What did you do in KSP1 today?

[CarbonFibre]

Today i messed with helicopters.

It works, but turning is an issue

i also made a pretty good looking SSTO, stable but ends up spinning if you turn too hard in the upper atmosphere. Pretty manouverable too.

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, qzgy said:

New helicopter development is going well.....

 

You’ve got to video that. 

[aagun123]

[Broken pictures removed by moderator]

Edited January 28, 2019 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[capi3101]

My Pathfinder base-building antics continued yesterday, but I also took some time to get a couple of other things done. The Spamcan 7 lander assigned to space station Minmusport was dispatched to go pick up engineer Nadard Kerman from a high and inclined retrograde orbit over Minmus; the retrieval was successful, and afterwards with all indications pointing to the need for additional help at the Deepwater Horizon outpost, I landed the Spamcan there and Nadard joined the crew for the time being. Her presence increased the base's productivity (as did the addition of a Habitat module to go ahead and record the crew's experience). The Deepwater Horizon base was expanded significantly yesterday, especially once the fission reactor was brought on-line and the base was no longer limited by Minmus's diurnal cycle. At this point the remaining intended structures have all been printed up and it's just a matter of awaiting the production of all the necessary Equipment before everything can be deployed. I'll build a custom craft to launch from DH and return Nadard to Kerbin once I reach that point.

The Piper Alpha outpost on Mun had a confirmed lackluster productivity rating (in the range of -2.7), which was having all kinds of utterly wonderful effects. The biggest thing that was happening was that I couldn't get the Rangeland unit to print up any new craft - and I really needed it to do that. In an effort to increase productivity, I designed the Space Oddity 7, a one-way 3-Kerbal Mun lander. Pilot Gregald Kerman, scientist Tefrod Kerman and engineer Ceri Kerman were selected as the victims a secondary crew to send to Piper Alpha, and were sent that way. The lander wasn't quite good enough for the job - it ran out of fuel and lithobraked. Miraculously, Gregald was able to hold the craft together; after tumbling and rolling about, the craft came to a stop eight kilometers from PA, having only a fuel tank and a lander leg and with the bottom half noticeably askew. Ceri and Tefrod both jetpacked over to the base, where it was discovered that their presence didn't make a lick of difference to the base's productivity value. 

I think it was a bug that allowed me to finally print up the Wisent 7a utility rover at Piper Alpha...

That Buffalo rover shouldn't be there. But I ain't going to knock it...

Somehow (and I don't know how), I got the Rangeland to thinking it was tearing down a Wisent rover, but since the productivity value was negative, it started building one up. I simply mashed go when it got above a 100% completion rating.

I immediately put the ill-gotten Wisent to work, stopping at Space Oddity long enough to pick up Gregald, then beginning a 25 kilometer rove to go pick up engineer Sulan Kerman (a second attempt to do so - the first attempt, which used the original TBD 7a rover, crashed out a mere three klicks away...).

Bloody hitchhikers...you know, they make horror movies that start out this way. Of course, they also make pornos that start out this way, but I'm pretty sure none of them are set out on Mun...

Your glamour shot for today. Wisent 7 coming up on Piper Alpha at Kerbinset on Mun.

Sulan's retrieval was a success, and like Nadard, a craft will be printed up to send her back to Kerbin. If I can figure out how to get the Rangeland working again, of course. Meantime, I've got other jobs for the Wisent to do.

Finished the day with the installation of Piper Alpha's Pipeline mass driver unit.

Got big plans for this base. Probably need to get more experienced personnel there, though.

I also "finished" a pair of ore-drilling contracts at both Mun and Minmus using the two outposts. Today I'll probably be continuing the expansion of Deepwater Horizon; at this point Piper Alpha is going to take a lot of konkrete, of which I haven't produced enough just yet. I can also look forward to a lot of Mun roving. Hoping to get more interesting contracts in the near future; I'm not particularly low on funds at the moment, but I'm going to need a lot more if I intend to go to Minmus any time soon...

 

[eddiew]

Went scouting anomalies with a first-gen aircraft. Which, as Jeb discovered, doesn't seem to have a 'zero throttle' setting. We're not really sure where it is now. Or if Jeb will ever be able to repay the cost of it. We don't actually pay him anyway.

