What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Geonovast]

2 hours ago, MiikkY said:

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

 

[cantab]

Junos can make stuff go like a bat out of hell.

[GDJ]

Just now, cantab said:

Junos can make stuff go like a bat out of hell.

They can with a decently designed aircraft. I've done Mach 1.44 with two Juno's.

[Gunnerline]

Normally, I'd put together some sort of rhyme and/or attempt clever word play, but I don't know how else to say that I finally reached Eve in KSP!

 

Of course, that wasn't the only thing being done; I continued my STS challenge by recreating the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft:

 

 

[Guest]

I am getting ready for wet test for the whole Expedition Purple

[Ratwerke_Actual]

JNSQ, Eve Flyby, En Route To A Gilly Landing Attempt. Apollo Style, Hard Mode/ No Revert/ Permadeath Career.

[Guest]

On 7/31/2019 at 6:11 PM, capi3101 said:

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

I can't comment on BG props specifically, but in general Eve's atmospheric pressure makes low speed prop and fan craft fly extremely well. Multiplanes become practically unstallable and altitudes of 20-30km are attainable.

I wonder if you could even make suborbital trajectories on places like Tekto from OPM...

[Hotel26]

13 hours ago, GDJ said:

I've done Mach 1.44 with two Juno's.

That's an Achievement!

Can you do that in stock?  What was your all-up weight, on the take-off roll?  ("Enquiring minds" and all that...)

Edited August 3, 2019 by Hotel26

[Servo]

I finally finished up and released my F-4 Phantom II! This thing has been in the SPH for a long time, so I'm glad to finally finish it.

I've been wanting to revisit the Phantom for a long time, but I wanted to make sure I did it justice. With recent advancement in abusing communotrons and variometer cockpits, I decided to return to the Lead Sled and give it another shot.

Download Link is here: https://kerbalx.com/servo/McDonnell-F-4-Phantom

[Loskene]

So I found out BDArmory works with 1.7.3, works very well indeed.

May have a short video of it doing donuts later, thing's awesome to drive. Turret with a howitzer cannon actuates 360 degrees as well as up/down with the translation keys, at a suitably tank-like traverse rate. Going to build a "regular" tank that the AI can control and see who wins.

[CaveJohnson376]

Landed on Duna for the fisrt time... and added an landmark for my first Duna surface base!

[Fraktal]

First unmanned mission for Eve has left Kerbin orbit today. Payload consists of a relay satellite and a Gilly rover. Had some technical difficulties with the transfer burn because as it turns out, KSP crossfeeds the fairing's interstage nodes, resulting in the transfer stage engine having emptied the relay's and the rover's fuel tanks before its own. Nothing a quick manual transfer didn't correct, but still annoying.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull this mission off. According to maneuver node simulations, I need to shave off 1100 m/s to stay in Eve's SOI but I have nowhere near enough fuel for that, so aerobraking is my only option, which I've never done before. On the other hand, I'm still within Kerbin's SOI so I'm able to fine-adjust the Eve periapse with minimal dV expenditure. What do you guys say, how low should I go? I'm currently on trajectory for an 83 km Eve periapse and have 213 m/s left in the transfer stage, plus a couple hundred more in the relay and about 1k in the rover's internal and drop tanks.

[Guest]

Expedition Purple Progress

Cruise stage reaches completion. 

The third stage of the Expedition Purple rocket is complete and the second stage (transfer stage) and first stage (orbital transfer stage) are under progress!

[Castille7]

KERBOL EXPLORER 172
Update 8.3.19

I was struggling here! I only had just enough fuel and Oxidizer to land and had to use Oxidizer to complete the landing after the fuel ran out. As I was in my descent the fuel kept running out and I was hitting the surface too hard. So instead of using thrust as I was descending I noticed I could give full thrust with all the engines in one burst near the surface. This took nearly 20 attempts it seemed. I finally got the right timing with the altitude and was hitting full throttle at about 5700m and I was finally able to pull off this landing. Now I am refueling and planning to bring fuel to Kerbal Explorer 172 in Ike's Orbit, this was the purpose of this mission.

