What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Geonovast]

@Tyko That video may or may not have influenced my decision to play with Kopernicus.

 

Apparently having Duna orbit Kerbin, but outside Kerbin's SOI, causes... issues.

[Delay]

39 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

@Tyko That video may or may not have influenced my decision to play with Kopernicus.

 

Apparently having Duna orbit Kerbin, but outside Kerbin's SOI, causes... issues.

Wait, what happens when you put Duna into Kerbin's SOI, but close enough to its end that Duna's SOI goes beyond Kerbin's?

Essentially a Venn diagram of SOIs.

2 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I question their accuracy on my shuttle however.  Those boosters definitely burn longer than 50 seconds, so I have no idea what it is referring to.

Turn on the fuel lines. Maybe it's not considering a tank?

Also; not surprised that something as complex as the Space Shuttle's fuel system would confuse a tool like this.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Delay

[putnamto]

sometimes i hate this topic, i do something that is big in scale to what i normally do, and somebody comes in here like "the water tower was in the way"

[NHunter]

Toady, my probe fleet finally arrived to Tellumo.

Communication relay #1 entering the equatorial orbit:

Meanwhile, the mapping satellite was sent onto the low polar orbit:

...Those rings are so pretty!

[septemberWaves]

I tested out some vehicles for my new entry to my Doing It Constellation Style challenge.

It was something of a pain to make an Orion analogue which works well with Kerbalism while also not being too heavy to launch on an Ares I analogue, but I managed it eventually. I had to give up on using 3.2x scale Kerbin and go back to the stock system though; this ship has a mass of nearly 18 tonnes and I do not have a solid rocket motor capable of serving as a first stage for it if I were to continue trying to use the upscaled version of Kerbin (I dislike tweakscaling engines, but even when I tried doing that I would've had to sacrifice aesthetics for functionality, which is something I do not wish to do here). In any case, this new Orion analogue has sufficient supplies for 80 days in space with a full crew of four.

It occurs to me now that I may want to rotate the service module 90° relative to the command module compared to its current orientation. I will do this later.

More difficult to put together properly was my Altair analogue. It's not much trouble to make a Mun lander, but making one with so many parts that it causes me significant lag issues in the editor is something I am not used to in the slightest. This is probably by far the most complex lander I have ever made; I am also debating giving the cargo bay a door, though I have never actually made a stock hinge so I am unsure how that would work.

It works quite nicely though. Using fuel cells means that mission duration is rather limited (to about a day), but I do not need crew on the surface of the Mun for a long time for the initial Munar sortie mission - and when I make a Mun base I will be able to use solar power for that, and the lander can have life support systems disabled so that the only thing that has to be kept running is the probe core.

The whole thing has far too much delta-v, but I would much rather have an excess than too little. It also means that the cargo bay on the descent stage can carry a reasonably-sized rover, or other payloads potentially.

[Tyko]

54 minutes ago, septemberWaves said:

I tested out some vehicles for my new entry to my Doing It Constellation Style challenge.

Really nice design work    The parachute/RCS ring on the capsule works really well and also like how you handled RCS for the lander/ascender! 

[NorthernDevo]

From the files of the Kerbal Facepalm Department...

Oyyyyyyyy....

So there's Barbara and Dilgred on the surface of the Mun, needing a rescue. No probs; my Kerbal Explorer 5-Kerb heavy lander has been working brilliantly; I only have 2 more Munar biomes to suck science out of. Also; Muner Refuel is in a 200km polar orbit; it's role is pretty self-explanatory. It is the prototype of the service vessel for the upcoming DunaStar mission. It carries oxy, fuel, monoprop plus food, water and air for plenty of replenishments over the Mun. 

My calculations are getting better - I guessed that Explorer would have enough fuel to make two landings and pick up both of the girls and make it back to LMO before running dry. Refuel could easily make RV; fill Explorer up and let her return to Kerbin.

Well - it went perfectly! I picked up Barbara, then a 200-km boing Northward to get Dilgred, followed by launch into a 21x18 km orbit. Excellent!

Jumping over to Refuel, it matches planes and drops down to meet Explorer sweet as you please:

I'll pause while you-all notice the facepalm moment.

Yup - I forgot to put a docking port onto Explorer.

Siiiiiiigh.

So - what do I need for an Engineer to mount a docking port onto the ship? KIS? I'll either use that or just send another ship to go get 'em.

Edit: Actually, they only have 2 days of life support left. I'll send another ship out to get them, then try to recover the vessel later.

Jeb chooses to fly the recovery himself. Time is short; he'll need to intercept the derelict, transfer the crew then dock to Refuel to load enough supplies to get them back safe.

Go Jeb!

