What did you do in KSP1 today?

[capi3101]

I made it - Kerbals launched to low Eve orbit. Full report tomorrow. For today, here's the blooper reel...


Uh, space is not in that direction, guys...

I don't know what's more impressive, the explosion or the flying concrete structure that's supposed to be anchored to the ground...

Love how their rocket blew up and they're all like "AGAIN! AGAIN!"...

[Guest]

50,050 reply! I'm a role of victories

14 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

I made it - Kerbals launched to low Eve orbit. Full report tomorrow.

Video of beefy details plz!

On my story I too am working on my own Eve lander and the community is great at telling me. But still I want a lot of different opinions.

Edited July 21, 2019 by Guest

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

Video of beefy details plz!

On my story I too am working on my own Eve lander and the community is great at telling me. But still I want a lot of different opinions.

No video, sorry - my KSP box is designed for office work; just playing it nearly melts the CPU, let alone attempting to record anything (at least anything in a non-blurry resolution). But, I'll be as detailed in my log entry as I can tomorrow. 

Big trick of Eve is to keep your TWR relatively low through the thickest part of the atmosphere below 20k. Q is a real factor down in the soup. A TWR of 1.05 is a good target; 1.1 is pushing it, and I'd only go higher if you're using something like Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (i.e. something that let's you be fine with a higher Q). At 20k, you're at about 1 atmo so from that point it's akin to a Kerbin launch, except that the final orbital velocity will be up around 3200 give or take.

Definitely something to be said for being able to land with one craft and building a separate ascent vehicle in situ.  Just saying.

[Guest]

After a lot of troubleshooting trying to track down what mod was causing the build to be buggy I finally got it all sorted out and launched my first space station in Real Solar System!

I present to you, Skyhab! XD

Edited July 22, 2019 by Guest

[ash73]

Haven't played Kerbal for ages but thought what better way to celebrate 50 years since Apollo 11 than to do a tribute mission. Slightly different design, just to simplify things.

1. Take-off

2. Reaching orbit

3. CM and lander in orbit around the Mun

4. Neil and Buzz EVA to board the lander

5. Lander away

6. Lander de-orbits

7. Approaching touchdown, some folk in Houston are turning blue

8. The Eagle has landed!

9. Planting the flag

10. Ascent stage

11. Plotting rendezvous with the CM

12. Docking

13. Boosting out of Mun orbit

14. Ditching the lander before re-entry

15. Re-entry!

16. Parachutes deployed

17. Neil, Buzz and Michael home safe

[Gunnerline]

2 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

After a lot of troubleshooting trying to track down what mod was causing the build to be buggy I finally got it all sorted out and launched my first space station in Real Solar System!

I present to you, Skyhab! XD

Congratulations!  Hopefully this is the start of many others!

 

I continued construction of a lunar gateway, mostly as an excuse to try out these fantastic Habtech 2 modules  (link) by @benjee10.  Here, the airlock module is being added to the assembly in Low Munar Orbit:

And the primary habitation and control module.  Also a nice shot of the cryogenic engine and the spherical hydrogen tanks attached to it from the Near Future and Cryogenic engines mods from @Nertea:

If orbital space stations are wrong to have cryoengines, I don't want to be right.

 

However, my primary task of the day was to assemble a munar research outpost.  Not only for the contract that had been accepted many moons previous, but also because I've never put together a station out of mod-based structures designed to look like a planetary base.  Of course, we had to get there first:

Gunnerline, you might say, why is it that you don't have a second base structure on this coupler?  The answer, dear viewer, is that Gunnerline is not always very smart, and this time he didn't realize that the off-center mass would have rather aggressive effects on the thrust profile of the trans-munar injection stage.  As in, "it took four periapsis kicks to make it to munar orbit" aggressive effects.  And then I discovered that the sky crane was also not able to account for the difference in weight distribution, potentially throwing the entire mission into FUBAR territory.  But thankfully, I was able to jerry rig a fix by decreasing the thrust in the front half of the skycrane to 65%, balancing out the overall thrust profile:

Space Truckin' 2:  Electric Boogaloo

 

After numerous restarts "simulations,"  I was finally able to tease the munar station down to the surface right in the center of a small crater.