SpaceTech Refuel Craft
(Landing On Ike)

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Castille7

[FahmiRBLX]

Finished flight-testing my shuttle & Grandslam-70M.

 

Granslam-70M

Grandslam-70M is an overhaul to the bomb bay, making it wider,more versatile and, essentially, look better. Other than fuselage overhauls, the four J-85 Tigers were swapped for two J-404 Panthers; this setup is (Hopefully) more efficient and yields more thrust.

So far, only the prototype, which is the cargo version, made flight. The bomber version is still in development.

And that's for the first flight, which ended up crashing in water towers in the 2nd picture due to pilot error 

Second flight is from Top Secret Area 51, one of the bases included with KSR.

*[Insert cricket noise]*

"Here comes the sun...*

More on Imgur To reduce the WiFi strain on loading the pics and to satisfy my gradual laziness and my eagerness to play KSP shortly.

Interwing-8

Everything initially went as planned... (Except for during screenshot, I was rushing to get that great shot )

... except when orbit was targeted at only 100km but those SRBs really packed too much punch and juice that my orbit ended up in 320km orbit even with throttle limit to 25% using MechJeb. My stations are planned to be at 300km orbit, so things were very far off.

SRB separation :

Which in turn did separated the shuttle as well. Lost some more dVs there.

But the shuttle managed to circularize its orbit under its own power, so that's good.

Val's out.

"Me and the boys and one gal at 8AM." -Jeb-

Four orbits were completed before re-entering back into Kerbin.

Aiming up for KSC.

All the remaining fuel has been used up only to reboost the shuttle to extend its glide range, which ended up with an approach too high that the PAPI lights say "Wait, that's illegal."

Graphics : "Wait,that's illegal."

PAPI Lights : "Am I a joke to you?"

Landed off the centerline although initially touched down at the centerline, but I was rushing to get the touchdown shot. See, this happened. PRE enabled in the process.

Much better. PRE turned off.

Craft files will be now available on KerbalX shortly. Check my sig!

Edited August 4, 2019 by FahmiRBLXian

[Tw1]

I did a single launch stock parts Eve return mission. 

Yep. You look at the size of my fairings and think, must be some compact, external seat with asparagus staged aerospikes thing. Perhaps it uses those new propellers, and ISRU.

Nope. That's mostly the mothership, the orbital cruise vessel. 

This bit holds the lander:

"What trickery is this?" you yell, baffled, and maybe even outraged.

Let me show you.

Get yourself off Eve  with this one weird trick! 

Kerbal player discovers physics hack, rocket scientists hate him? 

 

In other news, I crashed Bob into a tree. 

Did you know Kerbals could climb trees? I didn't either. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Tw1

[Cavscout74]

I've been offline for a few days, but my KSP career has continued to advance.  First up - the first crewed Eve landing & return I've done in quite a while and the very first time I've done it in a craft of my own design.  Stock TWR calculations were WAYYYYY off - I had to keep throttles under 50% almost the entire way, and frequently under 25% to keep my speed down in the atmosphere.  For the future, I probably need to trade out two more Vectors for aerospikes.

The all-important flag planting.   That nearly ended up a failure - there was a narrow spot on my ladders that caused Ribdas to fail going down, then he was barely able (after about 2 minutes of trying) to squeeze through & climb back up.

Remainder of pics in spoiler:

Spoiler

Ribdas transferring to Eve-1.  The docking port is covered by a heatsheild & nosecone, so an EVE transfer was the only option here

Going in hot.  So far, every sandbox practice entry & the real one, I've burned off exactly one speedbrake on entry.  Never more, never less.  Well, earlier (failed) designs burned off more, but THIS design only loses one

Drogues open, mains deployed

Jettisoning bottom heat shield & deploying gear.  I was really worried I would end up on too steep of a slope judging by the mountains in the background, but it worked out

Ribdas spent a few hours on the surface, then headed back to orbit with his fingers crossed.  And toes.  But it went pretty well other than having too much thrust

Almost done.  No pic of the final stage making orbit or docking with Eve station

While Ribdas was busy on Eve, the rest of the crew headed to Gilly to gather some science there.  I really hate the warp limiting altitudes around Gilly, such a pain.  Only got the single screenshot, then installed a set of surface experiments. This was the first time I've done that since I upgraded to 1.7.3, and the message spam was ridiculous.  And I've already upped the science message timer to something like 100000 seconds, and I'm still getting dozens of messages for transmitting 0.3 science or so.  A few make it above 1 science point.

