What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Ho Lam Kerman said:

Ok yeah look remind me how I land in this sort of terrain again?

1. Pancake lander. Something with a height ratio like a short tank with 6-way symmetry of the same tanks around it. Good luck with the aerodynamics on ascent though; probably better to launch all the tanks inline and rearrange them radially in orbit.

2. Upside-down basket lander. Plug yourself squarely onto a hilltop. You could do the inverse and land in a hole.

3. Build a roll cage around the lander with 80m/s girders and panels so it can just slip down most slopes by design. Provided the cage is sufficiently spherical, and you don't land in a Mohole-like dip, you can roll yourself upright with reaction wheels, robotic parts, or even sideways rockets like a Panjandrum.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Guest

[Loskene]

8 minutes ago, Rocket Witch said:

1. Pancake lander. Something with a height ratio like a short tank with 6-way symmetry of the same tanks around it. Good luck with the aerodynamics on ascent though; probably better to assemble such a lander in orbit.

2. Upside-down basket lander. Plug yourself squarely onto a hilltop.

3. Build a roll cage around the lander with 80m/s girders and panels so it can just slip down most slopes by design. Provided the cage is sufficiently spherical, and you don't land in a Mohole-like dip, you can roll yourself upright with reaction wheels (or even sideways rockets like a Panjandrum).

Wide-stance landing gear, a low centre of gravity and a set of nesting jets would like a word with you.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Loskene said:

Wide-stance landing gear, a low centre of gravity and a set of nesting jets would like a word with you.

Wide stance gear and low centre of gravity are the point of pancake landers. Nesting jets don't work in KSP unless you can perform all your landed operations during their run time (which is entirely doable, so it's a good point).

Edited August 23, 2019 by Guest

[Loskene]

21 minutes ago, Rocket Witch said:

Wide stance gear and low centre of gravity are the point of pancake landers. Nesting jets don't work in KSP unless you can perform all your landed operations during their run time (which is entirely doable, so it's a good point).

True, true, just pointing out there's diminishing returns to pancake landers (to the point they might as well be belly landers) so if you have problems putting it in an aeroshell you've gone too far lol

While the concept plays out in different ways you're right that nesting jets don't work in KSP the way they do IRL (we don't have loose soil to dig into and friction is a curse word to the game engine), but as a means of arresting motion just long enough to allow scene switching or timewarp I've had good luck with them. Not separatrons though, has to be tiny LF engines since you may need to ignite them several times.

The rollcage idea got a chuckle out of me but from having made custom rover wheels from high-impact parts I can say that it's very hard to tell when one of them is going fast enough to reach their impact tolerance, so do be careful, no uncontrolled hill rolls, fun as they are.

Edit: Well now you've made me want to build a kerbal hamster ball to see how it does.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Loskene

[TheJoolian]

I launched a stock 1.5 Saturn V replica to the Mun

[Cavscout74]

I tinkered with putting together a 1.3.1 RSS/RO install, but no luck so far.  I decided to shelve that idea & jump back to my 1.7.3 career, as the vets were a few days from entering Tylo's SoI for their braking 2300 m/s braking burn, then flying on to Laythe.   I changed up my original plan, put them in Tylo orbit briefly (for a contract) then did a second short burn to exit Tylo's SoI.  Laythe was in a bad position for intercept & I didn't have enough real world time to wait, so I spent several hundred dV to force a quicker intercept - down to "only" 57.7 km/s dV remaining on the Alderaan. 

Once docked with Laythe station, there was a several hour wait for the landing zone to come back to daylight, then everyone transferred to the Laythe-Lightning spaceplane for the trip down.  Since I was rushing, I made a dumb error that could be a problem - normally, I make sure my ground base with ISRU is landed before a crewed spaceplane lands, so I know it can be refueled for the trip back to orbit.  The Lancer-Laythe base is still several days away from it's Tylo fly-by/gravity assist.  If I botch the landing of the base, Jeb & company will be stuck for at least until the backup Laythe-Lightning arrives next year.  

