What did you do in KSP1 today?

[ValleyTwo]

So, last we left our Heroes around the Mun.  They decoupled the Basic Lander and started the process of landing on the selected site. 

But I noticed something was very wrong.  Where was their FUEL?  At first I wondered if maybe the Nuke-Tug had used some of it instead of using its own.

Still, they were able to land in one piece.  But now they were trapped on the Mun.  Oh no!  Muntrap!   (Coming to a theater near you).  

I examined the Lander and realized, once again, it was my fault.  The four outer tanks were JET FUEL tanks.    The crew were not pleased.  Also I just noticed "Bill" is on the flag instead of "Bob".  No doubt Bob is even more upset now.

Also, the solar panels were on top of the tanks.  Which meant recharging the battery was harder to do because we had to wait till high noon to properly broadcast the data collected.

So. first thing - redesign the Basic Lander.  Second, testing the mining equipment back home.  For I need to make a tiny mining platform, on wheels, to refuel the Lander to bring the crew back.  Luckily, I am not using one of the Life Support Mods.  Still, at least this isn't Dwarf Fortress.  One of them would turn into a weremoose and kill the other one.  Off to the VAB!

Edited February 11, 2019 by ValleyTwo

[Castille7]

4 hours ago, Jon Tash said:

No, I didn't passed out, I swear!

Jeb can you please hurry with that O2 bottle?!!

[MisterKerman]

I just reached Minmus, repositioned a satellite, and nearly landed on the moon before I realized one of the 7 paying customers was back at the space station hiding in an inflatable airlock... I think I need to eat lunch now finally...

 

Edited February 11, 2019 by MisterKerman

[Triop]

Building a engine from scratch.

72 days left in my 80 days around Kerbin adventure.

[TheKorbinjer]

I'm continuing to create scale replicas of aircraft

So far, I've created the :

-     A-26 Invader - Most maneuverable, despite its size, slowest.

-     XP-55 Ascender - Coolest looking

-     F4U Corsair - Most detailed

-     F-82 Twin Mustang - fastest of the group, least detailed (hard to make wings right)

-     Do-335 - 2nd fastest, only push / pull prop combo i've built, very ugly looking.

-     BF109G - slowest takeoff speed of around 30 m/s, 

(They all have flaps)

 

I intend to create more, does anyone want to suggest planes for me to replicate? 

 

[Triop]

Just finished my scratchbuild engine, I love the KIS mod.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Triop

[Aeroboi]

Finished my Duna Ion shuttle (stock + MH) and can carry 3 kerbals 3 times to orbit and back with spare fuel for navigation.

 

[Delay]

Today I launched my first spacecraft with a Sentinel telescope in my save. It's also the first satellite in this save to stay in interplanetary space.

...But night launches are boring, aren't they? I wanted to launch at dawn.

It's also the first flight with side boosters since forever! I usually just made single boosters lifters...

(By the way: This launch is brought to you by RealPlume! Rocket launches look so much better with it!)

...and after a slightly different, yet still acceptable gravity turn, - turns out that the different design messed with my TWR expectations - the second reached its parking orbit around Kerbin...

...followed by leaving Kerbin.

 

 

[Hotel26]

4 hours ago, Triop said:

72 days left in my 80 days around Kerbin adventure.

"You can do it!!"  Totally.  Go, Triop, go! 

[Triop]

@Hotel26 and others who are supporting me  :

Edited February 12, 2019 by Triop

[Espatie]

OK, The Plan to repair the Rover mission has... sort of worked.

 

The Heavy Lander arrived, deliberately injected into a inclined Mun orbit. We had a bit of a wait for local dawn to roll around at the landing site, but then we managed a pretty good descent and an initial landing with a LOT of dV to spare just under a kilometre from the Rover crash site.

 

After assessing the situation, we took the lander on a short suborbital hop and managed to land under 100 metres from the crash. So far, so good!

 

Repairing the Rover was fiddly, but not especially difficult. With 2 of the legs from the lander (it has 6 more; it'll be fine) to act as jacks, Kelvis got the whole thing back upright. Dragging the replacement wheels the 100 metres from the lander was a pain at 6m KIS movement distance per move (they are too big to go into a Kerbal backpack), but eventually Kelvis got the wheels replaced.