That's a tasty boi right there.

 

But a munar base is nothing without kerbals to make it home, so the Pathfinder program began with an auspicious start with Pathfinder 1:

It's the moments like this that make all the trials worth it.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Gunnerline
Gunnerline can't spell, apparently

[Reinhart Mk.1]

okay this is the last post im gonna make. i was just proud of my accomplishment, but this is what i did today

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by Reinhart Mk.1

[Guest]

Jeb took a lot of gees coming back from his test flight XD

...out of curiosity does anything bad happen to kerbals if you go past that scale?

[Reinhart Mk.1]

1 minute ago, Dale Christopher said:

...out of curiosity does anything bad happen to kerbals if you go past that scale?

ive tried simple a few simple rentry situations and yeah they just vaporize, not even like P O O F just meep then gone

 

edit: by "situations" i mean entry with a kerbal on the outside outside of the craft(even away from the flames). idk if that's what you meant lol

Edited July 22, 2019 by Reinhart Mk.1

[Athen]

I designed a space shuttle capable of docking to my space station, Space Shuttle Fortune. I created it after lessons learned from my previous Shuttle, Space Shuttle Mayflower.

https://imgur.com/NVamEn7

[Loskene]

1 hour ago, Dale Christopher said:

Jeb took a lot of gees coming back from his test flight XD

...out of curiosity does anything bad happen to kerbals if you go past that scale?

No, it just doesn't display values above 15G. You can press F3 to see your peak G-forces on the active craft. If you have Kerbal GLOC enabled in difficulty settings they'll pass out and become temporarily unresponsive after sustained high-G. I think those otherwise flavour text kerbal stats might have an effect on individual G-tolerance.

[Matrix Aran]

32 minutes ago, Loskene said:

No, it just doesn't display values above 15G. You can press F3 to see your peak G-forces on the active craft. If you have Kerbal GLOC enabled in difficulty settings they'll pass out and become temporarily unresponsive after sustained high-G. I think those otherwise flavour text kerbal stats might have an effect on individual G-tolerance.

Thats correct. When you play with GLOC enabled, your Kerbal's role and experience play a part in their G tolerance. Tourists also have (somewhat lower) tolerances and contracts can fail (or succeed) if you cause them to pass out. That said, at the default tollerances you have to make some exceptionally extreme maneuvers to cause even a level 1 kerbal to pass out, so its still mostly for flavor.

[KerikBalm]

Made a VTOL cargo SSTO for 3x Rald, carrzing a >38 ton payload. Rald's thin atmosphere meant it needed a lot of engines... I mean... a lot...

But it flew:

Then I had to think about how to get it off 3x Kerbin (1.25x atmosphere height), replacing its payload with extra tanks, and a (bit OP) wolfhound, I was just barely able to get it to orbit.

Vertical takeoff produced a lot of particles as the engines spooled up, and used a lot of LF just waiting for the engines to spool up. Margins on Kerbin are thin, so I ended up doing a horizontal takeoff, even if its going to operate as a VTOL at its destination:

Then for my 100% recovery 2 stage design, I made an alternate 2nd stage rocket for a design that pulls a payload instead of pushing one.

Testing it with a tilt rotor needed some funky placement, and it looked a bit like a flying train, but somehow it worked.

 

 

[FahmiRBLX]

Made a shuttle using @NESD's Mk1 Open Cockpit and so far so good.

Not to forget my shuttle collection put inside Kerbinside Remastered's Airship Hangar. It reminds me on the Buran hangar / VAB in Baikonur back during its golden age.

Pictures incoming, that if I had time to post them. (Was back in the hostel after yesterday's 'extended' break due to diarrhea. Made and tested the open-cockpit shuttle in today's morning)

Edited July 22, 2019 by FahmiRBLXian
DeEp SpAcE DuPlICaTiOn KrAkEn ExIsT

[Hotel26]

Sent a rover to rescue Billy-Bobory Kerman, whom I had left stranded for a few months at 55W.  Coasting back to base in orbit at 5,071m 555 m/s:

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) TL, DR: I had a busy weekend with a lot of stuff that happened. Got a tonne of screenies too - going to be using the spoiler shields today, methinks.

