What did you do in KSP1 today?

[FahmiRBLX]

So today I've made three more variants of my largest jetliner.

Here's my brochure :

Introducing Three New Variants of our Fr-30

We're happy to announce the launching of three new variants of our Fr-30 airliner and improvements on the original Fr-30.

Every units feature identical flight profiles, hence pilot retraining is no longer necessary.

Fr-30-100 - Wing Redesign

Wings on the original unit has been set at a higher Angle of Incidence to increase lift on the inboard section, consequently drastically reducing stall speed from 70 m/s down to 35 m/s and no longer cruising with nose being steeply upwards during cruise. That's what made this model.

This feature has been inherited to the whole family.

Fr-30-100ER

With fuel tanks in the outboard of each main wing, customers are able to fly further with a single full fuel tank.

But there's a downside; the main landing gears no longer steer since the landing gears are installed on five sets of bogies. Hence, a larger turning radius is what you get. Thus, the -100ER and above variants will be limited to operations on prepared, large airports.

Warranty will be void if aircraft is damaged on small, unprepared airstrips.

Fr-30-200

Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) has been increased, thus a higher acceleration (And higher fuel consumption, unfortunately) as well as (Theoretically) the ability to carry a North American-Rockwell Space Shuttle on its back.

This aircraft is optimized for high-speed operations or as a cargo aircraft carrying mild-heavy loads.

Fr-30-300

Made for high-density routes without pilot retraining, as well as an Auxiliary Power Unit, a feature yet to be implemented to the the rest of the variants, located in the tail to supply power on ground when local electric power is unavailable.

Expect range reductions as this variant is essentially the Fr-30-200 modified by putting a second deck on the top.

 

User Manual

Spoiler

Action Groups

Spoiler

Gear - Landing Gears (Nose, Main & Tailstrike Protection) (Extend / Retract)

SAS - Stability Assist (On / Off)

Lights - Cabin Lights

1 - Engines (On / Off)

2 - Engines (Reverse Thrust)

3 - Flaps (Extend / Retract)

4 - Rear Ramp (Lower / Raise)

5 -  Landing Lights (On / Off)

6 - Taxi Lights (On / Off)

7 - Auxiliary Power Unit (On / Off)*

 

*Fr-30-300 only.

Flight Instructions

Spoiler

Fly almost the same flight profile as the original Fr-30, with the exception of the maximum maneuvering speed.

Below is the original manual.

Spoiler

Engine Start - Takeoff

Activate action group 1 to start engines, taxi to active runway when cleared.

Once lined up, activate Parking Brake (Brake Action Group), throttle up to 100%.

Check thrust output.

When exceeding 210kN, release brakes and let aircraft perform takeoff roll.

Check airspeed.

Once reached 30m/s, activate action group 3 to deploy flaps. 

Once reached 50m/s, apply full pitch up until aircraft is airborne.

Retract landing gear at desired altitude / as instructed during training.

 

Mid-Flight, Cruise

Climb to designated cruising altitude as stated by Air Traffic Controller or flight plan, usually around 3km to 5km.

Trim elevators (Alt+W / S) until 2nd Notch (On the upper half, obviously). This might, however needed to be changed as aircraft speed builds up.

Autopilot mods (e.g Kramax Autopilot, MechJeb) should help flying the plane at a constant altitude, thus if this is used, disregard the elevator trimming instructions.

Above 120 m/s, sudden hard pitch input will shred the wings, plunging into what everyone hates. To be able to apply hard pitch input, 'fugoid' the aircraft for 5-10 seconds. Start 'fugoid'-ing slowly, then gradually intensify the 'fugoid' until enough approximately 10 seconds, then apply full pitch input.

Pilots may try cruising at near-full speed, at around 17,000 ft.

 

Landing - Touchdown

At desired distance / as told during pilot training, deploy landing gears.

Slow down to between 110 to 50m/s.

Start flaring (Refer Wikipedia for more information).

Steep flaring must be done in order to have a rather slow, but smooth landing. This is why a pair of tail landing gears was put there. Anyhow, keep on eye on the prograde marker in order to execute a smooth landing.