 

Up next were the last two Jool system landers - Pol & Tylo.  Pol was a piece of cake.  Tylo went remarkably smoothly for me until the stupid windows "sticky keys" message popped up a few meters (<10 I think) before touchdown, just as I was giving a burst of full throttle to brake.  By the time I got back in game, I had climbed back to 1200m & was down to 35 m/s dV remaining.  It was over 200 m/s just before the sticky keys mess, so I turned on infinite fuel for the second landing.  I don't mind doing that for real world glitches - usually I save before major events & only allow quickloads for game crashes & real world problems, but I hadn't this time so cheating infinite fuel was the only fix I had.  Still kinda disappointing that I had to do that.  I was so happy I didn't run out of fuel 2 seconds before landing for a change

Spoiler

Pol approach to landing

And safely down

Tylo approach, down to the final stage

and safely landed:

After these milestones, I attempted to make a somewhat unorthodox single-seat spaceplane to hopefully go to Dres (with enough life support) to satisfy a "Test Rapier in orbit of Dres" contract - which I only took to get access to the Rapier early.  Early experiments were not terribly successful.  Roswell Kerman is my most senior pilot still at KSC, and she was not amused:
 

Spoiler

Attempt 1:

 

Attempt 2:

At least the cockpit escape system worked (decouplers on each side of the cockpit & several sepratrons to launch it vertically away from whatever disaster I've created)

So after a complete redesign, it initially seemed like it might work out:

Made it to orbit

Roswell sitting in the shade waiting for pickup after a successful ejection just after reentry and the subsequent loss of control

At this point, I decided to try my hand at a Mk 3 SSTO spaceplane.  Early attempts wouldn't get off the runway.  Then I finally got one to get off the ground and it went straight into orbit, no problems.  Well, not many problems.

Then came time for reentry.  That actually went ok, but once my speed got down under 1000 m/s, the plane started doing barrel rolls around the prograde marker - no matter what I did, it stayed 20-30 degrees away from the prograde marker, with the top of the craft pointing towards the marker (ie if I was inverted and the prograde marker was on the horizon, my nose would be 20-30 degrees above the horizon).  That required another EVA escape before the craft plunged straight down into the ocean, ending my testing for the time being.

All in all, I wasted close to a million funds in various failed attempts.  I'm going to stick to my successful Lighting & Lightning II spaceplanes for a while.

Finally, I launched the "C" model of my crew cycler which drops the part count down to 40-something, adds about 200 more days of snacks for a crew of 4 and (somehow) adds a few hundred m/s dV, bringing it up to ~9600.

Then I topped it by launching a fusion-powered Deep Space Exploration Vehicle with something like 50,000 m/s dV.  Pictured here before the orbital insertion stage was jettisoned.

Edit:  Also, almost anti-climactic with everything else - Jeb & the company returned from Duna to a safe splashdown just east of KSC.  The NERV transfer stage burned back into orbit after dropping Jeb & company on a suborbital trajectory.  After recovery was made - and I remembered with everything else going on - it performed a transfer to the Mun where it burned its remaining fuel straight into the Mun, impacted at over 3000 m/s & managed to get 102 science points from the seismic sensor on the other side of the Mun.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Cavscout74

[eddiew]

Lamented not having a new Jool-monolith related picture for the upcoming page 2010  

So instead I will recycle this oooold one.

 

I'm not sure how visible the album is on imgur anymore because *complicated reasons of imgur internal faffing* but the saga is available at https://imgur.com/a/sJHOT and people are welcome to shout at me if it isn't available.

