What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Cavscout74]

I got a few things done in my career, including the highest rescue in Kerbin orbit so far (~6200 km), first steps towards an SSTO, a Mun surface rescue and finally a load of Mun tourists to help pay the bills. 

MPV-2-ER coasting to rendezvous for the high orbit rescue

CX-06 Eaglet SSTSO (Single-Stage To SubOrbit).  It doesn't do much except fulfill speed & altitude contracts before building an actual spaceplane. Forerunner of my Falcon spaceplane. 

Eaglet reentering the atmosphere prior to landing at KSC.  While not an SSTO, it did get Jeb really excited over what the future may hold

Surface rescue lander entering Mun orbit during an eclipse

Prepping the debris for destruction while the rescued pilot heads to the lander

Mun tourist craft entering orbit

This guy might be as fearless as Jeb...

Descending to splashdown at sunset

 

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Cavscout74

[KerballingSmasher]

8 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

I got a few things done in my career, including the highest rescue in Kerbin orbit so far (~6200 km), first steps towards an SSTO, a Mun surface rescue and finally a load of Mun tourists to help pay the bills. 

MPV-2-ER coasting to rendezvous for the high orbit rescue

CX-06 Eaglet SSTSO (Single-Stage To SubOrbit).  It doesn't do much except fulfill speed & altitude contracts before building an actual spaceplane. Forerunner of my Falcon spaceplane. 

Eaglet reentering the atmosphere prior to landing at KSC.  While not an SSTO, it did get Jeb really excited over what the future may hold

Surface rescue lander entering Mun orbit during an eclipse

Prepping the debris for destruction while the rescued pilot heads to the lander

Mun tourist craft entering orbit

This guy might be as fearless as Jeb...

Descending to splashdown at sunset

 

 

Me: wow that's cool and super impressive.

*looks at your ribbons in your signature*

HOLY *quack* THATS A LOTTA RIBBONS AND DANGLY THINGS

[Guest]

Got my hardcore-ish no-probes career going. I just sent up my first station: it's orbiting Minmus. Mission is to train staff and harvest that sweet Sci from those biomes. Still no disasters, and in fact no failures since the loss of that one rocket early on. I have done one simulation however, which I permit myself: with those, I make a save called SIMULATION-START, and return to it once the simulation is finished. I did that to check that the Pomegranate is in fact able to re-enter safely from a Minmus transfer. Not that I had huge doubts but I haven't used those parts much so better safe than sorry.

This was my first Mun lander/return module, which I also sent to Minmus, for which it was way overengineered, but I didn't want to change anything because it performed so well:

And this is Minmus Station, complete with a new-generation 3-kerbal lander and return module. All Pomegranates, all the time... I just rescued someone from Minmus orbit, so now I have two pilots on board which makes docking easier. (No probe cores, them's the rules...) 

I'm also role-playing life support a bit -- I've set a rule that any base, station, or interplanetary ship needs a bunk in a Hitchhiker Storage Compartment for each crew member.

[RizzoTheRat]

Test launch of a reusable SSTO to launch around 70 tonnes to LKO.  Sadly the SexBoar wasn't powerful enough so had to upgrade to an OctoBoar. 

Plan is it delivers payloads to LKO, and returning modules dock to the booster to be deorbited and landed back near the KSC.  Using KOS I can estimate the landing point and use the airbrakes to steepen the trajectory to try and land near the KSC for the maximum fund recovery.  Parachutes bring it down to a sensible speed, and the engines fire at the last moment for a soft landing.

I've done a similar concept in a previous game, although with a smaller payload, and was able to land them reliably within a couple of km of the KSC

 

 

So far the OctoBoar hasn't been quite so successful in testing...

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[DeltaDizzy]

20 hours ago, Jeb-head-mug kerman said:

Might I ask what visual mods do you use? Because your game looks amazing!

scatterer 0.053, EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements for KSP 1.4, and Beyond Home 1.2.0 (the planet pack, it packages its own visuals).

