What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

Been a while since my last report to y'all; entries in my log are dated 3/28, so it's been six days. Finally got enough meat to tell y'all some things...

So, last Thursday I had a grand total of thirty minutes' worth of playing time, which was just enough to set up a rendezvous between an Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane I'd launched from KSC the day before and space station Kerbinport. The Auk was hauling nine colonists heading for Minmus along with three tourists whose contract I'd arrived too late to send to Duna/Ike with LSV House Harkonnen, which had warped out several days earlier and had spent some time over Eve setting up communications and surface scanning infrastructure. Harkonnen herself had had to warp to a reverse free-fall trajectory over Kerbol to try and bleed off some speed, and when she had bled off as much as she could, she warped over to Duna to begin warp-back maneuvers to enter orbit. The maneuver over Kerbol bled off 4 kps of excess speed, bringing her to Duna at 8 kps...still far above the 0.7 kps needed to attain an orbit at a reasonable altitude...

And that was all that happened until yesterday, when I finally had sufficient time to sit down and play the game for a while.

Yesterday, began with the arrival of the Auk at Kerbinport.

Plane could've stood to have a few more RCS thrusters on its dorsal, but aside from that I really can't complain too much about the docking, especially for a plane of this size.

Once docked, the three tourists she'd hauled up boarded a waiting Minnow 7b touring craft sent over from LSV House Atreides early last week, while two tourists already at the station took their seats aboard the Auk. The South Base outpost near KSC shot up fuel supplies to the station via mass driver, completely fueling up all craft docked there, at which point the Auk departed and set course for Minmus.

Wings are dead weight in space, except when you're using Procedural Wings and have them working as fully-fueled tanks. Then they just kinda look silly...

The Auk is scheduled to arrive at Minmus in 4.5 days, which should be enough time for me to print up and deploy a dedicated docking pylon for space station Minmusport. The Minnow docked at Kerbinport departed to rendezvous with House Atreides; the craft affected a successful rendezvous and docking. 

Meanwhile, House Harkonnen continued its warp-back maneuvers over Duna, finally slowing down sufficiently to attain orbit over Duna; after maneuvering into a roughly 160 kilometer equatorial orbit, she went ahead and finished entering a 160x65, 4-degree inclined resupply orbit over the red planet on conventional drive. Her remaining fuel stores were pumped into two Minnow 7b craft piggybacked to the ship as well as Strange Cargo, which had also gone along for the ride. In turn, these three craft undocked from Harkonnen. Strange Cargo burned to rendezvous with space station Dunaport as well as one of the Minnows; the second Minnow conducted a burn to take it to Ike with a group of KSC staff aboard for flag-planting training.

Minnow 7b over Ike, with a second Minnow (the little blip to the right) and LSV House Harkonnen in the background.

The rendezvous burns with Dunaport were scheduled such that the Minnow should arrive about five minutes ahead of Strange Cargo, affording the smaller craft adequate time to dock before the larger ship arrives. Several tourists are scheduled to go down to the surface at that point using the station's lander; I'd have to look to get an exact count, which I just don't feel like doing right this second...

After the departure of the three docked craft, the Enchova Central outpost on Duna shot up nearly ninety tonnes of fuel supplies, Rocket Parts and Xenon gas to House Harkonnen, which then began construction of a TBD 7d base-seeding rover destined for the surface of Eve. At the present rate of construction, the rover should take thirteen days to finish building. The rover's crew is currently at Duna undergoing last minute training, and it occurs to me that I should probably take some time to verify that the craft can actually survive entry and landing on the purple world before I make the attempt - it'd suck to find out that I don't have enough working chutes. Been a while since the last time I tried to land anything on Eve; I recall the 10m heat shield actually getting quite the workout...

 

[Eriksonn]

I made an Adeline type first stage, it is like the spacex recovery thing but instead of doing suicide burn with the whole first stage, only the engine turns into a small airplane and flies to an airport instead. I tried with the mainsail first but it handeled horrible due to its short length, so i switched to the twin boar to make it abit more airplane like so it would fly better. It is less like the real thing but it works much better(and the twin boar has more thrust also).

I thought the rocket would be really awkward to fly with that many wings at strange places but it worked fine.

If i had more fuel(and patience) i could maybe fly back to the ksc and land there but due to fuel priority problems more than half of my fuel ended up in the wrong tank and got staged off...(bring more fuel next time)

The grass was abit bumpy but it worked quite nicely at the end.

Conclusion: Not as cool looking as the spacex thing and needs pre building and testing in the sph but easier to land as one dont need flat ground and precise timing to do and can go down anywhere as you dont need to aim at something.