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by eddiew

[GDJ]

On 8/3/2019 at 7:03 AM, Hotel26 said:

That's an Achievement!

Can you do that in stock?  What was your all-up weight, on the take-off roll?  ("Enquiring minds" and all that...)

Not using stock physics. I'm pretty much dead set on using FAR now. The planes (and everything else in the atmosphere) act so much closer to the real thing.

BUT, to fully answer your query, 2 engines, 200 units of fuel, approximately 4.3 tonnes at the runway. Takeoffs at 70 m/s.

Edited August 5, 2019 by GDJ

[Gunnerline]

Salutations you Scions of Space, you Sultans of Science, and you Settlers of the Stars!

Hopefully you haven't forgotten about me, because I bring a whole host of endeavors in KSP to share.

 

Having tried out the current rover, the crew of the Munar base, Do Not Leave Blank determined that the vehicle, while functional, was not particularly well designed or comfortable, and began to pose comments and questions like, "This rover isn't particularly functional," and "You landed us in the one place on the Mun that doesn't seem to have any rocks, yet the rover has a scanning arm" and even, "Are we sure the Flight Director isn't an eldritch being who exists beyond time and space, reverting launches as they see fit?"

Having taken their comments to heart, KSC built a brand new rover, courtesy of @Nils277 and the Feline Utility Rover mod.  Meet Sven, the Lynx Utility Rover:

Space Truckin' 3:  Truck Hard with a Vengeance

To commemorate this new bit of technology, the Do Not Leave Blank crew took their rover out for a long-range exploration mission to the various hills and valleys that make up the Farside Crater. 

Good thing we packed lots of board games along with the rover...

Of course, it wasn't all smooth sailing...

The Pathfinder 2 crew manages to flip their brand new rover, cracking the solar panel in the process and necessitating a swap of the panel for one of the spares brought with the Do Not Leave Blank Resource Pod.

 

I also made serious headway on the Intentionally Left Blank project, with new crewed missions sent out to install the:

• Second primary radiators on the truss system
• Erikson Laboratory Module
• Tranquility multi-attachment node
• The logistics module for the Tomodachi laboratory
• PMA-3 with Clamp-O-Tron docking port
• Cupola observation port

Additionally, robotic missions completed the truss system by installing the solar panels and secondary radiators:

Any closer, and we'd have to start filing insurance claims.

♪ Come sail away / Come sail away / Come sail away with meeeee! ♪

Centaur upper stage courtesy of @CobaltWolf and the Bluedog Design Bureau

So many pieces...

 

Of course, it wasn't all station construction:

Yep, it's green alright.

I even managed to finally get a crew out to Eve!  Sadly, even with chemical rockets, they won't be able to get into close orbit for nice pictures.  But in their absence, we've greatly advanced our tech, so who knows what the next crew will be able to achieve?

Now that's a sexy rocket (shoutout to @Nertea and their Cryogenic engines mod)

First interplanetary space walk!

 

[panzer1b]

Well after my last weekend creation, which surprisingly turned out to be near indestructible (only thing that could kill it some of the time was a siege torpedo which is complete overkill against starships), i decided to cross the providence with my dimension's internals to create the ultimate warship i have thusfar (even if it is laggy).

Its also the 1st successful ship (ive toyed with the concept over the years but never made it practical) to use front mounted engines for redundancy.  Its not 100% efficient (if you can tell those engines point at an angle and not straight as i couldnt make the front look good while being wide enough to thrust aiming engines directly to rear.

I kept a similar bridge layout to the providence, 1 front, 1 mid, 1 rear, and especially the rear one looks amazing as you can see down the entire hull and then some (with there was a 360 glass bridge to put up here but i did want to keep it stock).  I sorta overdid it with teh antennas on the top, but its a really pretty detail that breaks up the otherwise 100% armored hull, so yeah, thats another 10 parts to add to the 500+ parts that make this thing work.

Stole the missile bay concept from my older aurora, works well even if it takes a bit of finesse to actually get a missile out of the ship without breaking anything in the process (damn you exhaust damage).

