What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Fearless Son]

7 hours ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Need I say more?

Is that a rotary cannon made up of rotary cannons?

Yo dawg, we heard you like rotating gun barrels...

[Delay]

I played around a bit with return trajectories for first stages.

Turns out that for my launch vehicle, RTLS is viable until around 5t payload.

 

Edit: As an expendable rocket it can carry up to 22.5 tons into LKO (but not much further) while still being able to deorbit the second stage.

Launching a Falcon Heavy like this and performing 2 boostbacks and one brake to land on the peninsula should be an interesting exercise in multitasking.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Delay

[Johnster_Space_Program]

I accomplished this so far in my new career mode I recently made

 

[Cavscout74]

Didn't get much done today other than a few launches to Eve.  Unfortunately, I was distracted & totally forgot to send up the crew to take the third crew cycler to Eve.  I only remembered after time warping for nearly two weeks past the transfer window.  The crew mission will just have to wait for the next window.  Unless....

The only other thing I did was tinker with the FTL drive mod.  I sent a probe with a jump beacon to Eve & got the Kerbin beacon in orbit:

I'm debating if I want to keep FTL Drive - nothing wrong with the mod, just feels "cheaty" even though I already have probes in orbit around every planet, so all it's really doing is saving years of travel time.  It also makes my deep space vessels obsolete, which is sad - I just made a new design a few days ago & hadn't even tried it yet except a single test flight in sandbox.

[Dan Kerman]

Finished 1st part of Potato Phase II. Have spent the past week exploring Minmus for the first time. The most nervous part was getting Bob Kerman back to Kerbin. Just enough fuel to get a low PE at Kerbin... discarded the transfer vehicle, enough fuel left in the Science Can to circularize and adjust inclination so Jebediah can get up to him and bring him home! 5800 juicy Science Points in Bob's pockets. I'm exhausted!

Next, the same on the Mun, and then Tech Tree should be closed out.

[Servo]

I was looking for craft ideas and @HolidayTheLeek randomly guessed that XB-51 might be an aircraft designation. He was just as surprised as I was when this absolute beauty of a craft showed up.

I mean, what? Trijet bomber with a variable incidence wing, bicycle landing gear, and the oddest engine configuration this side of that Swedish asymmetrical fighter everyone was building on reddit a few weeks ago.

It also flies great, 10/10 would recommend: https://kerbalx.com/servo/Martin-XB-51

 

[capi3101]

Fairly busy day yesterday getting back into the swing of things. Began the day by setting LSV House Harkonnen in polar orbit over Duna to printing a fourth Pink Noise 7 communications probe carrier, the last such probe scheduled for deployment in the Duna/Ike SOI. Once that was done, Harkonnen engaged her Alcubierre Drive and warped to an equatorial orbit over Ike; I still need to move the ship into a polar orbit over Ike, but I've been having some issues with KJR of late and as a result the ship is fairly wobbly at the moment. Once the ship was in orbit, I went ahead and set up a rendezvous between the General Electric 7 XM jump-starting probe and the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin as well as a rendezvous between the newly-printed McFeely Sr. 7 heavy speedy delivery laboratory-probe and the Stevie Wonder 7 solar observatory over Mun. Construction of a Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander commenced at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun, while a newly designed SCSS 7a garbage collection lander began construction at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus.

I also continued an ongoing mission to gather surface data on Duna with the Gumdrop 7 scanner probe-lander, which Harkonnen left in polar orbit over Duna.

The Polar Highlands on Duna were one of five biomes the Gumdrop identified as potential landing areas for a Pathfinder outpost on Duna.

The Gumdrop performed its job admirably up to a certain point. Look carefully at the screenies and I'm sure you can ascertain the probe's final fate...

I'll give y'all a hint.