Friday kicked off with the successful completion of a colonization contract at the Enchova Central outpost on Duna, with two of my colonists being retrained as staff later in the day. After that, the Spamcan 7a lander I sent from space station Munport over to the Non Caseus Yards over Mun successfully rendezvoused and docked with the station. Scientist Roddon Kerman boarded the lander, which then departed from the shipyard.

I had forgotten that NCY had a lander of its own - seen left, back - and so I could've picked up Roddon a lot sooner...

The lander deorbited and landed at the Piper Alpha outpost on the surface. Roddon attempted to hook the lander up to the outpost via KIS resource transfer station, but unfortunately the lander had set down out of range of the hose, so the refueling attempt was aborted and Roddon took up his new assignment at the outpost. Bob, who had been assigned to the outpost for far too long and is at this point my only remaining veteran to not have a 5-star rating, boarded the lander along with pilot Patrod Kerman and scientist Tefrod Kerman. The Spamcan then returned to a 16.6 x 14.7, 1.81° inclined orbit. Out of gas at that point, Lusitania (a Luv Boht 7 rescue craft) departed Munport and set a rendezvous with the lander.

Next, LSV House Atreides warped to Eve directly after having spent some time over Kerbol reducing relative speed; she arrived going 3,050 m/s and proceeded to settle into a 982.1 x 738.5 kilometer, 4.03° inclined orbit with no warp-backs required. After her arrival, engineers Macnie, Gemul and Matdon Kerman re-boarded Gilligan docked to Atreides, which then departed and set course for the Caue Serpente Yards. Gilligan made the rendezvous and docking successfully.

Kerbolrise over Eve, with Gilligan just docked to the Caue Serpente Yards.

En route, the decision as to which engineer would be assigned to the post permanently was made - Matdon boarded the shipyard, and after taking on fuel supplies, Gilligan departed for a return to House Atreides.

With some time to kill prior to the scheduled launch of the Beer Can 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle, I next elected to assign some of my personnel of "lesser intelligence" to the South Base outpost near KSC. To that end, I cobbled together a pair of Hitchhiker modules with a quad of Mineshaft crew tubes attached and put it out on the launchpad with pilots Kardon, Wilrey and Samzor Kerman, engineer Nelrim Kerman and scientists Willin, Frovan and Siefen Kerman aboard. Pilot Lutop Kerman then boarded an Echo Flyer 7b quadcopter on the Runway along with tourists Tesby, Peggy, Teddrin, Podnie, and Lalock Kerman. The copter flew the three kilometers out to South Base and landed, where outpost scientist Ribsted Kerman hooked up the 'copter and the tourists offloaded for a short-term colonization contract (colonizing Kerbin once again). Once detached again, Lutop piloted the copter over to the launchpad.

The pad's actually fairly spacious if you're not going too fast.

Once the copter landed, it fell to Kardon to hook the copter up to the contraption I had out there.

He obviously had no problems whatsoever. Really.

Once hooked up, the selected staff all boarded. Kardon detached the 'copter from the temporary housing unit (which was recycled) and the Flyer returned to South Base, delivering the staff to the outpost's Castillo module without incident. Lutop eventually landed the 'copter back on top of the VAB (which is where you're supposed to park your VTOLs after all).  

At that point, I had nothing really between me and the scheduled launch of the Beer Can, but I had noted in the VAB that the design was going to take more fuel than I had available at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve where the Beer Can was being constructed, and it had been a while since I got a construction update, so I headed out there. Got an unwelcome surprise when I did.

Damnation.

Owing to a funky handling of the Rocket Parts, the launch had to be pushed back five days. The only positive side effect of this was that I was able to get a series of new Castillo Depots printed up and deployed at the outpost, which were then configured for fuel storage. Gas wasn't going to be an issue when the Beer Can was finally ready to go.

