What did you do in KSP1 today?

[MaverickSawyer]

You... do realize Kerbals have personal parachutes now, right? No need to futz about with the Mk. 16 'chute on ultralight builds anymore.. just bail out of the seat and hit "P", and BAM, steerable parachute.

[MaverickSawyer]

Finally, after many launches, rendezvous, dockings, EVAs, and fuel transfers...

Terminal High Acceleration Asteroid Deflection, mission #1, is ready for departure. The target asteroid will arrive in Kerbin's SoI in a few more days, so I have plenty of time for last minute "Ooops, forgot X!" launches.

[ARS]

First in-orbit EVA on 1.6

[capi3101]

(1.5.1, T-9 days to 1.6.x) Had a fairly frustrating day yesterday. With planetary operations over Kerbin suspended following Monday's Kraken attack on Swamp Castle and the base's subsequent complete loss, I wanted to get a new south base facility up as quickly as I possibly could. To that end, I designed a Buffalo craft to haul all the remaining structures along with the Equipment needed to deploy them directly from KSC. The resultant craft, dubbed Flying Circus 7, deployed from KSC 09 costing me √440k; this was still less than the cost of one of my old Piper Alpha 7 refinery craft, so I dealt with it. Had some issues getting it off the Runway ramp initially but ultimately it made it to the South Base site and engineer Beamon Kerman began a rapid expansion project. The damn Kraken decided to strike again, first knocking all the wheels off the Flying Circus and then blowing several of the storage structures as the base continued to grow, knocking several of them askew for good measure. The base looks like crap now, but at least all the intended industrial structures are up and running, so operations began to deploy a new ground Pipeline mass driver. The base is still not making any Slag for Konkrete production, which has me perplexed - it has the storage structure needed, it has the drills, it has the required lab going, it has a positive productivity rating, but still no Slag...

Pump-filling of the exotic matter tank aboard LSV House Harkonnen continued yesterday. I reached 513 XM before the day was out, which was over my original target goal of 500 for the craft. At this point I'm content to allow Harkonnen to continue on to Minmus to complete Xenon fueling before beginning its first mission, which will be to proceed to a position over Kerbol for final XM fueling before heading on to a Duna flyby. Meanwhile, I went ahead and brought the craft's onboard dockyard online, even though with no one aboard I can't actually use the thing yet.

LSV House Harkonnen, ready to dominate the spice trade.

The ferry ship Next Objective reached Mun yesterday and put into dock at the Non Caseus Yards, where a TBD 7b base-seeding rover had been printed up for establishment of a new Mun outpost.

Next Objective putting into dock at NCY, with the TBD rover visible.

Pilot Billy-Bobcal Kerman, scientist Wenmy Kerman and engineer Chadul Kerman boarded the rover, final checks were completed and the drydock clamps released:

TBD 7b under power.

The crew ultimately set the rover down about 6 kilometers west of the target zone,  roughly 900 meters from the skycrane of the Hellhound 7 rover Rogue 5, which was still in the area. Originally I went ahead with the rove and base construction despite it being morning twilight in the area, but the Kraken decided to attack the nascent base as well and I pulled a revert. I'll be attempting construction again this morning. Meanwhile, with the dock finally cleared out and with a junk-and-kerbal rescue contract at Mun to fulfill, a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe was ordered up at NCY.

Building is the order of business for today. I need to reassess the issues going on at South Base and re-print the structures I need to carry on operations, as well as figure out why Slag production isn't happening. The TBD mission will continue, and with luck I'll be able to carry out the aforementioned rescue mission as well. Kinda hoping to get to use House Harkonnen in her primary flight mode at some point today as well.

[Martian Emigrant]

8 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

You... do realize Kerbals have personal parachutes now, right? No need to futz about with the Mk. 16 'chute on ultralight builds anymore.. just bail out of the seat and hit "P", and BAM, steerable parachute.

Hi.

Yes.

 

I know and if you look at the Mun landing pic the craft doesn't have a chute.

Jeb jumped Gagarin style. And then I killed him. I steered him into the ground wrong.

Then I redid the mission with a bona fide chute. Jeb survived but the craft sank in the ocean.....Who knew?

There will be practice sessions. I will figure it out. Thanks for the "P". Didn't know that one. I deployed before bailing out.

 

ME

Edited January 9, 2019 by Martian Emigrant

[eddiew]

For being so close to the sun, Eve can be really frikking dark... especially when your engineering department completely underestimates the fuel needed to perform a plane change to the equatorial, and you end up having to dive into the atmosphere from a high AP, on the night side.

At least we have Jeb on hand to remote control the descent!

