What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Arzielle]

I got raster prop monitor and vessel viewer. I have to admit, this really improves the IVA experience. literally everything can be controlled from inside the cockpit!

And in other news, I made a new plane prototype, this one is called the Osprey X-2

I always have difficulty designing planes capable of landing, or maybe I'm just a bad pilot. If anyone has any tips on landing planes, and making them not spiral out of control at high speeds please let me know. Note: I am playing with Ferram aerospace installed so aerodynamics are a little different than stock KSP.

[MaverickSawyer]

2 hours ago, Arzielle said:

I got raster prop monitor and vessel viewer. I have to admit, this really improves the IVA experience. literally everything can be controlled from inside the cockpit!

And in other news, I made a new plane prototype, this one is called the Osprey X-2

I always have difficulty designing planes capable of landing, or maybe I'm just a bad pilot. If anyone has any tips on landing planes, and making them not spiral out of control at high speeds please let me know. Note: I am playing with Ferram aerospace installed so aerodynamics are a little different than stock KSP.

Hmm... not sure if Atmosphere Autopilot plays well with FAR, but it's been an absolute gamechanger for my aircraft. Basically, it gives you fly-by-wire stability systems. And the cruise autopilot's pretty handy, too. Would recommend NavHUD Renewed as well... It'll show your velocity vector, allowing you to aim the aircraft's direction of travel quite easily. Perfect for making those nice, smooth landings.

 

Speaking of landings... Brought that mini-shuttle home after its test flight. Reentry was absolutely fantastic. No overheat alarms, remarkable precision, excellent handling qualities. 

She'll take high-alpha S-turns like a champ, allowing you that incredible degree of control over your reentry and landing area that one would associate with a spaceplane.

Glide slope is actually pretty decent at high speeds, and she's slick enough that she loses little speed while gliding. However, once you get below 100 m/s, she does get a little mushy on the controls. This doesn't play well with the fact that she likes to drift while on the runway, no matter how hard I try to keep the nose straight... Anyone have any suggestions on that front?

 

In other news, today was crew rotation day at Minmus Outpost...

Expedition 1 takes a group photo before launching to rendezvous with the crew exchange vehicle...

Expedition 2 makes the customary low-altitude pass over the hills to the west of the Outpost on descent.

The new crew installed a Surface Experiment package and assembled a Buffalo Rover, which was the first time I did so in the field with KIS. Not nearly as bad as I'd expected, so I feel quite comfortable doing so on Duna.

And finally, did a long-overdue crew rotation on Salyut 1 with the new mini-shuttle on its second flight...

The returning crew will remain aboard for a short while to help the new crew settle in, and to assist with the installation of the new VASIMR engine I've prepared, but haven't launched yet. Said engine will be taking the place of the aft docking port that hasn't been used in a long time, and will be used to boost the station to a new, higher orbit at ~275 km, high enough to allow for all-new experiments to take place.

[aagun123]

[JadeOfMaar]

Released some new parts in OPT Legacy. The intake is tailor made for the OPT J-92 engine (not in Legacy). The spheres are a super advanced fuel cell and two fusion reactors built from OPT's very sketchy scientific excursions about the Mystery Goo, all with differing radiator requirements (200kW, 500kW and 1MW). So OPT has reduced need for spamming stock fuel cells or finding an external mod for power generation.

Edited March 29, 2019 by JadeOfMaar

[Raptor42]

17 hours ago, Tyko said:

Nice design! I went with something similar to your Europa Heavy. The only difference is I went with LVT-30 engines for the boosters. The single LV-T45 in the center core still provides enough attitude control and the two LV-T30 have a much better power to weight ratio. 

Great blueprint too   

 

You're right, I would probably use LV-T30 for the boosters in normal game, but from "roleplaying as a real space company that actually makes rockets" point of view having the same design on both the main core and boosters makes more sense, because of simplifying development and manufacturing costs etc. This is the way I'm trying to play my career, just like real space companies, launch everything with as few rocket designs as possible. The number of designs is limited by space on my notice-board (for now), which can fit six 30×40cm papers, so this is my limit right now. 

One funny thing at the end: I don't know if any of my rockets are able to get off Kerbin, because I use Beyond Home planet pack and in it the home planet has smaller gravity than Kerbin (my "Io" design might have a real problem with this)

[capi3101]

14 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Hmm... not sure if Atmosphere Autopilot plays well with FAR, but it's been an absolute gamechanger for my aircraft. <big_snip />

They work beautifully together - my Auk line of spaceplanes (now up to sixteen models) would probably not have been possible had the combination of those two mods been nonviable. 


