What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

Other than some strange glitches, I got a good bit accomplished today once my bad luck streak ended.  The second flight of the Lightning spaceplane went well and several kerbonauts were promoted to 3 star rank after their return.

My career first manned mission returned from Duna finally.  As planned, the Duna Express entered a suborbital flight and staged away the crew module (to complete the "return to Kerbin from a flyby of Duna" contract), then the drive module, under drone control, boosted back to a stable orbit for eventual disposal.   Crew module reentry & landing:

Since I rarely use the Mun in mid to late career (I prefer Minmus for mining, etc), I decided to use it to dispose of Duna Express's drive module.  A quick transfer to the Mun, followed by a second burn to drive it into the Mun at nearly 2000 m/s

 

 

 

[JadeOfMaar]

@GDJ @Triop KK statics are anchored to the planet and ignore physics except for impact with crafts and kerbals. They don't respond to weight and won't bend; are usually indestructible and mass may be irrelevant to them. KK statics also load and unload between 30km and 40km from you. That's a long way out from the physics bubble.

[Espatie]

I landed Val on the Mun!

 

Unfortunately, due to a combination of poorly chosen landing site and slightly top-heavy lander, the lander fell over (& then rolled down into the bottom of the Crater).

 

Using the SAS to roll the craft over to free the door, Val exited and put down her flag before turning back to contemplate the situation. Attempts to use the SAS and RCS to right the craft were unsuccessful, and eventually Val settled for manually decoupling the ascent stage and launching her off the engine bell.

 

The result was a rather uncontrolled ascent, but did result in a stable, if eccentric, orbit... but a retrograde one, which means the waiting orbiter doesn't have the Delta-V to rendezvous.

 

So now I need to send a 2 seater rescue ship to pick Val up which the Orbiter comes home with only one crew.

[Klapaucius]

9 minutes ago, Espatie said:

I landed Val on the Mun!

 

Unfortunately, due to a combination of poorly chosen landing site and slightly top-heavy lander, the lander fell over (& then rolled down into the bottom of the Crater).

 

Using the SAS to roll the craft over to free the door, Val exited and put down her flag before turning back to contemplate the situation. Attempts to use the SAS and RCS to right the craft were unsuccessful, and eventually Val settled for manually decoupling the ascent stage and launching her off the engine bell.

 

The result was a rather uncontrolled ascent, but did result in a stable, if eccentric, orbit... but a retrograde one, which means the waiting orbiter doesn't have the Delta-V to rendezvous.

 

So now I need to send a 2 seater rescue ship to pick Val up which the Orbiter comes home with only one crew.

In this game, if you can salvage the situation at all, that is a win.  The fact you got her back into orbit at all is pretty amazing.

[Pipcard]

Began the return leg of the Dres expedition (more here)

[GDJ]

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@GDJ @Triop KK statics are anchored to the planet and ignore physics except for impact with crafts and kerbals. They don't respond to weight and won't bend; are usually indestructible and mass may be irrelevant to them. KK statics also load and unload between 30km and 40km from you. That's a long way out from the physics bubble.

Good to know. Thanks!

[ARS]

I made a very small (and cute) VTOL fighter jets:

Flea Mays - Kukuriza: Single-seat VTOL microfighter armed with quad .50 cal machineguns. Has great agility and maneuverability, but drains it's ammo very fast due to the high rate of fire

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flea Flia - Kukuruznik: Even smaller VTOL microfighter. Payload limitation reduces it's armament to just twin .50 cal machineguns, which allows for more controlled ammo consumption rate, but reduces it's combat duration due to the limited fuel

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Also having some shenanigan when an experimental version of Flea Flia is fitted with 75mm AT cannon. Due to it's extremely light weight, the aircraft is visibly thrown back and slowed down considerably with the cannon's recoil

That's ridiculous

Edited January 14, 2019 by ARS

[capi3101]

(1.5.1, T-4 days to 1.6.x) Not much accomplished over the past 39 hours; no screenies to show for it either. After pulling off yet another ore-drilling con job using the Deepwater Horizon outpost at Minmus and a Con Job 7 ore tank at KSC, Next Objective docked at space station Kerbinport and after refueling the craft, I went ahead and transferred Val, Bill, pilot Billy-Bobcal Kerman, scientist Wenmy Kerman, and engineers Gemlorf and Chadul Kerman to the Minnow 7 craft also docked at Kerbinport. I realized that the smaller Minnow would be perfect to use within the limited warp bubble of LSV House Harkonnen to get a crew to Duna, as opposed to the significantly larger Superfortress 7 design (of which Next Objective is one). Only issue is that the docking ports on Harkonnen weren't compatible with the Minnow, and to that end I designed an adapter and started printing one up at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard. Similarly, a kit was designed to deliver more research kits to the Stevie Wonder 7 kerbolar observatory over Mun and construction of the kit began at the Non Caseus Yards also over Mun. Finally, I decided I wanted to go ahead and build a Pathfinder Castillo module for the South Base outpost near KSC, with a goal of stabilizing the base's physics when it loads up. I designed a rover (later designated as It's Only A Model 7) to take it and the prerequisite materials to South Base for deployment. Owing to events in RL, I was only finally able to deploy the thing this morning. Took three tries; at least on the final attempt none of the rover wheels or the Castillo module itself spontaneously exploded...