Despite the failure of planning, W-EVE-1L survives his descent through the soupy atmosphere, and has the fortune to land somewhere that is at least solid.

Probably best to wait for sunrise before continuing... what with the rover being solar powered and all.

Edited January 9, 2019 by eddiew

[SwissSpace93]

Tekto-1 Probe arrived at Tekto Orbit

 

It looks good after the deorbit Burn, but in the atmosphere the SAS stopped working and the Sensors registered some rotation of the Probe.

 

At KSC they think the Probe dont survied the Reentry, but they dont know that the Parachutes are open at this time

 

After a long waiting for a Signal from Tekto-1 it sends this Images and Data.

 

What	Data	Kerbin vs. Tekto
Temperature	-170.75°C	It is very cold here (The Oceans on Tekto cannot have water but what is liquid?)
Gravity	00.25G	Kerbals can possibly jump 4x higher than at home here
Pressure	124.4139kPa	the same air pressure like on Kerbin

 

[Triop]

Today's visitor:  *CLASSIFIED*

[Triop]

Just finished working on my new anti aircraft vehicle, setting up the AI so it can drive normal took me forever.

But it works fine now, pretty happy.

I think I have to try my new stealth bomber against this . . .

[Espatie]

Bill (on his own) is taking a ship to The Mun with 4 objectives (because the launch director is trying to squeeze maximum value out of every launch); to launch a Satellite, pick up a stranded Kerbonaut overfly some ground areas and leave the payload bay in a stable orbit for later re-use in a station.

 

Launch and insertion burn goes more or less to plan, as does the coast to The Mun's SOI, but once we arrive we hit a combination of what might politely be called "build errors".

 

Neither Bill nor the launch director remembered to put the satellite's AI core to sleep for the trip.

The build team forgot to forbid crossfeed to the satellite, so it's been drawing power from the main ship systems.

The ship only has one solar panel (enough to top up the reaction wheels, which is all that should be drawing), and by chance during the transit it's been facing the wrong way.

 

There's no RCS on the ship (although, as we'll come to later, there's still a Monopropellant tank).

 

So now Bill is on a ship with no ability to turn around and a trajectory which will have The Mun slingshot him into interplanetary space.

 

Oh and did I mention I'm terrible at EVAs?

 

With hindsight, what I should have done is just push the ship with Bills jetpack. However, that's not what happened.

 

Bill climbs out of the command pod and carefully jetpacks down the side of the ship to the payload bay doors. His plan is to get the doors open so that the satellite's own solar panels can charge the AI core (& the ship) up. Instead, when he gets there and grabs the EVA handrail, hits the door release... and promptly gets smacked in the face by the door.

 

Note to the guys at the VAB: handrails go in safe places.

 

However, while Bill is disappearing into the void, the ship is also sent gently spinning by the impact with  Bill. The lone solar panel swings around into sunlight for long enough that the AI reboots!. It promptly hits the SAS wheels, partially stabilises the ship... and crashes again as the wheel drain kills the battery. Next time it's slightly more cautious about the power supply and prioritises keeping the panel lit.

 

It's slightly hampered in this because it's a stupid satellite brain, so it's not supposed to be a ship, or have crew, it's just supposed to relay messages. It identifies a man overboard beacon, and forwards this to KSC.

 

KSCs response is the binary equivalent of "stop being a moron and go after him", so the ship turns around... and the AI crashes again as the power goes dark.

 

When it wakes up again it - very cautiously - stops the ships yaw movement, but keeps it spinning. No matter what, it will have some power.

 

Then it alligns towards Bill (crashing and rebooting again) and - in the absence of any RCS jets - touches the main engine throttle.

 

Someone down at KSC realizes that retro-firing the main drive straight at Bill is a recipe for BBQ'd Kerbal and instructs the AI to coast at low velocity. Bill is already a km away, so the ship takes nearly 5 minutes to catch up to him.

 

The AI at this point is having a conflict of commands. Power Saving protocol calls for all high power use to be eliminated. Man Overboard protocol calls for the running lights and nose searchlight be on. The AI compromises and turns on the running lights.

 

When it reboots again it's less than 50 metres from Bill. Once again, its instructions conflict. Power Saving says keep the panel pointed at the Sun. Man Overboard says point the door at the rescuee.

 

This time it prioritises power. Bill takes at least 5 minutes to work his way to the ship and grab the first handle he can find, and another few minutes to drag himself around to the crew access.

 

Now, surely, the worst is over? Well, maybe not.

 

You see, to the bright minds at KSC the build checklist simply says "has got a drone core aboard" when certifying a shop as spaceworthy. Unfortunately, when the drone core in question is part of the payload, there doesn't seem to be any way to ensure that you have one for the way back, too.

