What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Triop]

2 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Uhm... How is that not exploding? Did they change the wheels recently?

I don't know, maybe because I've attached it with KIS mod ?

It works though.

[Starman4308]

I'm not yet done with backlog, but this mission was kind of cool. All glory to Agathorn.

The goal was to place a test satellite into GEO, using my new-generation Atlas boosters. All of the main engines were upgraded; an AJ10-42 became an AJ10-104, the LR105-NA-3 became the LR105-NA-6, and the LR79 (S-3D) boosters became H1 (Saturn 1 version) engines. Each and every one of them with more thrust, more specific impulse, longer burn times, and higher max reliability... and I finally had a restartable upper stage.

Naturally, the first one had the LR105 sustainer fail to ignite, followed by deliberately dumping it into the ocean after clearing the pad. I usually catch failures-to-ignite before I release the clamps, but I wasn't paying enough attention

The second time around, I was very careful to make sure all three main engines and both verniers were at full thrust before releasing the clamps.

Then the LR105 sustainer suffered a loss of thrust, producing just 50% of normal thrust. I lofted more than usual, knowing that every meter/second of vertical velocity provided by the H1 boosters would be needed for any chance at an orbit.

As the core slowly burned through its propellant with TWR < 1, I pitched up, first to 32 degrees, then 45 degrees, as I watched vertical velocity sink from +900 m/sec, eventually falling to -85 m/sec.

But, burn through its propellant it did. Vertical velocity rose, and pitch fell, back down to 32, then 20, then 12 degrees.

At this point, I became increasingly confident that the mission could be a success... if the core stage burned to depletion. The LR105 was rated to burn for 5 minutes 50 seconds, and the verniers for 6 minutes. It was now minute 9, and Test Flight's predicted chance of engine failure began to soar. I needed those last few seconds of LR105 burn time. While the margins were generous... they were not so generous as to permit the loss of over a kilometer per second of delta-V.

Twenty seconds. Fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Eyes on the Test Flight display. Five seconds. T = 10 minutes, 25 seconds, and nominal burnout from LOX depletion.

MECO. Stage separation. Second stage ignition, and that AJ-10 was A-OK.

While the satellite had to complete the last 250 m/sec of the GTO burn on the second pass, it had more than enough hydrazine reserve to still make it all the way to GEO with a healthy remaining delta-V margin.

[Spacetraindriver]

I may have lied I mean uh no thats uh totally a Tu-144 

[Triop]

9 minutes ago, Spacetraindriver said:

I may have lied I mean uh no thats uh totally a Tu-144 

Cool, they are stock right ?

Do you have the craftfiles for this on Kerbalx ?

I'd like to paint them and take some screenshots.

[Espatie]

Mostly today in KSP was a day of getting things back to normal before the next big moves. Everybody except for the rover team are now back from the Mun (they should be picked up tomorrow), and the LKO station is partially refuelled.

 

Tomorrow will be a day of further "make good and mend" and possibly the deployment of a hopper to retrieve the Rover Team.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Testing a revised version of an old SSTO Spaceplane, 3300 Δv remains after circularizing at 90K.
Orbital refueling allows for a trip just about anywhere.
Payload bay can hold a small satellite or be swapped for a crew cabin.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Starman4308 said:

At this point, I became increasingly confident that the mission could be a success... if the core stage burned to depletion. The LR105 was rated to burn for 5 minutes 50 seconds, and the verniers for 6 minutes. It was now minute 9, and Test Flight's predicted chance of engine failure began to soar. I needed those last few seconds of LR105 burn time. While the margins were generous... they were not so generous as to permit the loss of over a kilometer per second of delta-V.

So do you get like a huge boost to reliability for (successfully) running the engine that long now?

[GRS]

Trying to make a bunch of landers to fulfill The Ultimate Challenge.

[Xurkitree]

I made this for practice.

[Starman4308]

6 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So do you get like a huge boost to reliability for (successfully) running the engine that long now?

Nothing special, necessarily, but:

Test Flight gives unused engines with 0 Test Flight data minimum reliability.

I was at roughly 60-70% of maximum data on these engines, probably on account of tech transfer from having used earlier versions extensively.

By the end, know I was past 90% of maximum data, possibly all the way to 100%.