 

He then drove the Rover over to the Lander to make it easier to add the rest of the parts. The new port side solar panel and batteries went on fine. The replacement lockers near the rear door (small KIS storage SEP item, if you need to know) were slightly fiddly to get into place without blocking the door, but eventually fine.

 

Unfortunately a short test drive has revealed that the Rover is an absolute pig to drive in Munar gravity, prone to flipping when turning and apparently capable of flipping forward under acceleration if the default keys are used because that also triggers the Reaction wheels. What I need to figure out is a way to have the reaction wheels trigger to stabilise the roll when turning, but not trigger when accelerating. It's been nicknamed "The Lady". Because it's not for turning.

 

Still, We have a working rover on the surface of the Mun. That's better than we had yesterday.

[MisterKerman]

Reposition Satellite

Plant flag on surface of Minmus

Return 4 passengers who have fulfilled their travel itineraries.

[Schwarz]

Holiday's almost over here, so I took out my new plane for endurance tests.
First up is full afterburner dash, M2.1~2.2@17000m:


Then I went for max dry power, M1.5~M1.54@13050m:


Both runs we left around 600 units of kerosene in the tanks for throttle control during landing.
A bit amused we only got around 300km more range not utilizing afterburner, albeit we were flying a lot slower and lower.
Next up we'll be trying subsonic ferrying and see if we will be able to achieve circumnavigation relying solely on internal fuel.

[Spacetraindriver]

Made a SOFIA this time! I've restrained myself to only aircraft that NASA has used so next stop X-15!*

*so by extension B-52

[Espatie]

Further adventures with a Moon Rover!

 

Command uploaded some altered control settings to ease the Rover's steering. Instead of WASD, the Rover now steers with NumPad 5123, and 1 & 3 are also bound to the Roll function, rather than the Yaw function, of the SAS wheels.

 

This makes an immediate and noticeable difference to the handling of the rover. It's also discovered that the roll function alone is quite capable of flipping the rover over (or righting it afterwards). For normal use, Kelvis dials the wheel response down to 50%.

 

For a shakedown test Kelvis takes the Rover out the 8.2km to go and rescue Beawell. The drive is actually more like 10km as it's necessary to detour around a small but steep-sided crater. Maduki is of the opinion that it's relatively new (it's very bright, which she says indicates that the formation is quite young) and the micrometerorite "hail" that rains down constantly hasn't had time to erase the sharp edge. "Young" is of course a relative term - maybe a quarter of a million years old.

 

Kelvis tests the rover extensively - and finds a few problems. It has a tendency to veer to the left under acceleration, especially when going uphill. Command is of the opinion that this means that the left front wheel (one of those replaced following the crash) is slightly lower than the right one. Kelvis is going to try softening the suspension on that side to see if it helps the issue, and if not he'll jack the rover up and try to fix it that way.

 

Overall though, considering that the Rover crash-landed in its original form, it performs well. Kelvis will now bring Beawell back to the landing zone, where she will board the Heavy Lander and return to Kerbin. Kelvis and Maduki will then head out - first eastwards, to where a Surface Experiment Package from an earlier mission is deployed. There they will add additional instruments to the SEP and turn northwards towards the Twin Craters biome, about 30km away.

[MisterKerman]

Making a new Commercial lander that seats 6. Smaller groups will be easier to manage as it's difficult to manage full loads anyways.

 

 

 

Designing a moon transfer booster next. Not sure what the most efficient engine would be to be honest.

UPDATE:

Decided on a Bobcat.

Edited February 12, 2019 by MisterKerman

[Xurkitree]

I finished this, check it out!

Also, I got my crew back from the Minmus Base, as Food was running out there and many of them had spent over 9 years in space already. So after some wrangling, I found out that Earn Your Stripes cause 11 Kerbals to become Veterans! Finally! I set my veteran limits to have atleast 10000 hours in space and 3 missions apiece, so these guys? They have spent over 4 years in space. Many  have done more.

[Jon Tash]

Unexpected landing of an Unidentified Flying Object.

[septemberWaves]

I surpassed 1500 hours in-game. What was I doing, you may ask? I was staying up all night putting together a custom tech tree layout for an upcoming playthrough.

[ValleyTwo]

Back to the drawing board!  The Basic Lander was redesigned - in other words the jet fuel tanks were replaced with rocket fuel tanks.  Sadly, I assume this means the Booster for the Lander will have to also be redesigned later to deal with the extra mass.

