What did you do in KSP1 today?

[McFlyever]

My first try and succesfully landing with my Falcon 9 Booster on the droneship! 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2019 by McFlyever

[Bej Kerman]

2 days ago: I made a jet car that somehow had enough lift to glide until I powered down the engines

1 day ago: Made a reusable booster based off the booster landing scenario

Today: Made a little spaceport shuttle for taking Kerbals around the KSC buildings, then sent it to space

The shuttle:

https://imgur.com/a/O4QCbiZ

56 minutes ago, McFlyever said:

My first try and succesfully landing with my Falcon 9 Booster on the droneship! 

 

 

Just make your spaceship and droneship out of Nokia 3310s and they will be able to survive anything

Edited March 16, 2019 by Bej Kerman

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Just got back into the game for the 1st time in months after spending 3 hours doing battle with SpaceDock to get all my mods downloaded. Built and launched the core of a new space station.

[purpleivan]

Bob and Bill back down to sea level, from the 3km high area on top of the big crater bay.

That'd be these slopes, that are about 2km from the top, down to the foothils.

If you're going to go sightseeing anywhere on Kerbin, you've gotta come here.

[Curveball Anders]

6 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Just make your spaceship and droneship out of Nokia 3310s and they will be able to survive anything

Nokia 3310 isn't tough enough.

Try the 6250 or even better Ericsson R310, phones designed to be used by construction workers (or people who wanted to signal that they had very rugged jobs ...).

Added moral story:

An office mate of mine had managed to drop/break 2 (company) phones in very short time.
To show us (and his boss) that he was serious  about being careful he got an "unbreakable" R310.
Wanting to demonstrate it's rugged features during a team meeting he smashed it a couple of time on the conference table.

The phone was un-damanged.

Sadly he didn't check what was on the table when he showed off his new phone.

His forceful whacking with the phone did send his Palm Pilot V flying, and crashing ...

 

[Fraktal]

Launched my first Duna probe, consisting of an Ike rover and a relay satellite. Not sure if I'll actually be able to complete the mission, though, as Duna's transfer window was closing (it's slightly ahead of Kerbin right now) when I launched so the transfer stage only has about 60 m/s left. Both the rover and the satellite have 1500+ m/s each and they're going to pass by just within Ike's orbit very close to the ecliptic, briefly entering Ike's SOI near the Duna periapse; is that enough dV to brake and still have enough to do other stuff?

Also wanted to launch an identical probe to Eve, but Eve is currently on the other side of Kerbol and Kerbin has just passed the ascending node, so I couldn't get an encounter. The transfer window will open shortly before the Duna probe arrives.

To pass the time, I strolled back into aircraft research. After having spent a while scratching my head over the point of the existence of the radial intake, seeing how it somehow has triple the drag of the circular intake and inferior performance as far as runway flameouts go, I discovered that it actually has slightly superior high-speed performance that can give a single-Wheesley aircraft an extra .3 Mach at low altitude despite the increased drag. Still not as good as an inline Engine Nacelle with a nosecone (capable of propelling three Wheesleys at Mach 2 and without a runway flameout!) and two circular intakes perform better than two radial ones on a two-Wheesley configuration (as the drag finally overpowers the slightly more air being provided by the radial intake at the same speed), so I'm still able to find a use for all three.

Also, I decided to try building something bigger. Enter the L3 Skystreaker, a dual-cockpit, quad-Wheesley flying wing that can not only match the triple-Wheesley L2 Record Breaker's maximum cruising speed despite being much bigger, but do so at a higher altitude (reached 14 km in a nearly level flight) and greater endurance. Did have some snafus during the test flight, though: flexing wings and multiple flatspins from overly responsible controls, the pilots almost passing out from one flatspin, stalling out below 4 km altitude from a too sharp turn... even the landing was a bit tricky due to the fact that the aircraft's massive wing surface area meant that it really didn't want to come back down to the ground and since I didn't put in drogue chutes (or any chutes), I was forced to land on the grass. It rolled for several hundred meters (used up only about 5% of the fuel, so it was over 26 tons) before stopping with a hair-raising 180° powerslide - but its weight being distributed over eight landing gear sets (smallest retractable, using this many makes it rock-solid stable on the runway, no jiggling or veering) meant that it didn't tip over.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Fraktal

[PTNLemay]

Wanted to try an Apollo style lunar lander.  For extra fun I'm using Sigma Dimensions to rescale everything up by 2.5x.  I forgot how even such small increases made everything much tougher.  The rocket I built cost me 70K, and I can only just barely get this spacecraft into orbit (the 2nd stage ran out before we achieved full orbit, so I had to do a clutch docking while both parts were still suborbital).  The reward I get for planting a flag is just 40K startup plus 100K for completion.  It's a profit... but it's not as big as I'm used to.   I shouldn't complain, I wanted a challenge.  But man, when even the mighty mailsail isn't up to the challenge, you know it's a big task. 