Val does a better job of keeping her plane on the leash, setting it down on the island airfield with minimal fuss. Other than the lift-off speed being only 30m/s which, it turns out, makes it really hard to actually land when you want to.

By this point, Valentina has become by far the more trusted of our two pilots, so while Jeb is sent on a 'refresher' course, she gets to investigate a strange site shown up by one of our recon satellites.

...and then we sent her and Astra to Minmus, where, it turns out, you can largely ignore gravity as long as you have SAS.

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, eddiew said:

Went scouting anomalies with a first-gen aircraft. Which, as Jeb discovered, doesn't seem to have a 'zero throttle' setting. We're not really sure where it is now. Or if Jeb will ever be able to repay the cost of it. We don't actually pay him anyway.

Welcome back @eddiew! 

[Xurkitree]

Today I loaded up my Career save (OPM) after some days on not doing anything cause i had hit a boring patch...

So the Jool probe Metria 3 - a Laythe Lander and Orbiter just performed its orbital insertion burn around Jool. Its actually quite old, being 4 years old now, sigh...

And since the Jool Launch Window came up, I took the opputunity to release Jovean Flight - 5 SCANSAT probes with Material/Goo and Mag/RPWS units to scan Altimetry and Biome/Anomalies on all 5 moons of Jool. Each craft is powered by a Nuclear Reactor from Nertea's NF Electricals, because each of them have 6 Hall Effect Thrusters - and the total power output 1 reactor provides enough power to give 9kN of Thrust from a cluster of 6 Hall Effect Argon Thrusters. Efficiency doesn't really matter when you utterly outclass chemical propellants. After the inital escape burn, I've throttled down all the reactors save 1 to 0%, and 1 running at 1% to ensure it ticks over.

They're all attached for ease in transport - they will all detach in the Jool system.

I should honestly make this image part of my wallpaper slideshow...

[Cavscout74]

I had time this morning for my Minmus rescue mission.  Half-way through construction, and after ground tests of the recovery rover, I discovered that A) I only had 2.5m fairings unlocked & B) the 2.5m fairing wouldn't fit around the wheels.   So the wheels got moved to the inside, allowing the fairing to fit, but requiring the engineer to reposition them once in orbit.  So without further ado, I present the Minmus Rescue Monstrosity

Spoiler

Lift off!!  Probably the largest thing launched to date in this career.

SRB's jettisoned, still looking good - a very good thing, considering there isn't any LES on this thing.  Kelrik the engineer has a parachute for emergencies.

In orbit.  Since the "lower" tanks also have the wheels for Minmus ops, the "top" tank had to drain first.  I thought I had enough reaction wheels & gimbal to compensate for the fuel imbalance.  I thought wrong.  I ended up running at 20% throttle to maintain control during my transfer to Minmus.  I had considered putting some Cubs or Twitches on the lower tanks to provide extra control, but figured I would be ok.

Upper tank jettisoned & wheels repositioned

for ground ops

Landing approach - I'm up to 23% throttle limit now that fuel has started to burn off.  Once I slowed down & switched to the vertical landing Twitches, it got better.  I ended up landing over 4km from the target though.

Kelrik the engineer had to adjust the gear position a little, but nothing was broken.  I didn't trust going too fast for the drive though - I was already bouncing off the ground at just 5-6 m/s.

Finally arrived at the wreck.  Nearly had a rollover of the recovery rover turning around to grab the wrecked lander, but it did have enough reaction wheel force to prevent that.

After transferring the pilot & tourists to the recovery rover, Kelrik set a self-destruct charge on the wreck & backed away to watch the fireworks. 

One of the landing legs survived the crash landing, so it got picked up & attached to the lower fuel tanks, then started a vertical takeoff.

Once I had some altitude, I switched to the Wolfhound & jettisoned the lower tanks.  It flies SOOO much better now.

Kerbin reentry.  

 

[manek22]

Revived an idea for a big mother ship, based on a Minmus re-fueler idea.  Test launch to prove I can get it into orbit.  From LKO it would hit Minmus to refuel, then could go to duna and whatnot.  Wasn't what i was going for so I went back to the drawing board, but still happy i was able to get it into orbit.

