What did you do in KSP1 today?

[LC 44]

4 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Awesome!  Just be careful if you try to aerobreak.  Eve is, uh, pretty unforgiving compared to Kerbin and Duna.

Thanks! Yeah I probably will just be orbiting and observing and using the probe as a comms relay. I have a rover attached to the probe, but I am pretty sure I will burn up with no heat shield

Edited April 5, 2019 by LC 44

[MaverickSawyer]

6 minutes ago, LC 44 said:

Thanks! Yeah I probably will just be orbiting and observing and using the probe as a comms relay. I have a rover attached to the probe, but I am pretty I will burn up with no heat shield

If you've got the dV, kick on up to Gilly with the rover. It's probably going to be used more as a hopper, but you can certainly go exploring there easily enough. Besides, there's only three biomes and a randolith to find, so it'd be a worthwhile trip for the science alone.

[Puggonaut]

[Fraktal]

Today marks the successful completion of my first Apollo-style two-part munar landing mission. Well, not quite Apollo-style in the sense that part of the LEM also came back:

But it was all according to plan. First moment of worry came when the game slowed to 7 FPS due to the 100+ part craft taking off. The game has been really crash-happy during my aircraft testing, but it didn't crash this time. Why does it have such a high part count, you ask? Because of my main booster itself having 40+ parts, being built entirely out of FL-T parts and no Rockomax parts. See, I hit diminishing returns with Thumpers while building this booster, so I ditched them for side boosters made up of two FL-T800 tanks and Reliant each, crossfed into the triple-Swivel core booster with fuel lines. Not exactly compact, but while neither stack has enough TWR to even lift off the ground, together they kick the payload off the ground at 1.58 TWR with around 3500 m/s, without even touching the munar transfer stage. Perfectly suited for this particular cargo. Only point of contention is the fairing being shaped almost like a mushroom due to the LEM's drop tanks (four Baguettes crossfed via the radial decoupler and set to drain first) at the top (that is, the bottom of the LEM; the LEM's upside down during launch), but I haven't felt any aerodynamic issues during takeoff.

Second moment of worry came when I completed my munar rendezvous burn and set up a maneuver node for circularization at 20 km, engaged time warp... and the maneuver marker on the navball jumped to a completely different location. When I looked at the map, the maneuver node was nowhere near I left it and would've put me on a steep collision course with the Mun, so I had to modify the flight plan a bit and the 20 km orbit became a 240 km one.

Then I looked at the transfer stage's fuel and realized that I may not be able to go home with the fuel I had left, as tugging the LEM's fuel around was quite a bit of weight (fully fueled, command module + LEM + transfer stage is slightly over 10 tons).

Landing was... mostly smooth, though I had to cheat a little with the gravity because by the time it touched ground, the LEM was so light and top-heavy it couldn't stay upright even on an 8° slope because its weight didn't press down on the legs hard enough to stand firmly. Anyway, the LEM's drop tanks separated during the suicide burn as planned and my arrangement of things in the service bay resulted in Bob reaching everything from his ladder (for the record, the bay contains 1 thermometer, 1 barometer, 1 goo canister, 1 experiment storage, 1 OKTO core and 1 Z-200 battery, all crammed inside without looking overly ugly).

Takeoff was fine, although I made the mistake of coming up to a 200 km orbit, resulting in me being forced to wait for an entire day and three hours to be able to get an orbital encounter with the command module but in the end, I got one with a 700 m separation at 14.7 m/s relative velocity, from where closing in to less than 100 meters and near-zero relative velocity required minimal fuel expenditure on my part. Still, by this time I was starting to sweat a bit at how little fuel I had left.

Since only the command module had RCS, I switched back to it and performed the docking. This was the first time I actually used the Docking Port Alignment mod I've had for over a year now and although it took me a while to figure out how it worked, I did get the hang of it eventually and docked on the first try, using surprisingly little monoprop in the process. As in, a tiny fraction of what I actually brought. Anyway, I then proceeded to pump over the LEM's remaining fuel (which required a bit of googling until I realized the command pod's heat shield was blocking the crossfeed) and decouple the lander stage, as planned. With this, I had over 500 m/s of fuel in the command stage, plus two and a half minutes' worth of monoprop, which was more than enough to return.

Only hitch was the LEM's top-mounted solar panels nearly (98%) overheating during reentry but aside from that, the thing was surprisingly stable and reentered without trying to flip, even without SAS, or without the lander can coming anywhere close to overheating (in fact, the command pod popped the overheat bar despite being directly behind the heat shield, but the lander can didn't despite its edges sticking out into the airstream).

For finalizing the design, I dropped the extra monoprop tanks since I clearly don't need them, moved the RCS over to the LEM to take advantage of the lander can's greater monoprop reserve, put the LEM's landing legs on the drop tanks to improve ground stability and put the solar panels on top of the drop tanks as well, since I'm clearly not bringing them back through reentry. The landing legs now barely fit under the maximum diameter of the fairing and I'll have to lug the drop tanks down to the ground, but it should keep the thing from tipping over that easily now. Probably wouldn't be able to handle a polar landing and return, though.

[Martian Emigrant]

Today I criplled handicapped Jeb.

 

 

Yuck, he was fine after he was recovered.

 

Me

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Martian Emigrant

[Puggonaut]

 

[Triop]

Today, I'm taking out my gal.

And Val could come too.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Triop

[Hotel26]

Well...  I've thrown my hat into the ring.

I'm doing a Kerbin SuperTrek.

This is an action shot of Pacemaker...

 

Not exactly an Elcano challenge, because I am using a ferry for short distances (where @Triop used bridges), but the spirit of adventure is the same.  Kerbin is smaller than I thought!

