What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

5 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

Expedition Purple starts today

Great timing - my manned Eve mission is arriving at the purple monster now.   Most of the craft are in orbit, with only 2 more still inbound.  The Gilly-bound craft are still in high Eve orbits, waiting on me having time to get them moved to Gilly.

Crew cycler arriving in Eve orbit.  One of the vessels I'm still waiting on is my Eve crew station, so the crew are stuck on board here for a few more days.  They've already gotten high & low orbit graviolli & EVA reports from everything around Eve's equator.

The Eve-1 lander also arrived.  I'm waiting for the crew station so my victim can at least be a level 3 pilot before trying to land on Eve.

I attempted to land another emergency fuel station, and again it lost control despite the addition of controls that should have kept it straight.  Next time, I'm just going to make a more compact version that will in between two inflated heatshields so it doesn't matter which end is which

Getting ready for entry, which aft heatshield & gridfins deployed

Remnants descending through Eve's clouds, looking remarkably similar to the first one that failed during entry.

Currently I also have a heavy remote rover with advanced scanning arm waiting to land on Eve, plus a small mining base, lander, relay & remote lander waiting in high Eve orbit until I have time to get them moved to Gilly.

 

I also just managed to kill a crew of 3 kerbals coming home from nearly a year on my Minmus mining base, including Elon Kerman.  I can't believe it happened.  I've only lost one pilot in this career until now, and he died testing an aircraft that was questionable at best.  This was a routine transfer - in fact, they were the 6th crew just at the mining base, not counting other bases & random missions.  The only difference was, I was a little low on my Pe (~24 km), and started heating up too much upon reentry.  My lower stage mostly exploded, but by the time parts of it stopped exploding, I thought I was pretty safe & staged off the Pomegranate pod for landing.  Only it wasn't safe & within 10 seconds of staging, it overheated & exploded.  I think I sat there for several seconds staring at the reaction wheel & parachute flying through the air without the pod with my jaw just hanging open in shock.  If I follow my normal naming protocol, then Eve, Duna & Laythe stations will now have names (Elon Kerman Memorial Station, etc).  I was quite proud that only a single station had a name until now.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Cavscout74

[qromodynmc]

I thought making this plane (f8 crusaderish) was impossible for a while, but yesterday i had bit of inspiration came at me so made this lesser-abomination.

 

[Lokachop]

I built my first SSTO!

Here's a pic of it on the SPH

[GDJ]

Last I played was March, so I updated everything (KSP 1.7.3 and the DLC's) and went out for a cruise.





Mach 1.440 with a twin Juno powered plane. Not too shabby....and at 10,000 Metres ASL.

Edited July 31, 2019 by GDJ

[Gunnerline]

Greetings cosmic jammers and lithoslammers!

With the truss complete on the Intentionally Left Blank and the Cумрак/Cолнце portion of the station now attached, it has been time to begin the next phase of construction of the project.  The first task was to bring the Z1 module up to the station so that the structure is capable of orientation and RSS control from a centralized location, especially with regards to its powerful set of reaction wheels:

 

The Z1 module is used here to orient the station in a polar orientation, ensuring maximum coverage of the Cумрак/Cолнце solar panels.

With station control finally established, I believed it was time for the station to receive its first inhabitants.  It felt appropriate that, with the "russian" side of the station complete (more or less), that it would provide the most reasonable place to dock a capsule for kerbal transfer, while construction continues on the other side of the station.  To this end, the I sent a Soyuz capsule with three of our most recent rescued kerbonauts eager kerbonauts along with the "Mол" specialized airlock and docking module:

Soyuz rocket/module and Russian ISS modules courtesy of @Beale and their Tantares mod

 

Additional construction included the addition of the Serenity multi-connector module with PMA adapter (though sadly, all mission images were corrupted), and the Tomodachi science laboratory:

When in doubt, just fire a massive module into space on an even taller rocket.

Because of the lack of connection points on the end of the Tomodachi module, I had to get creative with creating an orbital tug and RCS rendezvous/docking system.  A small drone core was placed on the upper docking port of the Tomodachi, but control was enforced on the longitudal axis of the laboratory module, allowing for precise alignment with the Serenity module.

The station is starting to look respectable.

Since contractors Kerbin-side had forgotten to install radiators on the truss system, and QA forgot to check to see if they were installed, I also completed the first of two service missions to install the large radiator panels on the rear of the station truss system:

Thomas Kerman inspects his handiwork after installing the right-side radiator system on the Intentionally Left Blank truss.