 

[RealKerbal3x]

5 hours ago, capi3101 said:

My Pathfinder base-building antics continued yesterday

—collosal snip—

That is a pretty extensive Mun base! I’ve often considered trying out Pathfinder but its size and complexity have put me off.

Also, what mod did you use for the landing pad?

[TrooperCooper]

 

Continued with my Karborundum mining operation on Sarnus / Eeloo. After the Exploration team with its rover had found a good spot to to start mining, back on Kerbin three new interplanetary tugs of the Pegasus class were launched...

 

 

Shortly afterwards, three key modules for the upcoming Eeeloo surface base with skycrane landing equipment were launched:

 

the habitat and control tower, able to keep the mining team entertained for hundreds of years

 

Live support systems to keep the Kerbals alive for a similar time span...

 

and a massive nuclear reactor with reprocessing capability to power the habitat and life support as well as the future mining and industrial equipment.

 

 

All three modules were strapped to their tugs...

 

 

 

And then made the long transfer to the Sarnus system...

 

 

Once they reached Eeeloo, the modules with their landing equipment were released one by one in a low orbit.

 

 

The habitation and control tower was the first to descent on the resource spot, marked by the exploration team on the ground...

 

 

After landing and removal of the skycrane, the Eeloo Exploration Rover with the A-Team moved up to the tower and connected to it.

 

 

Next up, the reactor core was landed...

 

 

The automatic removal system of the reactors landing equipment failed and thus Bill had to get out and start tearing it down manually...

 

 

POOF

 

 

Timber....

 

 

Two of three... one to go...

 

 

Then the life support system hovered in...

 

 

Automatic lander removal on that one worked flawlessly (TAC Self Destruct FTW!  )

 

The core of the mining base is now ready and Jeb, Bill and Bob are waiting for the mining equipment to be shipped in next...

 

 

Unfortunately I have hit the RAM limit of my computer (16 Gigabyes) several times over the last few days. Game keeps crashing on me. Ordered another 16 gig today. Untill thats installed, KSP career is pretty much on hold...

 

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

That is a pretty extensive Mun base! I’ve often considered trying out Pathfinder but its size and complexity have put me off.

Also, what mod did you use for the landing pad?

It's also from Pathfinder (specifically it's the Rangeland Extraplanetary Launchpad).

I agree that it's a complex mod, but once you get used to how things work its actually pretty fun (the mod's wiki is out of date at the moment, which doesn't help matters - though an update is on Angel-125's to-do list once the mod is feature-complete). It's also wound up being a lot cheaper in terms of gameplay - my old refinery design cost up around √1.2M to launch; that base came in at just over √300k, with a lot of it printed in-situ.  Also has a substantially lower part count. 

[eddiew]

Will do a proper mission log later tomorrow, but meantime, what a lovely little valley my first Duna probe found  

Naturally it fell into the shadow of a mountain so I had to wait for the sun to come round to the other side to send back any science

Also I totally overspecced the lander; I actually gave it a tiny fuel tank and a spark because I expected it to come in hot, but the parachute slowed it to 7m/s on its own... tiny little 500kg package that could have been ~300, but it doesn't matter because the orbiter has about a km/s left in the tanks anyway. My engineering team likes to leave generous margins.

[BadOaks]

Finally unlocked an antenna powerful enough for a Duna probe! It launched on the newly designed Driver II rocket and caries experiments for low-res altimetry and multi-spectral biome mapping, as well as infrared/ultraviolet/visual imagers and a magnetometer. 

[MaianTrey]

I finished installing the S0 truss on my Stock ISS. Installation was surprisingly smooth with my Canadarm2.

[Servo]

1 hour ago, MaianTrey said:

I finished installing the S0 truss on my Stock ISS. Installation was surprisingly smooth with my Canadarm2.

This is a really impressive project you've got going here. The detail would be extremely impressive, but the fact that you're assembling it bit by bit puts it over the top.

AskSomeoneElse from KerbalX and I have been dabbling in some black magic.