Goals for the near future remain the same as they were the other day - I want to crew Harkonnen and get her to Duna, reload Wonder with kits so an experiment there can finish itself up, and get Bob out to the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun. Running out of time to get these rather basic tasks accomplished...

[GRS]

Currently confused, just a little choosing between "focus on Dres and back in one ship twice" and "Focus on Second Jool 5".

[NorthernDevo]

New career, MUCH greater challenges.

I'm playing on Hard settings for the first time; no save, no revert, life support engaged. Extra rules: MJ in place but used only for housekeeping and basic orientation, and the Orange Four must survive; losing Jeb, Bill, Bob or Val forces a restart. (Silver guys are expendable...but that's in the fine print  of their contract...)

As such I've had to restart a few times... ;-)

This is the farthest I've gotten so far and I've FINALLY gotten over the science hump where it's very challenging to get enough science to reliably orbit the Mun. Still very early in the career; the KSA (Kanadian Space Agency) has managed to get Bob into a nice stable Low Munar Orbit.

Spoiler

KSA K-5 sucking up science from the Mun like a hyperactive Hoover.

It's been tough but VERY rewarding - each successive stage means much more now.

Cheers!

Edited January 14, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[Gapone]

Updated names and descriptions of my crafts: now names are [abbreviation]-[model in numbers][version] and descriptions are [type] [model in letters] - Version [version], such as name: L-4B, description: Lander Four - Version B, OR name: NPP-A, description: Nuclear Powered Probe - Version A, OR name: SHL-1 description: Super Heavy Lifter One, OR name: IPOTV description: Ion-Powered Orbital Transportation Vehicle.

All my crafts have nicknames, such as "Radiant" (nuclear lander), "Doubble" (orbital ship using KV-2 pod), so I am working on including explainations in descriptions. (why is it named this way)

Edited January 14, 2019 by Gapone

[JadeOfMaar]

@ARS I've wanted VTOL engine like that for a long time. What mod?

[Dafni]

@NorthernDevo kudos on taking the plunge into a hard play-through. My advise is to keep reverts active though, for those occasions when the game decides to funk you up. Believe me, sooner or later you'll be glad. Nothing worse than loosing an orange suit to some stupid glitch way into a nice play-through.

[Gapone]

2 minutes ago, Dafni said:

loosing an orange suit to some stupid glitch way

Save editing?

[steve_v]

13 minutes ago, Dafni said:

My advise is to keep reverts active

I never play without quicksaves and reverts, not so I can save-scum or revert design screwups, but so I can recover from the inevitable bug or glitch that bombs an otherwise successful mission.
It always happens sooner or later, a landed craft randomly explodes on load, wheels spazz out and flip a craft over, or a kerbal mysteriously goes poof walking over otherwise uninteresting terrain.

I really wish I could play ironman mode, but there is just too much jank in the game (and sometimes mods too) for me to risk trashing a months-old save over some bug or other.

Edited January 14, 2019 by steve_v

[NorthernDevo]

54 minutes ago, Dafni said:

@NorthernDevo kudos on taking the plunge into a hard play-through. My advise is to keep reverts active though, for those occasions when the game decides to funk you up. Believe me, sooner or later you'll be glad. Nothing worse than loosing an orange suit to some stupid glitch way into a nice play-through.

Hi @Dafni; agreed. While I do have 'Revert' disabled, I have 'quicksave' enabled - I just don't use it and I'm rather pleased with my self-control.  I've lost a few ships to stability but I've been taking a very conservative route; testing unmanned ships first and insuring escape systems work. Test-pilots (Silver) conduct first manned flight (Testing in HKO) prior to the mission. I've probably spent twice as much on ships as I would have without Revert and as such have had to do a LOT more testing/tourism contracts to make money, but that's part of the reward.

The best thing is that recently I asked about how to use the relevant equations for rocket flight and have been using them to plan my ships. Working brilliantly (with a few major whoopsies in there); I've only just upgraded the Tracking Station and prior to that flight planning was going very well.

