What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, ShadowZone said:

I landed a Saturn V. On its side. Sort of.

Was this from the video you posted a few days/weeks ago?

You should have Said: AGAIN!

[Loghogan]

28 minutes ago, cantab said:

At least yours stayed intact. I tested my full-scale Saturn V with the Apollo spacecraft for the first time.

It didn't go entirely to plan...

But hey, at least the CM and the Kerbals survived!

One of the (forty-two!) Mammoths broke loose of its mounting. Since this thing is so heavily clipped, it only takes a couple of frames for all hell to break loose. Now I have to work out which one...

Although not as massive as @cantab's pillar of rocket fuel (how many parts?) I have finally completed testing on my new super-lifter the Gichi-Nenookaasi Mk I

It's a 6 prop lifter that can haul a 30 ton payload with a 5 1/2 minute flight time or an almost 17 minute flight with a payload of 20 tons (Though I imagine if you went with a 10 ton payload or less you could get up to half an hour.)

[Azimech]

8 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Nice   How did you manage the torque/thrust balance between main rotor and tail rotor?

My first attempts at a single-rotor heli, I had no way to synchronize the thrust output from the tail with the main rotor, so had to manage torque-induced-yaw mostly manually; lots of manual input and adjusting of trims/defaults.  Was a barely controllable mess, but did manage to go up, and come back down in one piece.

Torque and rpm should be max at all times, the only difference is pitch authority limit coupled to normal controls. If the tail rotor bites too much, lower the max rpm.

If torque is not at max, you'll get a too large drop in rpm when changing pitch.

[Cavscout74]

20 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I'd really like some longer USI-Life Support supply & fertilizer cans

So I figured out a workaround for this - I took two of the unneeded variants of the Near Future trusses (LH2O & Argon) & changed the resources to Fertilizer & Mulch (LH2O variant) & Supplies (Argon variant).   The only issue I have now, after an endurance test of my crew cycler design is the greenhouse isn't actually making new supplies.  On the plus side, the small nuclear reactors should be just fine for power - running for just over a year with one reactor & the RTG's as the only power sources with habitat, recycler & greenhouse running, it kept everything charged & only used ~2 units of enriched uranium (out of 125).  It has 4 Gigantors for main power, but they are going to keep greenhouses & recyclers running out past Jool.  Now if I can just get the greenhouse to make supplies rather than just use mulch & fertilizer, I'll be on the right track. 

Until then, back to my current career:

After several weeks on the red planet, it was time to head back to the station, then on to Ike.  Val insisted since Jeb got to land, she would perform the first takeoff from Duna.

Back to orbit:

After docking with the Duna crew station, they only had a few minutes to transfer over to the Duna Courier for the hop over to Ike.

The hasty fix I made to add surface experiments to the Ike lander were a little too hasty - I forgot the second docking port, so the crew had to transfer to the lander the hard way

Of course, the Ike mining base was on the night side.  Jeb managed a fair landing (~180m from the base with nothing broken), and they performed a quick flag planting, but further Ike operations are going to wait for daylight.  First up, Kelrik has to move one of the main solar arrays on the mining base - it was attached at an angle by some idiot (me) in the VAB and it clips one of the radiator panels.  Then a nice spot for the surface experiments has to be found & get them deployed.  Once all that is done, they may have time to go back to Duna & try to find another surface anomaly.

[LekkoBot]

I made a prop plane that works pretty well

I Just need to work on the landings

Edited July 16, 2019 by LekkoBot
missed a space

[Geonovast]

I'm gonna see how many of these things I can put on the lawn before the neighbors start complaining.  (Looking at you, physics-easing)

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Avatar test plane joyride. I paid a visit to a space center that I assembled for JNSQ and flexed its muscle as a hypersonic transport. It performed well, taking 30 tons of Ore nearly 1/4 the circumference of Kerbin, and holding together on touchdowns...but it couldn't break Mach 7.

I also did some testing of Rational Resources' ISRU options for its next update, and started wishing for the drills to have a white variant. Is it too much to get 32 Xenon per second? I should probably nerf that.

[Targus]

Making some Kerbin based 8MW beam power station 

Here's my first version of beam relay 

I think I'm gonna upgrade it in the future 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Targus

[TheFlyingKerman]

Finally managed to land on Eve,

and then lifted off

and reached orbit. Then a Kerbal picked up the science

[Jeb-head-mug kerman]

3 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I'm gonna see how many of these things I can put on the lawn before the neighbors start complaining.  (Looking at you, physics-easing)

 

Lol

[KerikBalm]

I updated mods, and tried out new props, ideally for Eve and Duna on my 3x rescale.

The helo blades worked well initially:

With excellent lifting power, and a decent top speed. That design used 2 heavy rotors, 2 standard rotors, and 6 fuel cells.

Alas... it did not take well to spaceplane launching, and was too draggy, as I couldn't rotate the rotor blades to be edge on to the airflow:

So I turned to prop blades:

I found I could get by on 4 standard rotors, and still lift 40 tons, and I could tweaks settings for an ultra efficient cruise that allows plenty of range to circumnavigate kerbin:

But it gets better:

With such low consumption numbers, I turned off the fuel cells, so I could calculate consumption based on EC:

Significantly less than 1 fuel cell's worth of consumption... easily supplied by solar panels!

