just seem to make the picture even worse.

[ARS]

Jeb has finished his Mun mission, time to go back to Kerbin...

Reentry seems normal. Everything looks good...

Wait, did I sense something unnatural in my control? OH CRAP! The fuel tank! I accidentally used too much fuel during retrograde burn and now it's deprived of liquid fuel! I can't use oxidizer only for jet engines and now my craft is spinning out of control!

Cannot regain the stability! Alternator on engines are non functional! 5000 meters... Ah screw it! EJECT!

It pains me to see such a fine craft plummet to it's doom, but for the sake of my crew, I'll do anything to save their life, even if it means the loss of entire craft (Crew safety is my first priority in my space agency, more than the space asset)

Jeb returned safely from that mission. The craft is put back into design bureau for redesign to include a bigger fuel tank capacity to prevent the same problem occuring again

[LaydeeDem]

Modded some space potatoes into the game.

 

Tsyke, a big metal asteroid supposed to be an analogue to the IRL asteroid 16 Psyche.

 

Ridge, a tiny moonlet in a placeholder orbit around Tsyke until I can figure out where to put it. Only 2.4 km across. Shaped like a ravioli.

 

Trojar, a Jool Trojan asteroid. Haven't got the orbit right yet but it should work when I do. Especially with the Principia mod maybe.

 

Jeb discovered that Trojar has a big hole in it like the Mohole. Perfect for throwing sacrifices to the Kraken in.

 

Sacrifice: One (1) Kerbug-I and one (1) Jebediah Kerman. Hopefully the Kraken finds it worthy.

 

Suddenly, it happens. Jeb begins to vibrate violently as he phases out of existence! The Kraken is pleased.

"Gene, I don't feel so good" - Jeb Kerman to Mission Control

 

 

Edited December 10, 2018 by LaydeeDem

[Xurkitree]

After an eternity

I completed my second Grand Tour!

P.S - No refueling

[DocMike]

Built something for sheer fun. Learned that launching highly assymetrical craft can go wrong:

Horribly wrong:

...or just plain wrong:

But finally, there she is, ready for pirating: the Queen Anne's Revenge.

...and she rocks the waves as she goes. Side effect of offset NERVs and nose-mounted vernor compensating attitude  

Arr, matey! Make'em walk the airlock!

 

[capi3101]

Been up since 12:30 AM local working an end-of-semester overnight shift. If this is in any way incoherent, y'all know why.

Log goes back to last Thursday, when I put the Kerbincomm Foxtrot communications probe into position in polar orbit over Kerbin, rounding out the initial Kerbin commnet constellation. Scanning satellites were launched for Mun and Minmus, and a Pink Noise 7 satellite carrier reached Mun's SOI. The three Muncomm satellites were put into their final positions during the day on Friday, completing all the work I intend to do on the commnet over Mun. ScanSat Mun also reached polar orbit over Mun and I selected an initial area to survey in order to find a spot to plop down the planned Piper Alpha refinery outpost. ScanSat Minmus wound up doing a Mun flyby on its way out to Minmus as well. Having reassessed the required minimum structures to set up a successful Pathfinder base, tweaks were made to the TBD 7a base-seed rover design and yet another attempt was made to set up the South Base Area with the changes in place. Pilot Alder Kerman, engineer Beamon Kerman and scientist Frovan Kerman drove 3.5 kilometers south of the KSC 09 inner marker to the base site and began setting up the Swamp Castle experimental outpost (it's the fourth attempt at setting up the South Base Area; it stayed up). I've spent a fair amount of time over the weekend continuing to expand the capability of the outpost and trying to fight an odd bug that has crept up with it...

Beamon standing underneath Swamp Castle. Fusion power I could live with, but this anti-gravity business is for the birds, man...

The changes to the onboard structures worked, so the same tweaks were made to the TBD 7a launch vehicle. Pilot Patrod Kerman, scientist Dilbur Kerman and engineer Gemlorf Kerbin were launched aboard the TBD 7a and sent to Mun, ultimately landing a good fifty klicks away from their landing zone. At night, of course...

Last thing that happened Saturday was the launch of space station Kerbinport.

Spent thirty minutes working on tweaks of the station design before deciding to leave it exactly as it is...

Yesterday, aside from working with Swamp Castle, I launched a probe towards a high, retrograde and inclined orbit over Kerbin. That contract is still ongoing as of this writing; its up to the proper apoapsis/periapsis altitudes but it's a good thirty degrees off axis and it'll be another four days before I reach the proper node to try and correct it for contract. I also picked up scientist Kathald Kerman from LKO for contract using an Auk I rescue plane.

Kathald jetpacking to the Auk. 

The rescue went well, all told. Only lost one wing on landing...

So this morning's been pretty busy in terms of gameplay (overnight shifts don't involve a lot; just checking to make sure people who come in are supposed to be there). I launched four satellites for various contracts, finishing up two of those contracts. Space station Munport was launched and arrived in a 15x15 orbit over Mun, with practically no inclination to its orbit (and fulfilling a station contract in the process, incidentally). The team aboard the DOH-2 space station completed their space adaptation survey and so the station was de-orbited, the crew returning safely to Kerbin. Work also continued on Swamp Castle.

Did run into a slight problem with operations at Swamp Castle as the day went on. Next priority - remove the base's dependence on solar power.

Finally, the sun rose on the TBD 7a rover I'd landed at Mun, and so the process of roving over to the target zone commenced. So far the team has gone thirty klicks looking for the crucial materials needed to set up a Pathfinder base with no luck. The terrain hasn't been the most forgiving either, and with the target zone in the Twin Craters, I probably haven't seen the worst of it just yet. Certainly hope that when I get where I'm going it'll all have been worth it...

[Plane Crazy]

Made this.