[PunkyFickle]

Landed my tiny early career lander on the Mun running out of fuel exactly 5 meters above the ground!

Why is the FAR window open? Just like that, I forgot, nothing to do with a staged landing on Kerbin, trust me.

Oh, and by the way, [x]Science "log visual observation from the Mun Highlands" is a lie. Don't bother bringing a telescope up there.

Edited February 14, 2019 by PunkyFickle

[capi3101]

Howdy, y'all. Happy Valium-times day. It's been two weeks since my last mission report on this thread and the log's getting long enough to be annoying at this point, so I figured I might as well talk about what's been happening lately.

January 31^st began with the retrieval of pilot Kardon Kerman from his shipwreck in very low orbit over Minmus. The Spamcan 7 lander dispatched from space station Minmusport successfully rendezvoused with his craft and brought him back to the station, where he's still sitting as of this morning. Meanwhile, LSV House Harkonnen completed her printing of the Last Chance 7, essentially a grabber probe with a powerful landing engine. The probe was fueled and released from Harkonnen, and then completed a rendezvous with the TBD 7c rover in orbit over Duna, that craft having abandoned its original landing stage after an ATO maneuver during its initial landing attempt.

When the time came, the TBD de-orbited and began preparations for landing.

The first landing attempt and landing did not go exactly to plan, with the Last Chance running out of fuel and the TBD landing (intact at least) on its side. The rest of the day on the 31^st was spent trying to rectify that before I found a pre-deorbit burn backup save; the landing attempt occurred again on February 1^st. By altering the landing profile just a little, the rover finally touched down upright and intact in Duna's midlands about sixty kilometers northeast of the original target zone.

I would've preferred a larger fuel reserve, but at that point I wasn't about to complain...

With the rover finally down, I had a bit of a rove ahead (though by no means the longest rove I've ever done on the Dunan surface - not even close). First thing I did was have engineer Chadul Kerman get out of the craft and offload some of the extra unnecessary equipment the rover was hauling.

The abandoned equipment included a spare Pathfinder Pondarosa configured as a habitat, and since I was stopped I had the TBD crew go ahead and plant flags and climb in. Much like the stock lab module, the Habitat configuration has the option to level up crew, which I did - suddenly I had three 4-star Kerbals on the surface of Duna. Operation done, the three returned to the rover and began their long drive.

"Anybody see a 7-11 around here anywhere? I gotta pee..."

Sixty-eight minutes after their de-orbit and 47 kilometers later, the crew found a suitable, relatively flat spot along Duna's equator, at which point I said "good enough".

Construction of a Buffalo Bulldozer mound for the initial Duna base commenced at that point, leaving me free to take care of other things. I went ahead and recharged the capacitors of the General Electric 7 jump-start craft docked at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin, finishing the construction of a workshop module for LSV House Atreides while I was at it. A Minnow 7 touring craft was also launched from KSC on a mission to deliver the Ike-bound crew to Atreides. The Minnow went to Dystopia Planitia initially, where it picked up an adapter unit that would allow it to dock with Atreides's larger ports.

I spent much of the next week fighting mods. In particular, KIS 1.18 wasn't really playing along with Pathfinder, rendering much of the portions of the mod I needed to build out the Duna base completely unusable. The Kraken struck as well, causing the original base to self-destruct and for the mound upon which it had been built to start levitating. Luckily I'd seen the self-destruct behavior before during the development of South Base on Kerbin, and got the crew out to the rover; sure enough the base subsequently disappeared on me, leaving the crew alive but stranded on the surface. Ultimately, to get Pathfinder to a usable state once again, I had to roll KIS back to 1.16, where it'll stay for the time-being. Took me three days to get to that point diagnostically.

During that time I did get some work done with House Atreides; a transfer stage was designed for a Bigby Workshop module intended to be added to the craft and the Minnow went ahead and made its way to Atreides with the adapter module in tow, rendezvousing and docking with the warp ship. The transfer stage print was completed and the nascent craft docked with the Workshop module, which it then hauled to Atreides as well and a successful docking maneuver was affected. With the ship now crewed and with a proper workshop module, Atreides's onboard drydock was brought on-line, first used to recycle the transfer stage. A Spamcan 7a lander was constructed at Dystopia Planitia and the printing of a new TBD 7c rover commenced aboard Atreides, both of which were completed on the 4^th. After completion and fueling, the Spamcan rendezvoused and docked with Atreides, and when the rover was finished printing, all necessary fueling commenced via mass driver shots. Atreides began warp maneuvers to take her to Ike on February 7^th.