Upon touchdown, deploy thrust reversers until aircraft is at safe speed for taxiing.

*Subjects may change without prior notice. Seriously. I'm not lying.

Take note, this is NOT a seaplane, only ditch aircraft in water in case of emergency.

 

Specifications Sheet

Spoiler

Specifications sheet is made according to the rules of Kerbal Express Airlines - Regional Jet Challenge.

Most information may not be accurate, provided that this is written before redesigning.

Category : Jumbo Jet

Top Speed : 300 m/s (1,080 km/h) (Mach 0.88) (583.153 knots)

Dimensions : 56.99 x 12.18 x 54.37 

• Information may be outdated

Passenger Capacity : 

• 240 pax. (Fr-30-100, Fr-30-100ER, Fr-30-200)
• 504 pax. (Fr-30-300)

V₁ Speed : Approx. 30 m/s

• Failed to get accurate result, KSC's runway is too long

V_R Speed : 30 m/s (58 knots) (108 km/h)

V₂ Speed : 35 m/s (68 knots) (126 km/h)

Recommended Cruising Altitude : 5,200m (16,404.2 ft)

Recommended Cruising Speed : 275 m/s (990 km/h)

Maximum Handling Speed : 120 m/s

• Refer "Flight Instructions" on "Mid-Flight, Cruise" section for more information
• May no longer apply.

Powerplants : 

• 4x General Electric-C7 J-90-94B High-Bypass Turbofan, 360kN Max. Thrust Each, 1440kN Max. Total Thrust (Fr-30-100, Fr-30-100ER)
• 6x General Electric-C7 J-90-94B High-Bypass Turbofan, 360kN Max. Thrust Each, 2160kN Max. Total Thrust (Fr-30-200, Fr-30-300)

Maximum Altitude : 5,200m (17,060 ft) from sea level.

Part Clipping : True.

• At wings. Mainly for aesthetics.

Tweakscale : True.

• On landing gears to ensure aircraft is perfectly level on ground.

Version of Manufacture : 1.7.1

*Subjects may change without prior notice

 

Craft Now Available On

Click on Craft Pictures above to download.

Edited September 24, 2019 by FahmiRBLXian

[NHunter]

Today, I've planted a flag on Tarsiss

 

[FahmiRBLX]

39 minutes ago, NHunter said:

Today, I've planted a flag on Tarsiss

 

Love the shape of the lander. 

[Cavscout74]

I made a little progress yesterday in career, although most was getting things ready for an upcoming Eve window.

I did finally get my Heavy Mun Lander into action, with a quick trip to Mun & back with several tourists.  It actually has too much dV in the lander core.  I guess you can't have too much, but it was excessive, so I've since redesigned with a smaller core fuel tank. 

The landing gear/drop tanks still had a little fuel remaining when I staged them, and the core vessel had >1200 m/s dV remaining after circularizing around the Mun.  That was when I realized I could get away with a smaller tank on the core

Kelrik finished the dual Minmus rescue contracts, grabbing another engineer & a scientist from a pair of wrecks in high Minmus orbit before returning home safely.  The "little solar panel that could" managed to keep the mission going despite the lack of fuel cells.  I had to be careful to keep it facing the sun during time warps, but otherwise everything went smooth.  The design flaw has also been addressed to prevent this happening in the future.

Finally, my Duna polar lander arrived and landed safely.   It actually tipped over when I deflated the airbags, but it had enough reaction wheel strength to right itself & send back a load of data about the Duna polar highlands.

[hoover2701]

Just getting to grips with JNSQ... I combined it with Probes before Crew. Makes for a nice change of pace and lets me realize I'm still a noob after hundreds of hours of playing time! Even getting to orbit is hard as hell without those Kerbals. I still managed to launch my Kerbin Altimetry Scanning Probe into polar orbit though. Not much of an accomplishment for kerbalkind but a giant leap for me! 

 

[Dan Kerman]

Presently in a good transfer window for Duna so, sending over scanners, ore refineries and other odds ends prior to the invasion...  I mean scientific study! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, forgot to deploy solar panels on one of my payloads...  ship is dead in a highly eccentric orbit around Kerbin. Deciding whether to send up something cheap to intercept and revive or just say ehhh... and relaunch a new one.

