What did you do in KSP1 today?

[RealKerbal3x]

The Munar Transfer Station got its second lander.

Man, this place is gonna get crowded when Mun base operations get underway.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Not a lot to talk about with this morning and only one screenie for y'all (and not a great one at that). 

My day on Friday began with the arrival of T. Howell III at space station Kerbinport.

Got a little close to the station's mass driver while I was killing off the last of the relative velocity.

Howell affected a successful docking, after which I went ahead with plans to send LSV House Atreides back to Eve; the warp ship eventually entered a 717x674 kilometer orbit at 1.37 degrees inclination over the purple planet after a relatively small number of warp-backs, but not before Strange Cargo also reached Kerbinport and affected a successful docking maneuver at the station as well. Atreides is currently building a replacement Hellhound 7a rover/skycrane for deployment on the surface to replace the one last week that successfully landed but promptly exploded when the heat shield was jettisoned. The new print should be completed and deployed before LSV House Harkonnen is scheduled to arrive. I discovered that Harkonnen is going to need a supply of Materials Kits to finish its print of the TBD 7d rover, and without the ability to hold any at the moment I may be deploying engineer Ardon Kerman to the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna earlier than I originally intended.

The Auk XIII flight that picked up scientist Nielman Kerman from high orbit over Kerbin made its first aerobraking pass at the tail end of the day on Friday. The craft only has 333 m/s of delta-V remaining so I will be doing at least one more aerobraking pass before I attempt to deorbit it on a trajectory that will take it in for landing at KSC. I'll have to let y'all know how that one goes.

Howell and Strange Cargo had brought back tourists Lanard, Wehrming, Matby, Eligan, Lanwell, Podgun, Jedmore, Kenrod, Hellin, Geofsted, Henfal, Matkin, Hudory and Jenny Kerman from an expedition to Duna and Ike, with tourist Hanson Kerman already at Kerbinport having opted for the cheaper package of trips to Mun and Minmus. These fifteen Kerbals were all now at Kerbinport awaiting transportation down to the surface to close out their respective contracts, so to that end I launched an Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane to Kerbinport on Saturday. The plane successfully docked at the station and collected the tourists, then departed and landed safely at KSC 09. During the final approach to landing, though, the craft lost both sets of spoilers and the flaps; this is something that has never happened before with this design. On the other hand, I haven't flown an Auk VII for a while (definitely the first flight of one in 1.6), so I may just need to go into the SPH and adjust the craft parameters a bit. Despite the exploding control surfaces, the plane did affect a safe landing - she just came in a little hot and wound up needing the entire runway to come to a stop. The plane's recovery cleared four contracts and officially brought the Duna/Ike expedition to a close. Replacement contracts include an aerial survey on Kerbin - something I haven't done in a while - and a junk-and-kerbal mission over Duna. The j&k mission may be interesting; I'll likely have to make some kind of adjustment to the Bill Clinton 7 design to have something that can both grab the target and then dock it to a warp ship to get it back to Kerbin. 

So at this point I have design work to do - I need to get an extension module added on to the Crater Maker 7 passenger lander currently at space station Minmusport so the craft can haul more kerbals in one go, I need to make the aforementioned adjustments to the Clinton design, and I need to see what happened with the Auk VII. I've still got the TBD and Hound under construction and I'll need to get something that can haul Materials Kits over to Harkonnen, so I'll be busy at Duna for a while yet. Also have the Auk XIII with its rescuee trying to come home and a bunch of science experiments in progress. Overall things are still busy.

Also need to get into the VAB and SPH to start getting rid of parts deprecated in 1.7, apparently...I've got a while to go before I make the switch, but it wouldn't hurt me to get started...

[aagun123]

kerbalfoundries and magicsmoke

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 15, 2019 by aagun123

[RealKerbal3x]

27 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Also need to get into the VAB and SPH to start getting rid of parts deprecated in 1.7, apparently...I've got a while to go before I make the switch, but it wouldn't hurt me to get started...

I had a few ships/debris left over from 1.3.1 with the old parts and KSP automatically upgraded them to the new ones for me when I updated to 1.7, if that helps.

Of course, some parts (like the decouplers) have changed shape, so your ships might look a little weird.

[capi3101]

43 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I had a few ships/debris left over from 1.3.1 with the old parts and KSP automatically upgraded them to the new ones for me when I updated to 1.7, if that helps.

Of course, some parts (like the decouplers) have changed shape, so your ships might look a little weird.

Might. My big one is going to be the Rockomax Decoupler; I've got at least three active ships with those installed.

[RealKerbal3x]

6 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Might. My big one is going to be the Rockomax Decoupler; I've got at least three active ships with those installed.

I had an old ship where RCS clusters were arranged radially around that decoupler, and with the upgrade to the new parts they were floating in mid-space. It might cause some issues...if you had stuff attached to the top of the old version of that part, the parts on top might be floating above the now much thinner decoupler.