Edited January 20, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[NorthernDevo]

8 hours ago, Torn4dO said:

Today is the first time that the water tower got in my way ^^

That....

is Awesome!!!!

 

[Triop]

Returning from Dessert Airfield, I love flying this plane.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Triop

[Triop]

 

[MaverickSawyer]

8 hours ago, putnamto said:

sometimes i hate this topic, i do something that is big in scale to what i normally do, and somebody comes in here like "the water tower was in the way"

Dude, I've been playing for 7+ years now, and even I sit back and look at what people accomplish and go ".... HOW??!?!?"

[4472TJ]

20 hours ago, NorthernDevo said:

 

On the way home, the crew got the chance to view a rare and thrilling event:

They stayed in the shadow of the eclipse the entire way in; allowing for quite a dramatic shot; if I say so myself:

Not the only one to see an eclipse then.

[jack gamer]

Apparently my gilly lander was a failure

And now Jeb and Bill are stranded

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, jack gamer said:

Apparently my gilly lander was a failure

And now Jeb and Bill are stranded

Is it an Apollo style mission? If that’s the case they can just EVA their way back to the orbiter.

And by the way, you don’t really land on Gilly, more like dock with it

[eddiew]

After over a month of active rovering, all points of interest have been hit (well ok there are a couple more biomes but I really can't be bothered documenting them so...) and the expedition returns to a scenic spot near their escape vehicle.

Indeed we didn't send W-EVE-1L anywhere, because there wasn't a lot of point.

With the return window less than 50 days away and the lab having already transmitted over 20,000 data points, the crew decide it is time to head back to space once more.

The return route passes by their old drop pod - still on its side due to reasons we may never understand.

(This ascent. Is. Horrible. It's been a week IRL since designing and testing EEVEE, and although I know it can make 150x150 with 300m/s to spare,  I have apparently forgotten how to fly it properly. 5-6 simulations result in crashing back down to the surface before finally figuring it out.

Mostly it ended up being about maintaining pure vertical until half way through the 2nd pair of boosters, and hold the TWR around 1.6-1.7 to avoid wasting fuel fighting atmospheric drag. Need to be around 35-40km up by the time the aerospike kicks in. Very very unforgiving planet to leave indeed.

Also I realised upon boarding that there is no way to transfer leftover science to the upper pod. Oh well.)

And with that, I think I will bring this 1.5.1 career to a close!

Eve was my bucket-list item left over from my 1.2.2 career back in 2016, where I only ever did a single land-and-return, with 1 kerbal, no rover, and some slightly cheaty modded parts. This lander, though modded, is mainly stock and stockalike parts, and I'm happy to call that a legit Eve exploration.

The big legs, which I think are Lithobrake Exploration Tech, are vastly more stable than stock legs and don't fall apart upon contact with the ground; like the drop pod's did. The big radial attachers are Space Y and have inbuilt ullage motors - which is massively useful for getting spent boosters the heck away from your rocket. Big chutes also probably from Lithobrake. The nice roundy cockpit is Airplane Plus. There are stock answers to all these problems, but these mods can reduce your part count by a lot  

Scorpio's wheels are from Kerbal Foundries Continued and are just amazing. They work like wheels rather than... whatever it is stock wheels work like. And they have gears so you can handle hills better and/or draw less power at the expense of speed. And of course, Bon Voyage is amazing for not spending your whole life roving. Set waypoints, autopilot to them in seconds, do the interesting bits. I did end up driving probably 200km manually because I like the challenging terrain, but when it's 3000km of undulating dunes that's something to let the BV autopilot handle!

There is a complete album of this career from start to end (or end to start thanks to the way it's ordered) available on imgur:

https://imgur.com/a/O2mCdNm

 

Edited January 20, 2019 by eddiew

[maceemiller]

Even though it's not happened yet, within 2 hours of this post my friend is bringing her 3 children here and 1 of them, Harry, aged 9, wants me to let him build a space rocket

He likes Minecraft and Lego and recently he's taken an interest in my telescope....he's seen through it the Moon, Pleiades, Orion Nebula, Mars and Venus a few mornings ago (looks so bright and in cresent shape from UK)......

I'm really looking forward to seeing him build....build what ya like!! If it fails to fly I know he will ask "why" it didn't fly.......then I can start teaching the basics and hope we have a new player in the making.....

If all goes well I'll post a picture of his first build later on today

Edited January 20, 2019 by maceemiller

[NHunter]

Today, I jumped into a sandbox game and tried to design a Tellumo "lander" vessel.

