What did you do in KSP1 today?

[cantab]

With a bit of finagling with settings, and putting everything to potato quality, KSP is running surprisingly well on the family laptop with its 4GB of RAM and Skylake Core i3, running on a Linux live USB. And, well, I got distracted :-D

The new lander/rover can is brilliant, one of the best parts Squad have made. Here it's in what will be a bus, once I stop clowning around and finish building it.

[Sweetnsaltyish]

I finally landed my heavy moon lander, using a tug with a rhino,

[winterchillz]

So I started a new science career and decided to give myself a challenge and have only the KSC as a ground station (I like to live dangerously /s). Clearly, the first step in my grand design plan was to setup a nice relay network around Kerbin.

Step 1: Bring up 4 satellites at 500k orbit.

That felt too closed up and the connection was flaky, so

Step 2: Bring them up to to 1,000k orbit.

Brilliant, now it felt a bit better. But! I still had plenty of fuel and now I'm at the stage where it's easy to get higher orbit. That's right,

Step 3: 5,000k orbit!

All was fine and dandy until I lost a probe in Minmus orbit due to no coverage....

Step 4: 10,000K ORBIT!!1!

Yes! Now it's time to setup a single relay around Mun and Minmus, just to make my Tracking Station screen look like a rainbow. On the way to Minmus, I noticed one of my Kerbin satellites get a funky orbit for a moment while warping..... Dis bad.

Double check my Tracking Station and indeed one of them intercepted the Mun so it's now at 20,000K+ orbit.

That's ok, easy to correct.

While correcting, one of the other ones got a funny orbit for a split second...... You guessed it, 15,000K+ outta nowhere.

It's fine, I shall correct that one too. Couple of maneuver nodes and we're back on track... except, I see less green lines for some reason...

My first relay is completely MIA.. A couple of quick speculations and accepting the fact it was on Equatorial orbit, I admit that it may or may not have been quickly re-classified into a Mun probe.

[capi3101]

Quick news update - Bento Box 7 successful launch to 180k orbit from Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. Details tomorrow sometime between 13-15Z.

[Bubbadevlin]

Today in KSP i was able to get more work done! up to about 2.7 parts done out of 6 

Got the escape tower done for my Apollo, as well as the basic structure for the service module stage. The next step is to add the embellishments/make the stage actually functional

[Mignear]

Nothing much, just practicing landings.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Mignear

[Muetdhiver]

Working on a pykep flyby with manoeuvre finder thing.

Lots to do but the first numbers match what I did before for Kerbin-Eve-Moho missions.

I need to get the ejection data and stuff done now.

 

Edited May 21, 2019 by Muetdhiver

[Spartan Nat]

How about Extremely painful periapsis burns with an ion probe at 210,000 meter above Kerbin for mapping other planets? Already went from2,000,000 to 4,000,000 meters

Edit: And in stock ksp, so nothing special

Edited May 21, 2019 by Spartan-B312
Forgot some details

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @Spartan-B312.

One trick that helps with ion burns is to start the engine burning, hold down alt and press full stop (.) 3 times. This will enable time acceleration under thrust at 4 times normal speed.

[Hotel26]

2 hours ago, James Kerman said:

One trick

Congratulations on 1K posts!

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) TL,DR: The last several days have been quite eventful. Going to be a screenie-heavy post; my apologies in advance.

Thursday began with my efforts to bring the Christmas Tree 7 nuclear battery, which had launched on Wednesday from the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, to dock with the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna. The Tree affected a burn to bring it to rendezvous with the shipyard, after which I went ahead and sent a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe over Mun to rendezvous with the Non Caseus Yards in orbit there. The Clinton for its part had boosted a Venkmann 7 probe on a course that would take it to entry at Kerbin, then had burned to return to Mun orbit on Wednesday. After the Tree arrived and docked safely at BLK, its transfer stage was sent on a course that would take it back to ICY for recycling, while the Clinton arrived at NCY and grabbed ahold of the station successfully. Shortly after that, the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun signaled that after several in-game months, a Breakthrough Technology experiment ongoing had completed and a Temperature Survey began. I'd been fighting the breakthrough tech experiment for some time and was quite happy when it finished itself up.

The Venkmann probe made its way back to Kerbin next.

Glamour shot of the day.

The probe successfully entered Kerbin's atmosphere and survived to splashdown, completing a materials space exposure study contract in the process (which is why this particular probe has seating for two, which itself turned out to be unnecessary in this instance). The Christmas Tree 7's transfer stage arrived at ICY shortly thereafter.

I don't know. I think it would look better if I put some fake teeth on the end of the drydock. You know, give it that whole "sandworm getting ready to devour you" vibe. Of course, that wouldn't really work for launches...