[Triop]

Today, Triop went to space :

Made a MiG-21 SSTO.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

I'm playing with USI-LS, and left a couple of scientists and a pilot in my Mun Science Lab Station with plenty of Supplies and Habitation while I set up a Minmus RemoteTech Komms relay and a polar ScanSat. 

On manual launches I usually just launch in to an equatorial Kerbin orbit and then do a course correction half way to Minmus.  I'm quite please with my KOS script that now launches in to the plane of Minmus as the KSC passes though the plane, meaning only a small course correction as the ship enters Minmus SOI to ensure an equatorial orbit. 

So having got that sorted out I went to back to the Mun station to see how the scientists we doing....and found I'd overlooked the USI-LS parameter of "Home".  They still had supplies and habitation to spare, but had got homesick and stopped working 

Luckily there was a contract available to expand the Munstation by 10 Kerbals and 1000 Monpropellant,  so I launched a new module to dock to the station...

...which exposed some serious flaws in my KOS docking script, firstly that I couldn't cope will all combination of starting behind or ahead of the target while in a lower or higher orbit, and then that it wasn't stopping in the correct position before rendezvous.  The latter had been fine with small ships but with 42 tonnes that takes a while to manoeuvre it all went a bit wrong.

So much fiddling later my new module braked to a neat stop a safe distance from the station.... 

 

Then manoeuvred round to an offset position inline with the docking port and gently came in to dock

 

In hindsight I should have added some side docking ports on the new module, but once the lander's used up the spare fuel from the modules transfer stage (far right), it has an antenna and a OKTO so I can dump it on to the Mun and free up another port.

They're now good for another 42 days and slowly churning out the science at a disappointing 10 science per day.  Time to do some more rescue missions to see if I can find some more scientists to replace them and get them to do a Mun landing for a bit more experience which I think speeds up the lab.

[Grogs]

I worked on building an expedition rocket. I didn't really have a specific mission in mind. I just felt like building something, and I wanted it to have more dV than something like a standard Duna rocket. First item was the command module. Started with a Mk1-3 command pod, plus a hitchhiker to give the kerbals space for RP reasons, a science module, service module with several experiments inside, and enough liquid fuel to give over 5200 m/s of dV with the Nerv engine. I figure that's enough to get the crew back home from pretty much any other body in the Kerbol system. The only gripe is that the Mk3 to 2.5 m adapter is only available as an lfo version. I emptied out the oxidizer, but I would rather be able to fill the whole thing with lf.

 

The lander is pretty standard. It has about 3300 m/s and enough thrust to land on the Moho, Dres, Duna, Eeloo, and all the moons but Laythe and Tylo. I added chutes to make the Duna landing easier. The chutes would also work for Eve or Laythe, but that trip would be one way. I also took advantage of the door I didn't know existed until recently and crammed in some batteries and monoprop. The docking adapter on the bottom is used to redock on the transfer stage, then the CM docks to the top and the whole package can move to another location.

 

I added a rover with a sky crane for scouting. This is basically the model included with the game, except I added fuel, upgraded the probe core and antennas, and added parachutes. I'm OK with this for now, but I hope to eventually improve it. Actually, I'd like to make a modular lander/rover where I could send down just the lander, just the probe, or both together and have enough dV to return from the same set of bodies.

 

Here are the command module, lander, and rover attached to the transfer stage. Transfer stage gets 2800 m/s from the drop tanks, then another 4574 m/s from the center fuel tank for a total of 7374 m/s dV. That's enough to get from Kerbin to Eve/Gilly, then on to Moho. Another option might be Kerbin to Duna, Dres, and Eeloo.

 

 

This is the full ship on the pad. Total pad weight is a svelte 5943 tons and the whole thing costs 3.4 million funds.

 

... and after getting into orbit. I had about 1000 m/s left, so there's room to either increase one of the upper stages a bit or reduce the boosters.

[MisterKerman]

@Grogs Have you experimented with autostruts? They're basically free invisible struts that have no physics. You just need to enable them in one of the options menus.

I'll never use a physical strut part again! (aside from wanting it to simply look reinforced.)

[scottadges]

After the latest happy vertical accident with my Kerbin Shipyards, I went about redesigning to take advantage of a more vertical-focused build. I also wanted to eliminate redundancy in terms of multiple-parts-for-the-sake-of-symmetry. The end result is significantly more streamlined and reduced the part count (surprisingly!) by about 200 parts, with overall frame rate improvement that makes this much more playable.

I love the asymmetrical look of this and continued toying with it to be even more efficient, while maintaining the original vision. I'm not sure the "Mk3" version actually worked, so I'll probably stop iterating there. But it's a cool direction for non-symmetrical spacecraft design!