Other than that one error, everything else went smoothly, with just a little 4km overshoot on the landing.   I did enter a little early, but that was easily solved by retracting the airbrakes & keeping a little bit of throttle.  Made for a nice, long flight through the upper atmosphere wreathed in fire. Once Jool was climbing over the horizon, it was time to slow down & descend

Kelrik the engineer was selected to be the first kerbal to set foot on Laythe, and to test the atmosphere for breathability

After he didn't drop dead, the rest of the crew climbed out for a flag planting before taxiing back to the rovers

Kelrik also got a great pic in front of the geyser

Then it was back to business, getting everyone transferred to the amphibious rover and also attaching several external science experiments before the long drive/swim to the floating base - which will be a story for another day since I ran out of time at this point.

 

[papuchalk]

I dont know why most of the people place wheels on rover vertically. like this

 

while you have much better stability (and appearance) if you rotate them like this..

and i love the way how suspension works when accelerating and breaking. Breaking is shown on screen

Edited August 23, 2019 by papuchalk

[Fraktal]

1 hour ago, papuchalk said:

I dont know why most of the people place wheels on rover vertically. like this

Because if you don't, the wheels have a habit of kicking out like a horse if they touch the ground at an angle far from "straight down".

----

As for me, doing some testing on a three-seater ground-to-LKO passenger shuttle.

She's ugly on the ground, but she does the job, able to make it to orbit only by following prograde and varying throttle to keep apoapse 60 seconds ahead (thank you for the idea, @OhioBob !).

Just needs a very careful transition from surface navball mode because it's a mite aerodynamically unstable during takeoff due to a pair of diagonal winglets on the bottom to shield the two ventral Junos' intakes from reentry heat (there are four Junos and two Terriers on the shuttle itself). In fact, during this particular test flight, it actually spun out of control in the upper atmosphere but still made it to orbit after I cut the engines and let it drift a bit for the SAS to stabilize it. And for reentry, I gave it three small reaction wheels and 400 power, which allows it to maintain a 20° descent AoA and go into a horizontal glide at 30 km altitude without engine power or me touching the controls. Doesn't really fly well at subsonic speeds, though, as I can't use trim without making it backflip during takeoff.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Damn near finished up the ongoing interplanetary tourist expedition yesterday; almost certainly will get it done today. If all goes according to plan, I'll clear six contracts before the day is out.

The day began with Next Objective, which had just come from a tourist excursion to the surface of Gilly on Wednesday, conducting a burn at the intercept point to take it to rendezvous with LSV House Atreides in high Eve orbit. Flight time to rendezvous was one hour and 49 minutes and I was quite nervous about whether the ship would have sufficient fuel for the rendezvous burn when the time came, but there was not much I could do about it at that point.  While I was waiting for the rendezvous, I conducted a mass driver shot between the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly and space station Gillyport in orbit to refuel the station's Monopropellant and Ore tanks. The Spamcan 7 Bop-A lander hauling engineer Gemul Kerman also docked at the Imo Pyramis Shipyards in Bop orbit and Gemul got to work building a Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe, with time to completion estimated at 4.75 hours. IPS hadn't yet been supplied owing to the fact that the station was completely unmanned prior to Gemul's arrival, so a load of Rocket Parts were shot up via mass driver to the shipyard from the Bohai 2 outpost on Bop's surface.

Then it was time for Next Objective's rendezvous. The craft successfully completed the rendezvous with plenty of fuel to spare as it turned out.

"Define 'plenty of fuel to spare', capi", sez Eridred...