Accomplished precious little yesterday and nothing at all today thanks to events in RL, so I'll probably wait to post a composite report for y'all on Monday. 

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Raptor42 said:

You're right, I would probably use LV-T30 for the boosters in normal game, but from "roleplaying as a real space company that actually makes rockets" point of view having the same design on both the main core and boosters makes more sense, because of simplifying development and manufacturing costs etc. This is the way I'm trying to play my career, just like real space companies, launch everything with as few rocket designs as possible. The number of designs is limited by space on my notice-board (for now), which can fit six 30×40cm papers, so this is my limit right now. 

One funny thing at the end: I don't know if any of my rockets are able to get off Kerbin, because I use Beyond Home planet pack and in it the home planet has smaller gravity than Kerbin (my "Io" design might have a real problem with this)

Cool! I approached it a different way. The LV-T30 liquid boosters are an off-the shelf part that will be used with other cores    same concept of simplifying product lines though.

___________________________________________________________________

 

First test launch of my Kemini orbital pod today - it was ranked by the KSC as the cutest pod ever. 2 crew, 650m/s DV and enough life support for 5 days in orbit. Next step is to send crews up for rendezvous and docking practice.

Full Album here: https://imgur.com/a/89zN1ax

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by Tyko

[Arzielle]

18 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Hmm... not sure if Atmosphere Autopilot plays well with FAR, but it's been an absolute gamechanger for my aircraft. Basically, it gives you fly-by-wire stability systems. And the cruise autopilot's pretty handy, too. Would recommend NavHUD Renewed as well... It'll show your velocity vector, allowing you to aim the aircraft's direction of travel quite easily. Perfect for making those nice, smooth landings.

 

Speaking of landings... Brought that mini-shuttle home after its test flight. Reentry was absolutely fantastic. No overheat alarms, remarkable precision, excellent handling qualities. 

She'll take high-alpha S-turns like a champ, allowing you that incredible degree of control over your reentry and landing area that one would associate with a spaceplane.

Glide slope is actually pretty decent at high speeds, and she's slick enough that she loses little speed while gliding. However, once you get below 100 m/s, she does get a little mushy on the controls. This doesn't play well with the fact that she likes to drift while on the runway, no matter how hard I try to keep the nose straight... Anyone have any suggestions on that front?

 

In other news, today was crew rotation day at Minmus Outpost...

Expedition 1 takes a group photo before launching to rendezvous with the crew exchange vehicle...

Expedition 2 makes the customary low-altitude pass over the hills to the west of the Outpost on descent.

The new crew installed a Surface Experiment package and assembled a Buffalo Rover, which was the first time I did so in the field with KIS. Not nearly as bad as I'd expected, so I feel quite comfortable doing so on Duna.

And finally, did a long-overdue crew rotation on Salyut 1 with the new mini-shuttle on its second flight...

The returning crew will remain aboard for a short while to help the new crew settle in, and to assist with the installation of the new VASIMR engine I've prepared, but haven't launched yet. Said engine will be taking the place of the aft docking port that hasn't been used in a long time, and will be used to boost the station to a new, higher orbit at ~275 km, high enough to allow for all-new experiments to take place.

ok, thanks! I will check those mods out

Also, good job on the landing!

as for the plane, I did a few minor changes and it flies pretty good now.

I'm still having difficulty with the landings. I have been testing it's landing capabilities on rough terrain and even when I bleed off as much speed as possible before touchdown, it still crashes violently into the ground. I can get it to land properly sometimes, so maybe I just need more practice with landings. When I get this plane to work, I hope to use it in my career mode.

Edit: after lots of trial and error and testing, I found the problem. The landing gear could not handle the weight of the plane when landing, so after removing 1/2 the fuel from the tanks, it flies and lands perfectly! I only need 1/2 the fuel anyways.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Arzielle

[Tyko]

Docking test complete. The Kemini Orbiter is ready to put into service.

[scottadges]

On 3/28/2019 at 1:18 PM, Raptor42 said:

Great work! Lots of key details in all the right places on the blueprint. Also really like the simplified / standardized approach for a Career game launch arsenal. I try to do the same thing in mine, but nowhere near as organized as yours. 

[Hotel26]

3 hours ago, Arzielle said:

The landing gear could not handle the weight of the plane when landing

In general, it's an essential technique to be able to choose to attach outboard parts such as gear, engines and tanks -- anything weighty that might stress the wing joints, particularly on landing -- directly to the fuselage and then Shift-Gizmo them into the desired position with the Translate gizmo...  holding the Shift key down.    Also, for winged craft, I like to auto-strut everything massive in the central fuselage To Heavy and everything that is wing or attached via the wings as To Grandparent.