Saturday began with Lusitania's successful rendezvous and docking with the Spamcan over Mun followed by Gilligan's successful rendezvous and docking with House Atreides. After those events took place, I resolved to put everything on hold until after the Beer Can's launch, so the rest of my time was spent out at ALK getting ready. I did go ahead and move the Echo 2 rover, Echo 3 quadcopter and Echo 4 quadcopter away from the base in preparation for the launch, to reduce the local part count more than anything else.

Finally, I got the signal I'd been waiting for - construction on the Beer Can 7 was, after waiting twenty days, finally complete. The six kerbals riding in the craft - rescuee engineer Luddorf Kerman and tourists Haiald, Neilfrid, Lefel, Newrigh and Lizemone Kerman - boarded the rocket and fueling began.

Spoiler

The crew cockpits in which The Six were going to ride were behing a fairing; Ship Manifest was the only way I was going to be able to get them there.

I didn't necessarily need TAC to fuel the rocket up but it made life easier. You can see how thirsty the damn thing was. Didn't realize it at the time I took this screenie but I had seven ADTP-2-3s that I was supposed to leave empty...

I waited until kerbolrise for the launch.
 

Spoiler

 

Not really, of course - I had some issues with explosions and flying concrete structures on the first several launch attempts that I thought would be ironed out if I left the depots refuel. Poor thinking as it turned out but at least I got this screenie out of it.

Engineer Gilford Kerman looking at the floating launchpad with the thousand-tonne rocket sitting on it and saying to himself "Oh yeah, this is going to go well..."

Liftoff! Wait, we're supposed to head, straight up, right? Left? Right?

After first booster separation. The real trick to an Eve launch is to keep your TWR down through the first 20,000 m. This is an example of what not to do...a 1.05 TWR is really plenty at this point; you don't need fast, as long as you're still going up, you're looking for "intact".

After second booster separation. Still pushing it.

After third booster separation - I was really starting to think I might make it at this point. Still not somewhere that you want to oversteer - I got to this point twice. First time I turned too sharply and took the payload right off...

Orbital insertion burn. You really want to do it like we do here on Earth - just get the craft up into space, then worry about circularizing. None of that "burn most fuel at launch, small circularization" crap you can get away with at Kerbin.

 

A moment of triumph and jubilation for all involved.

After multiple attempts that largely failed due to my leaving moderation enabled in Atmosphere Autopilot, I finally managed to get the Beer Can 7 off the pad and into a 124.3 x 121.6 kilometer, 1.34° inclined Eve orbit.

Clean up of the launch debris occurred next - I had sixteen pieces of it (twelve of which were launch clamps) and the launch destroyed ALK's launch pad, so I had to print and deploy a new one, which was not a hard task for the staff to complete.

ALK's new configuration. We're putting it right next to the structures that hold all the rocket fuel, of course.

With the Beer Can in orbit, it was time to get the passengers over to space station Eveport where Strange Cargo and Next Objective were docked for the trip back to Kerbin, and to get back to work doing everything else I had put on hold for the launch. The Bill Clinton 7cE probe docked at Eveport - subsequently dubbed St. Simeous Salus - departed the station and burned to rendezvous with the Beer Can, with rendezvous and docking happening at the end of the day on Sunday. 

I had hoped to name the craft after the patron saint of dumb ideas but it turns out there isn't one. Naming it in honor of a holy fool isn't that bad of a second choice, me thinks.

St. Simeous Salus successfully docked with the passenger module and the final booster stage was discarded at that point, deorbiting to burn up in Eve's atmosphere and/or crash its remains in to the Explodium Sea to the east of ALK. The craft has conducted its burn to take it to Eveport; it's scheduled to arrive in about another ninety minutes. Meanwhile, Lusitania returned the lander to Munport just this morning, with the Spamcan having docked but Lusitania herself having yet to do so. I also sent the Fred Savage 7 MOLE laboratory (the only craft available) from space station Kerbinport over to the Dystopia Planitia shipyards to pick up pilot Rodhat Kerman; the lab docked earlier this morning and Roddon is safely aboard, ready to get away from engineer Ceri Kerman and her inaneness. Finally, LSV House Corrino warped out of Eve's orbit. Rather than sending the craft straight back to Kerbin, I decided to send her on to Jool in order to bleed off speed; just something I'm trying out - I suspect it'd safer to do it at Jool than trying to do it over Kerbol, which has a tendency to cook ablator at close range and make the drydock's uncomfortably hot on my warp ships...