Upon docking, I had a lot of folks doing a big do-si-do: pilot Leo Kerman along with tourists Theosy, Verrim and Geofbret Kerman boarded Next Objective, pilot Jedbrett Kerman, scientist Kerman and engineers Monty and Jubald Kerman boarded Gilligan already docked to House Atreides, and engineer Luddorf Kerman boarded House Atreides proper, joining engineer Jergar Kerman in the ship's Bigby Workshop. The idea here was to get all the kerbals heading back to Kerbin's surface aboard Atreides while the Laythe-bound crew went aboard Gilligan. Once that was all done, Atreides's business at Eve was concluded - the ship broke orbit and warped for Jool, arriving at 13,440 m/s. After six warpbacks to lose the necessary speed, the ship proceeded to Laythe.

Atreides with her Alcubierre Drive active, with Jool and the three interior moons visible.

House Atreides settled immediately into a 521.7 x 447.4 kilometer, 3.97° inclined orbit over the watery moon.

Thinking about making this my wallpaper...

Luddorf swapped places with pilot Rodhat Kerman at that point, with Luddorf boarding J. G. Backus also docked to Atreides and Luddorf taking the shotgun seat beside Jeb aboard Gilligan. After making sure she was fully fueled, Gilligan departed House Atreides, burning down to a 399.7 x 398.5 kilometer, 0.06° orbit over Laythe. The idea is to have LSV House Harkonnen, which is currently over Kerbin building the Echo Flyer 7a base-seeding 'copter destined to be the first craft on Laythe's surface, meet up with the intended crew of the base in Laythe orbit at the next opportunity.

At that point, it was time for Atreides to go home - she broke orbit of Laythe, then warped out of Jool's system straight to Kerbin, arriving at 9,218 m/s. After 22 warp-backs, the ship settled into a 544.6 x 363.4 kilometer, 3.27° orbit over Kerbin, and Next Objective departed Atreides.

Home sweet home, at long last.

Next Objective burned for an intercept with space station Kerbinport, coming to the intercept point nineteen minutes later; she then burned to take her to rendezvous with the station, leveling out the orbital plane at the same time. Flight time to rendezvous from there was 58 minutes, during which time J. G. Backus also departed Atreides and made her own set of burns to level out the plane and take her to intercept (21 minute flight time), and then to take her to a rendezvous 51 minutes later. I also finished sending up the remaining supplies from Bohai 2 to IPS, and IPS completed the print of the Clinton; the probe was launched after fueling on a mission to go grab Deoly's Pod in Bop orbit. Her job done at the shipyard, Gemul reboarded the Spamcan and departed, resuming her ongoing crew report survey mission. Finally, in preparations for her departure to Laythe, LSV House Harkonnen received fuel, Rocket Parts and Enriched Uranium supplies via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC. Next Objective then rendezvoused with Kerbinport, putting in to her assigned berth. Upon docking, rescuee pilot Leo Kerman and tourists Theosy, Geofbert, Verrim, Kelely, Calmore, Chadbus and Hayby Kerman - the seven tourists that went on the expedition - boarded a waiting Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane docked to the station with rescuee scientist Derney Kerman already aboard. The Auk then departed the space station in preparation for de-orbit and landing. I finished out my night with J. G. Backus's docking at Kerbinport, with the game getting pretty laggy at that point (it does that after I've been playing for a while these days - I suspect I've got a mod that's leaking memory like nobody's business. I have my suspects but no real methodology for checking).

So today landing the Auk is high on my to-do list; it will clear two tourist contracts and two rescue contracts assuming the plane lands with its passenger modules intact (I have no reason to suspect otherwise - the XVI's a reliable plane). I've also got a pair of mining contracts that I can wrap up in rapid order at this point so I'm liable to do those as well - the aforementioned six contracts. After that I want to get House Harkonnen out to Laythe. The idea there is to send her out with another pair of crews - one probably destined for Vall, the other probably destined for Pol - and so I've already begun the crew selection process there. I'll need to bring Leo and Derney back up once they've punched their tickets at KSC, and Rodhat is qualified to lead a crew. Engineers are where I'm coming up short; Necale Kerman at Kerbinport is the only one available right now, so I'm liable to have to take some from one of my outposts. Fortunately, the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus has eleven engineers aboard at this point - more than they really need, so I'm liable to make a stopover there to pick up a few of them. At Laythe, Harkonnen will pick up Gilligan and then head to Bop; Bohai 2 should be able to support the completion of the Echo Flyer, and I can go ahead and send one of the engineers to permanently man the Imo Pyramis Shipyards. Of course, on top of all of this is the uncertainty of what kind of replacement contracts I'll get - my plans could get shifted radically depending on what happens there. I'll be sure to let y'all know what happens over the weekend on Monday morning.
 