Redesigned: Kerbin Shipyards (Mk2)

 

Edited April 3, 2019 by scottadges

[MisterKerman]

@scottadges That station is too cool. Symmetry is over rated and I try to avoid it whenever I can.

Example: My last little failed project. Notice the docking port.

 

Edited April 3, 2019 by MisterKerman

[scottadges]

 

22 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

install and debug those dozen or so mods I had downloaded

You probably already know about CKAN, but I find it incredibly useful (basically essential) to manage mods.

I know some folks prefer to manually download, and other modders don't want to support it, but by and large I think it's the best tool for installing and updating mods.

Yes, there are many situations where you need to download manually, but for most current and recent mods, I think CKAN works great.

 

21 hours ago, Triop said:

Blue!

On 3/24/2019 at 4:53 PM, Poodmund said:

I don't think there is a single bit of stock SQUAD artwork in this entire screenshot

Love it! Honestly, for my KSP install it should be called: "Kerbal Space Program - brought to you by Nertea / Paul_Kingtiger / CobaltWolf / Beale / DMagic / LGG"

Edited April 3, 2019 by scottadges

[capi3101]

My activities yesterday began with alterations to the basic Venkmann 7 science probe-lander to conduct a MOLE temperature study; with the changes to the design complete, I ordered construction of said probe to commence at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun, a job that took the staff there 3.5 hours to complete. The probe is conducting the experiment as of this morning and I anticipate it will be several days before it finishes up. Once done, the Venkmann will launch and deliver the results of the survey to Kerbin. While I was at Piper Alpha I was able to inflate a Castillo Factory that I'd installed some time ago, the last Castillo structure i intend to install at PA. It's a good thing too - the base has ran out of Slag and at this point I'm not sure if I'm capable of producing more there should the need for additional Konkrete arise in the future. I was also able to start cracking Xenon gas while maintaining a surplus in ore production. Since my warp ships require Xenon in order to function, I'm very happy about this state of affairs.

Meanwhile, I was still shuffling around ships around Duna and Ike. A Minnow 7b touring craft that departed from LSV House Harkonnen in high equatorial Duna orbit yesterday arrived at space station Dunaport, with Strange Cargo arriving at Dunaport shortly thereafter; the ferry had also hitched a ride to Duna with Harkonnen. I did take a screenie of Strange Cargo's arrival at the space station but it was too badly backlit to post for y'all - really need one of you to get a move on that key-and-fill-lighting mod someday. A second Minnow that had come along with Harkonnen arrived in Ike's SOI and burned to set up a rendezvous with space station Ikeport, successfully docking before the day was out.

With a third Minnow craft carrying three straggling tourists headed to Duna and Ike securely docked, LSV House Atreides warped to break orbit from Kerbin and headed directly to Duna, conducting warp-back maneuvers upon her arrival to enter a 170 kilometer, 0.3 degree inclined orbit. Once she'd entered orbit, the Minnow departed Atreides.

It's not exactly clear from this screenshot, but I swear that I about scraped some paint off the Minnow during its departure burn...

The third Minnow did ultimately rendezvous and dock with Dunaport before the end of the day. 

The order of business for today is surface excursions. While I've got a sufficient number of tourists itching to go down to the surface of Duna, my main priority is getting the five KSC staff I took over to Ike down to the surface for flag-planting training. This group will also be heading to Duna for surface excursions/flag-planting duties; when finished they should each be eligible to level up to 4-star status. This is my Eve-bound crew and the two engineers I intend to man the shipyards orbiting Duna and Ike; three 4-star engineers would also go a long way towards speeding up the Hellhound 7a rover currently under construction aboard Atreides and the TBD 7d base-seeding rover currently under construction aboard Harkonnen, both of which will ultimately be heading to the surface of Eve. The group's scientist also has a job to do for me at Dunaport after they've visited the surface. I'll get to the tourists when I can. Many of them are headed specifically to Ike, so I'll also likely be sending Strange Cargo over there with that group sooner rather than later. All in all, it's looking like I'm getting into a busy time for my space program; hopefully I'll have a lot to talk about with y'all over the coming days.

[Red Stapler]

OMG...what have I done!...

Kerbal reverses polarity, news at 11.

No idea how (actually I do, it was Chase View), but Tretton Kerbal ended up spinning on his head for a minute after an unexpected explosion on his new nuclear test buggy 'The Thing II'.  Maybe he's into break dancing? 

KSP...a new adventure everyday. 