[Pipcard]

Y51, D78 - Taiko Base on Dres is now considered to be "complete" with a population of 12.

[fulgur]

14 hours ago, NHunter said:

Today, I've planted a flag on Tarsiss

1. *notification sound* Fulgur liked a post in a topic WDYDIKSPT.

2. How hard is it to get off Tarsiss? It has a 'Kerbin' class atmosphere without oxygen and a surface pressure of 1.4ATM.

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Had a very active weekend - here's your fair warning for a long post ahead...

My day on Friday began with the de-orbiting of a G-LOC 7a return to Kerbin craft, which LSV House Corrino printed up while still in orbit of Pol and hauled back to Kerbin. The GLOC deorbited and landed in the water about 75 kilometers to the east of KSC, fulfilling the latest exploration contract in the process. The next contract was for Vall - I was tasked with transferring crew between two vessels in orbit and then returning a craft to Kerbin's surface from Vall orbit. With LSV House Atreides deployed to Duna and LSV House Harkonnen already slated to haul the next group of colonists out to Bop, the job fell to Corrino, and to that end supplies of Exotic Matter and Xenon Gas were shot to the warp ship from SL Shai Hulud in high Kerbin orbit via mass driver.

The ferry ships Strange Cargo and Gilligan had been tasked with delivery of a group of nine colonists headed for the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface to space station Dunaport as a last stop before final delivery to their destination. Both ships arrived at Dunaport relatively close to one another, performing a double rendezvous and docking.

One of these days I might get over my fascination with having the object of focus not be the object in the foreground...Gilligan is the object of focus in this case, with Strange Cargo in the foreground.

Once both ships were docked, colonists Decan, Stelvis, Meller, Barvey, Susey, Serena, Wilsel, Seanfurt, and Huduki Kerman boarded the station and the two ferry ships took on fuel supplies from the station's stores for the return flight to House Atreides. Both ships departed the station at that point to return to Atreides; while I don't have the exact point of their rendezvous and docking listed in my notes for some reason, I do know that the flight time back was just short of three hours each, with sufficient time between the arrival of the two to make life easier on myself. While the ferries were in flight to Atreides, I brought up a Spamcan 7a lander that had ferried tourist Gregfred Kerman to the surface of Mun for contract and set it to rendezvous with space station Munport; flight time to rendezvous was 55 minutes. I also got Corrino prepped for her run out to Vall - after transferring supplies of fuel and Rocket Parts to the ship from the South Base outpost near KSC via mass driver, the ship printed up a new G-LOC 7a with a total print time of a mere eighteen minutes. Monopropellant was transferred to the nascent craft, which launched from Corrino's drydock and affected an immediate docking to one of the ship's exterior ports. I then had the crew begin printing up a Hellhound 7 rover with skycrane for delivery to Pol; total print time of the rover/skycrane was 42 minutes. The Spamcan arrived at Munport at that point, Gregfred boarded J.G. Backus docked at the station and Backus departed, burning to head for Minmus directly from Mun. Flight time to periapsis over Minmus will be just over 75 hours.

Yeah, that's what 75 hours translates to. I could've said "12.5 bols" (as in "twelve Kerbin days and three hours") but that term really never caught on...

With the desire to bring down all nine of the colonists I'd brought to Dunaport all in one go, I finished Friday up with the design of the Crater Maker Heavy 7 16-passenger lander.

It's a damn spider...quick, someone get me a boot!!

Construction of the new lander began at Enchova Central, with total construction time seven hours and forty minutes.