Not much else happened on the 7^th; the second of two ongoing colonization contracts at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun completed, and a Bill Clinton 7b probe was constructed at Dystopia Planitia to retrieve what turned out to be a large decoupler from LKO; that mission concluded successfully.

Last Friday, with Pathfinder working again, I decided I needed to try again at the construction of a Duna surface base. To that end, I designed the Phage 7 probe lander, so called because of the way the final design looked. Basically it consisted of a few Pathfinder base-starting parts - a Pondarosa Blacksmith printing lab with a Hacienda Claim Jumper drilling rig, a foundation and a couple of solar panels tucked inside it - and a landing stage; the idea was to use the Equipment resources, still aboard the TBD rover on the Dunan surface to build the initial outpost, allowing me to make a very lightweight design. Construction of the craft commenced aboard LSV House Harkonnen still in Duna orbit. While that was being built, I conducted an ore con at Piper Alpha and space station Kerbinport, collected some orbital Mun science for contract, and flew an Auk Ia 2-passenger spaceplane to pick up pilot Eridred Kerman from LKO, returning him safely to KSC 09. With the Phage completed, fueled and released, the lander made its way down to the site, where Chadul began the construction of what became the Enchova Central outpost as the week progressed. House Atreides reached the point for final warp transfer to Duna and conducted the maneuver, and then continued further maneuvers to take her into orbit over Ike. Pilot Lerod Kerman and Scientist Willin Kerman loaded aboard the Spamcan and conducted a landing, fulfilling the latest Ike exploration contract. The replacement exploration contract involved transferring a kerbal between two craft over Duna via spacewalk, which I have yet to do as of this morning.

After a hiatus over the weekend, pilot Janpont Kerman, scientist Elidun Kerman and engineer Thombles Kerman piled aboard the TBD 7c rover aboard House Atreides. All preparations complete, Atreides released the rover from her drydock.

The hint of Dunan red is meant to signify "not Mun". Just saying.

The rover successfully touched down (on the first try, even) 150 meters from the targeted coordinates. With it nighttime on Ike's surface at the landing site, the crew waited until daylight until begin a rove to try and find a better location; the original site was suitable resource-wise but turned out to have a nine-degree grade. When daylight came, the crew only had to drive seven klicks along Ike's equator to find a site flat enough to build a base, at which point Thombles unpacked all the equipment and the Scan Queen outpost became operational. The past two days have been spent getting Enchova Central and Scan Queen up to full intended operational capacity.

"♫ Oh, what a beautiful mornin' ♫ / ♫ Oh what a beautiful day ♫ / ♫ I've got this weird kinda feelin' ♫ / ♫ Things finally started goin' my way... ♫

Last thing I did last night was to add a Castillo module, Rangeland launchpad and Pipeline mass driver to Enchova Central, giving the same amenities to the base as South Base near KSC, Piper Alpha and the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus. 

Looking down the mass driver barrel at the completed Enchova Central outpost, at night on Duna. Dunan nights are awesome because you can still see. I still plan on adding a few more buildings out here...

Scan Queen has hit a bit of a snag, unfortunately. While she was able to deploy a Rangeland without issue and construction of an orbital shipyard for Ike is now underway, the site has no Mineral resources - a necessary component of Konkrete production, without which she can't build a Castillo or Pipeline. The plan to rectify this involves orbital shipyards for both Duna and Ike and a lander capable of hauling a load of Minerals from Duna orbit all the way down to Ike's surface. Pretty sure it'll work, but I won't know for certain until everything's in place.

At this point I'm ready to get back to doing other things. I need Jeb to visit Enchova Central to finish out an outpost contract I have for Duna that requires the presence of two pilots, and I've got new colonization and tourist contracts to conduct. Some of these involve travel out to Duna and Ike, so I will need to bring back either Harkonnen or Atreides at some point (probably Harkonnen, since she's currently hauling tourists that were headed out to Duna and EC can resupply her at this point). I'm fully capable of conducting all of the Duna/Ike contracts I have available at this point - just got to get around to doing them.