[Jeb-head-mug kerman]

31 minutes ago, DeltaDizzy said:

scatterer 0.053, EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements for KSP 1.4, and Beyond Home 1.2.0 (the planet pack, it packages its own visuals).

Thanks

[Guest]

 

 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) All in all, not a whole lot of stuff to talk about for my day yesterday. The day itself began with LSV House Harkonnen freshly arrived at Kerbin from Bop still undergoing warp-back maneuvers to slow down enough to enter orbit. Took a total of twenty warp-backs even to bleed off the necessary speed, with Harkonnen finally settling into a 564.6 x 549.1 kilometer, 2.07° inclined orbit. Upon orbital entry, the Bill Clinton 7c probe hauling Deoly's Pod, which Harkonnen had in turn hauled from Bop, departed the warp ship.

Somebody make sure to be standing by with a big can opener when the probe splashes down, m'kay?

The probe burned down to a 93x90 equatorial orbit, then proceeded to deorbit, shooting for a landing at KSC. Unfortunately I waited too late in the process to deploy the 10m heat shield and wound up blowing it clean off the craft, but the probe itself still survived to splashdown.

Good news, Deoly. Just have to swim eighteen klicks to get to that can opener, you know, the one we need to get you out of that box. Bet that's the last time you try to become an audience volunteer for a magic show...

The successful recovery of the probe finally cleared Deoly's rescue contract, and because I had flown by Laythe with Harkonnen on the way back to Kerbin, it also cleared the current exploration contract. The game surprised me - instead of sending me on to Dres like I thought it was going to, the next exploration contract is to orbit Pol. I'm actually thrilled about this - it means I can finally dump that TBD 7dG base-seeding lander that LSV House Corrino has been hauling around for weeks and have her drydock available for other things (like communications satellites). I've already got a crew in the lander ready to go. This does mean I have to get Corrino back to Pol, but that's not an insurmountable challenge by any means.

Spent most of the rest of the day getting the other three ferry ships Harkonnen brought home from Bop - Necessary Evil, Gilligan and J. G. Backus - over to space station Kerbinport. I'll spare y'all the details, other than to say that the three ships left in rapid succession and a triple rendezvous occurred.

Bumper to bumper traffic on the 404 Not Found today, looks like.

♫ I saw three ships on Christmas Day / on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day / Shelley got up and killed the turds / on Christmas Day in the morning... ♫

Flight time from departure to rendezvous for all three ships averaged around 75 minutes. There was enough separation there to keep me from having to try to perform two maneuvers at the same time.

Only other thing I've got in my log is crew transfers. Prior to the arrival of the three ships at Kerbinport, Duna-bound colonists Decan, Stelvis, Meller, Barvey, Susey, Serena, Wilsel and Seanfurt Kerman boarded Strange Cargo docked at Kerbinport, which then departed and burned for a rendezvous with LSV House Atreides over Kerbin; flight time to rendezvous is 100 minutes. After the three ships arrived at Kerbinport, Minmus-bound colonists Burdard and Sanski Kerman along with tourists Gemgard and Gregfred Kerman boarded J. G. Backus, while colonist Huduki Kerman and tourists Subart and Camvin Kerman boarded Gilligan. The station passed fuel supplies along to the newly arrived ferry ships from its own stores, and for the first time ever I passed warp drive fuel supplies from one warp ship to another, in this case a load of Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter from Harkonnen to Atreides via mass driver. Atreides has the distinction of being the very first of my warp ships to have a full tank of Xenon Gas available to it. Shouldn't need another resupply there for quite some time...