[Puggonaut]

" We choose to do stupid idea's"

 

 

[T-Bouw]

Today I attempted a rescue of Jeb that I accidentally marooned on the Mun.

This was the first time I properly used a delta-v map for the construction of a dedicated rocket. Thanks community! I also used it to check if every flight-phase went according to plan.
The 3-person capsule was chosen, Val and Bob put in, and the whole thing had 200 m/s of dv to spare, but somehow - because I tried to get as close as possible to Jeb's location - after landing I came up 200 m/s dv short for the mission total. I used 400 m/s of dv more than average! I'll have to work on that landing...
The extra maneuvering was in vain too because I landed 3+ km away from Jeb. Jeb's lander didn't have the fuel to orbit, but he did have just enough to make a little hop towards Val.

Did some first-time science on the Mun, got Jeb in and launched towards Kerbin. All while hoping I could make it there despite the fuel shortage.
And I did make it. Had some fuel to spare again to lower the Ap in order to make reentry less severe.
400+ science added, lots of funds, 3 missions checked off and one happy Jeb!

Edited August 23, 2019 by T-Bouw
formatting

[Cavscout74]

I had some time this morning, so I took the long drive & swim from my Laythe landing site to the Sagan Sea base.  About 10km was driving, mostly rolling hills till the last little bit when it dropped sharply to the water, then a 50km swim at 8-9 m/s.  At least while swimming the Lynx Amphib could mostly be left on it's own while I did other stuff.

Ambera took a quick swim to gather science in the shallows before continuing the trip

Sagan Sea base finally in sight

Once the Lynx Amphib arrived, Kelrik jumped out to link it to the base with a KAS cable.  He also needed to flood the ballast tank closest to the rover a little to level the base.  Once that was done, the rest of the crew took a quick dip before climbing on board the base.  Ambera is the only one with serious work to do in the lab, Jeb & Vall are pretty  much just pigging out on snacks in the crew quarters while Kelrik keeps an eye on the base systems.

Finally, Kelrik went down to check out the ballast system & the SAFER reactor system

Once everything was set, I timewarped till my Lancer base arrived, performed a correction at Tylo Pe that led straight into a Laythe intercept with a 130km Pe, then set up for landing, just a few km's from my target site.  Despite an accident with some of the wheels on the base, it still was able to drive to a mostly flat spot near the fuel rover & spaceplane where it commenced drilling & refining operations.  

Now that it's in place, the landing engines can be jettisoned with their self-destruct charges.  Oddly, when I did this, most of the remaining wheels blew up also.  I haven't had that problem in a while.  At least this base didn't get updated - the newer design omits the underside landing legs & just keeps the wheels to reduce part count & have the base be permanently mobile.  So I lost the mobility, but it's sitting on a 12.8% ore lode that happens to be mostly flat, so it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[PTNLemay]

Started a mission to send 4 Kerbals to Jool.  I've never done it before, and to add to the challenge I'm doing it on a 2.5x upscalled Kerbol system.  It doesn't sound like a big increase, but some of the destinations require a staggering amount of deltaV now.  Reaching Jool needs well over 10,000 m/s.  Here's the good ship Jericho.  It has a pair of drills, a refinery, and a surface scanner.  Everything you need to find a good spot to refuel.  The plan is to planet-hop where ever we can on the way to Jool.

 

 

 

[Kerbuvim]

(sorry for my google-alike English)

 

Today I continued my career with USI Life Support.

