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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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I created a rover which I wanted to send to Duna. When removing the protective shroud in orbit I realized that I had forgotten to put a heatshield on the module, thus I changed course and payed Dres a visit. Now my fellow kerblads are stranded on Kerbol's most lonely planet for enternity... :o

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55 minutes ago, Roartal said:

I created a rover which I wanted to send to Duna. When removing the protective shroud in orbit I realized that I had forgotten to put a heatshield on the module, thus I changed course and payed Dres a visit. Now my fellow kerblads are stranded on Kerbol's most lonely planet for enternity... :o

You don't really need a heatshield for Duna, even if you're coming on a hyperbolic trajectory. So your Kerbals could have still returned home...

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1 hour ago, Roartal said:

I created a rover which I wanted to send to Duna. When removing the protective shroud in orbit I realized that I had forgotten to put a heatshield on the module, thus I changed course and payed Dres a visit. Now my fellow kerblads are stranded on Kerbol's most lonely planet for enternity... :o

 

Seems like an opportunity to me.

Plan a rescue.

You can choose a robotic return ship or a fully crewed rescue vessel.

 

ME

Edited by Martian Emigrant
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Yesterday, my Eve glide-rover finally arrived.  Results were not as planned.  I almost pulled off a partial success, but even that didn't work out

Eve entry - I already realized I dropped my Pe lower than I should have at this point, but was hoping for a small miracle

pXF5r8T.png

After losing my ailerons, I lost control of the glide-rover & it ended up turning nose first, causing the loss of the nose cone & fairing, followed shortly thereafter by mutliple exploding parts.

Yn0IDZA.png

Ironically, one of the last parts to actually explode was my rover probe core.  Other than it, I still had a wheel, several of the science parts, an antenna & a good bit of battery and I think there was even a surviving solar panel and a single parachute remaining

3k2J4ww.png

Shortly before the rover debris splashed down hard

9c2sGjI.png?1

For reference, this was supposed to be a rocket-boosted glider to find a suitable landing site for the rover, then jettison the nose, for the rover to descend via parachute like this:

iCX0Hw3.png?1

 

Edited by Cavscout74
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Due to Kerbin's rotation, launching to a specific inclination is a pain. So yesterday I derived an equation to calculate the angle at which I need to burn, rather than eyeballing it every single time.

Now I finally tested it. With a 45°, 90° and 135° inclination.

The 45° orbit was pretty terrible because I didn't quite hit 48° on the navball. 90° was essentially perfect.

As for the last one: I'm off by 0.257°.

Spoiler

For anyone interested, here's the equation I arrived at:

tan-1(vO*sin(a)/(vO*cos(a)-vR))

- a is the inclination you're trying to achieve in degrees
- vO is the orbital velocity. For an 85km orbit it is 2270.6m/s
- vR is the rotational speed of the planet at the launch site. In this case: Kerbin's equator with 175m/s.
  For a launch at Baikerbanur vR = 163.75m/s as it's not on the equator.

Beware, though, that any result over 90° is negative. It's a limit of the geometry used.
Simply add 180° to get the correct result.

 

Edited by Delay
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Apparently I'm on a bad luck streak this weekend - I just tried to launch one of my Lightning spaceplanes to orbit with 5 eager young kerbals on board, planning a quick trip out of Kerbin's SoI & back so I would have a few level 3 crew at home while the others are off on missions.  At somewhere around 10km, Kerbal Launch Failure mod kicked in & failed one of my rapiers.  I had already cut the throttle when I got the "Imminent failure on...." message, planning on slowing down & flying as best I could on the remaining engine back to land at KSC.  Instead, the engine exploded & took the back half of the spaceplane with it.  So as the crew section is spinning down out of control, each crewman had to EVA & deploy his/her chute.  By some miracle, all 5 made successful water landings after bailing out & were recovered safely back to KSC, so I could stick them back in a spaceplane for another launch attempt.  So I guess the ending was a good luck.

I didn't actually get any screenshots of the emergency, unfortunately.  The spinning crew cabin was pretty impressive - the entire crew had blacked out at one point.

 

 

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My exploration of Duna had to wrap up, my return window was closing. The ground team hit every biome and investigated two anomalies. I had spotted a third, but it disappeared when I had a gap to investigate it, just to pop up again today. I'm not sure what happened there. 

j7Wux1u.png

The biggest miscalculation I did in planning this mission was that the landers were built around a Mk1-3 pod and I needed a 4 seater to pick up the ground team. I organized this mission around a primary and backup exploration team each with a pilot, scientist, and engineer. One team landed in a rover and the second stayed in orbit. When it was time to pick up the ground team I realized I hadn't accounted for a pilot to fly the lander down, so the ground team engineer, Teddard Kerman, was left behind to wait for a second trip and to repack the chutes on landing.

MechJeb landing guidance for some reason was malfunctioning for me on Duna, so I had to do these manually. I got within a couple kilometers on each landing and the rover would have to drive to the new pickup point.