Also pictured, the Free Churro slowly trying to eke away from the camera

 

The biggest event, however, of the KSP missions I've run was my participation in the Shuttle Challenge!  Yes, having flown mod-installed orbiters for many of these station installation and maintenance missions, I believed it was time to give it a go and build my own orbiter.

Completely original design, Do Not Steal!

Everything is on fire, and yet they are so.  damn.  calm.

I should probably rebind my F12 key at some point

[Guest]

BAK is back fellow spacekerbals!

I swapped out my homemade rotor blades for the 1.7.3 prop blades on the Ikarus. 

They're wack.

On Kerbin, Ikarus now flies like a bat out of Hades, the props produce so much thrust the wings flex and it flies at nearly 200 m/s; it's also way overcontrolled for Kerbin now.

On Duna, however, they're much worse. My initial experiments failed to produce enough thrust/lift for flight there; however they required ridiculously low throttle to spin. Adding more blades helped but not enough. I think it ought to be a soluble problem but we'll see how complicated it is.

I also discovered a bug. https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23282#change-127679

Update: I got the Ikarus to fly on Duna. Barely, but it does it. It's a good deal faster than with the home-made rotors, but has tremendous trouble producing enough lift to get off the ground. Still draws very little power. I would need to add a lot more blades to make it genuinely workable.

I'm starting to think the 1.7.3 prop blades just aren't usable in such a thin atmosphere -- it's really nice that there is still a mission for props/rotors crafted from other parts.

Edited July 31, 2019 by Guest

[capi3101]

(1.6...something. Mental flatulence in progress). Not really all that much to show for my day yesterday, though in fairness it was one of those days where I didn't have as much time as normal to play. The fifteen hundred kilometer flight of an Echo Flyer 7 with pilot Lutop Kerman at the stick  over Kerbin didn't help me pad my log any at all either...

Mountains along my flight path. Service ceiling of the Echo Flyer 7 on Kerbin is only 11,000 meters, so I have some cause to be nervous around the things.

At least the landing zone was relatively flat...

At least his flight went off without incident and he successfully hit all five waypoints of a gravimetric survey. He's still out there this morning and I'm debating as to whether or not to fly him home or just recover the craft and take the money loss for not recovering the 'copter closer to KSC. Leaning towards the latter.

Day yesterday also included a mass driver shot, with the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun supplying space station Munport in orbit with fuel and some extra Enriched Uranium for the station's reactors. I drilled up 600 units of Ore at the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly for a contract, and the Infans Calicitrant Yards over Ike finished printing up a Bill Clinton 7c probe, which launched after fueling. The Clinton made its way to Tomwise's Shipwreck and rendezvoused (orbital flip required), grabbing the Cupola that engineer Tomwise Kerman trapped himself in successfully. After that the probe made its way to space station Ikeport (another orbital flip required), rendezvousing and docking safely. The probe will await the arrival of LSV House Harkonnen when it gets there with the next batch of tourists - whenever that will be - to catch a lift back to Kerbin.

Strange Cargo arrived back at Kerbin earlier this morning, rendezvousing and docking with space station Kerbinport. The ship stayed long enough to fuel and to offload passengers Melney and Karfurt Kerman, and to take on passengers Halbrett, Ludvis, Geofbert and Chadbus Kerman, leaving tourist Halby Kerman on board as well as engineer Luddorf Kerman and scientists Malgar and Pasted Kerman. Once the passengers were swapped, Strange Cargo departed the station once again and burned for Minmus. She'll arrive in a little over 10.5 days - not the best-timed of burns. On the other hand, she shouldn't have to do much in terms of course correction once she gets there.

Not really a whole lot going on right now - the big stuff will happen once Necessary Evil arrives back at Kerbin from Minmus here in a few hours. NE will be offloading staff heading back to the surface for reassignment and will be taking on a batch of colonists heading out to Ike; like Strange Cargo, she'll probably only be sticking around Kerbinport long enough for a wash and a wax (by which I mean refueling and passenger swaps). From there she'll be heading on to Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit. I've got more tourists heading outbound on interplanetary tours, so I'll probably need to send one more of my ferry ships over to Harkonnen before she heads out - probably Next Objective, since she'll likely be the next craft to coming back from Minmus. All my other non-tourist contracts are on hold at the moment except for a parts test at Kerbin, which I may or may not get to later today.

I hope to have something a little more interesting to talk about for y'all tomorrow.

[Shadowmage]

8 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I'm starting to think the 1.7.3 prop blades just aren't usable in such a thin atmosphere -- it's really nice that there is still a mission for props/rotors crafted from other parts.