 

There's not even any way to take it along, as there's not enough delta V to keep the payload bay attached.

 

So Bill sets the ship up for the next burn, orients the ship for power gain for 10 minutes, makes the capture burn and then shifts the ship ready to eject the Satellite.

 

The Decoupler, which was supposed to have been set at 1% force, fires at full power, smashing the drone into the far wall of the payload bay. Monopropellant tank first.

 

The explosion takes out the Payload Bay and the large (thankfully now almost empty) fuel tank just aft. Somehow the drone core survives, but it's ejected - without fuel - at speed.

 

KSC briefly argues that Bill should eject the damaged Cargo stage, go after the probe and transfer the redundant Monopropellant Tank that the VAB team forgot to take off the ship when they stripped the thrusters off to the Satellite, but Bill throws his wrench overboard in protest at that idea.

 

Bill charts up a burn for home, and hits the Staging to eject the wreckage of the cargo/transit stages... and *this* Decoupler fires at only 1% force, leaving the wreckage  still touching the return stage engine.

 

It takes Bill 20 minutes to stop hysterically laughing and go EVA to drag the wreckage clear.

 

And that, dear friends, is the tale of how you shouldn't fly rockets put together by the lowest bidder.

[Pipcard]

Landed the first modules of Iwaki Base on Ike

[Xurkitree]

Not exactly KSP, but here's what I did today.

I found out 1.6.1 was out, so I copied the files over into my 2 1.6.0 installs all right, all cool ya? Then I fire up my modded install only to find out that Kopernicus is really version locked and I don't have 1.6.0 files now and if I were to revert using steam it would be really painful, so I have no option but to wait till the next Kopernicus comes out. Yay.

So anyways, I fired up my Nuzlocke of Pokemon Fire Red and beat the Elite 4 today! Whoop!

This was some great Stuff.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Xurkitree

[aagun123]

 

[capi3101]

(1.5.1, T-8 days to 1.6.x) Yesterday can best be described using the kind of invective that the forum administrators have expressly forbidden, which in this case is unfortunate. No screenies today, and that's probably for the best.

A thorough investigation at the South Base near KSC into the reasons why it's not producing Slag came up empty. As far as I can tell all the necessary preconditions - positive base productivity (+8), operating Geology Lab Prospector unit, working drill and dedicated Slag warehouse - are there, but still nothing is happening. KML'd the warehouse half full; that will at least get me to the point where I can make Konkrete there. I would've preferred to do things the intended way. Oh well...

Assembly of the new Boot Hill base on Mun also went awry; something is borked badly either with my local instance of KSP, KAS and/or Pathfinder. I've got bits and pieces of bases that connect just fine, but then when I go back to look at them later, there are 2-3 meter gaps everywhere. The base's remote exotic minerals processor destroyed itself three times during assembly yesterday, and this morning the main base has managed to turn itself 90 degrees; the TBD 7b base-seeding rover is still attached and is now listing 45 degrees to port; I'm afraid the damn thing's going to tip over and kill a pair of very smart kerbals in the process... 

So not much done these past 24 hours. I may proceed with an upgrade to 1.6.x early and do a fresh start of everything if this all continues today. I should at least take LSV House Harkonnen out for one spin before calling it quits, though...

[Angelo Kerman]

I got MOLE’s interstage adapters working again, and updated DSEV’s Mobile Emitter to reflect changes to removing helmets:

Once I figure out how to override the death check, the Emitter will let your “holograms” walk around in space without helmets. That ability is also a precursor to another project that I have in mind...

[Triop]

Today we upgraded the island runway.

@aagun123 you make some cool stuff, just subbed to your YT channel.

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by Triop

[MaverickSawyer]

Another day, another launch campaign...

Solaris 2 departs Kerbin for Eve. Solaris 2 will perform basic orbital survey work of Eve and Gilly before transitioning to serve as a communications relay for future missions in the system.

 

My first Duna lander in this save is also the first Duna lander I've flown in at least two years. Despite departing several days after the Solaris 1 orbiter which will serve as the communication relay for the lander, the lander will arrive some 10 days earlier than the orbiter. That's not a serious issue, though, as I included solar panels on the loiter and deorbit bus, as well as a short-range antenna that will eventually link into the Solaris orbiter to relay the deorbit commands after mapping of Duna is complete.

[Triop]

Testing FLIR: Locking on to the control tower . . .

Spoiler

X-2 "Silent Hunter"

 

Edited January 11, 2019 by Triop

[Cavscout74]

My current career had its first landing on Laythe today, managed to get a dry landing and sent back substantial science for future manned missions.  Pictured here descending through the clouds with 2 of Jool's other moons visible

I also had my Jool Voyager fly by Tylo before establishing an near-polar orbit around Jool. 