Today the next interplanetary expedition departs (knock on wood) - I need to get Strange Cargo and Gilligan over to House Atreides before that can get underway, but all the passengers are loaded and ready to go at this point. Backus will be staying local - the two tourists are headed to Mun, where I also hope to get a rescue mission completed before heading on to Minmus. Next Objective gets to stay in port for a while, and House Harkonnen gets to stay in her parking orbit. Atreides will be headed to Duna first to drop off her colonists before heading on to Eve, where one of her tourists will be visiting the surface - occurs to me that I should start printing up a new Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve to get them off the surface when the time comes. Corrino will be heading to Pol as soon as I can manage it, and I still need to bring the warp tanker SL Shai Hulud to Kerbin. Pretty busy at the moment but it's mostly just shuffling things around. I'll be sure to let y'all know when something more interesting happens.

[Hotel26]

Built this for fun.  Fantail, also known as "Con Air".

32 inmates; 3 guards.  Kinda fun to fly as long as you arrive at the destination before they break down the cockpit door...

This one's for you, @swjr-swis

Edited September 17, 2019 by Hotel26

[Cavscout74]

My 20% science career is still plodding along.  I sent the vets back to Minmus to repair a rover wheel - Kelrik is my only 3-star engineer and I recently unlocked the passive seismograph so I figured I might as well have a 3-star scientist place it, and they deserve to be flown to their destination by the best.   Once the rover wheel was fixed, it was time for Kelrik & Ambera to go looking for rocks to scan with the rover arm.  Only took a few minutes for me to find one about 2 km from the outpost

Heading back after completing the scan & an assortment of other experiments.  The base is that collection of 3 darker spots in a row down on the flats

I also have two Minmus tourist craft carrying 4 tourists each to & from Minmus orbit.  The first is on its way back while the second is a few days out.  My new 2.5m Kerbinport Station is almost ready for launch (3 days remaining) so it was also time to deorbit the old MOLE station:

Passing over the space center for the last time

Starting to get hot

Now we're cooking....

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Cavscout74

[KerballingSmasher]

This was yesterday-- I was attempting my first manned Mun landing, crashed into the surface, lost my Science Jr., main chute, and expirement storage unit. I managed to land the remainder of the craft, bring it home, and splashed down with my auxiliary chutes. Lesson learned: ALWAYS BRING MOAR PARACHUTES!

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

This was yesterday-- I was attempting my first manned Mun landing, crashed into the surface, lost my Science Jr., main chute, and expirement storage unit. I managed to land the remainder of the craft, bring it home, and splashed down with my auxiliary chutes. Lesson learned: ALWAYS BRING MOAR PARACHUTES!

*notification sound*

RealKerbal3x liked a post in topic What did you do in KSP today?

[Barefoot Friar]

Yesterday I finally decided to upgrade to 1.7.3.

I've been playing 1.0.5 since it came out.  I briefly tried 1.1.2, but found it too buggy for my computer.  Also I kind of hated the new UI, which I found to be juuuust different enough to be annoying. For instance, I don't like the little menus that pop up on parts when you right click them, because they have a frustrating tendency to pop up under whatever MechJeb window I have open at the time.

Anyway, I had a good game going in 1.0.5, and had taken several years away from the game in general when my kids were being born and we were just trying to learn to survive on no sleep.  So over the summer I picked it up and started exploring more.  I had my mods just right, the game was stable, and I was having fun.

I don't really know why I decided to switch.  I may go back to the old one.  Shoot, I may even go back to my old 0.23.5 install just for kicks.  It would be nice to just plow into Eve at 7km/s and not worry about exploding.

But back to the new game.  I got all my mods installed.  And I mean ALL THE MODS.  Some of them aren't working, but I don't really care right now.  I started a new science career so maybe I need to sort the mods before I go further but dang it was nice to land on Minmus for the first time in a fresh install of a new version.  (Specifically what isn't working is OPM and Astronomer's, but I think from researching today I've figured out my problem so we'll see...).

I still don't like the UI.  And I hate the way they changed the way the venerable old Jumbo-64 looks.  I don't like the way a few other tanks look, either, so I'm going to create my own mod of old parts brought forward because yes, it's that important to me.  That said, I saw the new vernors and immediately thought of the laser turrets in Portal 2.  "Are you still there?"