In an outboard tank/engine assembly, it's OK/desirable to attach one of the tanks to the center fuselage, moving it out Shift-Gizmo, and then attach the other components to that first tank as usual.  It's the wings in particular that should be lightly-loaded because they potentially exert so much leverage upon the wing joints.

So in your statement above, the diagnosis will depend upon whether the gear could not handle the weight of the plane (e.g. too small) or whether the linkages with leverage could not handle the shock of a slightly-harder landing.  If the gear are big enough for the craft and it is still fragile, then try the Shift-Gizmo approach, but I just about always do that as standard build procedure anyway.  Just a suggestion.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Hotel26

[scottadges]

The Duna Mission continues! With a spacecraft created from concept art, I set about planning to build this in orbit. But rather than just assemble it floating in space... I thought a proper "orbital gantry" was in order or, as it has come to be called, the Kerbin Shipyards.

It's designed to fit around the Duna Mission Vehicle, with extensible (not actually moving) cranes to facilitate the construction, plus all the operational, habitation, material storage, and fuel refining infrastructure to support the orbital construction.

This actually evolved from an originally symmetrical idea and then into something much more organic, with each side of the Shipyard having a majority function. There are plenty of docking ports, but not so many that you can just dock anywhere. This is a controlled facility and it was "built" in orbit over many years and always with a pragmatic sensibility.

So then testing it in orbit (Hyperedit), a curious thing happened:

It loaded... sideways. Of course, in space there is no "up" or "down" and once in orbit the configuration switched from a horizontal plane to much more vertical! (Orbital Camera View)

While the inflatable habitats (on the left, above) sitting below the "plane" of the construction perimeter HAD been my favorite aspect, suddenly they're off the side in a gorgeous asymmetrical sort of tower. The Main Docking for construction is sitting off the side, giving it a kind of "sidecar" look.

The best part of this happy accident is that the fueling area becomes a "floor" for the Shipyard, while the cranes appear to hang off the "top". Whereas the radiator panels had been on the bottom, now they're making so much more sense off the side. Needless to say, I'm now re-designing with a more vertical / asymmetrical sensibility. I'll post more as this evolves.

Also... the frame rate is ridiculous (currently 647 parts and just shy of 1,000,000 kg mass) so I'm going to scale back this iteration so it's actually playable.

You can see more images at my Imgur album: Concept to KSP: Mars Mission Vehicle.

Edited March 30, 2019 by scottadges

[MrChumley]

Today I Downloaded @RoverDude 's Alcubierre Warp Drive mod

I made a 2.5M Warp drive rocket,  docked my Superplane to it,  and took it out for a spin to visit the Kronkus system.

It was glorious!

 

Edited March 30, 2019 by MrChumley

[Loskene]

Digging through the screenshots folder from my 1.5 career save, and I find a bunch of neat launch and orbital timelapse footage from a Duna orbit mission I did with a large interplanetary ship made of Tantares parts. The reason it's so big is because I was playing with USI life support and a bunch of other mods that upped the difficulty, so I had to build and sequentially test a system that could realistically support crews for hundreds of days at a time. Cuts into the delta-v budget a little, y'know?

Well seeing as I was doing a couple of KSP videos anyway I thought this wouldn't take too long to edit into a nice short.

 

I did say I was working on that high speed autopilot-stable all terrain rover video last time, but that one'll take longer because I need to record B-roll to cut into it. Probably vacuum or low-G optimised variants with low thrust, high efficiency nesting jets for grip, filmed on Minmus or a Joolmoon. Anyway If you want a sneak preview you can check out the first draft below. While the editing is less complete this version will have the most raw footage in it compared to what'll be left on the cutting room floor at the end, so it serves as a decent proof that this little rocket rover is stable over long distances. In this case from the Dessert runway to the nearby coast for a dip. Might stay unlisted though because oooo copyrighted music.

Spoiler

 

 

[MiscelanousItem]

Over the last days I've been quite busy(in RL as well as in KSP)

So I've have launched 3 interplanetary missions DDM-1 "Shoot and hope":

Due to a small design over sight you have to use the  EVA pack to access the barometer on DDM-1

GDM-1 "Lets not feed the purple monster" (I haven't actually launched this I will do it tomorrow)

And EDM-1 "Maybe we should":

I installed KAC, its so useful with all these missions flying at the same time

 

 

[Arzielle]

11 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

In general, it's an essential technique to be able to choose to attach outboard parts such as gear, engines and tanks -- anything weighty that might stress the wing joints, particularly on landing -- directly to the fuselage and then Shift-Gizmo them into the desired position with the Translate gizmo...  holding the Shift key down.    Also, for winged craft, I like to auto-strut everything massive in the central fuselage To Heavy and everything that is wing or attached via the wings as To Grandparent.