Saturday saw a fair amount of Alcubierre Drive usage. The day began with Corrino's departure from Kerbin; the ship arrived at Jool at 8,325 m/s and after one warp-back she settled into a 5,772.8 by 5613.2 kilometer, 2.08° inclined parking orbit over Jool in preparation for final warp to Vall. While waiting, House Atreides broke orbit over Duna and warped to Eve, arriving at 15,138 m/s. Atreides required 32 warp-backs before she settled into a 959.2 x 806.4 kilometer, 2.81° inclined orbit there. Upon attaining orbit, Gilligan took on fuel from Atreides and departed for space station Eveport. Flight time to Eveport was 57 minutes, during which time Corrino warped to Vall, arriving at 2,395 m/s. Corrino required thirteen warpbacks before she had slowed down sufficiently for orbital entry, attaining a 349.4 x 309.4, 2.69° inclined orbit. Gilligan docked at Eveport without incident and took on fuel, as did the Cigar 7 Eve Descent Module already docked to the station. Tourist Supont Kerman boarded the Zima 7 payload to which the Cigar was docked and the craft departed Eveport for landing at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface. While waiting for the Cigar to reach the point of its deorbit burn, I got a message from KAC saying that space station Laytheport was finally ready for launch from the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe. Alas when I went out there the station still had two days left of printing to do (that's what I get for starting construction with insufficient Rocket Parts for completion at the time and not visiting the outpost in the interim), but the visit did give me the opportunity to install a Kerbal Konstructs Runway out there, something I'd been wanting to do for a while.

We'll see whether the first plane that tries to land on the thing takes off a wing against the terrain in the process...

The Cigar was designed to deorbit the Beer Can 7 payload originally, which is 2.2 tonnes heavier than a Zima; I had sufficient fuel to get a pretty good readout from the Trajectories mod...

Cigar 7 becoming a rod from God...a topic that Kyle Hill talked about this past week on the Because Science YouTube channel, so I guess that was on my mind or something.

Alas, a landing on at ALK was not to be, but at least the Cigar landed safely 8.7 kilometers to the west.

Two airbrakes destroyed on landing. That seems to be the average...

The operation to retreive Supont from the Cigar was delayed only by the completion of the ferry ship Roy Hinkley at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin. The new craft took on fuel supplies from the shipyard and departed for delivery to space station Kerbinport, with flight time to rendezvous a mere 44 minutes. Engineer Gilford Kerman boarded the Echo 4 quadcopter stationed near ALK and flew the nine kilometer distance to the Cigar's landing site, hooking the two craft together long enough for Supont to board the 'copter.

One long tube for one dinky little payload. Eve sure is a place of excesses...

After detaching it from Echo 4, Gilford recycled the Cigar and boarded the 'copter for the return journey to ALK, arriving safely without incident. Gilford hooked the 'copter up to the outpost long enough for Supont to disembark to the outpost, at which point Gilford detached the 'copter and resumed his station aboard the outpost. Supont will remain a guest at ALK until printing of the new Zima 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle is complete, scheduled to take place in a few day's time. I ended the day on Saturday with Roy Hinkley's arrival and docking at Kerbinport.

Sunday began with a quick trip out to the Bohai 2 outpost on Bop, where a colonization contract had completed. Unfortunately, none of the four kerbals involved in the contract had a stupidity rating less than 0.5, so I will not be retraining them any time soon. With House Corrino in orbit of Vall, I decided to do what bits of the exploration contract I could next. G. Grant docked to Corrino departed, at which point Val got out from the driver's seat and jetpacked over to Necessary Evil also docked to Corrino and got back in, fulfilling the requirement to transfer crew between two vessels. Job done, G. Grant re-docked and Val resumed her seat. With that finished up, House Corrino broke Vall orbit and warped to Jool to bleed off speed for a warp over to Pol. The ship arrived at Pol going 194 m/s and performed a set of conventional burns from there to slow down the rest of the way for orbital entry, eventually attaining a 35.5 x 34.2 kilometer, 9.61° inclined orbit. The ship had finished printing up the Hellhound en route to Vall, so at this point I fueled up the skycrane and launched it from the ship's drydock.

The Hound is a tight fit, but at least it fits...

The Hound burned to put itself into a 25-kilometer periapsis over Pol, opening up the distance between it at the warp ship in preparation for Corrino's departure. About this same time I got the word from Enchova Central that the Crater Maker Heavy was ready to go.

I thought I killed this thing with a boot already...