Eeloo: the final frontier. 

Science has provided new parts, so the new ship is more powerful, compact and roomy. In addition to agroponics and recycling, now introduced a new feature - deep freeze kerbals!

 

 

Ready to Start: 3 kerbal as a duty crew, 8 frozen kerbals as a Luggage, 14 seats available, nuclear reactor and life support for 8 years...

 

 

...and 24 nuclear engines

 

 

Frozen kerbals rolled to Eeloo to gain experience and increase their rank. They were there thawed, hung out and frozen back.

 

Edited August 23, 2019 by Kerbuvim

[Angelo Kerman]

Today I finished the baseline hull patterns for my KFS mothership. Then I took the prototype out for a spin:

There's a lot more to do with the detailing before I can finally start working on things like cargo bays and science labs, but I'm liking the direction.

[Curveball Anders]

I did ship two newbie Kerbonauts on some kind of a trip.

I needed a new Rover on Minmus and tried a new (and cruel) way of sending it.

Rover, Skycrane, translunar (transminmus) injection and a lifter.

But this time the poor sci/eng kerbals was dropped in the external seats on the rover, already at launch...

(They did have the protection during the ascent).

So they spent about 7 days sitting in their rover on their way to Minmus, and then some horrifying minutes of landing.

The landing site was chosen because I had a contract to check the local temperature at some specific sites on Minmus.

When coming in for landing I realise that it's a 20 degree slope (yes I use MJ and KER), so I activate the brakes on the rover, then thinking again I deactivate the brakes.

I manage to land, separate the skycrane and send it back to orbit as spare fuel and manage to keep the rover from falling over.

However, the rover is rolling at an increasing speed down a crater, backwards, in the dark.

There are of course lights on the rover, both broad and pin (I'm not that stupid), but they are aimed forward, and I'm currently rolling backwards down a crater...

If I hit the brakes the rover will flip, if I try to change direction, the rover will flip.

After 3 sessions up and down the crater I manage to get the rover stable (and yes, I had RCS and upward thrusters).

Now find the target and move towards is, without getting boored nor sending the rover tumbling..

After a couple of km the rover went tumbling, poor engineer fell out of her seat. It took her Comrade 5 minutes to regain control of the rover, and then she had walk (munwalk/minmuswalk) 350m to regain her seat.

I they haven't even begun to do science

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Curveball Anders

[KerikBalm]

Launched this monstrosity to in 3x KSP:

I hadn't configured fuel flow properly, so fuel was draining from the payload, and the first stage (the carrier plane) went higher, faster, and farther than anticipated (I thought that I was getting unusually high and fast before the carrier's oxidizer ran out, and shut off engines while the carrier still had some oxidizer left)

I was able to transfer some fuel from the 1st stage carrier to the orbiter, and the orbiter put the payload in orbit with enough excess fuel to fill the payload tanks completely

The carrier nearly overheated, but it didn't, and made it back to base:

The orbiter landed fine too:

The payload was a bit tricky, instead of using a mk3 cargobay based system to deploy a mun surface base, I made use of robotics... but I had some thrust occlusion, I had to extend its docking arm to put the payload farther back. I hope I can land the thing on mun (with 1 module, leaving the other for a 2nd trip)

 

 

[ChrisSpace]

So my day in KSP has been quite, uhhh… entertaining.

Today I was testing one of my combat spacecraft designs in KSP and since things went so hilariously wrong and while I initially didn't want to discuss it here, I might as well tell y'all about it too.

Here's the vehicle I was testing, the IDFS X-Wing. A good blend of aesthetics and functionality, using an open-cycle gas-core nuclear engine.

The first test flight began quite well, as usual the launch vehicle consisted only of an Orion engine, nuke tank, fairing and decoupler.

It was about here that I lost all control of the vessel. Only later did I realize that this was because there's something in the spacecraft sucking up over 20kW of power. And it's entirely solar powered. And I launched it at nighttime.