And 1.7.3 lags like hell where 1.0.5 doesn't.  Maybe I've got too many mods.  I'll pull them all out and re-add them, one by one, until I get it right, just in time for a new version to come out.  Such is life.

[NHunter]

My expedition to Gauss continues:

- First, I finished mapping Loki.

- Next, the crewed lander arrived, and was transferred to low Loki orbit.

- Finally, the Catullus SSTO arrived as well.

In order to save some fuel, I tried to aerobreak. I might have been a bit too aggressive there, dropping periapsis to just 150km, and nearly lost landing gear. Thankfully, the plane still has all of its parts and is waiting for the mapping satellite to finish its job so that I can land it on a reasonably-flat area somewhere on the day side.

[Geonovast]

Been awhile since I stopped in here.

I've been picking at my career game, mostly just wasting money on testing designs.  But I decided to make a deep-space self sustaining interplanetary ship.  During assembly, I ran into an interesting bug regarding Konstruction!.

See the thing in the red circle on the right?  That's two Konstruction! ports docked together.  They were attached to the ship on the left in the red circle.  For some reason, I couldn't weld those ports.  It kept telling me I needed to dock two weldable ports together.  Which I'd done.  So I thought maybe if I dumped the ship that brought that part up, it would correct itself.  Nope.  I had problems separating the upper stage... and I found out why when I zoomed out.

Not sure what to do about this.

 

 

[coyotesfrontier]

Rust Spear, now renamed to Red-Rusted Reign, is nearing completion, but the mission is going to miss the Duna transfer window by a few days. The delta-v losses will be low, but still notable. Instead of taking 5 launches  (transfer, science+tug, life support, hab, crew shuttle) as I expected, RRR will end up taking 15 (5 + 5 refueling, 4 solar repairs, and 1 maintenence), many more then I had hoped for.

I was able to find out the cause of the solar panels freaking out, and it was due to the truss they were mounted on not being sturdy enough. Replacing the truss with a long, empty 1.25 fuel tank seemed to ward off the kraken, but I had to send a crewed mission to attach new ports, along with the panel array itself. This totals 4 panel-related missions, as these two were a repeat of my last attempt to fix them, which didn't work.

After that, I have to send up 5 fueling missions. I originally intended to send up the transfer stage fully fueled, but that ended up way too massive to launch, so I decided to do 4 missions to fuel it in orbit. After I docked the first one onto RRR, I discovered that the upper stage of its laucher drained out much of the fueling craft's oxidiser (thankfully not the LH2, as the upper stage used LFO). So now I have to send yet another mission to bring a small amount of oxidiser to RRR.

[Hotel26]

Asteroid HVP-683, originally 2,784t, captured on August 10th, is shown here, tagged by Mosquito, HVP-683 and then brought to heel with the help of an Escort (5x Rhinos), now in an equatorial Mun orbit, but mass down to 1,956t.

It's making me think I should resurrect my Crab all-nuke space tractor.  It'd be slower than the Escort, but much more efficient, ISP-wise.

 

Had to dig a long way back through the archives to find this shot -- it looks like Crab has 24x NERVs.  Shazaam.

 

Here's a clearer shot of the protagonists...

 

Edited September 18, 2019 by Hotel26

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) I've had a fairly busy 24 hours all told. My day yesterday began at the Caue Serpente Yards over Eve, where I ordered up a print of a Cigar 7 Eve Descent Module in anticipation of the arrival of tourist Subart Kerman. Along a similar vein, I ordered the crew at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface to begin printing up a Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle. The Cigar was ready after 3 hours and 30 minutes, with printing of the Zima expected to take a total of 47 hours.