So I did that:

I'm not sure how it will handle on Duna or Eve yet, but I like the looks of this (its got a 40 ton payload while doing this)

Then I took it to space, with its payload switched for a propulsion module in the cargobay:

I had a bit of a mishap at separation, something I can overcome (cut throttle on both craft, pitch down with the orbital section, relight rocket), the tilt rotor lost a prop blade and its vertical stab, I think the recoverable carrier plane was damaged too, I reverted after getting to orbit, and didn't switch back to it while it was still on its ballistic arc.

But other than the separation mishap, it went well, I just need to check its handling on Duna and Eve, and I'm ready for my main 3x game

 

 

[RealKerbal3x]

7 hours ago, Geonovast said:

May I ask what engines you are using there?

[Pds314]

Made a turbine-driven plane that flies with magic instead of science.



 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Pds314

[Geonovast]

6 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

May I ask what engines you are using there?

6x Sarnus-HC1-280 "Grivan", which do not gimbal.

3x Sarnus-HD1-279 "Navi", which have identical thrust and ISP as the Grivan, but gimbal (and weigh a little more because of it)

They're from BDB, of course.

 

The center Navi has full gimbal, the outer two have it set to 36 so they don't clip into their neighbors.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Geonovast

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Imgur is telling me that today is my Cake Day. Makes me glad I've got screenies for you guys...

Began my day with ScanSat Bop gathering biome data to determine the best biome to put down a Pathfinder base; by day's end, the satellite was in a 250.2 x 248.3 kilometer, 90.16° inclined orbit. As hoped, the mysterious biome I collected data from yesterday was the Valleys (learned that you get different KerbNet results if you access it from a probe core versus a narrow-band scanner, and the probe core tells you the damn biome), and there are four general equatorial Valley areas on Bop, so I targeted one of them with a waypoint marker - that'll be my initial set down point when I'm finally ready. Meanwhile in Bop orbit, LSV House Atreides completed the print of a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft. After fueling it with monoprop, the new craft was released and then docked onto one of Atreides's main docking ports. I'll be landing it on Kerbin at the next opportunity, which I hope will give me the go for Bop landing.

Positioning of the Bopcomm communications satellite constellation also took place, with Bopcomm Alpha successfully reaching a 2-hour orbit at just over 83,000 m over the surface. Bopcomm Bravo and Bopcomm Charlie were released and made their respective burns for positioning. Bopcomm Charlie had a pretty standard set of maneuvers to put it into position, but Bopcomm Bravo went a little low...you know how the wiki mentions that the highest altitudes on Bop are something like 24,000 m? I managed to find them inadvertently and it was only a quick radial burn that prevented a loss of craft...

Okay, so it's not exactly hovering mere meters above the ground. This is still way closer than I'm comfortable with...

Bopcomm Bravo did acheive a 2-hour orbit, but it also wound up slightly out of position due to its maneuvering; Bopcomm Charlie can't connect to it. I've yet to take the necessary corrective measures to re-position the satellite but it is on my agenda. I'll have to run the numbers before I do anything there. 

The Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin completed a print of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe, which launched after taking on fuel from the station. The probe burned to rendezvous with Module JP-S8, which at rendezvous was found to be a Mk3 Cargo Bay.

Those of you who think this is a bad approach angle are 100% right.

The probe grabbed the target after some finagling and de-orbited, bringing the target down safely in the Grasslands 30 kilometers to the west of KSC. The replacement contract was one of those ludicrous colonization missions to South Base near KSC, so I loaded up colonists Robro and Beagun Kerman into an Echo Flyer 7b quadcopter and flew them the three kilometers out to the base. Scientist Ribsted Kerman hooked the 'copter up long enough for the passengers to unload, then disconnected the craft and went back inside, at which point I flew the copter back to KSC.

Nice to know the design works on a plethora of worlds. Still haven't tried it out on Laythe yet but I know it's coming eventually. I'd try to fly it on Jool but landing it would probably prove to be problematic.

Mortimer Kerman must've called Uber again. He's probably going out for a $20,000 haircut...

Last story of the night was over Eve with the repositioning of LSV House Corrino to conduct a high-altitude rescue mission. The warp maneuver to slow the ship the ship down went as planned, but the altitude change did not - I overshot and didn't realize it until the ship was halfway to Moho. I brought her around, returned to Eve and then more carefully put her into a 8,180.5 x 6,064.2 kilometer, 2.12° inclined orbit, after which pilot Aldler Kerman departed aboard J. G. Backus docked to Corrino to conduct the rescue. I haven't got a rendezvous with Malgar's Pod set up just yet; Backus is ten degrees of the craft's plane and won't reach the ascending node for another couple of hours, but I'm confident that she'll get there and back with fuel to spare at the end. 