#1: I am staying away from stupid mountains.  When you are going long distance, a small deviation early to avoid mountain ranges pays HUGE dividends and costs little.

#2: Pacemaker can operate at a sustained 45..50+ m/s.  That's a deal-maker.

So far, I've done 4x 300km legs and am now approaching Baikerbanur from the NE, or soon will be after I clear that Mississippi-like river.

I'll give kudos now to @Atkara, since Pacemaker owes its heritage to his Rover Mk1 design; although I took a screwdriver, wrench and blowtorch to it, ripped off the panels, pried out all the silly science-gathering junk, put in better shocks, heavier-duty batteries, an Eveready industrial-strength fuel cell array, some road trip habitation and a fully-stocked refreshment bar as well as the latest GPS navigation...

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Hotel26

[Triop]

Triop inc. ~Shipping Kerbals since 2019~

Order your Kerbal now ! call 555 - Tr10p.

*3 day delivery guaranteed.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Triop

[capi3101]

29 minutes ago, Triop said:

*3 day delivery guaranteed.

That's out to Dres, right?

[MaverickSawyer]

2 hours ago, capi3101 said:

That's out to Dres, right?

Depends on if you're willing to spring for the Planetary Express shipping. After all, torchdrive fuel isn't cheap.

[Loskene]

19 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Depends on if you're willing to spring for the Planetary Express shipping. After all, torchdrive fuel isn't cheap.

Yeah but funnily enough it gets cheaper the more delta-v you pay them to burn since the karborundum comes from the hardest to reach places.

[Barzon]

3 hours ago, Triop said:

Triop inc. ~Shipping Kerbals since 2019~

Order your Kerbal now ! call 555-Tr10p.

*3 day delivery guaranteed.

Can this be released as a mod?

[Loskene]

13 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Can this be released as a mod?

Well, I think it's just a custom texture swap setting for the stock 1x1 panels, tweakscaled to fit around a command seat. You could probably change the texture to whatever you want with a short tutorial if triop wants to give one.

[Triop]

38 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Can this be released as a mod?

Wouldn't that be cool ?

24 minutes ago, Loskene said:

Well, I think it's just a custom texture swap setting for the stock 1x1 panels, tweakscaled to fit around a command seat. You could probably change the texture to whatever you want with a short tutorial if triop wants to give one.

Yep, mods used:

Tweakscale for the panels.

DCKinc for the texture, The wood is just a picture I found on the internet reduced to 256 x 256.

NEBULA mod for the decals, also customised via pics of the internet.

[Fraston]

[scottadges]

Continuing my 1.6.1 Career Game, I picked up an Investor contract for a space hotel, which requires you to drive them around the KSC. I thought, "Perfect opportunity to pick up some of that sweet, sweet free KSC science." The only problem? I didn't have a decent science rover... well, problem solved!

KSC Rover Science Truck

It carries four (4) Material Science units, four (4) Mini-Goo pods (8 observations), a barometer, thermometer, seismic detector, and magnetometer. Between the Cockpit at the front and and the Airlock at the back, I was able to carry Jebediah, a Scientist, and the Investor.

And without even getting all the hidden science locations around KSC, I netted 327 science including crew reports, et. al.  This was made much, much easier using the [X] Science! mod to check off the list of experiments.

Muchas gracias to @Nils277 for his awesome mod: Feline Utility Rovers. I haven't unlocked all the parts yet, but I'm looking forward to making this my standard for rovers throughout the Kerbol system.

 

[Fearless Son]

I sent a trio of communication relays into Duna orbit, along with a rover:

The relays were released one at a time into a resonant orbit so they're all in line of sight from one another.  Feels extremely satisfying.

The rover was inspired by NASA-style Mars landers, and so came in with an aeroshell and heat shield structure that was honestly probably unnecessary on Duna, but I wanted to do it because... NASA.  The aeroshell had some drogues and a standard chute, once it was low enough the head shield was jettisoned, the aeroshell detached, and the rover was lowered on a skycrane.  In the picture above, the skycrane had already rocketed off after detaching the rover, and the aeroshell survived the impact with it's chute and is gently rolling by in the background.

Unfortunately the rover flipped over when driving over a hill and exploded.  FML

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Revisited an Old Save, Started Docking the Rest of The Asteroids.

Have spots for nine more.

[Loskene]

4 hours ago, Ratwerke_Actual said:

Revisited an Old Save, Started Docking the Rest of The Asteroids.

Have spots for nine more.

Damn, son. You have to save the crown spot for a magic boulder.

[Triop]

Today, I made a new friend.

[GDJ]

21 minutes ago, Triop said:

Today, I made a new friend.

Aww.....aren't they sweet?

 

[Triop]

23 minutes ago, GDJ said:

Aww.....aren't they sweet?

 

It just bugs me, I'm working hard sharing my KSPXperience, uploading photos, videos, creating stories...

I don't have to share my stuff, but I like too, and that's not a crime.

[GDJ]

7 minutes ago, Triop said:

It just bugs me, I'm working hard sharing my KSPXperience, uploading photos, videos, creating stories...

I don't have to share my stuff, but I like too, and that's not a crime.

Certainly not a crime at all. So do I, But I suffer from No-time-to-play-KSP-because-I'm-working syndrome.

But.....that's life.

[Triop]

11 minutes ago, GDJ said:

But I suffer from No-time-to-play-KSP-because-I'm-working syndrome.

But.....that's life.

Keep working dude, I got laid off through health problems, I worked as an operation room sterilisation assisent before and now here I am.

Sitting at home, playing KSP all day . . .

But.....that's life.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Triop