Glad I'm not the only one to come to that conclusion.  The props work a treat on Kerbin.... but I haven't been able to get good thrust out of them on Duna at all.  The helicopter rotor-blades are a bit of a different story, and work logically on Duna just as they would on Kerbin (e.g. work fine, just need a bit more pitch / blade surface).

[capi3101]

30 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Glad I'm not the only one to come to that conclusion.  The props work a treat on Kerbin.... but I haven't been able to get good thrust out of them on Duna at all.  The helicopter rotor-blades are a bit of a different story, and work logically on Duna just as they would on Kerbin (e.g. work fine, just need a bit more pitch / blade surface).

What about Eve, y'all? Any of y'all tried yet?

Makes sense that propellers wouldn't work as well on Duna as they do on Kerbin. Atmosphere isn't as dense, ergo the mass flow rate and resultant thrust won't be as much. You counter that with bigger props.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Makes sense that propellers wouldn't work as well on Duna as they do on Kerbin. Atmosphere isn't as dense, ergo the mass flow rate and resultant thrust won't be as much. You counter that with bigger props.

The 1.7.3 prop blades aren't big enough. 

Fortunately props/rotors made from elevons still work fine. More lift, more torque needed.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, capi3101 said:

What about Eve, y'all? Any of y'all tried yet?

I tried swapping the home-made rotor blades for the official ones on one of my Evecopters. It did not work well at all. I logged an issue about it: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23290

Pending patches, these parts are clearly Kerbin (and maybe Laythe?) only. Until and unless they're patched, I'll stick to home-made rotors on other planets.

[Mahnarch]

Valentina ran out of juice returning from a contract rescue mission saving Kleborn from orbit of the Mun.

 

So, I made him get out and push that last 2 million Pe to get us down to 43km. It took a little while...

He's chilling in his quarantine cell, now.

 

I have also mastered manual docking! I have always struggled with that aspect and just let MechJeb do it but, I had to build a small/medium station in Kerbin orbit and I don't have rendezvous or docking unlocked, yet, so I forced myself to learn and, after docking 15+ modules and refuelers I am a God at docking, now!

[Tw1]

Meanwhile, on Kerbin's North Pole

Mitfurt: The sensors are showing something entered the security zone.  Anything out there?

Samcas: let's have a look

Samcas: hmmmm

Samcas:  Nope. Nothing to report.

Samcas:  Nothing to report at all

Also, the problem with building big radio towers for the fun of it is it makes the comms path algorithm make some odd choices.

Despite there being perfectly adequate towers on kerbin it can reach, my signal is being sent via my new tower on Minmus  

Edited August 1, 2019 by Tw1

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Another day of little things to report today. I began the day yesterday by slapping a Hydraulic Detachment Manifold on the bottom of a Bad Idea 3 survey plane on a mission to haul said part up to 23,000 m. Hauling was a success but I forgot to adjust the landing gear on the plane, came in hot, skidded, rolled and promptly RUD'd. Decided to let it stand; my program doesn't really need the cash anyway...

Next contract involved sending a drogue chute to between 3,000-8,000 meters and a minimum speed of 230 m/s, which is easily in reach of my Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter design for Kerbin. I quickly swapped out the craft's emergency chute for the drogue in the SPH and sent it out for the mission, which it accomplished in fairly rapid order. Return of the 'copter to KSC went much more smoothly.

VAB was the landing site of choice today. Next time I should try one of the other rooftops just for the hell of it...there looks like a possible spot over there on that R&D building closest to the VAB...

After yet another parts test which didn't require me to leave the ground, I finally got a contract I could ignore for a bit and took the time to get pilot Lutop Kerman and the Echo Flyer he took to go do a gravimetric survey on the far side of Kerbin on Tuesday home. The 1500 kilometer flight back went without incident save from me having to stop once to end a session (still have that paying job I occasionally have to do), with the 'copter coming down in the Administration parking lot about thirty seconds before a KAC alarm was due to go off - Necessary Evil had finally returned to Kerbin from her recent trip out to Minmus. After aerobraking, the craft set a rendezvous with space station Kerbinport and docked safely. Once at Kerbinport, colonists Sieski, Joebin, Muncott, Napont, Derny, Edbas, Melely and Newski Kerman boarded Necessary Evil while scientists Kathald and Lebal Kerman, pilots Geofbles and Suly Kerman and engineer Janbles Kerman boarded a waiting Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane docked at the station. With her passengers swapped out, Necessary Evil took on fuel from the station's stores and then departed for a rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit, rendezvousing and docking successfully.