While I am annoyed at myself for forgetting to deploy the solar panels (ever) and allowing the probe to run out of power, I did get successful narrow-band readings from ten of Duna's fourteen biomes, and am quite confident at this point that the spot I'd originally surveyed for a surface outpost will prove to be suitable when I'm ready (since it turns out that spot is in the Midlands and the Midlands scanned as one of the suitable biomes). To that end, I spent part of my day designing the TBD 7c base-seeding rover, which was basically just a re-tooling of the 7b to ensure the craft could land safely on Duna. I added a Buffalo Bulldozer to the front end for good measure as well.

With their delivery missions completed yesterday, the ferry ships Next Objective and Necessary Evil departed space station Minmusport to return to Kerbin. Owing to bad timing on the burn, Next Objective won't return to Kerbin for another ten days, while Necessary Evil's transit is scheduled to take a mere 4.5 days. Both ships will head back to their designated moorings at space station Kerbinport, where they'll refuel and await any upcoming tourist or colonization contracts.

The McFeely Sr completed its rendezvous and docked with the Wonder, at which time a gravioli wave experiment was transferred over. The McFeely then departed and burned for Kerbin.

McFeely Sr. 7 over Mun, having already broken orbit and looking kinda Mir-like, if you ask me...

The McFeely has since returned to Kerbin orbit, where an attempt will be made to dock it to Kerbinport to retrieve a Power Tools experiment recently completed there. The big concern there is whether or not it'll have sufficient fuel to make the rendezvous; it should if I'm careful about it.

Speaking of careful rendezvous, the General Electric 7 reached Dystopia Planitia and rendezvoused with a mere 3 m/s of fuel remaining in the tanks. The probe successfully docked at the station and after about five orbits, its capacitors reached full charge. The GE should be ready to provide the necessary amount of charge required to kick start the exotic matter generator of LSV House Atreides when its construction is completed a few days from now.

The day ended with the completion of the Crater Maker and SCSS print jobs. The Crater Maker was delivered to space station Munport just this morning, while the crew at Non Mentha boarded the new SCSS.

SCSS 7a launch from the Non Mentha Yards.

The trio of kerbals will be retrieving a MOLE laboratory from the surface of Minmus, bringing it into a stable orbit before returning to Non Mentha; there the SCSS will be recycled and a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe will be printed to take the lab back to Kerbin for contract.

Anticipating another busy day today, though current things are starting to wind down a little bit; I anticipate in a day or two the game will be a matter of waiting for things to get to where they're going.

[NorthernDevo]

I've been grinding missions; trying to make money and open up my tier-3 buildings. "Test part xxx at the launch site! Plant a flag on thje Mun!"

Gaaah - The Mun has so many flags now it looks like Canada Day up there - and it's not enough! I missed this year's Duna window grinding missions.

What does make decent money is carrying tourists - get the ones that want landings on both the Mun and Minmus and you can make pretty decent Funds. The problem is, to build a ship large enough to do both in one mission seriously cuts into the profit...and making it multiple missions takes too long. So the idea of course is to carry more Kerbals per trip.

I was trying to do something with the Mk-3 Passenger Module; it carries 16. It's just too heavy.

The answer hit me last night at work. I built a new ship, made it light as possible, grabbed every single tourist contract I could and voila:

The K.S.S. Money Makin' Kerbal Mover!

33 Kerbal tourists at a shot; plus a pilot! Two million Funds per flight! Woohoo!

 

[capi3101]

12 minutes ago, NorthernDevo said:

<snip />

The answer hit me last night at work. I built a new ship, made it light as possible, grabbed every single tourist contract I could and voila:

The K.S.S. Money Makin' Kerbal Mover!

33 Kerbal tourists at a shot; plus a pilot! Two million Funds per flight! Woohoo!

 

Seatbelts optional, obviously...

[NorthernDevo]

20 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Seatbelts optional, obviously...

Yeah well, I priced them out. This is a low cost tourist service, so they make do with passing a roll of duct-tape around.

Hey - on the bright side they get a fantastic view!

Edited January 23, 2019 by NorthernDevo

[Martian Emigrant]

1 hour ago, NorthernDevo said:

I've been grinding missions; trying to make money and open up my tier-3 buildings. "Test part xxx at the launch site! Plant a flag on thje Mun!"