The Orion engine was still on and I had no way to shut it off, nor could I open the fairing or deploy the solar panels. At this point I calculated that the spacecraft would shoot back through Earth's atmosphere for a bit before accelerating back into space and out of the solar system Solomon-Epstein-style.

Instead, the X-Wing and fairing broke apart and crashed down into what must've either been Xinjang or eastern Kazakhstan. The Hydrogen tank was the last bit to survive.

But the Orion engine had other plans. Still attached to it's nuke tank and nothing else, it accelerated back into space while spinning around. Again I thought it would be lost to the void, never to be seen again, considering that it's Dv would be a three-digit number of km/s.

Instead it began to descend again, giving everyone in southern China a really bad day. I thought that it would crash into the ground, ending this nonsense. Instead, the aerodynamic forces straightened it out, and after coming within a few kilometres of the mountaintops it shot back up into space.

Again, it began to descend, still firing at full throttle. At this point I was trying to calculate just how much of the world would be wiped clean before the engine ran out of nukes. I thought the next target would be either Mongolia, Manchuria or the Korean peninsula.

Thankfully it crashed into the ground, bringing the initial test to an end. The second test was more successful since I made sure to launch in the early morning and deploy the solar panels as soon as I left the atmosphere. On the way to orbit I realized that with the Dv of the Orion stage I could go much further than Low Earth Orbit. And since the Moon was straight above, I decided to go there instead.

I used the Orion engine for most of the deceleration burn but finished it off with the X-Wing's own nuclear engine, since testing it was part of the mission goal.

Finally I tested the landing gear just to make sure it worked. So, yeah, that's what I did in KSP today. Made it to deep space for the first time in Real Solar System, and learned to be more careful about energy consumption. I don't know if there's a moral to this story.

Edited August 24, 2019 by ChrisSpace

[NHunter]

The kerbal'ed part of the mission arrived to Neidon and immediately transferred to Thatmo:

 

Somewhere far away there is a pale blue dot...

[catloverjerrygarcia]

I did this today.

 

[StrandedonEarth]

I never did look very hard for anomalies since the greenoliths were introduced, just opened Kerbnet now and then to see if anything was spotted, but didn't have the patience to babysit it to find anything. I did visit some easter eggs, either through wiki'd coordinates or Anomaly Surveyor contracts (Contract Configurator packs). Last weekend Kerbnet finally showed a question mark on Minmus, and this morning I finally got a chance to check it out. So I finally(!) found my first Greenolith! Navin Kerman fainted when she saw what she had discovered!

Apparently I was awarded the tech "Experimental Motors," although I had already finished the tech tree. Oddly enough, I couldn't find that tech in the tree...

[mistergoblin]

Made more progress on my science career in Galileo planet pack. Following the success of Wallaroo-2 (second flight overall and first orbital flight with mk1 pod), Wallaroo-3 was launched atop a brand new launcher. Galileo Gaelan took the spacecraft to an elliptical 140x320 km orbit, collecting our first science data from high space. 

  

Next, one of our commercial partners tested their Falcon-1 rocket, launching Stayputnik-1, our first automated satellite. 

Deorbiting the upper stage:

Not pictured, but the Falcon-1 was quickly flown again to launch our first scansat to a 78* inclination orbit. Soon we'll have orbital data to check our awful hand-drawn maps against. 

With the unlocked science, our engineers and commercial partners are hard at work implementing significant advances in rocketry and electronics. Due to intense online interest from Kerbals everywhere, we'll be having a presentation this week to go over the current state of our space program, and announce and outline our upcoming exploration program beyond LGO. (editor's note: the presentation has been postponed until mid-September)

Edited August 25, 2019 by mistergoblin

[SLAMS]

Here's something I've been working on.

Edited August 25, 2019 by SLAMS

[hellblazer]

Delivered my satellite into a supersynchronous orbit using Probe Control Room. RSS/RO

 

[aagun123]

duna rally