After taking on fuel, the new lander launched from Central and burned for a rendezvous with Dunaport, arriving and docking successfully after a ninety minute flight. My colonists boarded the new lander at that point and it took on what fuel was available from the station, but it wasn't sufficient to completely fill the craft's tanks; departure was delayed until I could arrange for a refueling shot from Central (which still hasn't happened as of this post). The delay gave Corrino a window to warp over to Jool in preparation for the return flight to Kerbin, with the ship attaining a 6,435.7 x 5,481.4 kilometer, 3.08° inclined orbit.

With nothing else going on, I felt the time was right to get Harkonnen's mission going. To that end, colonists Barton, Bartvan, Lemvin, Leabo, Elford, Tamfred, Joerigh, Eridun, Traner, Mungard, Raybles and Maufrid Kerman boarded an Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane at KSC.

Launch of the next expedition. Your in-flight movie will be Fearless (the Jeff Bridges one, not the Jet Li one...)

The plane rendezvoused safely with space station Kerbinport despite a minor tail-strike and loss of the two ventral engines at take-off. The colonists boarded Next Objective and Roy Hinkley at the station, with pilot Gregeny Kerman taking the helm of Roy Hinkley. With the colonists delivered, the Auk departed Kerbinport and affected a safe landing at KSC 09 (though well left of center) to close out the day yesterday. This morning began with the departure of Next Objective and Roy Hinkley from Kerbinport to House Harkonnen, with expected total flight times for the two ships averaging out around two hours and 56 minutes. House Corrino has also broken orbit over Jool and just arrived at Kerbin going 4,376 m/s. 

So, my first priority today will be getting Corrino in Kerbin orbit, after which I will go ahead and deorbit the G-LOC she hauled out to Vall; this should clear out the rest of the exploration contract and hopefully open up landing operations at one of the Joolian moons. I'm still hoping for Pol since assets for landing are already in place, but if I wind up getting the go for landing at Vall instead I won't be terribly disappointed. I also hope to get the Crater Maker down to Enchova Central, and I should be able to get my two ferry ships in flight to Harkonnen for delivery to Bop. Don't know if I'll get those folks down there today or not; there's definitely already plenty on my to do list right now. I'll let y'all know how the day goes tomorrow morning.

[NHunter]

9 hours ago, fulgur said:

1. *notification sound* Fulgur liked a post in a topic WDYDIKSPT.

2. How hard is it to get off Tarsiss? It has a 'Kerbin' class atmosphere without oxygen and a surface pressure of 1.4ATM.

Tarsiss's atmosphere feels very soupy and it's tall (130km). You need to use Eve-ish ascent profile and even then, you need a lot of dV - my lander has rather cheaty characteristics (ok, just plain cheaty: 5 km/s dV when landed on Gael) and I still barely escaped Tarsiss.

[Maravone]

Finally got around to play some of my RO/RP-1 career this weekend and after a bunch of building some future missions, I got the chance to fly my first manned craft into orbit!

 

13th December 1961: Nestor-Auriga I sits on the pad ready for lift-off.

Powered by 2xH1C's, with attitude control provided by 2xLR-101 verniers, the Nestor Booster blasts off into space!

MECO and upper stage separation. The Vega upper stage is powered by an X-405H. In real life it never flew, being substituted by the Agena-B and its successors.

After MECO the flight proves to be much smoother for the pilot. The maximum 6.5G's just before MECO are reduced to a maximum of 4.1G's at 2nd stage cutoff.

After reaching orbit, the Vega stage separates, and the Auriga capsule is in orbit! Any similarity with real life Mercury program is pure coincidence.

Unfortunately, the retroburn wasn't very photogenic, happening in the night side. The retropack was decoupled just before reentrying the atmosphere, on the day side.

Scorching hot reentry, hitting a dizzying 8.2G's.

Gliding down to a landing by the eastern Mexican coast. A successful mission! Andrew Thomas becomes the first westerner in orbit, returning to earth safe and sound.

[fulgur]

@NHunter:

That's odd; the official GPP dV map says only two thousand-odd. Although it does have 1.4ATM at sea level. I think one needs more aerodynamic landers. Actually, an aerospike-powered plane (you can get over 3000m/s dV from one aerospike alone) might work on Tarsiss's low gravity.