In an outboard tank/engine assembly, it's OK/desirable to attach one of the tanks to the center fuselage, moving it out Shift-Gizmo, and then attach the other components to that first tank as usual.  It's the wings in particular that should be lightly-loaded because they potentially exert so much leverage upon the wing joints.

So in your statement above, the diagnosis will depend upon whether the gear could not handle the weight of the plane (e.g. too small) or whether the linkages with leverage could not handle the shock of a slightly-harder landing.  If the gear are big enough for the craft and it is still fragile, then try the Shift-Gizmo approach, but I just about always do that as standard build procedure anyway.  Just a suggestion.

Thanks for the help, I am pretty sure the gear could not handle the landing, since sometimes it was the front landing gear (attached directly to the fuselage) that broke. Often what would happen is the craft would bounce along the ground which probably put more stress on the wheels. I will keep that in mind when I build my next plane  

9 hours ago, scottadges said:

The Duna Mission continues! With a spacecraft created from concept art, I set about planning to build this in orbit. But rather than just assemble it floating in space... I thought a proper "orbital gantry" was in order or, as it has come to be called, the Kerbin Shipyards.

Wow! that looks awesome! I can't wait to see it in action!

6 hours ago, Loskene said:

I did say I was working on that high speed autopilot-stable all terrain rover video last time, but that one'll take longer because I need to record B-roll to cut into it. Probably vacuum or low-G optimised variants with low thrust, high efficiency nesting jets for grip, filmed on Minmus or a Joolmoon. Anyway If you want a sneak preview you can check out the first draft below. While the editing is less complete this version will have the most raw footage in it compared to what'll be left on the cutting room floor at the end, so it serves as a decent proof that this little rocket rover is stable over long distances. In this case from the Dessert runway to the nearby coast for a dip. Might stay unlisted though because oooo copyrighted music.

  Hide contents

 

 

Nice rover, the beginning of that video reminds me of The Martian

[MisterKerman]

Finally finished up a harrowing 52 day mission (with essentially no fuel for adjustments) orbiting Kerbin running experiments for contracts. It was awful.

During reentry my SSTO's nosecone overheated sending my unstable craft into a messed up spiral leveling off with just enough time and fuel to pull out of it at the last second and land on solid ground first attempt.

That was the longest most boring thing I've ever done in KSP but at least the end was exciting and everything turned out okay.

Orbital observations are officially more trouble than they're worth to me.

Edited March 30, 2019 by MisterKerman

[Puggonaut]

RSS 1.6.1 ( one off install ) DirectX 11 , not available for public release , before you ask .

[Aeroboi]

Experimenting with Stock subs with the intention to create the fastest Jet sub.

1. Did Submarine test for Hydrodynamics and lightweight, this is a lightweight version.

Here is a very fast version (226 kp/h)

[Puggonaut]

NSFW

 

 

[NeoFatalis]

Baby moon lander

 

[Grogs]

I finished up the last of the MH missions, "Ziggy Kerman and the Spiders from Duna". The idea is to send a probe to Duna to verify the rumors that Duna is inhabited by giant robot spiders.

Spoiler

There are no giant robot spiders on Duna

Ship design required a probe with 5 instruments. Hardest part was just figuring out where to mount them. 1,000,000 credits for ship design was overkill really. I was pretty wasteful and yet at 554k I didn't feel like there was anything else the probe needed.

 

Ship flew fine ...

 

... and made LKO with lots of dV to spare

 

It was kind of silly having five science instruments onboard because the mission requirement was simply conduct/transmit any science experiment. And the pressure sensor didn't even work since the required locations were above the atmosphere.

 

The very last task in the mission was to crash the probe into the surface at a specific spot. I managed to overshoot the designated de-orbit spot, so I had to fly the probe in a "J" pattern to hit the target. By the time the probe was finally heading in the right direction, I didn't have time to complete a suicide burn and it hit the surface at ~ 200 m/s. I could have reloaded a save and tried again, but I was happy with the mission result.

[Barzon]

48 minutes ago, NeoFatalis said:

Baby moon lander

 

That lander would go really well with the new 0.9735m capsule in @Well's amazing mod, KNES!

 

[AFF]

Landing to Eve)

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Martian Emigrant]

1 hour ago, Puggonaut said:

NSFW

 

 

I need this.

Can't believe you are the first member (That I know anyway) that built one.

It's beautiful.

 

ME