I would recommend making a backup of your persistent.sfs before you update.

Edited April 15, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[Angelo Kerman]

I made a fly fly..

[Hotel26]

After his first, successful test flight in the Komet,
Podsy Goes To Space

It wasn't exactly his idea nor his preference...

Podsy was mighty relieved once arriving in space -- but vastly disappointed when Flight Control called to inform him his flight was being ruled "sub-orbital", due to the perigee of only 69,896m.  If only his hand hadn't been shaking so much on the stick during the ascent, he thought.  Poor Podsy!

In Part 3, Podsy Sets A Record...

[RizzoTheRat]

If you stuck nose cones on the boosters to keep the drag down I reckon that might make it.

[Tyko]

2 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

If you stuck nose cones on the boosters to keep the drag down I reckon that might make it.

Yep @Hotel26 , you're really close!  -  in addition to adding nose cones you can also use smaller radial decouplers to save weight. You can probably also get away with removing the little solid rocket separation motors for your SRBs. You don't need that much separation force and it'll save more weight

Edited April 15, 2019 by Tyko

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Started up a new lightly modded Science Mode save for 1.7. Found here

But to summarise

Bluesky 1 - Flea jumper

Bluesky 2 - Suborbital space hopper

Bluesky 3 - Science Jr. equipped suborbital hopper

Bluesky 4 - Orbiter and high-orbit science

Greenpeak 1 - Minmus lander, 2 biomes

Greypeak 1 (Ongoing) - Mun lander

[RizzoTheRat]

8 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Man, this place is gonna get crowded when Mun base operations get underway.

Amazing how quick that happens 

I now have the core station (top right), the power and fuel module I launched separately (the bit with the Gigantors), an extra lab and habitation module that was for an expansion contract (centre left), the booster stage for that module that will be junked once I've used the fuel form it (top left), the lander (left), and 2 crew transfer  vehicles (bottom one brought up the latest 3 crew members, the one at the back with the bigger tank was also the booster for the power/fuel module). 

I've still got 1 docking port left...

 

I think maybe I should put a bit more thought in the design of my next station

[Barzon]

I messed around with Hyperedit.

[Delay]

I'd like to know what happens when the SOI of one body ends up touching the surface of its parent.

Do vessels just float upwards as the Mun passes by?

[Fearless Son]

11 hours ago, aagun123 said:

kerbalfoundries and magicsmoke

[JadeOfMaar]

9 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

After his first, successful test flight in the Komet,
Podsy Goes To Space

As others have said, a nose cone on the boosters would have helped a lot. Whichever SRBs also have a bottom stack node could also help with putting a nose cone up there (the drag reduction trick that's famous with the RAPIER). Also, you could have throttle limited the boosters a bit. The less you fight the lower atmosphere with TWR, the less you suffer drag as you approach Mach 1, and you can squeeze some good dV out of Solids.

[theonegalen]

Today, Beamore Kerman became the first Kerbal in orbit around a 2.5x rescaled Kerbin!

Unfortunately, I, uh, I mean, someone at the KSC miscalculated her reentry and she had to bail out of the capsule before it rolled down the side of a mountain and exploded.

Val, Bill, and Bob had to take one of our small cargo planes and rescue her. Of course, if you ask Bea, they didn't rescue her at all, they only gave her a ride back to the KSC.

Full story here.

Mods: Rescale 2.5x, KAX, SXT, Airplane Plus, Harder Solar System, Snacks! Life Support, Restock, KSC Extended (customized version), KerbinSide Remastered and KSR Airports

Edited April 16, 2019 by theonegalen

[K3rb0dyn3]

Build a Minmus surface base with a crew capacity of 26 crew:

Science lab rover behind the main base:

Also, There is 2 science rovers attached to the front of the base.

[Barzon]

13 hours ago, Delay said:

I'd like to know what happens when the SOI of one body ends up touching the surface of its parent.

Do vessels just float upwards as the Mun passes by?

I dont think so.

The burn in the image managed to get me an encounter with the Mun, with a impact a few hours later.

[K3rb0dyn3]

I have also finished my Mun base assembled in Kerbin orbit and landed it:

[aagun123]

On 4/15/2019 at 2:36 PM, purpleivan said:

SEAL Delivery Vehicle

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Yesterday as I was typing up my daily report for y'all and came to the bit where I would have to figure out a way to get some Materials Kits over to LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Duna so that construction on the TBD 7d rover could wrap up, I had an epiphany. I had the Nostromo 7 resource lander docked at space station Ikeport. Now, that craft has three Mule reconfigurable resource containers from the Pathfinder mod and the ship was designed for hauling Uraninite from Ike to Duna and then Minerals from Duna to Ike. Long story short, I reconfigured the central tank for Materials Kits and the side tanks for extra fuel, and then shot up the necessary resources from the Scan Queen outpost on Ike's surface via mass driver. Nostromo then left Ikeport and burned for Duna. 