Curious how long it'll be before I'm Eve-bound...

[ValleyTwo]

So, the rescue begins with the Mini-Mun-Mining Platform being placed into orbit around the home planet.  This is, in fact, after the first launch failed.  The Booster had to be re-engineered to handle the new payload.

And the second Robotic Nuke-Tug also put into orbit to help carry the Platform to the Mun.

I just have to make sure to check all the settings, make sure the fuel in the Platform STAYS in the Platform, and so on.  Let us see where this goes.

[MaverickSawyer]

13 minutes ago, ValleyTwo said:

So, the rescue begins with the Mini-Mun-Mining Platform being placed into orbit around the home planet.  This is, in fact, after the first launch failed.  The Booster had to be re-engineered to handle the new payload.

And the second Robotic Nuke-Tug also put into orbit to help carry the Platform to the Mun.

I just have to make sure to check all the settings, make sure the fuel in the Platform STAYS in the Platform, and so on.  Let us see where this goes.

You can set the docking ports to not allow crossfeed, or you can simply use the flow priority tool in the context menu to put it lower on the priority list for the engines to draw from.

[MiscelanousItem]

Today I launched a solar orbiting return module(for training):

Then I realized that my Experimental Duna Transfer Vehicle"Shoot an Hope" was back in coms-range so I had it retransmit its data and manged to maneuverer it into a kerbin encounter

Which meant that sending more probes to Duna is a bit a high cost low reward situation,so NZ space agency decided to progress boldly and launch a manned Duna ship and lander at the next transfer window.A meeting was called and priorities were decided and milestones to reach placed:

Top priority:

Rendez vous and docking

Middle priority:

Launcher vehicle

Paloads(comsats,mapsats...)

Low priority:

Lander(not essential because  it doesn't need to fly on the first mission)

Lander payloads(not essential but they will get a lot of work because they're fun to make)  

Then I tested a manned duna rover design:

"Whoops!"

Then I launched a contract telescope:

Don't ask me what happened to the fourth solar panel

Edited February 14, 2019 by MiscelanousItem

[woeller]

A violent dust storm surprised my little Rover on Gratian today. Fortunately he is not dependent on solar panels.

[Mikki]

I made a RCS Chair for Jebediah, so he can freely move around Minmus as he desires. The lack of any instruments or communication gives him the opportunity to go nuts undetected. Better so.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Mikki

[Delay]

So... this just came to mind.

Realism overhaul... and 1/10th scale Kerbol system.

I suspect that may be more difficult than it seems...

Edited February 14, 2019 by Delay

[NHunter]

Nothing much happened today, just maneuvered the lander and the other mapping satellite into Augustus' orbit

[RizzoTheRat]

Continuing my experiments in KOS, "Docker" on the left successfully completed an automated docking with "Agena" on the right (following on from a fully automated launch and rendezvous).  

Still needs a bit of work as it overshoots the initial standoff position, and currently won't work if the docking port is in about a 45 degree cone the far side of the target ship, but that should be easy to fix.  it also assumes the docking ships port is on the centreline which is an easy fix too, but will mean I have to use the RCS for the final push where I currently use the main engine.

The code needs a major tidy up though, I'm at over 300 lines to get from a point about 500m away to the docking, looks like I'm being very inefficient code wise in the way I'm using the RCS comparing it to a few scripts I've seen online.

 

Edited February 14, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Delay said:

So... this just came to mind.

Realism overhaul... and 1/10th scale Kerbol system.

I suspect that may be more difficult than it seems...

1/10th would make Kerbin 60km in diameter. That's only slightly larger than Minmus a 1x scale

Edited February 14, 2019 by Tyko

[PHO3NIX_F1RE]

I rescued a few stranded kerbals from Kerbin orbit in between other projects, and managed to dock with my LKO station-in-progress with barely any fuel left.

 

[Colonel Cbplayer]

Well I definitely didnt spent my time very wisely
|

 

[PunkyFickle]

51 minutes ago, Colonel Cbplayer said:

Well I definitely didnt spent my time very wisely

Is that supposed to be a choreography or is it having a stroke and begging for help?

[MaverickSawyer]

1 hour ago, Colonel Cbplayer said:

Well I definitely didnt spent my time very wisely
|

 

I'd argue you spent it VERY wisely!