[Guest]

A cheap mission to Mun and Minmus

 

Go to the Doodling adventures to see why

[Cavscout74]

Had another day of mixed missions, and Kerbal Launch Failure reared its ugly head again and for the third time in this career failed a radial decoupler.  I don't know what its issue with radial decouplers is - I've had one engine failure and 3 radial decoupler failures in this career.

You are NOT going to space today - landed safely in the desert after aborting at ~25km.  This was a crew of three 1-star kerbals heading for a Minmus landing, flag planting & promotion to 2-star.

Second attempt went better and they are on their way finally.  In addition to the cost, each of these landers takes 11 days & change to build.

More successful was a combined soil moisture scanner (DMagic) and resource scanner launched into a polar orbit

I also launched a can lander to Eve.  The lander is just a 2.5m service bay with a heatshield on the bottom, parachutes on the top and everything important stuffed inside the service bay.  For reasons I'm a little uncertain of, this is one of the first times I've used Kickbacks in ages, but they were just right for this launch.

Finally, I got another Mun & Minmus rescue completed.  Mun rescue pictured here

[Barefoot Friar]

I don't have screen shots for all of it, but I've been fairly productive.

• I landed a base at the East Crater, not too terribly far from the Mun arch.  Probably about 15km away.
• I sent a crewed science lander ("Standard Lander 2") to the Twin Craters and then hopped over to the base to leave the science in the lab there.
• I launched a lander ("Luna 2") to send to Duna.
• I dealt with a bug on my Munar station where the solar panels showed full coverage but were not generating current.
• I was trying to land an empty lander ("Luna 1") near the base to use in an emergency (read: needed the docking port on the station) but encountered some sort of bug in MechJeb which first crashed it into the Mun and then upon reverting did something to the engine.  I just reverted again and then quit out... I think it's a mod conflct related to OPM and Kopernicus, since it was working fine before I installed those today.
• Oh, yeah.  I installed OPM and Kopernicus today.  The planets are showing up in the tracking center, but I haven't had time to launch anything toward them yet.

Relevant shots:

1. Our intrepid explorer sets a flag on the Mun's Twin Craters in front of the Standard Lander 2.  Valentina is at the controls.

 

2. Flying over Mun Base Alpha and the lander.  I'm using several mods, including StockAlike Station Parts (and the expansion) and the entire NearFuture line.  I've also got the Kerbal Planetary Base Systems mod, but haven't gotten any of those parts in my science career yet.

I had another but my internet sucks so it won't upload properly.

[RizzoTheRat]

Upgrading my RemoteTech Komms network, 3 satellites in a polar orbit with the longest range antenna available. Launch vehicle took them in to a resonant orbit and then the satellites each lofted to the correct altitude on consecutive orbits.

  

 

 

 

Dishes are set to track the active vessel and the omnidirectional antennas hopefully should link them all back to the KSC, but if there is a problem when the KSC is 90 degrees from their plane, they can talk to the old equatorial network which should always have coverage.

[NHunter]

After a long timeskip (~370 days) Hox Vanguard has arrived to its destination:

- Since I was doing a rather aggressive transfer, I needed a massive deceleration burn upon arrival. Thankfully the transfer stage had enough fuel to perform a massive 14 km/s burn. And don't be fooled by the scale of the dish - those engines are enormous 3.75m monstrosities with slightly over 2.5 MN of thrust between them:

- Guess which little twinkle here is the Sun Ciro:

- Finally in designated orbit and awaiting the rest of the "fleet":

[Fraktal]

Today a new era has dawned, as the 8 gig RAM module I ordered back in August finally arrived, allowing me to at last experience KSP the smooth and responsive way it was meant to be experienced. Seriously, startup and shutdown times dropped to something like a tenth of what they used to be, with scene changes finally taking seconds rather than minutes.