Shortly after Necessary Evil arrived at Harkonnen, I received word from the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun that it was finally daylight and so the launch of the Neon 7 ion probe could take place.

Neon 7 launching from Piper Alpha. The key to a successful ion probe? Make the damn thing really, really, really light...

The probe burned to a suborbital trajectory of 224 x -7 kilometers, with a parts test of the Dawn ion thruster taking place once the craft reached an altitude of 210 kilometers for contract. I had no real need for a new satellite over Mun, so I went ahead and left it on the suborbital trajectory - I'm sure it has crashed onto the surface of Mun somewhere by now.

Last thing that happened last night was a replacement contract on Eve to conduct some atmospheric crew reports. The testing zone wasn't too far away from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on the surface, so I piloted the Echo 3 quadcopter over to ALK (I'd moved it prior to the Beer Can 7 launch a week or two ago) to pick up pilot Lerod Kerman from the outpost. Lerod flew the copter the 250 kilometers to the target zone, hit all four waypoints in fairly rapid succession, then returned safely to ALK. 

This morning began with a situation where I had all extant contracts in a waiting state, so I went ahead and warped ahead to get rid of three contracts that I hadn't taken for various reasons. One of them gave me a clue as to my next destination in the Kerbol system once I'm done exploring Bop, while the other was an adjustment contact for satellite K-01-024-000251. I conducted the first of what looks like three necessary burns to put the satellite into a 33,420 x 12,614 kilometer, 75.5° inclined orbit over Kerbin this morning. The next burn, which should finish the plane alignment at the ascending node, won't take place for another six days. In the meantime, Next Objective arrived at Minmus with her boatload of colonists, rendezvousing and docking with space station Minmusport successfully. Colonists Barski, Wilzer, Shepnard, Millas, Madorf, Katwin, Berbo and Deston Kerman disembarked to the Crater Maker 7 lander docked at the station, after which Next Objective took on fuel from the station's stores. Next Objective then departed Minmusport and burned to return to Kerbin. She'll arrive at a 47,500 kilometer periapsis over Kerbin in four days, four hours and thirty minutes. 

On tap for today is the launch of the Imo Pyramis Shipyards from the Bohai 2 outpost on Bop (had to really stretch for the name - "Imo Pyramis" is Latin for "the bottom of the pyramid". Bottom Of Pyramid - B.O.P., get it? Yeah, even I think it's lame as hell, but I couldn't come up with anything better). When that's done, Bohai will begin printing up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft that should be capable of fulfilling the rest of the current exploration contract; after that the outpost is scheduled to begin working on construction of space station Bopport. Next Objective should arrive at Kerbin before Strange Cargo arrives at Minmus with the remaining colonists; Next Objective will be hauling the remaining interplanetary tourists from the current expedition from Kerbinport out to House Harkonnen, and once she arrives there Harkonnen should be clear to depart. My colonists at Minmusport won't proceed to the surface until Strange Cargo arrives; she's hauling the remaining colonists for the current expedition and she'll also be carrying some staff out there for flag training. Makes sense to do just one landing if I can at all help it, right? I'll be finishing up that satellite adjustment somewhere in the middle of all of that as well.

 

[DStaal]

Started building my orbital construction station for this playthrough, and realized I've gotten a bit carried away on the scope of the project...  I'm sacrificing efficiency in many places for aesthetics.  Meh. 

Stage1 (as launched, after initial deployment):

Stage2 started - one resource storage and solar power arm built:

(And yes, I picked the photo because I liked how it looked backlit - I'll put in a better lit photo once it's more built.  Which will require me sending up more resources - I've used most of the initial storage of building materials for deploying the ring and building the first arm.)

[Hotel26]

According to imgur.com, nine months ago, I was working on Condor:

It's a big, ugly bird.  The carbuncle on the stern is a Forward-Accelerating Rear-mounted Thruster that launches the vee-hickle into space from a conventional runway.  After which, the passenger cruise ship proceeds to its next planetary destination, meets another, uhm, Forward-Accelerating Rear-mounted Thruster (for Kerbin, Laythe or Duna), docks and then descends to the surface.  Spaceway to spaceway for the passengers with no enroute transfers.  The Cruise ship can land on moons by itself.

                                                                                                

Fast forward to now.  Excalibur:

Same concept.  Better look:

The Forward-Accelerator remains in orbit at the origin for subsequent re-use upon return of any interplanetary passenger cruiser.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Hotel26

[The Dressian Exploder]

I like the look of the Excalibur, Hotel26! That shuttle's earnt you a free Neato Burrito™ from me!