Finally, Moho station arrived & entered a polar orbit, waiting for whenever I send a manned mission.

 

 

[Angelo Kerman]

Thanks to @SQUAD's updates to KSP to allow removal of the helmet and neck collar, I'm able to update DSEV's Mobile Emitter:

Thanks @SQUAD!

[MaverickSawyer]

THAAD has departed!

Lighting out at 1.73 Gs. (center engine was shut down partway through the burn to keep acceleration to a manageable level)

After 4 days, THAAD arrives at the target asteroid, some 63,000 km above Kerbin. Under the careful guidance of Valentina Kerman, THAAD is guided to 30 meters off the asteroid...

At present, due to the orientation of THAAD, high-gain downlink is not possible, so further images were not available. However, THAAD successfully transposed the grapple unit from the transit position to the bow position and has a firm connection on the asteroid. Science is currently underway before diverting the asteroid into a survivable orbit for capture and utilization of the 80+ tonnes of ore it carries.

[MaverickSawyer]

Shortly after the previous posting, the crew of THAAD undocked their Soyuz from THAAD and swung around the backside with an ASERT unit attached to the orbital module. Readings were successfully gathered, but upon nearing return to THAAD, Stelgun Kerman, the mission specialist, accidentally triggered the entry mode, jettisoning the service and orbital modules and sending the descent module careening into space with Valentina and Stelgun aboard. Val quickly kicked Stelgun on an EVA to hang out near THAAD, then ejected the heat shield and used the retrorockets to arrest her movement and return her to the ship. Maucal Kerman, the flight engineer, used the self-contained docking unit already attached to the docking port atop the Orbital Module to maneuver it to THAAD and docked it to the port the Soyuz had been docked at, creating an impromptu airlock. Val and Stelgun were then able to board and figure out their next moves.

Maucal was able to remove one of the docking ports from the hub and manually transfer the orbital module to a hard-mount, and a quick shuffle of docking ports freed the now free-flight grapple to chase after mission-critical parts.

Under Va'ls careful control, the grapple managed to retrieve both the descent module AND its heat shield, which Maucal gleefully bolted back onto the DM, where the grapple then latched onto, allowing Maucal to add a docking port atop the DM. The newly whole DM was then docked back at the port the Soyuz had been attached to during the trip out.

Following the near-disaster, Val, Maucal, and Stelgun did successfully divert the asteroid, now dubbed Thaadeus, out of a collision course. However, they opted to not press their luck any further and opted to leave the rock to fly back out into deep space.

A few last bits of science were collected before the supply ship and the main grapple were discarded on trajectories that would result in their destructive reentries, and the crew prepared for a 7 day coast before braking into a circular, if highly inclined, orbit above Kerbin...

At least... that had been the plan. The braking burn went haywire, with THAAD being sent not into a safe orbit, but into a literal crash course. Val aborted the burn and promptly ordered an evacuation of THAAD via the DM. A quick undocking followed, using the grapple as an impromptu service module to pull the DM clear of the now-doomed THAAD. Stelgun performed one final last minute EVA to remove the docking port, leaving the parachutes clear for deployment, then all three ladies prepared for an aggressive ballistic reentry.

Following a punishing 9.4 G reentry, THAAD's crew returned home semi-successful, having proven that, yes, asteroids can be redirected, albeit with much care. Capture of an asteroid, though, is a whole 'nother ball of wax, one that the boffins at R&D aren't quite sure how to perform just yet... Especially since the next rock to arrive is a Class E, wheras Thaadeus was a moderate Class C.

All in all, though the mission did net an impressive  427 science points. Not the biggest haul to date from a single mission, and certainly not the best cost-to-science mission by any means. But it was informative.

Now, I have 26 days to figure out how to catch that Class E...

[Xurkitree]

Since today I can't play KSP until Kopernicus updates, I decided to make a part for my Mod. Today I made an Ore Harvester, using the stock Survey Scanner Model, which rips the ore right off the ground, no ground contact required.

Its pretty neat.

If you have bizzare ideas, let me know.

Edited January 11, 2019 by Xurkitree

[NHunter]

Today, after 262 days in-flight, my probe finally reached Niven.

[RealKerbal3x]

This is one for @Triop....

A tiny plane I built. Incredible manoeuvrability (pulls 10G in turns ) and it can reach speeds of up to 700m/s.

Of course, that speed kind of overspeeded the Wheesley engine and it overheated and exploded after a while.

I had to use an FL-T100 tank to keep the plane short, but luckily I was able to switch it to only liquid fuel through @Snark's Simple Fuel Switch mod:

It's awesome, go and check it out