No big construction happened, just a reorganization of my inventory of boosters. Also finished a mission that consisted of Jeb and Bob prototyping the MH Mk2 command pod to fetch some science from Minmus for processing in the lab at Kerbin Gateway Station. Problem is, they got greedy and visited a second biome to double the data. By the time they got back to a 275 km orbit around Kerbin in preparation for a rendezvous with the station, they didn't have enough fuel to pull off the rendezvous and match orbital velocity on arrival. So they instead burned to an equatorial inclination so that Val launching from the KSC in a single-seat pod could fetch the data and take it to the station.

The second complication arrived from the fact that after the transaction was carried out, Jeb and Bob didn't even have enough fuel left to deorbit (shouldn't have wasted the fuel on an inclination change when Val had enough to spare). It took them about 20 packs of EVA fuel to manually deorbit their vessel, by which time Val also missed her rendezvous burn with the station by six minutes and was forced to take a more aggressive approach. In the end, the data was delivered and everyone came home safely, with the station's lab now producing slightly more than 0.1 science per day.

More hardware reorganization is planned, followed by a major expansion of Kerbin Gateway Station with fuel storage and a docking grid to serve as the eventual assembly point of a Duna mission at the next transfer window (over a year away), while waiting for an Eve/Ike probe to arrive in ninety days. Also thinking of building a second station far out at the edge of Kerbin's SOI as a future launch point for interplanetary missions.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Fraktal

[GRS]

Last time...i went to Arkanus...

Full Album here.

[Pipcard]

Y51, D110 - Six new crewmembers arrive at Akagi Base on Duna, increasing its population to 18

[Space Nerd]

19 hours ago, NHunter said:

Tarsiss's atmosphere feels very soupy and it's tall (130km). You need to use Eve-ish ascent profile and even then, you need a lot of dV - my lander has rather cheaty characteristics (ok, just plain cheaty: 5 km/s dV when landed on Gael) and I still barely escaped Tarsiss.

So it's quite like tekto!(which I can successfully launch from)

btw what's the gravity?

 

[capi3101]

(1.6.1) Had me a good day yesterday.

After a quick mass driver shot to send up fuel supplies between the Enchova Central outpost on Duna and space station Dunaport, I continued my efforts to put LSV House Corrino into orbit of Kerbin, having  warped their from Jool at the tail end of my day on Sunday. After four warp back maneuvers the ship was able to settle into a 780.8 x 659.4 kilometer, 1.59° inclined orbit, at which point the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft that she'd hauled out to Vall over the weekend departed and burned to a 99.3 kilometer periapsis at 0.03° inclination in preparation for final entry. While awaiting final entry, the ferry ships Next Objective and Roy Hinkley rendezvoused and docked with LSV House Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit carrying a group of twelve colonists bound for the Bohai 2 base on Bop.

The G-LOC reached its designated burn point and proceeded to de-orbit.

Looks like I missed the mark for putting the payload down at KSC, though not by all that much...

The craft came down into the water five kilometers to the east of KSC, completing the latest exploration contract. Going straight to Mission Control, I was happy to discover that the next exploration contract was to land on Pol as hoped. To that end, I picked one of the spots I'd painted using the ScanSat Pol probe last week for landing (the one closest to the equator) and proceeded to maneuver the Hellhound 7 rover/skycrane that Corrino had dropped off into a 15.98 x 15.1 kilometer, 0.02° inclined orbit, and set up a maneuver node for landing at that point. Taking some time in the interim to send up replacement supplies to Corrino from the South Base outpost near KSC and SL Shai Hulud in HKO, the skycrane deorbited and landed safely in Pol's midlands approximately three kilometers south of the targeted site.

Somebody told me I needed to 'put flag on Pol'. Will a rover do instead?

The skycrane released the rover designated Papa 1, which then proceeded to drive to the target site.

Didn't I read somewhere that Pol was kinda hilly? I'm just saying - if this were Mun, I'd've already crashed this thing...twice...

Arrived. Looks like the ScanSat might've picked actually found me a reasonable spot...