 

 

 

[Loskene]

2 hours ago, MisterKerman said:

@Grogs Have you experimented with autostruts? They're basically free invisible struts that have no physics. You just need to enable them in one of the options menus.

I'll never use a physical strut part again! (aside from wanting it to simply look reinforced.)

Ah, and the honeymoon begins. Don't worry, you'll be back using normal struts in no time. Autostruts were really only meant as a band-aid over the landing gear problems so try to use them sparingly, if at all, and avoid "heaviest part" like the plague.

[MisterKerman]

5 minutes ago, Loskene said:

Ah, and the honeymoon begins. Don't worry, you'll be back using normal struts in no time. Autostruts were really only meant as a band-aid over the landing gear problems so try to use them sparingly, if at all, and avoid "heaviest part" like the plague.

I just grandparent wobbly or fuselage parts generally. I've already had a unplanned rapid disassembly of a space station upon docking a fairly heavily autostrutted lander once.

I'm a good boy now...

[Loskene]

1 hour ago, MisterKerman said:

I just grandparent wobbly or fuselage parts generally. I've already had a unplanned rapid disassembly of a space station upon docking a fairly heavily autostrutted lander once.

I'm a good boy now...

haha, I see you've already found out why autostruts come recommended with serious caveats then. Self-solving problem I suppose, they let you know quite viscerally when you've gone too far.

Docking complete, station now initiating hula dance with the devil.

[MaverickSawyer]

I've never had issues so long as I ONLY autostrut to grandparent. Anything else and yeah, you'll summon the Kraken in no time flat.

[Grogs]

8 hours ago, MisterKerman said:

@Grogs Have you experimented with autostruts? They're basically free invisible struts that have no physics. You just need to enable them in one of the options menus.

I'll never use a physical strut part again! (aside from wanting it to simply look reinforced.)

Yeah, I've got autostruts, but like some of the others have said, they're not a panacea that can solve every possible stability problem. My strategy was roughly:

- Autostrut the radial boosters/tanks to grandparent. These are rock solid, and I've never had an issue doing this.

- For the big S3/S4 center tanks, I autostrutted them to root part. Again, I've never had a problem doing this so long as the direction of the root part never changes. In this case, it's always "up" towards the pointy end of the rocket no matter how I rearrange things above.

- For the parts above the fairing, I found they would sway back and forth and clip through the fairing when I maneuvered to do my gravity turn. I tried using grandfather autostruts in that area, especially where there were docking port connections, but I wasn't able to get it stiff enough. I didn't dare use root or heaviest part here, because these do come apart and possibly change orientation. The real struts helped. Since they're inside the fairing, they're just adding a tiny amount of weight and no drag. I decided that was a good trade-off.

- The struts on the rover/sky crane were on the original model I borrowed. This model is really just a placeholder until I find something I like better. I didn't look to see if some of them could be eliminated.

[Loskene]

1 hour ago, Grogs said:

- For the parts above the fairing, I found they would sway back and forth and clip through the fairing when I maneuvered to do my gravity turn. I tried using grandfather autostruts in that area, especially where there were docking port connections, but I wasn't able to get it stiff enough. I didn't dare use root or heaviest part here, because these do come apart and possibly change orientation. The real struts helped. Since they're inside the fairing, they're just adding a tiny amount of weight and no drag. I decided that was a good trade-off.

Your mileage may vary with this depending on configuration, but I've found that if the root part is inside the fairing (like the payload's probe core or whatever) it's safe to root strut the fairing base to it. This seems to hold it steady, but yeah usual caveats apply, test important launches before committing.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Today I got the potato netbook to cooperate with vid-cap of my Eve Direct Ascent to Kerbin craft.

A 30 ton payload to Orbit, consisting of a Mk1-3 capsule w/service module,  two crew cabins and four inflatable airlocks serving as snack storage, bunks and a shower.

That's a technical capacity of 11, so 3 Kerbals have space to stretch on the journey home.

Additionally, all debris is left on atmospheric path to eliminate orbital or interplanetary debris.

Yes I know all the incoming critiques about this particular gravity turn. I decided to share this one, warts and all. Still had enough Δv to get home.

Also of note, the SM25 service module still occasionally breaks the universe, as seen after staging the side panels. (yes @SQUAD please fix this part any time soon)

If my new gaming laptop ever arrives, I may film one done right.

 

[GoonFather]

First off all; im sorry, this is my first post in this treath, so i'm a little confused how to post pictures. 

 

But i spent my day i KSP trying to break the code making the perfect SpacePlane, i think i have tryied for about 6 hours, and i've still not managed to get to orbit. Also Bill and i, have finally established the SUMO - Rolling MUN base...