With a rescue mission over Kerbin to conduct, I had given some thought to printing up a Bill Clinton 7b probe at the Dystopia Planitia shipyard in orbit, but the shipyard is currently engaged in the printing of Roy Hinkley; it'll still be a few days before that job's finished. I remembered, though, that I already had such a probe printed up and ready to go at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun - I just needed to get the probe back to Kerbin. To that end, I had the probe detach from the shipyard and set a burn. Time from departure to burn was 22 minutes, during which time Gilligan departed space station Kerbinport and burned to set an intersect with LSV House Atreides in HKO; flight time to intersect was 23 minutes. J. G. Backus also departed Kerbinport and burned for Mun, with flight time to Mun periapsis estimated around six hours even. The Clinton conducted its burn at that point and will arrive at Kerbin periapsis in about 5.75 hours. Gilligan conducted a burn at intercept to take her to rendezvous with Atreides, with flight time to the rendezvous at one hour and fifty minutes.

With some time to kill and with LSV House Harkonnen having donated most of her available Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter - the vital consumables for her Alcubierre Drive - to House Atreides, I decided my next course of action would be to warp SH Shai Hulud from Duna to Kerbin, the craft's first warp flight. I had been concerned about this flight, as the ship's mass driver protruded outside the warp bubble during the test and there was a risk it'd break off and explode. Nevertheless, I proceeded with the warp, and Shai Hulud arrived at Kerbin without incident.

Shai Hulud passing Ike during her maiden warp. She certainly looks ready to eat a few Harkonnens...

Owing to a good departure angle, the ship arrived at 2,760 m/s, slow enough to enter an elongated orbit directly - after some maneuvers to bleed off an excess 1 kps, the warp tanker settled into a 591.9 x 574.4 kilometer, 5.16° inclined orbit. At that point I wanted to fuel up the ship's Liquid Xenon tank; with the tank set to convert Liquid Xenon directly to Xenon Gas, the idea was that it would provide Shai Hulud with a steady supply, which could then be passed along via mass driver to my other warp ships. It's an idea that so far works in theory though the conversion rate is fairly slow. In any case, I had sent out pilot Lutop Kerman to the South Base outpost near KSC with a modified Wisent 7 utility rover a day or two ago in anticipation of the need to do this. With Shai Hulud in orbit, it was time to hook up the rover to the outpost; engineer Janbles Kerman went on EVA to do just that.

Janbles getting in her morning run. Just fifty more laps to go, Janbles!

The rover was hooked up successfully and its supply of Liquid Xenon was shot up to Shai Hulud via the base's mass driver. Janbles disconnected the rover from the base and proceeded back to her post, at which point the rover was recovered (blew several wheels when it was hooked up, so driving it back to KSC for recovery was quite impossible). Upon receiving the payload, Shai Hulud used her mass driver to shoot a supply of Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter to House Harkonnen. Harkonnen is now full up on Exotic Matter again and has sufficient Xenon for operations when I need her again. Which turns out is going to be soon - about this time one of my Mission Control alarms went off and a new contract appeared to take twelve colonists out to Bop...

After Strange Cargo rendezvoused and docked at House Atreides, I once again had some time to kill. With the go-ahead given to orbit Pol, LSV House Corrino broke Kerbin's orbit and headed to Jool, arriving at 9,268.3 m/s. After one warp back maneuver, the ship settled into a 7,229.8 x 5912.0 kilometer, 0.51° inclined orbit over the green giant. The ship began maneuvers to take her to Pol after Gilligan arrived and docked at House Atreides. I was able to get Corrino's relative velocity down to 191 m/s before proceeding with the final warp.

Taking steady aim here...don't want to get going any faster and I sure as hell don't want to miss. Plus two moons visible...

Slow as she was going, Corrino arrived about a hundred m/s too fast to enter orbit directly, but she did get a flyby with ample time to prepare for a conventional burn, which took place forty minutes later; the ship is at the present time in an 18.8 x 13.8 kilometer, 5.39° orbit over the crusty moon. (Going to go with that descriptor...why not). The burn closed out my day yesterday.