Today I hope to conduct the Eve rescue, and my calendar is finally clear enough to send House Atreides on to Duna after someone conducts an EVA; I've got tourists heading to Duna and Ike, which is the next destination on the ship's present itinerary. In the long term, the plan is to send her on to Eve to drop off two of the engineers and print up the base-seeding lander headed for Bop, at which point she'll return to Kerbin, drop off the G-LOC then head back to Bop to hopefully begin surface operations. I've also got the launch of the Beer Can 7 Eve ascent vehicle coming up; last report says there's about six days remaining on the craft's construction at this point. Pretty much all of my contracts are dependent on the Beer Can and House Atreides at this point. I'm confident and hopeful that I can get their respective missions completed soon - largely my main issue is having very limited time in which to play the game (not to mention I'm pretty sure I've got at least one leaky mod installed - game gets interminably slow and takes forever to shut down if I play much past 45 minutes in a single go, and there's only so much you can accomplish in that time frame...).

Edited July 16, 2019 by capi3101

[Jett_Quasar]

Apollo 11 craft file has been posted

 

 

Download here:
https://kerbalx.com/Jett_Quasar/Apollo-11

 - Jett

 

[Dafni]

10 minutes ago, Jett_Quasar said:

Apollo 11 craft file has been posted

 

Amazing stuff, as usual. Only minor gripe would be the eyesore of the heatshield shroud. Was there a reason for not using the upper attachment node that does away with the shroud? Just curious.

[Jett_Quasar]

2 hours ago, Dafni said:

Amazing stuff, as usual. Only minor gripe would be the eyesore of the heatshield shroud. Was there a reason for not using the upper attachment node that does away with the shroud? Just curious.

Good idea, I just never thought of it as being an issue...

 - Jett

[Dafni]

11 minutes ago, Jett_Quasar said:

Good idea, I just never thought of it as being an issue...

 - Jett

It's no issue, really. Just never liked that shroud. The craft is still awesome. And a well timed tribute too!

[DStaal]

I find using the closer node still doesn't look right to me.  I tend to go with the Decoupler Shroud mod for this, as it's shroud is much nicer.

[Tyko]

On 7/14/2019 at 7:53 PM, Cavscout74 said:

I spent some time today tinkering with my alternate install.  Part of what I wanted to do was basically impossible, so as a substitute, I loaded a trimmed down Near Future Construction & it seems like it will do nicely.  I rebuilt my single-launch crew station design & my crew cycler design - the latter took a little work to get it where I wanted, and I'm still not quite happy.  I'd really like some longer USI-Life Support supply & fertilizer cans - stacks of the short ones are racking up my part count, and I barely have enough for a trip to Jool.  It'll handle 4 crew, but if I go up even 1 more it becomes marginal at best

 

Procedural Parts has USI-LS procedural tanks. Those work great for me.

[Cavscout74]

Just now, Tyko said:

Procedural Parts has USI-LS procedural tanks. Those work great for me. 

I didn't realize that, although the last time I messed with Procedural Parts, I wasn't using any LS mods.  I'll have to check it out again.  I'm probably going to keep the trusses anyway, but Procedural Parts might make up for a couple of other mods I'm trying to get away from in this alternate install.

My wife wasn't feeling well this morning, so we just sat home.  Other than waiting on her some, I had some KSP time so I got my Ike fueling operation going, set up the surface experiments, then got the crew back to Duna station.  I also landed my second (small) Duna outpost on the north polar icecaps and got a satellite inserted into very low Moho polar orbit.

Getting the fuel rover inflated & in position to fill up:

Deploying surface experiments while the fuel rover gets refilled:

Once the crew was back in orbit & waiting to rendezvous with the Duna Courier, I went ahead & landed the second Duna outpost.  Landing went well, but my attempt to dump the landing engines went slightly off track - one of the engines flipped over & destroyed the self-destruct charge & fuel tank, leaving a pile of debris nearby.

Finally, my Moho polar reconnaissance orbiter arrived & established itself in a very low orbit passing over the Mohole:

 

 

[Tyko]

New save playing using the JNSQ solar system (I seem to spend a lot of time in early game with the 3 month update cycle).

I'm in the Gemini era and launched my first station to test early life support systems and extended stays in space. This represents three launches. From right to left: 2 Crew Orbiter/Return vehicle, KSS-1 Station, disposable Resupply Vehicle.

The Resupply vessel's core part is a customized SSPX habitation part with the crew accommodations ripped out and replaced with unmanned probe core and cargo space (Supplies for 3 crew for 100 days). It's my version of a Progress type vehicle. @Nertea - thanks (again) for all the beautiful parts!

Edited July 16, 2019 by Tyko

[Barzon]

@Tyko gib patch pls

[KerrMü]

It´s been a long time since I thought "hmmm, could I fly this over to the island airfield?"

Turns out I could. Phew! Just before the sun went down.

I barely made it. Fuel was running out and the landing involved extreme amounts of luck and very little skill. I´d say this heli is a step into the right direction, but it definitely isn´t good. It is controllable with my old flightstick, but with keyboard... not really. Maybe I´ll be able to improve it with more experience. Oh, and the fenestron isn´t there just for good looks. I cheated a little bit. Six of the 12 blades are for steering, the other six for yaw trim.