The targeted zone does look suitable for a base, though I am thinking about using Kerbal Konstructs to try and level out the terrain, assuming I can figure out how to do it - I know there's a height map involved but I'll need to fiddle around with it some more. My attempt to put raise a plateau in my litterbox save yesterday didn't go so well...no explosions or anything, but no new landforms near KSC either. If someone can point me out to a decent tutorial on how to use KK to fiddle with terrain, I'd sure appreciate it (and no, I don't mean a link to the wiki - what's there does not qualify as a tutorial...).

The mere landing of the rover cleared the Pol exploration contract, so at this point it was back to Mission Control...

Aw, hell yeah, Gene!

The contract to land on Vall was happily snapped up and planning began for that mission. Meanwhile, with a group of colonists loaded into the Crater Maker Heavy 7 16-passenger lander at space station Dunaport late on Sunday, I decided it was time to get that ball rolling. The Crater Maker departed Dunaport and made its way down to the surface, landing safely at Enchova Central.

Still waiting for the EC staff to get out and dust this place. Also, haven't I already killed this granddaddy longlegs twice?

Upon arriving, engineer Wilzon Kerman was given the task of hooking up the lander to the outpost so the colonists could disembark. It was at this point though that I discovered a flaw in the CM Heavy design.

Oh, is that what the VAB engineers meant by "missing ladders"? Who'd've thunk it...

Fortunately, I was able to MacGuyver a solution using Central's fab lab to print up another Mineshaft crew tube real quick. Wilzon attached the tube in an unconventional spot on the lander and was able to hook it up to the base.

Should we tell the colonists that we switched over to hypergolic fuels last week? Naw....

The colonists disembarked to begin their 42 bol (i.e. 252 hour) colonization contract at EC, fuel supplies were transferred into the lander, and Wilzon detached the lander from the outpost. After then detaching the Mineshaft from the bottom of the lander's engine bell, Wilzon resumed his post inside the outpost and the lander lifted off for rendezvous with Dunaport. Rendezvous is set for just over one hour from now. The day ended with a print of a new Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane for Vall aboard House Corrino; the print concluded very last thing last night after 43 minutes. I also performed a quick change to the loadout of the TBD 7d base-seeding rover design, as I'm going to be needing one fairly soon in all likelihood.

So today I've got a pair of warps ahead - I want to get House Harkonnen to Bop (the Pol landing yesterday put the kibash on that) and I need to get House Corrino to Vall. I already have the facilities at Bop to get all twelve of Harkonnen's passengers down in one thwack, so that should be reasonably routine. Corrino's got a more convoluted route - the plan is for her to drop off the rover in Vall orbit, then head to Laythe while beginning construction of a TBD 7d; one of those craft will take more Rocket Parts than she can carry to finish up and there will be the need to load Equipment when the rover's done. I can get both from the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe's surface, so it makes sense to go there rather than have to haul the craft all the way back to Kerbin. I also hope to get the Crater Maker back to Dunaport today, and the reprint of space station Laytheport is nearing completion (hopefully for real this time around), so I'll probably have a launch to deal with there. I could also go ahead and set down the TBD 7dG base-seeding lander I've got at Pol to begin base-building there, but I think I want to get the warps out of the way first. I also want to at least try to level out the ground a bit more at the Pol landing site if I can...that patch of 2.2° slope I found on really isn't all that big...

[Cavscout74]

I got my Eve probes sent on their journey and got the first Jool probe (a Voyager-like design) sent into orbit.  After getting another trio of junior kerbonauts landed on Minmus for experience, I put in a little work on building a seaplane for a contract. 

Eve can lander starting it's transfer

Jool Voyager in orbit, waiting on the next transfer window

Minmus lander skimming some hills before landing

CSP-02 sea plane after successful water landing.  It still needs some work, but I was able to take off, land safely in the water then take off from the water & land mostly safely on the runway, so it already does what it was built for.   Due to the CoM sitting pretty high, it has a strong tendency to bury the nose in the water on landing.  I haven't broken anything yet, but that is one of the things that needs work.

 

 

[Triop]

I just got back, what did I miss ?

[RizzoTheRat]

17 minutes ago, Triop said:

I just got back, what did I miss ?

Clearly I've been away to long if Triop's now making aircraft not race cars