[Fraktal]

What did I do in KSP today? Nothing, actually. Some more experimentation was on the table but in the end, the game refused to work at all. First start, took nearly 45 minutes to reach the menu, after which it promptly exited to desktop without any errors. None on-screen, none in the logs, not even an application error in the Windows event log, it's just poof, exited. Second start, took about 30 minutes to reach the menu, then hourglassed for another 20 minutes, then hanged so badly that I had to physically restart the laptop because I couldn't even get to Task Manager.

This behavior started since I installed Making History. Before that, the game loaded in about 20 minutes and had a few more minutes of idling at the menu before becoming responsive but since I got MH, it fails to launch at least as often as it does. I'm not even maxing out RAM, but Windows memory compression is spinning the hard drive so badly that it completely locks KSP out.

[Espatie]

Reinstalled.

[Guest]

Progress on Expedition Purple

A mini august series for exploring the development of Expedition Purple

"Lander completes 15 tests most of which end in fiery explosions"

The Lander is now completed and will fly on Expedition Purple when everything else is ready. The Next part is the Eve deorbiter stage, then the Orbiter, Then the cruise stage, then the launch vehicle. I think this is so over-engineered for what it needs to do but it is that for the most comfortable flight experience (Cough... LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG!)

List of Tests (no cheats)

Grip pad on launch pad test 1

Grip pad on launch pad test 2

Grip pad on launch pad test 3

Descent test

High altitude test (image with the ascent booster)

Half orbital landing test

Ascent test 1

Aerodynamic failure test

rover test

Rover deployment test

Structural test 1

Structural test 2

Ladder test 1 (image of structural failure of the deorbit stage)

Ladder test 2 (image of Jebbediah who miraculously survived both ladder test failures)

Ladder test 3 (Image of test success)

Edited August 1, 2019 by Guest
13 tests that were from a previous tested part of expedition purple

[KerrMü]

Updated an old design to new technology today. Took it out for a testflight, left it alone for an hour, came back and found it near the southern ice caps. Ok, it doesn´t fly straight. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited August 2, 2019 by KerrMü

[capi3101]

Got to conduct a job interview here in about 45 minutes so I don't have time to type up a full log report for y'all today. Spoiler screenie instead.

G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft freshly brought from Bop with parachutes out and getting ready to land. At night, naturally. The tiny mass of lights on the right is the South Base outpost. On the left is KSC. Pretty good landing all things considered...

I'll have today's activities added into my next log entry, which will be Monday if I can't find time to do one over the weekend.

[Thecsem]

I sent my first rover to Duna on my new breaking ground career. After playing around with the lander design which I overengineered with way too many parachutes for such a small mass, I launched it on its way to the red planet. After a smooth journey and relatively easy aerobraking, I descended upon the planet. After several reloads due to the lander tipping over because of the stupid amounts of parachutes pulling it sideways at the last moments, I had my rover decoupled and ready to explore. I was excited to finally test out my robotic arm scanner on some interesting terrain features (I skipped doing these on the Mun and Minimus because I was eager to get back out into the system). Upon finding a nearby boulder ripe for scanning, I parked my happy little rover (Spirit) next to it to capture that juicy science data. It was there I discovered the error of my ways. Thinking the measly 120 EC of the rover core enough to power my probe and antenna, I missed that the robotic arm requires a full 249 EC or so to actually function, regardless of whether my solar panels were enough to charge the core back up or not. And so now Spirit wanders the red planet with little to no purpose, except the odd temp and pressure scans. Needless to say the next rover (Opportunity) will feature less parachutes and more batteries. I guess that's what I get for rushing my ground testing.

[MiikkY]

Lots of stuff. Mostly Apollo style in the Kerbin system. I would like to share my inventions, but how can I upload screenshots to my reply?

Pls. Help a newby.

Best Regards, MiikkY

[sndrtj]

Contuing baby steps.

Spent an ungodly amount getting this contraption on the Mun.

After many, many attempts I finally figured out that having your probe core angled by 90 degrees makes for extremely awkward maneuvering. Ergo, decided to place multiple probe cores along the body, so I could switch. Ultimately settled on this rocket

After botching that specific attempt too due to .. ah... ''landing" too quickly ( ), I decided to only send one Kerbal this time. As I relied on the last stage actually crashing and exploding so the base would land on its belly, I had to come in rather hard.

 

 

Yay, Jeb's on the Mun! Except...... I broke my solar panels in the landing, meaning Jeb will slowly freeze to death. This requires a rescue attempt. Thankfully, I settled on a much, much simpler design for the rescue: just a large tin can.