A mining platform was designed.  A experiment - not a design that would be used on the Mun or other moons.  I just want to relearn how it all works.

I even fast forwarded to see how the equipment works.  Sadly, this region of the planet has little ore and turning it into fuel was slow going.  Luckily the spot where the Lander is trapped on the Mun should be a better spot for mining.

So I will now design a tiny mining rover to mine ore, process it to fuel, and top off the Lander's tanks.  That should give it enough Delta-V to get it into orbit.  Once there the Nuke-Tug can link up with it and take it back to the OSS.  Learning what I have at Mun I can think about a full-scale mining operation on Minmus to supply future interplanetary missions.

[MaverickSawyer]

I'd recommend Minmus. Lower gravity and the Flats make for easier landing or construction of larger bases.

[JadeOfMaar]

I designed a transcontinental Buffalo rover a few nights ago. Sadly I don't think its cabin with geology lab can work like a full-featured science lab, largely defeating the reason I wanted to design it.

But today I designed its companion, a large heli drone that docks to it to carry it overseas. I didn't check the Isp of its engines so dV has a slight chance of being a problem (2.5x GPP, Gael has quite a lot of ocean on one side). Landing these together is a very delicate procedure. I managed to touchdown at <1m/s vertical speed but I was still near 80m/s horizontal...on a small slope, therefore the slope met me at 80m/s.

Anyway...

(The mk2 tank with solar panel is Airline Kuisine when installed with Snacks! The heli engines and gas turbine engines EC generators are part of Buffalo.)

the rover itself has changed a bit since the picture below. That aside, it has some downscaled Wheesley engines so it can cruise at super-car speeds without me needing to mash W. But I may still be better off installing Bon Voyage.

[woeller]

Jeb is stranded... again! This time on Ceti's Poles. #homesickness

[capi3101]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I designed a transcontinental Buffalo rover a few nights ago. Sadly I don't think its cabin with geology lab can work like a full-featured science lab, largely defeating the reason I wanted to design it.

<snip />

Pretty cool design - I might have to steal emulate it at some point myself.

I'm pretty sure the cabin can't be reconfigured, but since you're using Buffalo already, you might think about Pathfinder's Doc science lab. In its default configuration it works much the same way as the stock lab. I think while it's stowed it'd fit inside the cabin - no need for new parts there. You'd need 1200 Equipment and an engineer with a KAS screwdriver to deploy it once you got where you were going. That might not be entirely in the spirit of what you want to do, but it's certainly doable.

Myself, I'd like to figure out how to plane and how to sub with the Buffalo parts - both things I haven't fiddled around with enough.

Edited February 12, 2019 by capi3101

[purpleivan]

The past few days I've been mainly working on an attempt at the Eve Oceanic Rescue/Salvage challenge. I started with the recovery of the 10 ton ship, which will need to be dragged at least 10km to the shore, for the rescue method I've chosen.

First I tried out this design, which didn't really have the range I needed in sea trials just off the coast from the KSC.

After that I switch up to a beefier, but also more aerodynamically efficient design, which based on more Kerbin water time, seemed like it would have the range needed and then some.

When tested out on Eve itself, the range was ok, even taking into account the missing mass of the fuel tank and engine of the stranded ship, when I dropped it in the drink with Vessel Mover. With a change to this design, that remove the raised wings at the front, the range while towing increased to about 30km.

With a design I was happy with for the recovery vehicle for the stranded ship, next came the problem of how to carry the thing to the ascent vehicle. I tried out various designs, based about the idea of carrying it horizontally, but using a bit of rocket thrust to sit it upright beneath the ascent vehicle, ready to be docked with it. This was an early, rathe unsuccessful (or should that be explosive) design.

Once I had an updated transfer vehicle design that could right the ship more reliably, the next step was to try righting it in a test stand, to simulate the attempt that would be made to do the same on Eve. Here she is chugging up the ramp on Kerbin, but in 1.7g

The righting machinism proved to be successful, but I'd designed the test stand with too short a gap between the docking port and the ground, so I didn't get to test the us of the landing legs to dock the ship.

 

Taking a break after most of two days messing with in boats and rocket carrying vehicles, I made a space plane as an entry for the K Prize challenge by @boolybooly .

The space plane was carrying cargo in the form of Val on lightwight re-entry vehicle.

Edited February 12, 2019 by purpleivan