Though I've only had forty minutes of play time so far this morning, it's already been eventful. CSY finished the print of the Cigar, which was released after fueling and set to rendezvous with space station Eveport; flight time from launch to rendezvous will be 65 minutes total. After that, my attentions returned to events at Pol. I had long ago printed up a TBD 7dG base-seeding lander for use at Pol aboard Corrino, and had put pilot Rodhat Kerman, scientist Nedmore Kerman and engineer Millas Kerman in the seats aboard (made sense; I needed every available seat at the time and I figured I would need a crew in the lander eventually). With the lander ready to launch well before now, I gladly released the thing.

About time I was able to launch this damn thing. Next time I get ready to set up shop on a world, I need to remember that the satellites are supposed to come first, then then outpost...

With the drydock clear, the crew aboard House Corrino began printing up ScanSat Pol. Owing to the fact that the ship's twin Bigby Orbital Workshops are both filled to capacity with highly experienced engineers, the ship's productivity rating right now is 55.9; it took only five minutes and 45 seconds for them to complete the probe. During the interim, though, there was still sufficient time for G. Grant to undock from Corrino and for Val to take a spacewalk over and board Corrino via Necessary Evil, fulfilling two out of three requirements for the latest exploration contract.

Val doing her part to earn me money for the good of Kerbin's broadening of the economy scientific exploration.

G. Grant docked back up and Val returned to her pilot's chair, at which point the ScanSat was ready. After transferring fuel, the satellite was released and a Pink Noise 7 communications satellite carrier was ordered up; print time was 12 minutes and 45 seconds. The ScanSat performed a burn to take it from the relatively equatorial orbit it was in at launch to a 20.2 x 19.3 kilometer, 90.47° inclined orbit; it's too low to perform the orbital analysis but a further burn will take place to move it up to 25 kilometers when it reaches apoapsis about thirty minutes from now. The Pink Noise was completed and fueled, and was dubbed Polcomm Alpha upon launch. The probe carrier has already conducted a burn to put it into a 54.2 x 13.4 kilometer, 90.58° inclined orbit over Pol. With any luck, I'll be able to circularize the probe and deploy the three planned satellites of the Polcomm satellite constellation today. Meanwhile, Corrino has begun printing a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft to satisfy the third and final condition of the current exploration contract (to return a craft to the surface of Kerbin from Pol). Printing there will take just under 21 minutes. The plan is for Corrino to dock that craft up when it's finished and then to print a Lab module so that I can go ahead and level up all the crew aboard - at this point, all of the crew aboard have hit enough destinations that even the least experienced of them should shoot instantly up to 5-star status. The three kerbals aboard the TBD should also be able to do so once they get their planned Pol outpost established.

Today is liable to be eventful. Owing to the fast build times going on, Corrino should be able to return to Kerbin today and I have the communications satellite constellation to build at Pol as well. Backus is almost to Mun, where she'll be conducting a rescue mission and landing a tourist on the surface before heading on to deliver colonists to Minmus. The Clinton is almost to Kerbin so I should be able to conduct the junk-and-kerbal mission I've got there, and at this point House Atreides is ready to head out on her next interplanetary run (she'll be stopping by Jool before going to Duna, and after dropping off colonists there she'll be heading on to Eve). Harkonnen still gets to chill for a bit - while I do have twelve colonists to take out to Bop, the only available ferry ship at Kerbin right now is Next Objective (max capacity nine), so I'll need to have another ferry ship available before anything can happen there. I might wind up with more colonists heading out when that junk-and-kerbal winds up anyway. Looking forward to getting things situated at Pol, and I'm definitely ready to put an outpost up out there. Just got to get the permission to do it first...

[Guest]

Not a great day for the Brikoleur Hardcore-ish Space Program.

First I had to abort a launch. My rocket was a bit shorter on TWR than I thought and I made my gravity turn too early, and it turned out my kerbals would not be going to space today. Fortunately I had my abort sequence all sorted and no lives were lost, but I did lose an expensive payload and rocket.

Then, when sending up some new station modules for my Munar station, I had a series of piloting errors that very nearly led to damage to the new electrical power and accommodation module. After much annoying manoeuvring however, everything ended up docked as intended.