Once the stage was recycled, a pair of Bill Clinton 7c dockable grabber probes were ordered up - one at ICY, the other aboard LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Eve. The first would conduct a junk-and-kerbal mission over Ike, while the second would be the part that would bring the payload of the Bento Box 7 back to Harkonnen for transport to Kerbin, assuming that launch went off. The Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin finished up the print of a Bill Clinton 7b shortly thereafter and after a quick resupply via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC, the Clinton launched from the shipyard and burned for a rendezvous with component HR-7LD in Kerbin orbit.

Friday saw the rendezvous of the Clinton 7b with its target, which turned out to be a loose Poodle engine; the probe grabbed ahold of the Poodle and deorbited safely, landing about 85 kilometers to the west of KSC for contract. The crew aboard Piper Alpha completed their temperature survey shortly thereafter, so the results of both that survey and the breakthrough technology survey were loaded aboard a waiting McFeely Sr. 7 speedy science delivery craft awaiting launch on the outpost's pad. After fueling, the McFeely launched.

Could've stood to use the zoom controls on this one, I'm afraid...

The McFeely established itself in a 15-kilometer, 26-degree inclined orbit over Mun. Unfortunately, this put the module in orbit but without insufficient fuel to send it on to Kerbin. Plans for a resupply mission didn't really materialize until Saturday, but they'll involve the use of this kludge:

♫ Soon you'll be making another run... ♫. The fact that I know any of the lyrics to that song really dates me, I think...

The day on Friday ended with the completion of the Clinton print aboard Harkonnen. It was necessary for LSV House Atreides also in Eve orbit to send some additional fuel supplies over to Harkonnen in order to completely fuel the probe, but once that was done, the Clinton launched safely from Harkonnen's drydock. To distinguish it from the other Clinton 7c, this particular probe was given the launch name Dreamcatcher. Seemed appropriate given its mission.

On Saturday, ICY completed its Clinton probe under construction, and after the Scan Queen outpost on Ike resupplied the shipyard via mass driver, the probe launched from the shipyard's drydock. The probe easily affected a rendezvous and grab of Pilot Lutop's Scrap over Ike, then burned and finally arrived in a 108x98 kilometer, 0.62-degree low orbit over Duna. The probe with Lutop attached will await the final construction of LSV House Corrino currently under construction at BLK, and will dock to the new warp ship once it's launched; Corrino's first mission will be to bring Lutop home. Da Luv Boht 7 was designed after this, with a new instance of the ship ordered up at NCY; construction should take 4 days.

Shortly after that, I got the signal I'd been waiting for from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve - construction of the Bento Box 7 was complete.

Bento Box 7, a big rocket with a really small payload, on the pad at ALK awaiting launch. Of course it'd have to be at night...

Once the outpost had finished fueling it up, I quicksaved - I figured there was no way I'd get the launch right on the first try, and I was right. 

Never did get the damn thing to launch straight up. Of course, that might've had more to do with the fact that the whole base was trying to tip over due to the rocket's weight...

On the first two tries, the rocket disintegrated due to atmospheric stresses. On the third try, I decided to keep the thrust down a bit and let it fly up until the Q started coming down - it still got up to a very impressive ~280 kPa all the same - at which point I started to nudge it over a bit more towards horizontal. Wound up doing Elon Musk's flight profile for the Falcon Heavy really...did something like a 2300 m/s orbital insertion burn. But it worked.

Bento Box 7 in a 192x183 orbit over Eve, somehow with 1,687 m/s of delta-V still aboard its booster. Makes me wish I'd loaded some experiments on the thing...

With the Bento Box 7 successfully in orbit over eve, ALK began the print of a new Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter; construction will take 4 days. If I decide to try to launch something else from Eve's surface in the future, I'll work on optimizing the ascent profile then. Myself, I accredit the successful launch of the Bento Box to Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and FAR...

Today, my goal is to get Dreamcatcher to scoop up Bento Box's payload and get it back to Harkonnen. When that happens, Harkonnen can return to Kerbin to drop off its payloads and do a resupply. If I finish up Da Luv Boht, I'll be sending it to get the McFeely - the fact that it'll have an operational mass driver aboard means that I can resupply DLB as much as I need to until the McFeely is in a position to get into equatorial orbit. Ideally, I'd like to get the McFeely to space station Munport, where it could transport rescuee scientist Lageremy Kerman home and kill off all three of my current Mun contracts in the process. I'll have to see how the day goes. If I can get the new Echo Flyer built and splash it down in Eve's oceans, and Harkonnen safely gets the Bento Box to Kerbin, I could be looking at a go for Gilly missions as early as today. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Edited May 21, 2019 by capi3101

[Red Stapler]

Enjoying the view...

My probe/plane/boat about to drop gear to get back on land...

Final power down for the evening...

Jool Fuel 76 awaits the next customer...

Was a fun night.  Cheers. 

[Triop]

Today, I finished designing the Break Dance.