After that all took place, I busied myself with some design work. I had picked up a junk-and-kerbal mission over Duna, so I needed to come up with a way of grabbing the target and then have the grabber probe latch on to a warp ship for return to Kerbin. In the end, I took the existing Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe design and added a disposable docking port to the underside of the craft's heat shield. Simple fix overall but I have yet to see if it'll work as intended. While I was fiddling around in the VAB, I finally got around to designing a passenger cabin expansion for the Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander; the CM Crew Adapter adds seven seats and (most importantly) and accessible exterior hatch. One of these adapters was ordered up at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus.

Next on the to-do list was an aerobraking pass of an Auk XIII spaceplane carrying rescuee scientist Nielman Kerman from HKO.

Auk XIII at entry.

The craft slowed down enough that Trajectories was projecting a final entry on the next orbit, so the plane was put into a 230x100 orbit over Kerbin so that a re-entry coincident with KSC could occur later. The orbital stabilization unfortunately left the plane without sufficient fuel for entry, so Next Objective was dispatched from space station Kerbinport on a mission to deliver some fuel stores to the plane.

Incidentally, this is not what the Superfortress 7 ferry ship design was designed for, but whatever works, right?

Rendezvous and docking were accomplished fairly quickly, and after transferring fuel, Next Objective undocked from the plane and burned for a rendezvous with Kerbinport. The plane was able to make a safe landing at KSC 27 while Next Objective was still headed towards rendezvous, completing the rescue mission. For its part, Next Objective affected a successful rendezvous and docking with Kerbinport,

Caught an eclipse from orbit during the rendezvous and docking to boot.

Shortly thereafter Nostromo made its rendezvous with House Harkonnen.

Nostromo maneuvering to dock with LSV House Harkonnen, with Gilligan also visibly docked to the warp ship.

After docking, construction of the TBD 7d took a mere five minutes to complete. As of this morning, I'm sitting with a base-seeding rover in Harkonnen's drydock. Still have yet to add the remaining supplies to the craft, but otherwise the ship is ready to deploy the rover to Eve. Knock on wood the damn thing may even survive entry...

With their work aboard Harkonnen done, Bill along with engineers Gilford, Lucas, Ardon and Gemlorf Kerbin boarded Gilligan, which then departed with Jeb at the helm for the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards also in LDO. Gilligan arrived at BLK this morning and the engineers boarded the station to begin construction of a Bill Clinton 7c probe. Construction is not yet underway - I need to transfer the necessary resources up to the station before that can occur, but that should be a simple matter of shooting them up from the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface via mass driver. I will have to turn BLK's mass driver on; right now she's on the night-side of Duna and I'll have to wait to get the shipyard onto the day-side so she doesn't burn through all the Electrical Charge all at once. Non Mentha also completed its print of the CM Crew Adapter this morning, and after fueling, the new craft launched and burned for rendezvous with space station Minmusport. 

I still have a fair amount of things going on. At this point, I need to print up the Clinton, get it to go pick up Siefen's Craft and haul it over to Harkonnen, deliver Lucas to the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, and then get everybody else over to space station Dunaport before I can sit around and wait a bit for things to finish up at Duna completely. I'll probably dock the Crater Maker bits together and then I do have a group of colonists ready to go down to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus today; delivering those folks will allow me to send a couple of tourists back to Kerbin as well. Long term, once Harkonnen gets to Eve, the TBD will land, and if all goes according to plan, a new outpost will become available. With a required goal now to return a craft to Kerbin from the surface of Eve, this outpost becomes a launch center regardless. I did one final piece of design work yesterday:

The numbers say the craft should be able to get to Eve orbit (definite operative word: should). Won't know until I try, of course. But the beauty will be that I A) don't have to land it first, B) won't lose anything if it fails except for the amount of time it takes to build and C) can readily try again if necessary. Final payload on the Bento Box 7 is a mere 500 kilograms. Assuming the Bento Box enters orbit, the plan at that point would be to use a Bill Clinton 7c to haul it to a warp ship, warp it home and have it enter Kerbin's atmosphere. I see only one difficult part of this plan, and that's the launch. Will let y'all know more as this whole thing unfolds - hopefully this will all happen fairly soon.

[Sweetnsaltyish]

Whoooo! just got a twenty kerbal lander to the mun  and back!

(it only took 13 tries)

[Triop]

Edited April 16, 2019 by Triop

[purpleivan]

More boat entertainment for me today, that started before 5am (on vacation this week and my sleep is broken).

One tanker plane gives what it can spare to another tanker plane...

Then that tanker plane flies to the boat and fills it with fuel.

The boat then heads South until reaching the narrow entrance to a huge bay, that it's now exploring.

Then the boat puts ashore just after sunset to wait for... more fuel.

It's a never ending cycle.