After that I sent up a similar module to my Minmus station. There, however, I had forgotten that the Minmus station was a slightly earlier version and not equipped with Docking Port Jr's. This meant that my docking plan failed. Fortunately I had one standard-sized docking port on it, but I did lose the fuel I had hauled up... for the time being anyway, it is now orbiting Minmus and once I have a Klaw up there, I will be able to recover it.

And the final setback is what I would consider a bug.

I had sent up some surface experiments. However, my lander is not equipped with a container for them, so I figured I'll just have its 3-kerbal crew carry them down. No dice: their inventory simply disappears when they board a module.

Better luck tomorrow I hope. At least everyone's still alive, and I just need to scrap my plan for surface experiments for now, until I have a new lander up there anyway.

[RizzoTheRat]

Putting all my KOS scripts to good use with a series of tourist missions.  Automatic rendezvous and docking makes life so much easier.  7 tourists and new 4 seal lander arriving at the Minmus orbital fuel dump.

 

Dumping the old 2 seat lander was a bit hairy though, I forgot it didn't have a probe core so Jeb had to decelerate it enough to deorbit it, then bail out and RCS back to the ship on his backpack.

[Cavscout74]

3 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Not a great day for the Brikoleur Hardcore-ish Space Program

Sounds like my career a few days ago - lost a ~70,000 Minmus outpost that took almost a month to build due to a decoupler failure then had to abort a rescue mission due to a first stage engine failure.

Today's report is much better however.

First up - Kerbinport Station was launched into a 245 x 255 km orbit with near zero inclination and is now waiting on its first crew. 

 

Then my first two Duna/Ike probes arrived at Duna.  First was the Ike Sojourner/Surveyor combination orbiter & lander, followed 2 days later by the Duna Sojourner.

Ike Sojourner/Surveyor entering Ike's SoI.  

Sojourner orbiter released in a near-polar, highly elliptical orbit to also act as a comm relay.  Surveyor lander with transfer stage is preparing to deorbit

Surveyor safely landed with a view of Duna

Finally, the Duna Sojourner in orbit

 

 

 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Well, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had hoped but it was a productive day nonetheless. After beginning with a mass driver shot of fuel and Rocket Parts from the South Base outpost near KSC to LSV House Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit, I went ahead and got the nascent ScanSat Pol probe into a 25 kilometer polar orbit over Pol and conducted the orbital survey. That done, I proceeded with biome scans in preparation for establishing a ground base, a job that proceeded rapidly on account of there only being four biomes on Pol; I was able to get the job done in a single sitting. Pol's going to be a challenge: of the four biomes, the only one that contained Rare Metals - the primary ingredient in Equipment, which I need to put up new Pathfinder structures - was the Lowlands, which lacks Minerals and Uraninite. Since I'm using the TBD 7dG base-seeding lander for the job, there's only about 350 units of Equipment on board right now, which is enough to change the configuration of the onboard Micro ISRU; it's set to monopropellant production right now. I don't have enough Equipment to deploy structures at the moment; the idea was to save mass by manufacturing Equipment on site. The Micro ISRU can make Equipment, but it requires Minerals to do so...

I've got a plan, it's just going to be convoluted.  Getting the Pol base running is going to be interesting...

LSV House Corrino continued the spate of construction it had been up to earlier in the day yesterday, completing the print of the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft. I was able to transfer monopropellant aboard the newly-printed craft, but I didn't have time to release it from the bay - KAC informed me that the Cigar 7 Eve Descent Module had arrived at space station Eveport, so I spent the next several minutes getting it docked up to the prior Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle already docked at the station.

So, y'all see that Mk1 Lander Can? That's what's left of the Zima...the rest of that bit sticking out from the station is St. Simeon Salus. Another screenie where I would've ran out of light before docking, incidentally...

The Polcomm Alpha communications satellite arrived at its final position next and burned to a circular 2-hour polar orbit over Pol, at which point the side satellites were released and made burns to set up a triangle communications satellite constellation; Polcomm Charlie (1 hour 20, with an 8000m periapsis) went low while Polcomm Bravo went high (2 hours 40 minutes). At that point I was able to return my attention to House Corrino; the G-LOC was released and proceeded to dock with its mothership.