Well, today I'll still be trying to catch up from the launch - I want to get the Beer Can to Eveport so I can get those folks home, I need to dock up Lusitania and get Necessary Evil on course to Minmus, I want to get House Corrino into Jool orbit for a little bit to do an exploration contract and then send her back to Kerbin, and I want to get House Atreides over to Gilly to drop off another engineer at the Samwell Tarly Yards there. Next big job on the horizon is the establishment of a ground base on Bop and crew replacements in Kerbin's SOI. No time frame set for either of those.

een typing for ninety minutes now and I should really get to work doing my paying job, so that's how I'll end this post...

[DStaal]

I had what was probably a cursed flight...  Barely made it to orbit, transfer to the Mun went ok, but then the Mun landing used in excess of 3,000d/v, due to control problems.  (Available because it was designed to *hop* around the Mun...)  Only for the landing gear to fail from a design failure (the engines were to close once they deployed...) taking the command module and the crew with it.

However: The primary goal of the mission was to deliver some experiments to one of the southern Munar anomalies.  The experiments survived the crash intact, ~400m away from the anomaly.  (Which was the designated landing zone...)  The experiments needed to be set up within 100m of the anomaly however, so a nearby rover that had originally scouted the anomaly was redirected to move the experiments is place:

A probe core used for landing was scavenged off the rover, and the experiments are now running, under reduced efficiency.  The rover - having visited all the anomalies possible on Mun - will now be scouting for mining base locations.

[Guest]

First concept for the eve lander is complete

[KatastrophicKonstellations]

On 7/19/2019 at 11:58 AM, Frank_G said:

Very nice and welcome to the forums!

If you copy the bbc-code from your imgur picture site and paste it into the post, the picture is shown directly here, so people don't need to leave the page

well I've been Playing since 2015, so i'm not very new, but I mainly used Planes, and Hardly ever flew rockets, also thanks for the tip about posting photos!

[Guest]

My space station now has a crew of kerbals  

[XLjedi]

Today I found out the top of the control tower at the Dessert Base is glitched if you try to walk on it...

I also found out the tops of these ruins are a lot larger than I thought they were...

 

[StrandedonEarth]

I was trying to find decent tourist contracts to fill the inaugural trip (in my new 1.7 career) of the Space Camp Bus. Well, maybe these ones that wanna visit an asteroid... Any asteroids around? Quick, KerbMan, to the tracking station!

'Lo and behold I quickly find an E-class asteroid on a collision course with Kerbin, impacting in about 100 days! It looks like I have a new toy to play with. First step was to task the lonely Sol station with seeing if it could manage a rendezvous before it entered Kerbin's SOI. With some playing around, the astrogator (some no-name, which is why they were in such a forgotten station) managed to plot an intercept ten days before the SOI change, passing  50km away at less than 350m/s. As a bonus, it swings a wide orbit through Kerbins SOI first, giving an opportunity and a staging orbit to send tankers and the Space Camp Bus (just launched after spotting the 'roid) out to meet Sol Station as it swings through in 50-some days, on it's way to the asteroid.

It looks like this career has a little extra excitement going on. I've got some planning and work to do. Kerbal Construction Time will give this a little extra pressure, but there's lot's of time (famous last words when I need to match a high hyperbolic orbit)

[Cavscout74]

I started getting ready for the next Eve window in my career.  First up was an improved version of my mining base, now with grid fins that extend past the inflatable heatshields, so hopefully I can maintain control  Also with extra sepratrons to make sure the heatshields get pushed clear of the base.

Over in sandbox, I fired up a Bachem Natter replica I downloaded from somewhere.  It was doing weird things at first (like skipping stages somehow) but I finally got it to launch & Jeb had some buzzed around a little till it came apart.  Yay for kerbal parachutes. 