Edited April 4, 2019 by GoonFather
I just figured out how to copy pictures ;)

[Loskene]

13 minutes ago, GoonFather said:

https://imgur.com/88guwUA 

https://imgur.com/Xsi4Mu6

First off all; im sorry, this is my first post in this treath, so i'm a little confused how to post pictures. 

 

But i spent my day i KSP trying to break the code making the perfect SpacePlane, i think i have tryied for about 6 hours, and i've still not managed to get to orbit. Also Bill and i, have finally established the SUMO - Rolling MUN base...

Right click the picture and select copy image address (this will give you the direct link to the image file, sometimes called "copy image location" depending on browser), then paste it here and it'll auto-embed.

[Fraktal]

Not quite today, more like yesterday. But still, I did some more plane design streamlining... though it's hard to actually test them out due to the game's habit of crashing with an access violation after 5-6 reverts. Crashed three times within three hours.

[capi3101]

Well, my intention yesterday was to do several surface excursions at Duna and Ike; thanks to an untimely Windows update and the slowdown it caused on my laptop, I only managed to get one done. No screenies today y'all; sorry.

My day kicked off in the SPH with the design of the Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane; I took the craft, moved it over to the VAB and then saved it over there after tilting the plane to a vertical launch position and retracting the landing gear. Once that was done, I ordered one up for construction at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin; construction will take two days. The plane will be used for an LKO rescue mission. Considering how long it will take to construct the plane, this is probably a method for getting the craft into space that I won't be using in the future. Still, I can now say that's something I've attempted.

The Enchova Central outpost on Duna shot up fuel supplies via mass driver to space station Dunaport in orbit, and then shot up supplies to LSV House Atreides, newly arrived in a 170-kilometer equatorial orbit. Supplies to Atreides included fuel, Rocket Parts and Research Kits; not sure the Kits will be necessary but at least now she has them. At Dunaport, the freshly-arrived tourists were sorted into a group heading down to the surface of Duna and another group headed out for Ike; the Ikebound group was loaded aboard Strange Cargo docked at the station, which then departed the station and burned for Ike; she is still en route as of this morning. Four of the surface-bound tourists were loaded into the station's Spamcan 7c lander, which then departed to head down to the surface at Enchova Central. While waiting for the 7c to come into position, I went over to space station Ikeport with the intention of sending down a group of KSC staff members newly arrived at the station to the surface. To my dismay, I discovered that there was no lander at Ikeport; I had moved its Spamcan 7a lander some time ago to the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, and so it was necessary to move it back over to Ikeport. Shortly after the 7a docked at Ikeport, the 7c came into position to land at Enchova Central; the lander burned, descended and landed about fifty meters off the target landing zone. The lander was still close enough to Enchova Central to be hooked up via KAS winch cable, and a refueling operation was successful. The 7c lander is still on the surface of Duna as of this morning waiting for Dunaport to come back around into position of a return launch to the station. I'm planning on sending down my staff to the surface of Ike before the tourists go back up. 

I also designed a docking pylon module for installation at space station Minmusport; it proved to be a pretty quick print job when I ordered it up at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus. I'll probably try to get it installed at Minmusport later today.

In case y'all missed it, Squad has said that 1.7 will drop some time next week. Been anticipating this, and to be honest I'm kinda bummed about it. I was hoping to get past Eve exploration before that happened; it's looking like that's not going to happen at this point, not unless I step up the amount of time I spend playing the game on a daily basis. RL's kicking my butt there.

Edited April 4, 2019 by capi3101

[Mr. Peabody]

On ‎4‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 12:37 PM, Triop said:

This never happened . . .

Actually...

That's a MIG-21 going down after being shot by a F-86.

[septemberWaves]

Yesterday the wifi was out. I passed the time by using my Soyuz-building skills for evil.

Gemini and Dragon 2 (albeit a scaled-down Dragon 2, because the Dragon-like Near Future pod only seats three and is roughly Apollo-sized) are probably the most unusual Soyuz payloads I have seen in a while.

I would make an Apollo-Soyuz, but it would probably be too massive. Apollo-Proton on the other hand...

Edited April 4, 2019 by septemberWaves

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, septemberWaves said:

Gemini and Dragon 2 (albeit a scaled-down Dragon 2, because the Dragon-like Near Future pod only seats three and is roughly Apollo-sized) are probably the most unusual Soyuz payloads I have seen in a while.

Apollo and Dragon V2 aren't actually too different in size, as shown by this image. However, Dragon V2 is a bit taller, while Apollo is wider. The Dragon V2-style pod in NFS is kind of like an Apollo capsule with SuperDraco pods on the sides.