Given the presence of a high-pressure atmosphere that will render most rocket engines completely inefficient until I'm already high in the air, I decided to go with a spaceplane design. A warp-jet one, since carrying chemical fuel for in-atmosphere flight will make any (already-heavy) design even heavier. Thus, this monstrosity was born:

Despite being a huge and heavy, it flies pretty well on Kerbin Gael. And Shieldnir provides a level of protection against heat when flying through atmosphere at orbital velocities (~3.3 km/s). I was even able to throw it out of  Kerbin's Gael's SOI entirely on warp-jets once or twice.

On Tellumo, though, things don't look anywhere as good. The spaceplane CAN survive (re?)entry at 4 km/s, but it comes dangerously close to overheating a few parts even when holding prograde . It's also noticeable less stable and has a much harder time picking altitude, a problem aggravated by lower TWR. Still, I was able to climb out of Tellumo's atmosphere on the first try with some hydrolox still left in the tanks.

All in all, this design can work, but some optimization is required if I want to successfully use this design in career mode.

[maceemiller]

Arrgghhh....never got a screenshot of Harry's rocket but I will say, after a little advice, he launched one that touched 300km straight up.....no manoeuvre nodes needed here

Gotta pack laptop away as having Sunday dinner soon but the boy understands how to "fly a rocket"...we had many fails and many spins yet on each build adaptation he told me " this feels better"....also got him now reducing thrust at about 450...500ms on his own so getting there

[Delay]

Huh. This looks...
interesting.

[NorthernDevo]

I just found out about Green Monoliths, so I decided to fire up Kerbnet and go looking on the Mun.

I found a ? and sent up a cheap and cheerful mission - young Alsted landed in the gnarliest patch of awful terrain in the South Polar Lowlands I've ever seen - how she found a spot flat enough to land is totally beyond me.

It should be just ahead - she's heading off to look...

...Very carefully.

Edit:

Umm........

Yeah...no.

After walking the rim of the valley long enough to know the object - whatever it is - is in fact at the bottom, Alsted chose to risk some precious jetpack fuel to get down to it. And there...it...was.

Just a normal black one unfortunately; still, it's one I haven't found before. 

Now - the ship is waaaaaay up at the top of those unclimbable walls. She's got 3.5 units of fuel left; here's hoping it's enough! I've lost one Kerbal so far; I don't want Alsted to be #2. I'll have her climb as far as she can before hitting the jets.

Edited January 20, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[Roartal]

Ohoho, today I did something rather nice.

You see, after digging into a bunch of mods, thus boosting the ultimate 'Kerbal experience' tenfold, I came up with a marvelous little design. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the newest invention of Octahedron Industries: The OI-Deepcolant!

Now, this is a very tiny, yet extremely efficient interstellar vessel. It is absolutely autonomous and requires no pilot, but houses a capsule for transportation purposes nevertheless. With a total of 16,000 Δv it can travel vast distances and remain operational in even the darkest corners of the galaxy thanks to four individual fission reactor cores. For the slim price of 372,266, this Argon-powered beauty could be yours! 

The vessel can be launched in one go (the ring section is completely collapsable), the tail section can be undocked and / or replaced for future missions. After crafting this starship I immediately made a trip to Dres and rescued one lonely astronaut from Dres (At this point, thanks to @Martian Emigrant for solidifying my plans for a rescue mission). Having done that I payed Duna a visit (like I initially wanted), some refueling later I finally returned the lost little kerblad back to Kerbin. 

I sure had a blast today!

[Delay]

Just a Falcon 2 (because it's a 2.5m rocket, but it also fits the actual Falcon's naming convention) landed in the middle of an EVE city.

Absolutely nothing to worry about.

And while I'm on the topic of SpaceX, here are some Stage 2-esque shots from LKO:
 

Spoiler

[Servo]

I spent yesterday building and testing an Il-76 from scratch. Took me hours, but I'm really happy with the result.

If you want to try it out, I've uploaded it to KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/servo/Il-76

Edited January 20, 2019 by Servo

[NorthernDevo]

5 minutes ago, Servo said:

I spent yesterday building and testing an Il-76 from scratch. Took me hours, but I'm really happy with the result.

If you want to try it out, I've uploaded it to KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/servo/Il-76

That's fantastic!

[Mister Kerman]

Put my KSP shoes back on. I brute forced a very heavy fuel payload into orbit.
Ignition

Second stage

Third

Fourth

Fifth

Sixth stage had separation issues requiring a zero G separation solution to keep them from pivoting at their center of mass into my main engine.

Easy fix

They worked beautifully.

After that I docked. It was a little tight but I never traded paint, which is always nice. :3

My Space Tourism business isn't as lucrative as I hoped but this fuel will allow me to make good on a few contracts still unfulfilled and maybe help pay for a complete overhaul. This was a very important fuel delivery in any case. Brute forcing is a bad business model however, and I'll need to figure out a way to make lightweight efficient craft for future endeavors.