And ofc it has broadside weapons (along the usual nose cannons), not that it makes any sense to do so, but its one detail from the providence i wasnt going to toss even though it is technically replacing my dimension class and not really a replica of the providence anymore (i have 1 way closer to a replica, but its not quite as useful due smaller hangar that fighters cant get in or out of, no front guns, and is way higher on parts despite having less guns on it.

 

While i also dont normally make them, i will say organic styled hulls do actually look pretty neat, especially when you make it in KSP and its almost utter lack of organic styled components (there are a few like the radial air intakes, and the rounded adaptors and fairings, but not much else.  Ill defenetely attempt to make more organic hulls after this one came out so good...

[Ratwerke_Actual]

In JNSQ, Hard Mode, No Revert/Permadeath Career.

Both Apollo Style missions to Gilly and Ike were successful.

[MiikkY]

I'we done a lot of Mun exploration on my campaign lately. Here's what I ultimately came up with...

A very Apollo like CSM with a capability to fully RCS translate after SM jettison. A lander with a compact rover on the bottom and an ascent stage + a habitation module on it's "deck" for an extended stay on the Mun. Both have Delta-V to spare so the lander can be hopped if necessary.

The Lander's docking port is not on the center line of the combination so a gimbaling CSM  main engine and a bit of RCS is required to balance this during the MOI maneuver.

PDI. The lander has 4 Twitch engines clustered around the lander which have plenty of power for the job. The lander is somewhat top heavy because of the added mass of the hab but nothing that the engines, a small reaction wheel in the ascend stage and little RCS can't handle.

Landed safely.  The crew is heading out to do stuff in their sporty rover.

Time to head home. The ascent stage lifts off from the deck of the lander for a rendezvous with the CSM. The landing stage could be used as a place of refuge and a fuel reserve for later missions in the same area.

-MiikkY

[KerikBalm]

Yesterday I was testing a duna* helicopter that would fit in a mk3 cargo bay, and carry science gear. It worked well and SAS wasn't going all funky (like it does on Kerbin, I guess its due to thinner air and less forces on the blades).

I could get about 50 m/s forward velocity on it, which was nice, and it was completely solar powered. Then I tried to see just how high I could take it. I eventually got it to a pretty good climb rate of about 30 m/s, and I ended up climbing much higher than I could sustain (over 7km). The problem came when my upward velocity dropped, I was slow in finding the optimal blade pitch, I found my craft plummeting down at over 70 m/s as I was trying to get the blades to the right angle and to slow down and arrest my descent. I opened up the alt-f12 menu and looked at the aero data GUI. I eventually found I was getting the largest upward force (and larger than the force of gravity) with negative blade pitch because I was falling so fast.

I managed to slow my descent to 20 m/s before I impacted the ground... the cockpit survived...

Looks like I'll need to be careful with the way I fly around on Duna, I can easily find myself in an unrecoverable fall because that air is so thin.

I also didn't reach an altitude corresponding to the highest altitude on Duna, so I've got more work to do to make this practical.

*It was a modded duna though, 3x rescale to radius and SMA, 1.5x rescale to terrain height, 90km atmo height (9/5ths rescale), and a height offset + water added so it has bodies of water at its lowest points.

 

[Chris Hopkins]

So I had a mixed weekend. After driving the rover around Mimmus looking for the best ore, the highlight was discovering a rip in the spacetime fabric of minmas that destroyed any craft that touched it.

And here we have the actual destruction:

I didn't feel too bad about reloading after that. I couldn't fly over it as I had no rockets on it whatsoever, I tried landing one of my skycranes onto it, but my docking skills aren't up to the job. I came up with a plan. (Unfortunately no screenshots as I was busy doing the madness). I drove as fast as I dared parallel to the crack, downhill, then did a hard turn. As we all can imagine this flipped me into the air, and sent me spinning. I was able to use the onboard torque to remove the spin and correct myself to a straight just in time for landing.

Do all the objects in the kerbin system have a crack like this? Should I be designing rocketry into all my vehicles in case I come across one of these in the future?