 

[Draconiator]

Since I did not want tons of planets via planet packs, but still want some of my favorites, I'm picking and choosing a few to edit into my "stock" game.  Newest addition is Tekto from OPM, which I placed between the orbit of Duna and Dres.  Also have Kalley, another moon of Kerbin, originally from Interstellar Adventure Revived, and a small rock around Minmus called Jopa, from Kargantua System.  I'll probably put Hale around Tekto as its moon, and I definately want that Kargantua black hole in there.  hey who knows I'll maybe work on getting permission from the original authors and release it as "Planet Pack All-Stars" or something heh.

 

[Triop]

Today, moarrr robotics...

Man, these things are fun to build

[ARS]

Made 2 new mini-submarine

This one is a prototype for mini-sub with much more powerful engine

It's succesfully tested, but tests shows that it's incredibly difficult to control because it's engine is too powerful. It's currently being redesigned, no name has been given yet

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The second one is a mini-sub with 2 crew capacity, officially named "Big Tadpole"

It's 50% more expensive than Little Tadpole and more complex, but offers more crew capacity, faster speed and more maneuverability. How maneuverable? From this...

To this...

[Mikenike]

Today, I redesigned a F 1 that I built, and made it have RATO rockets(Puffs) to have an assisted takeoff

[Triop]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

I love the shape, looks nasty.

Playing around with the concept:

Edited May 21, 2019 by Triop

[Triop]

I'll just let myself out . . .

 

[purpleivan]

After a few days away, it was back to bringing the crew home in the Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation.

For this fuel was required, this time brought by the More Range version of the Juice Goose, flown by Gusman Kerman.

The drop tanks covered a lot of the distance out to the Coastal Cruiser.

Gusman played chicken with some mountains... I think we can call it a draw, as although the plan didn't end up as smoking wreckage, it did lose the control surface on the end of the left wing.

Then some recon was done on a river, further up the coast from the boat. It had been planned to head up it to the mountains, but as usual, the river needs a little dredging.

Finally he made it to the boat after a landing in the dark.

Edited May 22, 2019 by purpleivan

[Flibble]

Val and Bob took the photography plane up today.

They gathered some useful science, but unfortunately most of it was lost in a rather poor landing. Still any landing you can walk away from...
They both promptly went on leave after being debriefed, which may or may not be related.

Edited May 22, 2019 by Flibble

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Not much to report to y'all today. After Saturday's successful launch of the Bento Box 7 from the surface of Eve and a couple of days off from the game, things picked back up yesterday with the Dreamcatcher probe, which rendezvoused with the Bento Box.

This is my first public screenie of the Bento Box payload - as y'all can see, there's not a whole lot to it. Then again, with a classic Temstar-style asparagus rocket, you'd be lucky to get much more than five tonnes off of Eve...

After successfully grabbing the Bento Box, Dreamcatcher made a burn to rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in higher Eve orbit.

Tada! One warp ship, one Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe, one hopefully fulfilled contract payload...

Dreamcatcher was slated to dock up to one of Harkonnen's central ports but I discovered they were all occupied, so Jeb went ahead and undocked Gilligan and the docking adapter module from Harkonnen and moved them both to one of the side ports off the craft's Bigby Workshop module. Dreamcatcher then moved to dock to the vacated port.

Coming into dock, with Gilligan docked to Harkonnen in the foreground.

After Dreamcatcher docked, I made a quick check to ensure that Harkonnen's business at Eve was concluded - it was - and to ensure that everything currently docked up would fit within the ship's warp bubble - it did, though Gilligan's Poodle engine just barely made it in. All preparations complete and with her mass driver secured from operations, Harkonnen warped to return to Kerbin.

Time to go cash in a few checks.

I spent the rest of my play time yesterday getting Harkonnen into orbit over Kerbin. The ship ultimately settled into a 593x549 kilometer, 0.28 degree high orbit over Kerbin, and is now set to receive a resupply from the South Base outpost near KSC.

Harkonnen used up a lot of its available fuel stores - including those aboard all the craft docked to it - to launch the TBD 7d rover that ultimately became the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface. I have to replace all of it to complete Siefen's junk-and-kerbal rescue from Duna, get the Power Tools study I did at space station Dunaport checked off, and get the Bento Box down. Guessing Harkonnen is ultimately going to be heading off to Gilly next; I've got a crew standing by for that mission, but I've got to get them trained first. I have a pair of colonists heading out to Minmus so the Gilly crew can tag along and do some local flag-planting at the same time; I'll try to get all that started today. Everything else is pretty much waiting for various construction projects to finish up at this point. Hoping to clear out the current Eve exploration contracts soon so I can begin Gilly missions; with luck the game will give me a go on all that today. Going to depend on how much KSP time I get...

 

[Triop]

I just can't stop building these things....

[xub313]

I finally got some time to play some KSP after a long while. I started a new career save. I recently finished my LKO space station/fuel depot, Capricorn Station. You can see Mira 3, stopping by on its way to the Munar surface, and the X-598 Mk2 shuttle, which carried up the first crew of scientists to the station.

[ARS]