Each of us have built our own version of the oft-overlooked RF-101C Voodoo, a plane which arguably holds the title of the Second Fastest Combat Aircraft. The mach 1.85 reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam war flown by the Voodoo were second only to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird in speed, and more impressive that it was flying at lower levels against SAMs and other defenses. This means that out of all aircraft on combat missions, the RF-101C flew the second fastest. A questionable title, but the Voodoo will take whatever fame it can get.

More importantly for me, the F-101 was the second replica aircraft that I released. Recently, I've been revisiting more and more of my first craft as a way of showing how much I've improved (as has the community as a whole). As a means of comparison, here's my first (and second - the F-100 on the right) replicas.

I released the entire Century series (F-100 through F-106) on New Years' Eve of 2016, so I think it quite fitting that as the two-year anniversary of these craft return that I should return to them. 

Here's to another two years of improvements!

Edited December 18, 2018 by Servo

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

1 hour ago, Servo said:

 

Each of us have built our own version of the oft-overlooked RF-101C Voodoo, a plane which arguably holds the title of the Second Fastest Combat Aircraft. The mach 1.85 reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam war flown by the Voodoo were second only to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird in speed, and more impressive that it was flying at lower levels against SAMs and other defenses. This means that out of all aircraft on combat missions, the RF-101C flew the second fastest. A questionable title, but the Voodoo will take whatever fame it can get.

The F-104 could reach mach 2 though, right?

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 hours ago, MaianTrey said:

finished installing the S0 truss on my Stock ISS. Installation was surprisingly smooth with my Canadarm2.

It took me a moment to fully appreciate what “stock” meant here.   Your poor framerate...  How are you even making a robot arm work with stock bits??

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

It took me a moment to fully appreciate what “stock” meant here.   Your poor framerate...  How are you even making a robot arm work with stock bits??

I believe it's using several separate craft held inside each other...Or is it using Dock Rotate? @MaianTrey?

[capi3101]

Yesterday saw continued expansion of the Deepwater Horizon Pathfinder outpost on Minmus, with all of the remaining structures I intend to add to the outpost printed up; by the end of the day yesterday, the outpost had reached parity with the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun, including the installation of a Rangeland extraplanetary launchpad and a Pipeline mass driver. Both outposts at this point are focusing on konkrete production to start putting up the permanent Castillo modules, at which point I hope to start getting some colonization contracts. The addition of an antenna and docking port at Deepwater Horizon qualified the base for an outpost contract I had as well, which was pretty nice.

After doing some reading up on how productivity values are calculated - it's a feature of the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod that Pathfinder uses as well - I did some rearranging of the personnel at both outposts, moving them into different modules more in line with their areas of expertise. While Deepwater Horizon saw a modest gain from doing this, it was Piper Alpha that saw the biggest jump in productivity, going from -2.7 to a rating of 4.16. It did mean that pilot Gregald Kerman had to go sleep in the Wisent 7a rover parked by the station (him going on EVA jumped the productivity rating by four points), but now the base is making Slag and, more to the point, the Rangeland there finally works like it's supposed to - printing of a Spamcan 7a lander for space station Munport commenced at that point, and before the day was out the new home-grown lander had arrived at Munport. I'll be making arrangements to return Gregald to Kerbin soon, seeing as he's not needed at PA. Meantime I've got some good notes for folks having the same sort of issues with the Pathfinder mod.

I put the Rangeland at Deepwater Horizon to work with the printing of a Blip-Blip 7 probe, with the goal of putting a new probe in a high, inclined, retrograde orbit over Minmus; this probe was actually completed before PA's Spamcan, and became the first thing I launched in the current career save from a location other than KSC.

Launching stuff without having to make a huge booster for it rules...

Unfortunately, after re-reading the contract, I discovered that it was for Mun, not Minmus - a hell of a mistake to make, to be sure. Since I had the probe already up, though, and since it definitely had enough delta-V to do the job, I went ahead and sent it on towards Mun anyway; it should arrive in Mun's SOI in about ten days.