Cheers!

Edit: Bob returning home with MASSIVE science onboard:

The Mk-1 Inline cockpit was a testing contract I was able to include in the 'Orbit Mun' mission; normally I'd use the Command Pod. Still; I like this design 'cause you get to put the hear shield at the front and enjoy the view.

And Bob returns home; safe and sound:

WOOT! 392 Science!

Edited January 14, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[eddiew]

With the escape vehicle, rover and crew pod all safely on Eve's amethyst surface, all the ingredients are in the pressure cooker. All we need to do now is light the flame and... and I don't know where that metaphor is going.

To the space world!

Jeb denies all knowledge of why the drop pod tried to self destruct the moment he disembarked. Fortunately it was only a temporary shelter anyway, and now that the crew is aboard Scorpius, it can be allowed to roll away to wherever it prefers to live.

Turns out Eve is... really big. Even the "nearby" waypoint in the Lowlands requires more hours than there are hours of daylight remaining, and it is next morning before Bill finally spots the telltale glimmer on the horizon that marks the Western Sea just "a little way" beyond.

[septemberWaves]

I designed a couple of new rockets for 3.2x scale Kerbin.

I also launched several satellites.

As it turns out, building nice and effective space probes is quite challenging when your most powerful existing launch vehicle has a payload capacity of only 150kg.

Details about these missions can be found here.

[Espatie]

So after Val getting stranded in a retrograde Mun orbit yesterday, today Haduki set off to retrieve her. Shortly afterwards, we got a contract to collect a stranded Scientist from Mun Orbit (Prograde), so I launched Dabro in another rescue ship.

 

Haduki pulled an amazing series of maneuvers, first transitioning straight from launch into a Mun trajectory. On arrival in the Mun's SOI, he retroburned into an appropriate orbit, burned normal for inclination, and managed to be under 5km from Val's stranded lander. A few minute later, Val was aboard and Haduki punched in the burn home, Prograde out of the SOI, retrograde to a direct entry at Kerbin. He'd not completed a full orbit of any kind. Orbits, says Haduki, are for wimps.

 

Dabro meanwhile, not to be outdone, reaches Mun after Haduki to collect our free scientist. Realising that she too can make a fast transit, she charts up her approach, pulling through a Periapsis of under 5k. When later asked, she simply shrugged and said "There weren't any Mountains on my orbit path". She collects Obwise from his hulk, then burns for Kerbin, and because her Mum orbit was prograde she gets back before Haduki, undergoing a re-entry of over 15g.

 

Gene has banned pilots from racing their rockets.

[ARS]

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@ARS I've wanted VTOL engine like that for a long time. What mod?

Retrofuture space plane parts. It's outdated, but all parts is still perfectly functional (I'm running this on KSP 1.6). There's a small and medium-sized engine. Don't forget to assign toggle rotation for VTOL/jet mode to action group

https://spacedock.info/mod/197/retrofuture space plane parts

Edited January 14, 2019 by ARS

[IgorZ]

On 1/12/2019 at 4:57 PM, Fraston said:

I had fun downloading KIS and building an awesome cargo rover, just to find out that @IgorZ hasn't been able to cleanse the terrible sin of the 1-liter bug from existence, since it has the will to live that is almost unbeatable.

Not true. This "bug" is nothing but a wrong installation of the mod. You've been given a link to Wiki that helped resolving the issue for dozen of people before you. Have you tried it?

[Angelo Kerman]

I made a prototype SSTO booster that delivers 17 metric tons into orbit:

It needs more work but it does function..

[NHunter]

Today, I finally got to visit Eta properly:

[Tyko]

Starting a new game...I've played 2.5x and 3.2x ... and I'm struggling with which one to use for the next play through. Science will be set at 30% but I'm using DMagic, so the extra experiments nets me out at around 50-60% science (roughly guessing).

2.5x is pretty easy with stock parts and makes me want to push myself harder. I really feel like I accomplished something when I use 3.2x. The tradeoff is that mid - late game when I want to build bigger more complex missions the "fun challenge" of 3.2x early game starts to become less fun and more "struggle"

I really like early game and optimizing, so I was leaning towards 3.2x, but then I think back to my early days of KSP when I was playing stock and got to build big stations and motherships - that's achievable in 3.2x, but borders on "not fun".

Edited January 14, 2019 by Tyko

[Zosma Procyon]

I've been trying to build ring stations wider than the standard 43 meters. I couldn't get 8 spoke stations to work without summoning the kraken. I thought I was going to get a 4 spoke 80m station to work today, before I finished the ring only to discover that one side was somehow a meter lower than the other in the VAB.

I think the problem with the 8 spoke stations might be autostucting.