Most of the rest of my time today was spent trying to build an Eve crew lander.  I've actually only done one (successful) manned mission to Eve's surface & back, and that was several careers ago, so it's about time I tried again.  Also, that was before I started using life support mods.  So far, not so good.  Two failures just trying to get to LKO, then several trying to enter Eve's atmosphere.  The last one, I was actually doing ok - got through the major heating phase, slowing down nicely, drogues deployed, mains deployed, staged away the airbrakes.  Then mains all failed due to "overheating and aero forces" a minute later.  And the inflatable heatshields took out half my launch engines when jettisoned even though I was nose first at that point due to losing my main chutes & the heatshields being higher drag than the drogues.  Back to the drawing board.  I think starting from scratch is in order.

[capi3101]

1 hour ago, Cavscout74 said:

Most of the rest of my time today was spent trying to build an Eve crew lander.  I've actually only done one (successful) manned mission to Eve's surface & back, and that was several careers ago, so it's about time I tried again.  Also, that was before I started using life support mods.  So far, not so good.  Two failures just trying to get to LKO, then several trying to enter Eve's atmosphere.  The last one, I was actually doing ok - got through the major heating phase, slowing down nicely, drogues deployed, mains deployed, staged away the airbrakes.  Then mains all failed due to "overheating and aero forces" a minute later.  And the inflatable heatshields took out half my launch engines when jettisoned even though I was nose first at that point due to losing my main chutes & the heatshields being higher drag than the drogues.  Back to the drawing board.  I think starting from scratch is in order.

My advice - don't dump the airbrakes. Seriously - keep them all the way to the ground (and keep them deployed the whole time), then dump them if you must. First hand experience on this one.

Edited July 23, 2019 by capi3101

[Gunnerline]

Good Evening Kerbonauts and Tasty Kumkuats, I bring fair tidings from the Land of Gunnerline.  Where the physics are hot and the engineer's warnings are dutifully ignored.

The primary task of today's Kerbal session was to take advantage of a fortuitous transfer window.  Eve has come rather close to Kerbin, enough that a full transfer and entry burn should clock in at around 2800 delta-V or so.  But a transfer window is nothing if I don't have a spaceship that can actually take advantage of that window, so I needed to assemble something that could take my kerbals to and from Eve.  It was pretty clear early on that a single-vessel was not really something I wanted to build, not only because of simplicity, but also because the idea of sending kerbals all the way to not-Venus and back in a capsule less than the size of my bedroom seemed like the sort of slow-burn psychological experiment that would get me tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity (kermanity?).

So, before we could leave, we needed a ship.  And a ship needs fuel and propulsion.  Between nuclear thermal rockets and cryogenic rockets, cryo seemed to win out, if only because I could not manage to get an acceptable TWR and delta-V amount with the technological level of NTRs available.  But I would need a concerning amount of fuel, and a very large launch platform to carry it into orbit.

Pictured:  A concerning amount of fuel, and the very large launch platform

 

From there, the next phase was to assemble the crew complex, which was much easier to send into space.  Possibly due to not having to worry about the transportation of incredibly flammable material via controlled explosions.

The Pax Glupp* is completed in LKO

With the final assembly complete of the Pax Glupp, the ship was ready to take its victims brave kerbonauts through the silent ocean of space, if oceans were mostly empty and devoid of whales.

Not pictured:  The restart of the acceleration burn necessary when it was discovered that the command station of the Pax Glupp had been installed "upside down"

 

With the mission to Eve now established, and realizing that I'd spent much of my past few days in KSP pointedly *not* landing on extraterrestrial bodies as part of a continuing effort to plant a flag on every biome of a planet.  With the Mun well explored, it was time to start looking at the more extreme biomes, such as the poles:

Raven IX high above the rocky surface of the munar south pole.

You gotta take the time to enjoy the little things in life, like running on the surface of another planetary body.

 

 

*Ed. Note:  It's a long, probably very boring story involving a 4X game called Stellaris. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Gunnerline