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One of the aspects of this mission I don't think I have mentioned is that I had sent a probe controlled supply ship some time after the main mission launched. It launched on a higher speed transfer to arrive ahead of the main mission ship. The non-optimal transfer cut the fuel available at Duna, but ended up being more than enough for the time spent around Duna.

The original plan when this mission launched was to drop a lander with a pilot and a rover with a scientist and engineer. The rover would hit a few biomes and find the lander and come home. I had backups of each lander and rover in case there was a landing crash (I hadn't done many when this launched). Sending the supply ship allowed me to expand the mission objectives to include exploring Ike and a satellite servicing mission which weren't in the original plan. Adding Bon Voyage to the rovers extended the Duna exploration to cover the entire planet since I didn't have to spend hours or days driving around.

The supply ship also allowed topping off the main mission ship's fuel and supplies before returning to Kerbin. This helps counter the unexpected drop in engine performance that happened during the transfer to Duna (launched under 1.4.5 and arrived with 1.6.0 & the ISP cut to the Wolfhound).

QzXSvpu.png

To prepare for the trip home the inflatable heat shields I used for aerobraking into orbit were retrieved from where they had been drifting since arrival and reinstalled for aerobraking at Kerbin. Also, the backup rover and both landers were transferred to the supply ship to be left behind for any follow up missions since they would be dead weight for a return. A trajectory was plotted and engines fired for home.

wHF4cPV.png

Elsewhere I have a contract to transfer a crew member in orbit around the sun. Sun Chaser 1 & 2 were launched separately and rendezvoused en route to exit from Kerbin's SOI.

Edited by Tonka Crash
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1 hour ago, Cavscout74 said:

Apparently I'm on a bad luck streak this weekend

Have... have you tried not running with a mod that is specifically designed to give you bad luck? :D 

4 hours ago, Roartal said:

I created a rover which I wanted to send to Duna. When removing the protective shroud in orbit I realized that I had forgotten to put a heatshield on the module, thus I changed course and payed Dres a visit. Now my fellow kerblads are stranded on Kerbol's most lonely planet for enternity... :o

Duna doesn't need a heatshield anyway ^^;

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Just a run-of-the-mill docking, my space tug did well though, making easy work of the 40-ish tonne fuel module. Though I have noticed both the tug and the module had strut ends left on them, fortunately it didn't stop anything docking but I must be careful in future, I might use autostrut to secure the payload in the launcher next time instead.

https://imgur.com/qHTkJ08

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I've got nearly two thousand in-game hours and probably half as many again crawling the forums... but can we PLEASE celebrate this thread and revel in its glory? It is the absolute best thing I've ever seen on here :)
 

I honestly feel as though we should commemorate it as the "art" (thanks @klgraham1013) it rightfully is.

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More bridge building.

This bridge is so long I have to curve it with the planet... :o

IEAPOa2.png

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Fun fact : the landing runway for the space shuttle had to be curved.

Fun fact 2 : The reason why planes are rolling forward in KSP when placed on the runway is because of the curve of this small planet.

Edited by Triop
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TIL that when going to Eve, one should always take a slow transfer. Reason being that if you take more than half an orbit to get there, you must pass through either the AN or DN, and you'll have a chance to make a cheap inclination adjustment for an equatorial orbit on arrival.

Shame that this is probably my last Eve transfer of this career - and possibly the last expedition of the career, because, tbh, I've done the stock system in 1.3.1 and I don't quite feel a need to revisit any of that unless I do something drastic with mods. I've rovered Duna, Ike, Moho, Dres and Tylo, spaceplaned Laythe, hopped around Gilly, Vall, Bop and Pol. But I only landed once on Eve, with a basic one-drop one-ascent lander.

So Eve it is. And since it's probably the last one, let's do it properly. We know Eve is a brutal planet; it likes to eat anything thrown at it, and the descent is arguably more harrowing than the ascent. For safety, we'll ensure that all the infrastructure to sustain and return kerbonauts has already landed before we send the crew down to join them. Everything will be dropped from an equatorial orbit onto terrain already scouted by the W-EVE-1L rover.

EEVEE; weighing just over 115 tons, this tough 'little' vessel will get four kerbals from Eve's surface to 200x200km orbit. With good piloting. If it survives the drop.

Scorpio; a new breed of heavy rover. Bullfrog worked well on Duna, but Eve is a literal pressure cooker where a hole in the hull means the lethal atmosphere comes in.

Styx Ferry; because the smaller and simpler the drop pod, the safer it will be. Getting down to Eve's surface is a doddle with two pods, a heatshield and a parachute.

TGrAIIu.jpg

EEVEE handles the descent admirably. Although she does wobble a little at 2200m/s, by that point the dangerous heating is behind her and soon she can kick loose her heatshield and airbrakes and settle down onto a modest 6-degree hillside as scouted by W-EVE-1L.