Gaaah - The Mun has so many flags now it looks like Canada Day up there - and it's not enough! I missed this year's Duna window grinding missions.

What does make decent money is carrying tourists - get the ones that want landings on both the Mun and Minmus and you can make pretty decent Funds. The problem is, to build a ship large enough to do both in one mission seriously cuts into the profit...and making it multiple missions takes too long. So the idea of course is to carry more Kerbals per trip.

I was trying to do something with the Mk-3 Passenger Module; it carries 16. It's just too heavy.

The answer hit me last night at work. I built a new ship, made it light as possible, grabbed every single tourist contract I could and voila:

The K.S.S. Money Makin' Kerbal Mover!

33 Kerbal tourists at a shot; plus a pilot! Two million Funds per flight! Woohoo!

 

You can put Tourists in Chairs???????

 

ME

[NorthernDevo]

1 minute ago, Martian Emigrant said:

You can put Tourists in Chairs???????

 

ME

Lol I didn't think you could either; given they can't do anything. But yup; you can.

 

[NHunter]

Today, I've finished upgrading my GPP career from 1.5.1 to 1.6.1. And, I gotta say, the game runs much better now - something that was quickly "rectified" by installing scatterer.  Well, it sill runs a bit smoother than 1.5.1, and it looks much better. Hooray!

As for actual things I did in-game recently... I've grinded enough science to unlock the top-tire relay antennas my mods provide and began upgrading my Ciro constellation with new communication relays. Once I'm done, I should be able to maintain connection even with ships deep in Grannus's SoI.

Relays that powerful aren't cheap or easy to put into their designated orbit, though. Each costs ~500 000 credits and weights over 50 tons (transfer stage NOT included). But you gotta pay for being able to chat freely with Gealans in a nearby star system...

[Johnster_Space_Program]

I recreated Luna 2 in KSP for a contract and impacted it into the mun!

[eddiew]

Apparently everything from 1.4.x works in 1.6.1 so... we return you to our normal schedule of exploring Galileo's Planet Pack + Grannus Expansion Pack + some mysterious homebrew things that probably aren't bombs. Cookies if you remember the bombs reference.

I made a mistake in my last post; the Otho expeditionary assembly does not weigh 200 tons. That would of course be about the mass of a basic Eve lander. Hahaha... how mundane. This thing is in fact just over 500 tons, all of which needs to be delivered to LGO as a unit because I can't be bothered docking things in orbit. 

On the pad, the mighty Pink Cougar ended up at 2600 tons and provided a serious engineering challenge for not letting it fall apart under its own weight. After several sims and an awful lot of struts, it finally looked like it would make orbit, and the expedition could begin!

[Triop]

Today's visitor: YF-25

Edited January 24, 2019 by Triop

[CatastrophicFailure]

@eddiew I’m wondering what sort of generator you were using. All those names sound like, well, stage names at a very specific sort of entertainment venue... 

should have gone with Thunder Flash...

[Geonovast]

On 1/19/2019 at 3:50 PM, 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"

"Now what, Jeb?"

I kid I kid

 

I didn't mean for this to be so SS heavy (no, really), but here it is:

I decided to play around with making a Kiskaskit car.  Landed an assembly structure with two large KIS containers, a squad of kerbals, and some tools up to Kerbin's closest moon, Dres.

Assembly went mostly ok, although after needing a bug patched and then looking into how it's set up, I may need to redesign this thing a little before doing it for real.

 

After getting the wheels on, Freddan decide to walk under one, which catapulted him away...

Not great for him, but I got some screenshots as I laughed at his misfortune.

He finally came to a rest...  2.7km away.

 

Rover completion was rushed, and one of the pilots drove out to get him.

 

But decided to take the quick way back.

That's right, it flies.

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Geonovast

[Cavscout74]

Today I did a bunch of mid-course corrections.  And I mean a bunch.  Several Jool-bound craft & my most recent set of Eve craft all came due within 2-3 weeks game time.  Other than that, I finally took the time to land my Laythe amphibious rover & small base.