With two extraplanetary launchpads in place, I figured the time had come to give the design of an orbital drydock a try, and to that end I designed the Dystopia Planitia 7. A prototype craft was launched with Bill aboard; that craft was reverted when the initial design didn't have a suitably high productivity rating. A MOLE workshop was added to the design and a second craft was launched with pilot Rodhat Kerman and engineer Jergat Kerman joining Bill. The second craft arrived safely in an 80 kilometer equatorial LKO, at which point the two engineers got to work.

Dystopia Planitia 7 - not much more than a cupola, a MOLE workshop, a container for Rocket Parts and an orbital mass driver. That and the freakin' huge drydock on top of everything...

With the drydock in place, the figures for the orbital construction of a Superfortress 7 ferry craft were obtained and the necessary resources were shot up to Dystopia Planitia from the Swamp Castle outpost near KSC, at which point construction commenced. In three days time, the first Superfortress of this career save - Strange Cargo - will be ready to delivery to the nascent fleet. I hoping to have a nice screenie of the launch in the next few days for y'all...

Plans are also currently in the works to print up Glass Cannon 7 orbital mass driver modules for inclusion at space stations Munport and Minmusport; once those are in place, I should have all the infrastructure in place to begin a budding tourist industry in Kerbin's SOI, not to mention get back to doing things that'll earn me money. The goal at that point will be to build an Alcubierre Drive ship. If I ultimately choose to build that in orbit, I foresee one huge problem to overcome - the Exotic Matter required to power the drive. It takes a LOT of Electrical Charge to generate it and the only thing that will generate it is an Alcubierre Drive, so orbital construction may prove to be more of a hassle than it's worth. I'm still considering my options here.

In more mundane matters, I finally put a Boop-Boop 7 probe into a high, retrograde, inclined orbit over Kerbin after 18 days of flight. It's about the only other thing that got accomplished yesterday.

[Servo]

8 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

The F-104 could reach mach 2 though, right?

You are correct. The distinction is that it never did so on a combat mission (defined as doing so while getting shot at).

It is important to note that the people claiming this record are the RF-101C pilots themselves, and not any official record agency.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Servo

[MaianTrey]

10 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

It took me a moment to fully appreciate what “stock” meant here.   Your poor framerate...  How are you even making a robot arm work with stock bits??

 

8 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I believe it's using several separate craft held inside each other...Or is it using Dock Rotate? @MaianTrey?

It's using kraken-tech. Each part of the Canadarms are separate parts held together with hinges. I have DockRotate installed to keep elements lined up for things like the Solar Arrays and core modules. The Truss System uses pairs of Clampotron Jr's to install it straight. That screenshot above is already over 1200 parts, and I was getting about 10-12 fps when recording it. Also, the Mobile Transporter moves along rails in that pic. I recorded a quick demo but haven't made time to upload it. I do have videos of all the missions thus far that I've completed in the forum thread (link in my signature).

I'm anxious about getting further in... the final station is somewhere around 2400-2500 parts not including docked shuttles or extra spacecraft (Soyuz, Progress, HTV, etc.).

Edited December 18, 2018 by MaianTrey

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, MaianTrey said:

2400-2500 parts

That would vaporise my laptop.

[Tyko]

14 hours ago, BadOaks said:

Cool stuff...which Camera and extendable truss is that? It's really nice

[duesenmilan]

On 12/16/2018 at 3:43 PM, eddiew said:

Unfortunately what happens is that the model rotates and the IVA doesn't.

*snip*

For some reason, the 'smallest' pod orients the kerbal correctly with their feet pointing away. Sizes 2 and 3 aim their feet to the right. None of them seem to have the same IVA windows.

Feels like I need a way to tell the config "this side is up when controlling from this part" rather than trying to rotate... but I think I'm out of luck. To my understanding, what I'd need is to do a fresh export of the IVA model file with changed axes, which I'm not equipped to do. Guess I'm just going to have to not use the window view 

It is actually possible to do this, if you are not opting for the realistic reason CatastrophicFailure. I did only translation with this code (I stole vom SXT was totally my Invention) , but it should also work for rotation.

At least you can play around with this 

@PART[the name of the part]
{
	@INTERNAL
    {
    	%offset = 0 , 0 , 0
	%rotation = 0 , 90 , 0
    }
}