Scorpio's ride is a little rougher. Resembling something between a whale and a ham shank, the centre of mass may be slightly out because he soon wants to turn sideways into the brutal airstream. Fortunately the fairing survives the heat intact, allowing the rover to kick loose of all its descent accessories. Or at least it would, if it wasn't that the heatshield falls slower than the rover which falls slower than the tailfin, which ultimately results in an awkward balancing game until the parachutes deploy. Landing within metres of the fairing base, Scorpio takes note of his position and prepares to collect the crew once they arrive.

With EEVEE and Scorpio both safely on the ground, mission control gives the nod to drop the crew into the seething pink atmosphere below. Jeb, Bob, Bill and Erin enter the pod, buckle up and prepare for the roughest descent they'll ever experience. Which it turns out, was the easiest of the three. An oversized heatshield and simple aerodynamics ensure stability all the way, and though the outside pressure rises fast, nothing comes even close to thermal failure. The final landing site is on a relatively severe 13 degree incline, but only 17km from Scorpio seems like a win. Worst case we can gear him down to make it up the slope.

Valentina will stay aboard the Styx Ferry to be their comms link and supply navigational data. Sorry Val, but you did get to do all the Duna expeditions so it's about time we let Jeb take the wheel.

*edit* For a moment, I thought disaster had struck... there is no Bon Voyage module on Scorpio! :blush:  But it turns out I wrote a patch ages ago to assign BV functions to external command chairs, and he does actually have one of those so... game on!

InBxHVi.jpg

Edited by eddiew
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9 minutes ago, GDJ said:

@Triop:

How well does the stock physics work out with bridges that long, or is that an issue?

No, not at all, I'm surprised by this to be honest.

I'm in 1.6 running 5 mods:

- KerbalKonstructs (for building stuff)

- KerbinSide (stuff you need for building)

- KAS (for refueling)

- WheelSounds (vroemmmmm)

- VesselMover (just for setup, I'll remove it when I start the challenge)

No bugs so far.

I can upload the bridge files, but it's not completed yet (4 more bridges to build).

You can test it if you like.

 

Edited by Triop
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I'll wait until you're done. I have patience. 

As long as the bridges are wide enough for MEGA Truck (I'm pretty sure they are) then I'm certain that it will be all shiny.

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Actually had a very productive KSp weekend since i wasnt in the mood for any other games and it was so bloody freezing outside i didnt bother going outside :(...

 

1st of all i almost finished the new upcoming version of SciFiVE mod ive really been wanting to make an update for, after which i made a 2nd version of my new mobile bunker, this time with a big enough cargo hold to actully fit the smallest half decent tank ive been able to come up with. 

LfVA6Ms.png

Docking that tank into teh hangar was a massive pita, the thing kept randomly exploding cause wheels kept flinging it into the cieling.  After 6 tries (and 2 minor redesigns on the klaw hardpoint locations) i managed to actually get it inside the thing completely. 

7OqpcUA.png

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Landing went rather good despite this thing not having anywhere near enough reaction wheels nor gimballing engines.  That explosion was the booster hitting the ground at like 500m/s (i was lazy and went for a direct collision intercept trajectory).

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The tank didnt actually explode the instant i released the klaw (which is very suprising given how often that happens with new KSP wheels).

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Managed to destroy a enemy listening post with the tank, after missing 3 times (its really NOT easy to hit anything with bone stock tank mounted SRMs, but at least its a challenge unlike BDA that everyone's into these days).  Then ofc got back in the bunker, managed to attach it back onto a klaw (after having to roll it in and out 3 times), and luckily the takeoff went smoothly and didnt result in anything randomly exploding).

Nb5TVj7.png

Btw, does anyone know what i based this on (hint: cartoon i watched ages ago back before TV went all educational and lame and filled full of unoriginal reruns)?  Its not a spot on replica and i dont even remember 100% what the thing looked like exactly as i cant even find a picture of it anywhere on the internet, but the whole bunker that becomes a ship thing (as much as i wanted to i cant quite get half of it to be under ground) and the rough shape i remember fairly well (despite it being like 14-15 years ago that i saw this thing im pretty sure).

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fV3fzPA.png

The final update for today is an upgraded power station that arrived at my Minmus base. The new reactor was located away from the main base complex. It includes extra nuclear fuel storage & reprocessing and a large supply of Xenon. This base has a Global Construction assembly line that is in the process of building my first USI warp drive equipped ship that unlocked with all the science returned from exploring Duna.

Edited by Tonka Crash
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Made a CFASTT-alike SSTO for 2.5x. It can lift 30 tons to 300km. It took much of my afternoon to build. It needs to spend much more time in atmosphere than I like but it performs quite well. The forward nose is a Thor Tech Shieldnir but Squad's revamp disables the custom texture. The main wings' pieces (excluding elevons) are Tweakscaled but nearly nothing else is.

DGCabr1.jpg

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dxMAZkP.jpg

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Tested my Minmus miner/refueler "Comstock" that will resupply Jack Station.  Few changes needed.  Takes 4 days to mine and fill up but I bring back a full S4-512 fuel tank (256 tons of fuel).

To get there, do work, and get back to Jack Station Takes about 21 days total.  Donno why but that feels long to me.  Oh well. 

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