Not the most dignified atmospheric entry, but hey, nothing burned off so it's a win

REALLY glad this is an amphibious rover...

The base landing went much better, coming down <5km from the spot the rover found once it swam ashore.  Since the base is wheeled too, I drove it to the rover rather than the other way around, since it was a little flatter at the rover.

[scottadges]

Without actually getting into KSP, the past few days I've been going through and updating mods for 1.6 and reading up on where they stand. Most of what I use seems to be updated and there are a few outstanding issues that I'm reading about with Kerbalism and then I guess MechJeb is getting a proper update, but otherwise all the main ones I like made the transition well.

Kudos to all the modders who keep these things going ad infinitum and deal with so many "Update!?!"-type of uncouth-demands-that-should-really-be-genuflecting-praise for these awesome people who love this game.

[MaverickSawyer]

Launched two TKS missions, one TKS-Lite to Salyut 1 for a crew swap, and one TKS-ER to Minmus Station to bring it up to full staff...

Jeb, Bill, and Bob depart from Salyut 1 after an extended stay shaking the station out.

 

TKS-ER departing for Minmus.

 

Also launched the supply ship for the station with some extra parts and a host of experiments for the crew to perform.

 

Finally Val took Mossie down to visit the sample return lander and to gather samples of the surroundings for reference.

Regrettably, Mossie had to be scuttled after a critical failure of its docking port. Val managed to retrieve the samples and manually transfer them to the TKS that brought her, Maucal, and Stelgun to the station, then boarded the station via the airlock. Mossie will be missed, but not heavily... Discussions are already underway on a heavy lander, and this incident will simply encourage the R&D team to be swift... lest Stelgun gets the idea in her head to perform an extreme EVA down to the surface on her own. 

Edited January 24, 2019 by MaverickSawyer

[purpleivan]

15 hours ago, NorthernDevo said:

I've been grinding missions; trying to make money and open up my tier-3 buildings. "Test part xxx at the launch site! Plant a flag on thje Mun!"

Gaaah - The Mun has so many flags now it looks like Canada Day up there - and it's not enough! I missed this year's Duna window grinding missions.

What does make decent money is carrying tourists - get the ones that want landings on both the Mun and Minmus and you can make pretty decent Funds. The problem is, to build a ship large enough to do both in one mission seriously cuts into the profit...and making it multiple missions takes too long. So the idea of course is to carry more Kerbals per trip.

I was trying to do something with the Mk-3 Passenger Module; it carries 16. It's just too heavy.

The answer hit me last night at work. I built a new ship, made it light as possible, grabbed every single tourist contract I could and voila:

The K.S.S. Money Makin' Kerbal Mover!

33 Kerbal tourists at a shot; plus a pilot! Two million Funds per flight! Woohoo!

 

I had a similar idea in a challenge a few years ago and launched the K.S.S Points Pirate (9 kerbals and 32 satellites).

[Espatie]

I've been trying to make basic planes. I can make them fly, but it's about 50/50 on walking away from the inevitable crash on landing.

 

How the hell are you supposed to land these things?

[Castille7]

4 hours ago, purpleivan said:

I had a similar idea in a challenge a few years ago and launched the K.S.S Points Pirate (9 kerbals and 32 satellites).

You peeps are bringing back some memories, I put 33 on Minmus!

Edited January 24, 2019 by Castille7

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, Espatie said:

but it's about 50/50 on walking away from the inevitable crash on landing.

The first diagnostic question I'd ask is whether 1) you're not able to reliably touch down lightly (KSC runway, straight and level), or whether 2) your airplanes fall to bits even when you do?

(From the way you've worded the above, I'd say it's the first...?)

If it's 1, I'd assure you it's possible (if your craft is sufficiently maneuverable) and "practice makes perfect".  Get lined up far enough out and at the right altitude...

Or is it 2...?  (You may need some tips about making your craft more rugged.)  How do you do with the pre-built, stock aircraft?