Love how Jool has managed to crop up in each one of my Pol screenshots so far...

With the G-LOC docked, I next busied myself with the print of a Lab module, which the engineers aboard Corrino had done in under twenty minutes. The Lab module was utilized to level up all of the Kerbals aboard Corrino to 5-star status, including Bob, first Kerbal on Mun, who became the last of my veterans to attain that status. Sure took him long enough...

The Bill Clinton 7b probe I'd sent to Kerbin from Mun arrived and made a burn to align and intercept Anzor's Wreckage. I was rather miffed to discover that rather than being a craft in relatively low Kerbin orbit, Anzor's Wreckage was damn near out to Mun's orbit - I probably could've saved a lot of time had I not burned all the way down. Intercept is set for six hours and 42 minutes. At least this will give me a chance to make a better alignment burn. J. G. Backus also arrived at Mun and made her burn to put her into Munar orbit, which corresponded with the burn to take her to rendezvous with space station Munport. Flight time to rendezvous was 102 minutes.

After Polcomm Charlie made its burn to put itself in final position, I had a window for LSV House Atreides to head out on her scheduled expedition. The ship broke Kerbin orbit and warped to Jool, arriving at 9,854 m/s. Two warp-backs later, the craft settled into a 5,974.6 x 5273.2 kilometer, 1.67° inclined orbit. Atreides had one passenger aboard whose itinerary required Jool orbit, and with that done the ship's next destination is Duna. She'll begin maneuvers to head that way when Duna is in an optimal position to warp from Jool, expected in about 3.5 hours from now.

Polcomm Bravo burned to put itself into position next, finishing up the Polcomm satellite constellation.

Yeah, another equatorial triangle...

My day wrapped up with the arrival of J. G. Backus at Munport. The ship put into dock without incident.

So my to-do list is not all that long at the moment. I need to send down one of my tourists at Mun and while I've still got Backus in the area, I need to perform a rescue mission over Mun. When those two things are complete, Backus will be able to leave; she'll be heading on to Minmus next for the second phase of her current mission. Atreides will be heading to Duna, and with luck I'll also have time to get Corrino back to Kerbin; I'll need Corrino to deliver the G-LOC to Kerbin before I'll get permission for surface landing on Pol. Longer term, I've got the Pol base to build and I've got another interplanetary expedition to commence, this one bringing more colonists out to Bop. I'm debating whether or not I want to put a Hellhound 7 rover on Pol prior to getting the base up; while Pol is the second smallest object in the Kerbol system, its delta-V requirement for landing isn't all that much lower than that for Minmus, and I've used Hounds on Minmus for years. One would certainly help in the search for decent base sites if nothing else. 

I'll let y'all know how the day goes.

Programming note - did the moderators disable Likes on the forums? I haven't been able to give anybody any for the past few days...been some posts that deserved them, IMHO.

Edited September 19, 2019 by capi3101

[Hotel26]

4 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

did the moderators disable Likes on the forums?

Nope.  Technical difficulties being resolved...

 

[manek22]

Was putzing again with ship design.  Decided to make a Star Wars inspired ship (can you guess which one?)
Balance is almost there.  Not sure of the uses, can hold a pilot and 2 crew.  Also has a probe core and a lot of Vernor for horizontal landing on the Mun or Minmus. 4500 Dv Vac fully fueled.

[Guest]

A slightly better day for BAK Moderately Hardcore Space Program.

No major accomplishments, but ran one simulated mission which turned out not to work, due to the bouncy landing legs again. 

I made a base design that uses hydraulic cylinders for legs, with the idea that I can also use them to level it. Bad idea. It just bounces like mad whenever physics kick in; also when adjusting the cylinders after returning to it, they may randomly extend to full length, which doesn't exactly help keep it stable. Back to the drawing board with that one...