Also, I'm finally warming up to the little lander pod.  I was unnerved by how asymmetrical it is at first (that, and I prefer using 1.25 docks on everything, which don't fit nicely onto it) but with some love and attention it can fit right into my constructions.  And it helps that it's a real workhorse.

Edited March 17, 2019 by PTNLemay

[StupidAndy]

i made a lander that has a name that accidentally sounds like minecraft, and landed it on minmus

minkraft - 1

also i need to figure out how to add clouds to ksp, since i have the ability to do that now

[MisterKerman]

Just completed 3 Kerbin contracts before realizing that the last time I had played I had left my lander above Minmus in a suborbital trajectory which if left to it's own devices would result in the deaths of Bob and Valentina. Not sure why I left it like that. I had to revert hours of progress.

I can continue operations on Minmus. There is another orbital observation contract and a landing contract, and I've got plenty of fuel.

[RizzoTheRat]

Working out how to calculate the terrain slope in KOS so I can use it to steer landers to a flat spot, and I realised I could use it to log the slope and elevation as I orbit, and then overlay it on a map (stolen from the Wiki, credit Harryyoung), and work out some flatish spots to put down a lander in different biomes. 

The KOS module ran out of memory for the log file hence the gap from 70-170, but it's good enough for now.  After originally landing on the Lowlands, this gave me a decent location for a second landing on the Midlands that got enough science to unlock the Mk1-3 pod, so after some hasty modifications to the lander and some additional boosters for the launch, the third Mun mission took a couple of tourists along to earn some cash on a landing in the Farside Crater.

No pilot, no probe core, no problem 

Edited March 17, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[ARS]

[Grogs]

I played through the Munar 1 mission that's included with the MH expansion. I thought it would be fairly trivial since I've landed on the Mun a few times in the past, but I manage to shoot myself in the foot several times on the ship design and that made it quite challenging. There were three main problems I ran into.

1. I mounted the Apollo-style MEM's docking port directly under the engine of the command module. I thought this would be fine because the CM's engine was on an engine plate. But when I decoupled the engine plate in orbit, the fairing that gets automatically placed over the engine stayed on the lunar module. Undocking the MEM's port didn't get rid of it either. After several tries, I was able to dock the MEM and CM through the fairing, but that was not as intended. Next time I'll add an extra coupling between the MEM docking port and the CM engine bell.

2. I didn't realize the MEM module had no reaction wheel control. I was able to use monoprop during the descent to the Mun, but I ran out about halfway back to orbit. From there, my only method of steering the craft was with the engine gimble. Luckily I had enough spare fuel that I was able to get a decent approach to the CM. I fine tuned it with the CM, then had Bob and Val ditch the lander and EVA back to the CM.

3. After we left the Mun, I tried to set up a precision landing in the drop zone the mission required. I burned all the remaining fuel to get it as close as possible, then started my re-entry. And only then realized I forgot to put a decoupler below the heat shield. I tried to keep the CM engine pointing down, but that didn't last for long. It flipped with the CM nose pointed straight into the wind. Just before the temp reached critical, I detached the heat shield. That flipped the craft back to retrograde, and it was able to survive the rest of re-entry. The initial speed was ~ 2800 m/s, so I consider myself fortunate I was able to pull it off.

Landing wasn't as close as I would have liked, but I got within the 150km circle. BTW, looking at the mission builder, there's a node that gives a bonus for "accuracy > 75%". I can't figure out how that translates to a distance.

 

Final mission score. I've been working my way through these missions, and this is the first gold award I've managed. Given all the problems I had, I'm pretty happy with that outcome.

[Hotel26]

I know what I want for Xmas (from Squad):

I want an Advanced Grabbing Unit that is not only "free to pivot" but also "free to spin".

That way, Gryphon (the fuel tractor) would be better able to "push back" from the terminal for those aircraft that need a little extra clearance to get away from the refueling mother ship.

[Castille7]

Today I am working on The Construction Site 2 Video, you can see Part 1 Here.

This is some of the method to the madness. This is how I am setting up some Debris for the Front End Loader

Edited March 17, 2019 by Castille7

[NHunter]

I made a kerbal'ed landing on Armstrong:

And sent a probe to Ash. This time I will not be landing probes there blind (I will have a map!):

I also took this pretty screenshot:

[Cylbruda]

Today, I learned that the stock rotating section on my space station works great... until you switch back to it after using a different vessel not n the vicinity.

 

I think the game treating the components as separate vehicles is resulting in minor variation in the orbit so when you with back, they're not aligned anymore and everything explodes. Not sure what the solution is. I'm considering a larger fixed outer ring that can dock to the rotating section when stopped, reconnecting them.

[kurgut]

Today, I finished the last bit for the crewed mun program, (i sent the mining segment to the base, reusable lander, and refueler)

Mun expedition one is go! destination is of course the canyon which is about 1.5 hour of driving from the base,

Let's rove!

After this long time roving, all batterys and kerbals are exhausted, need to take a mun' nap! setting up the camp for the night (only lacks a munar barbecue to my feeling..)

Hmm, yes the flag likes to float after quickloading..

It was also the maiden, and confirmation flight for the mun-taxi, which carry the crew (from mun base& station) to LKO.

undocking from KDG station:

After few passes in kerbin atmo, performing rdv and docking with KSS:

done! now everything is almost reusable! (still lacks reusable surface-lko crewed vehicle, but I wait for rapier tech to do it)

 

 

[purpleivan]

Today it was some completely unnecessary use of personal parachutes.

Start with Val exit a perfectly good rover...

... add some dramatic scenery...

 

... then have her jump off a cliff, 5.3km ASL, leaving Bob to take the long route back down to sea level in the rover on his own.

Just a shame she couldn't quite nail the landing (she was aiming for the boat).

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Role played as 'The Dukes of Mohole.'

 

[Geonovast]

Going through Mash Q

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll see myself out...

 

[StupidAndy]

ITAP

scatterer is looking NICE

[Grogs]

Tonight I went through a couple more Making History missions. First mission was Sally Hut (Salyut) 1. It was basically just a glorified rendezvous mission: launch a station, then launch a 'Soy-ooze' capsule up and dock with it. Both docking ports were inline, and I did find that getting them to line up was challenging. I managed after two or three tries though and got the gold medal.

 

The second mission was the Acapello (Apollo) 13 mission. This was a series of failures that made the real Apollo 13 look tame, plus the mission still managed to land on the Mun. I actually thought a lot of the failures ended up being pretty trivial compared to some of the self-inflicted wounds I've had from poor ship design. For example, failure 1 was an explosion of the 2nd stage engine. That would leave you short of fuel, except that when it happened, I still had 1150 m/s in the 1st stage. I used the 1st stage engines to transfer to / capture at the moon and arrived with an almost full CM.

 

The second failure was that after Jeb landed on the Mun (they recommended I only send one Kerbal, and I guess he was the most expendable) the engine of the lander exploded on ascent. The instructions said to bail and use the EVA jetpack to get into orbit, but I found there was enough RCS thrust to get the lander into orbit and set up a good rendezvous with the CM. I didn't have enough left to slow down or dock, so Jeb did have to bail and swim the last few hundred meters back to the ship.

 

The last failure was that the parachutes blew up on re-entry. The solution was to have the kerbals bail out and use their personal chutes. The hardest part was figuring out how to do it. You have to EVA a kerbal, let go, then immediately tab back to the CM. If you wait too long, the game will tell you that you can't change craft in the atmosphere, and anyone left in the CM is toast. So EVA, tab back, EVA, tab back, EVA. And then open chute, tab to next kerbal, open chute, tab to next kerbal, open chute. Once their chutes were all open, they stayed within physics range and I was able to just tab between them and land one at a time. I must have been too slow somewhere on the mission, because I only got a silver for it.

[Martian Emigrant]

9 hours ago, Cylbruda said:

Today, I learned that the stock rotating section on my space station works great... until you switch back to it after using a different vessel not n the vicinity.

 

I think the game treating the components as separate vehicles is resulting in minor variation in the orbit so when you with back, they're not aligned anymore and everything explodes. Not sure what the solution is. I'm considering a larger fixed outer ring that can dock to the rotating section when stopped, reconnecting them.

Yes.

When parts are undocked and touching they are actually individual ships flying in formation. With slightly different orbits.

If you were to warp time while at your station you would see the individual parts phase through each other until they are clear of each other or until you stop the warp and see them mesh (Collide) and explode.

 

Quote

1 hours ago, Jeb said:

How could I know that landing was also forbidden?!

Spoiler

 

 

 

ME

Edited March 18, 2019 by Martian Emigrant

[CatastrophicFailure]

Today, I actually played KSP for the first time in a couple months.  Too little time, getting the new and old machines set up right, real life drama, and a good helping of Murphy’s law (the thing, not the show). But also, my wife discovered Skyrim on the new computer, so my time May continue to be limited. Rockets are great and all but sometimes you just have to split a brigand’s skull in twain to maintain a happy homelife. 

[Triop]

Today,

O whatever, just watch the video ...